CHAPTER XXXII.
CRIPPS ON CELIBACY
Whatever might or may be said by any number of most able and homicidal physicians, Russel Overshute will believe, as long as he draws breath of life, that by the grace of the Lord he owes that privilege to the fire-bell. In this belief he has always been most strongly supported by Esther Cripps, who perhaps was the first to suggest the idea; for he at that time must have failed to know a fire-bell from a water-bucket. The doctors had left him, through no fear for their own lives, but in despair of his. There was far less risk of infection now than in the earlier stages. No sooner, however, did the household find out that the medical men had abandoned the case, than panic seized their gallant hearts, and with one accord they ran away. From Saturday morning till Saturday night, when Esther came from Beckley, there was nobody left to watch and soothe the poor despairing misery, except the helpless and worn-out mother.
One thing is certain (and even the doctors, with their usual sharpness, found it wise to acknowledge this) – both Mr. Overshute and his mother must have been dead bodies with little hope of Christian burial, if that brave girl had not set forth (without any one even asking her) on the Saturday night to help them. Mrs. Overshute had quite thrown up all hope of everything – save the mercy of God in a better world, and His justice upon her enemies – when quite in the dark this young girl came, while she was lying down on her back, and curtsied, and asked her pleasure.
If Esther had not curtsied, perhaps Mrs. Overshute in that state of mind would have taken her for an angel; though Etty's bonnet, made by herself, was not at all angelical. But she knew her for one of the lower orders (who bend knee instead of neck), and belonging herself to a fine old race, she rallied her last energies with a power of condescension.
However, these are medical, physical, social, economical, and perhaps even psychological questions – wherein what remains except perpetual inquiry? Enough is to say that Russell Overshute, having long had a ringing in his ears, was rung out of that, and rung back to life, by the lively peal of the fire-bell. And ever since that, whenever he is ill – though it be only a little touch of gout – he immediately sends a good corpulent man to lay hold of the rope and swing to it. These things are of later date. For the present, this young man (although he certainly had turned the corner) lay still in a very precarious state, with a feeble mother to pray for him. Mrs. Overshute held that same vile fever, but in a very different form, as at her time of life was natural. With her it was intermittent, low, stealthy, and undermining. It never affected her brain, or drove her into furious calenture, but rooted slowly inward, preying on her life quite leisurely. Their cases differed, as a knock-down blow differs from a quiet grasp.
But though the house lay still in sadness, loneliness, and dull suspense, and though the doctors, having abandoned the case, had the manners not to come again, still from day to day there was some little growth of liveliness. Hardenow came almost daily, having put his class of striders under a deputy six-leaguer; the Squire also might be expected, whenever Mother Hookham let him out; and even Zacchary Cripps renewed an old washing in that direction. He came, with the hoops of his cart taken out, because of the beautiful weather, and four good baskets of clothes for to wash (whose wearers were happy enough to have no idea where their "things" were), and quite at the centre of his gravity – as felt by himself, and endorsed by Dobbin – anybody getting up with a curious eye might well have beheld a phenomenon. For here stood a very large pickling tub, with the cover taken off for the sake of air; around the sides was salted pork – hands and springs, and belly pieces – and in the middle was a good-sized barrel of the then existent native.
"Veed 'un," cried Cripps, with his coat-tails up, while tugging at his heavy tub; "veed 'un, Etty, whatsomever 'ee do. Salt is the main thing for 'un now. I have heerd tell that they burns away every bit of the salt inside 'em, in these here bouts of fever. If 'ee can replace 'un, laife comes round; or else they goes off, like the snuff of a candle. Bless me, I must be getting fevery myzell, or never should have a job to lift this here. Now the quality of this pickle you know well, for the most part fell on your shoulders. Home-bred, home-born, home-fed, home-slaughtered, and home-salted – that's what I calls pork!"
"Yes, to be sure, Zak," Etty answered, laying her hand to the tub upon the shaft-stock, while Dobbin wagged his tail at her; "but what have you got in this very small cask, sitting in the middle of all the brine?"
"Why, you know, Etty, you must have seed me bring 'em for all the great folk about Christmas-tide. Oysters, as lives in the sea, and must be salt inside of their barryels. So I clapped them in here for a fresh smack of it, and uncommonly strengthening things they be if you take them with enow of treble X. Likely his worship will be too weak to keep them down with the covers on yet, as is the proper way, they tell me; so you best way take out the hearts and give him."
"Oh, brother," cried Esther, remembering suddenly, "I ought not to be talking to you like this. Whatever could I be thinking of? What would the people at Beckley say? They would fear to come nigh you for a month, Zak, and your business would be ruined. Now, do jog on, you and dear old Dobbin. How well I knew the sound of his old feet. I can't give you the fever, Dobbin, can I?"
With this perhaps incorrect or, at any rate, unestablished hypothesis, she gave the old horse a lingering kiss just below his blinkers, in return for which he jerked off some froth on the sleeve of her dress, and shook himself; while the Carrier, having discharged his cargo, smote himself with both arms, from habit rather than necessity, and approached his young sister for his usual hearty smack.
"No, Zak, no," she cried, running up the steps, "I have no fear of taking it myself whatever; but if I should happen to give it to you, I never should get over it."
"Well, well, little un, the Lord knows best," Master Cripps answered, without repining too bitterly at this arrangement; "but ating of my victuals lonesome is worse than having no salt to them; you better come home pretty soon, my dear, or somehow or other there might happen to be some one over in the corner, 'longside of our best frying-pan."
Etty had heard this threat so often, that now she only laughed at it. But instead of laughing, she blushed most sadly at her brother's parting words:
"God bless you, Etty, for a brave good girl; and speed you home to Beckley. You want more sleep of nights, my dear; your cheeks are getting like a pillow-case. But excoose my mentioning of one thing, Etty; I be like a father to 'ee; don't 'ee have more than you can help to say to the great scholard, Master Hardenow."
Cripps was a gentleman, in an inner kind of way, and he took good care to be getting up his shaft (with his stiff knee stiffer than ever, from the long frost of last winter) while he discharged his duty, as he thought it, at, as well as to, his sister. Then he deposited the polished part of his breeches on the driving-board, and brought his "game-leg" into the right stick-out, and with his usual deliberation started – nay, that is too strong a word – persuaded into progress his congenial and deliberate horse. Neither of them hurried on a washing-day, any more than they hurried upon any other day.
Zacchary knew that his sister was – as Master Phil Hiss had said of her – "a most terrible hand at blushing;" and she could not bear to be looked at in this electric aurora of maidenhood; and therefore he managed to be a long way off, ere even he turned both head and hand, to deliver last issue of "God bless you!"
Full of confusion about herself, and clearness of duty for other people, Esther Cripps ran in, to see to the many things now depending upon her. There were now three servants in the house, gathered from good stuff around, but wholly void of any wit, to make up for want of experience. Esther had no experience either, but she possessed good store of sense, and quickness, and kind energy. Whatever she thought of her brother's warning, she would think of afterwards. For the present she must do her best concerning other people; and Mrs. Overshute needed now more nursing than her son did.
Zacchary Cripps, at the very first distance at which he was sure of not being seen, began to shake his head, and shook it, in a resolutely reflective way, for nearly three quarters of a mile. The trees above him were alive with beauty, alike of sight, and sound, and scent; and the Carrier made up his mind for a pipe, to enable him to consider things. His custom was not to smoke, except when good occasion offered; and he tried to have no contempt for carriers (of inferior family) who could not deliver a side of bacon without smoking it over again almost. Zacchary Cripps, like all good men, stood up for the dignity of his work. Strictly meditating thus, he saw a slight figure approaching with a rapid swing, and presently met Mr. Hardenow.
The fellow and tutor of Brazenose, at the sight of Cripps and the well-known cart, stopped short to ask how things were going on at the house on the hill above them. The Carrier answered that it would be many a long day, he was afraid, ere his worship could get about again, and that he ought to be kept very quiet, and those would be his best friends now who had the least to say to him. Also he was told that the poor old lady would find it as much as her life was worth, if she was interrupted or terrified now.
"But, my good Cripps," answered Hardenow, "I am not going either to interrupt or terrify them. All I desire is to have a little talk with your good and intelligent sister."
Poor Zacchary felt that his own tactics thus were turned against him; and, after a little stammering and heightened glow of countenance, he betook himself to his more usual course – that of plain out-speaking. But first he got down from his driving-board that he might not fail in due respect to a gentleman and clergyman. Master Cripps had no liking at all for the duty which he felt bound to take in hand. He would rather have a row with three turnpike-men than presume to speak to a gentleman; therefore his bow-leg seemed to twitch him at the knee, as he led Hardenow aside into a quiet gateway; but his eyes were firm and his manner grave and steadfast as he began to speak.
"Mr. Hardenow, now I must ask your pardon, for a few words as I want to say. You are a gentleman, of course, and a very learned scholar; and I be nothing but a common carrier – a 'carrier for hire,' they calls me in the law, when they comes upon me for damages. Howsoever, I has to do my part off the road as well as on it, sir; and my dooty to them of my own household comes next to my dooty to God and myzell. You are a good man, I know, and a kind one, and would not, beknown to yourself, harm any one. It would go to your heart, I believe, Mr. Hardenow, from what I seed of you, when you was quite a lad, if anyhow you was to be art or part in bringing unhappiness of mind to any that had trusted you."
"I should hope so, Cripps. I have some idea of what you mean, but can hardly think – at any rate, speak more plainly."
"Well then, sir, I means all about your goings on with our little Etty, or, at any rate, her goings on with you, which cometh to the same thing in the end, so far as I be acquaint of it. You might think, if you was not told distinkly to the contrairy, that having no business to lift up her eyes, she never would do so according. But I do assure you, sir, when it cometh to such like manner of taking on, the last thing as ever gets called into the account is sensible reason. They feels this, and they feels that; and then they falls to a-dreaming; and the world goes into their tub, same as butter, and they scoops it out, and pats, and stamps it to their own size and liking, and then the whole melteth, and a sour fool is left."
"Master Cripps, what you say is wise; and the like has often happened. But your sister is a most noble girl. You do her gross injustice by talking as if she were nothing but a common village maid. She is brave, she is pure, she is grandly unselfish. Her mind is well above feminine average; anything more so goes always amiss. You should not have such a low opinion as you seem to have of your sister, Cripps."
"Sir, my opinion is high enough. Now, to bring your own fine words to the test, would you ever dream of marrying the maid, if I and she both was agreeable?"
"It would be an honour to me to do so. For the prejudices of the world I care not one fig. But surely you know that we contend for the celibacy of the clergy."
"Maning as a parson maun't marry a wife?" asked Cripps, by the light of nature.
"Yes, my friend, that is what we now maintain in the Anglican communion, as the tradition of the Church."
"Well, may I be danged!" cried Cripps, who was an ardent theologian. "Then, if I may make so bold to ask, sir, how could there a' been a tribe of Levi? They must all a' died out in the first generation; if 'em ever come to any generation at all."
"Your objection is ingenious, Cripps; but the analogy fails entirely. We are guided in such matters by unbroken and unquestionable tradition of the early Church."
"Then, sir, if you goes outside of the Bible, you stand on your own legs, and leave us no kind of leg to stand upon. However, I believe that you mean well, sir, and I am sure that you never do no great harm. And, as to our Etty, if you feel like that in an honest, helpless sort of way, I beg the honour of shaking hands, sir, for the spirit that is inside of you."
"Certainly, certainly, Cripps, with great pleasure!"
"And then of asking you to tramp another road, for your own sake, as well as hers, sir. And may the Lord teach you to know your own mind."
"Cripps, I will follow your advice for the present; though you have said some things that you scarcely ought to say."
"Then I humbly beg your pardon, sir. Every one of us doeth that same sometimes. The bridle of the tongue falleth into the teeth, when the lash is laid on us."
"Your metaphors are quite classical. However, I respect you greatly, Cripps, for your straightforward conduct. I am not a weak man, any more than you are; although you seem to think me one. I like and admire your sister Esther, for courage combined with gentleness. I always liked her, when she was a child; and I understood her nature. But as to her – liking me more than she ought; Cripps, you are imaginative."
"Never heerd before," cried Cripps, "any accoosation of that there kind."
"My friend, it is the rarest compliment. However, your horse is quite ready to walk off; and so am I, towards Cowley. I will not go to Shotover Grange to-day; and I will avoid your sister; though I rarely do like talking to her."
"You are a man sir," cried Zacchary Cripps, as Hardenow set off across the fields. "God bless your reverence, though you never get a waife! A true man he is, and a maight a' been a faine one, if he hadn't taken to them stiff coat tails."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
KIT
In the meanwhile, Mrs. Luke Sharp was growing very anxious about her son, and only child and idol, Christopher. Not that there was anything at all amiss with his bodily health, so far at least as she could see; but that he seemed so unsettled in his mind, so absent and preoccupied, and careless even of his out-door sports, which at one time were his only care. Of course, at this time of year, there was very little employment for the gun, but there was plenty of fishing to be got, such as it was, round Oxford, and it must be a very bad time of year when there are no rats for little terriers, and badgers for the larger tribe. Yet none of these things now possessed the proper charm for Christopher. Wherever he was, he always seemed to be wanting to be somewhere else; and, like a hydrophobic dog, he hated to be looked at; while (after the manner of a cat assisted lately by Lucina) he ran up into his own loft, when he thought there was nobody watching.
Well arranged as all this might be, and keen, and self-satisfactory, there was something keener, and not very easy to satisfy, looking after it. The love of a mother may fairly be trusted to outwit any such calf-love as was making a fool of this unfledged fellow, fresh from the feather-bed of a private school.
Considering whence he came, and how he had been brought up and pampered, Kit Sharp was a very fine young fellow, and – thanks to his liking for gun and rod – he could scarcely be called a milksop. Still he was only a boy in mind, and in manner quite unformed and shy; his father (for reasons of his own) having always refused to enter him at any of the colleges. He might perhaps have shaped his raw material by the noblest models, if he had been admitted into the society of undergraduates. But the members of the University entertained in those days, and probably still entertain, a just and inevitable contempt for all the non-togati. Kit Sharp had made some fluttering overtures of the flag of friendship towards one or two random undergraduates who had a nice taste for ratting; he had even dined and wined, once or twice, in a not ignoble college; and had been acknowledged to know a meerschaum as well as if he owned a statute-book. But the boy always fancied, perhaps through foolish and shy pride on his part, that these most hospitable and kind young men had their jokes to themselves about him. Perhaps it was so; but in pure goodwill. Take him for all in all, and allow for the needs of his situation – which towards the third year grow imperative – and the Oxford undergraduate is as good as any other young gentleman.
But Kit Sharp being exceedingly proud, and most secretive of his pride, would not long receive, without return, good hospitality. And this alone, without other suspicions, would have set bounds to his dealing with a race profusely hospitable. His dear and good mother would gladly have invited a Cross Duck Houseful of undergraduates, and left them to get on as they might, if only thereby her pet son might have sense of salt for salt with them; but Mr. Luke Sharp took a different view. To his mind, the junior members of the glorious University were a most disagreeable and unprofitable lot to deal with. He never, of course, condescended to the Vice-Chancellor's court, and he despised all little actions, in that large word's legal sense. He liked a fine old Don, or Head of a House, who had saved a sack of money, or well earned it by vitality. But for any such young fellows, with no expectations, or paulo-post-futura such, Mr. Sharp was now too long established to put a leaf into his dinner-table. This being so, and Christopher also of restricted pocket-money (so that no dinners at the Star or Mitre could be contemplated), Master Kit Sharp, in a "town and gown row," must have lent the weight of his quiet, but very considerable, fist to the oppidan faction.
"Kit, now, my darling Kit, do tell me," said Mrs. Sharp for about the fiftieth time, as she sat with her son in the sweet spring twilight, at the large western window of Cross Duck House; "what is it that makes you sigh so? You almost break your poor mother's heart. I never did know you sigh, my own one. Now, is it for want of a rat, my darling? If rats are a sovereign apiece, you shall have one."
"Rats, mother! Why, I can catch my own, without any appeal to 'the Filthy!' Rats are never far away from legal premises, like these."
"You should not speak so of your father's house, Kit. And I am sure that no rats ever come upstairs, or out of the window I must jump. But now you are only avoiding the subject. What is it that disturbs your mind, Kit?"
"Once more, mother, I have the greatest objection to being called 'Kit.' It sounds so small, and – and so horribly prosaic. All the dictionaries say that it means, either the outfit of a common soldier, or else a diminutive kind of fiddle."
"Christopher, I really beg your pardon. I know how much loftier you are, of course; but I cannot get over the habit, Kit. Well, well, then – My darling, I hope you are not at all above being 'my darling,' Kit."
"Mother, you may call me what you like. It can make no difference in my destinies."
"Christopher, you make my blood run cold. My darling, I implore you not to sigh so. Your dear father pays my allowance on Monday. I know what has long been the aspiration of your heart. Kit, you shall have a live badger of your own."
"I hate the very name of rats and badgers. Everything is so low and nasty. How can you look at that noble sunset, and be full of badgers? Mother, it grieves me to leave you alone; but how can I help it, when you go on so? I shall go for a walk on the Botley Road."
"Take your pipe, Kit, take your pipe; whatever you do, Kit, take your pipe," screamed poor Mrs. Sharp, as he stuck his hat on, as if it were never to come off again. "Oh, Kit, there are such deep black holes; I will fill your pipe for you, if you will only smoke."
"Mother, you never know how to do it. And once more, my name is 'Christopher.'"
The young man threw a light cloak on his shoulder, and set his eyebrows sternly; and his countenance looked very picturesque in the glow of his death's-head meerschaum. It occurred to his mother that she had never seen anything more noble. As soon as she had heard him bang the door, Mrs. Sharp ran back to the window, whence she could watch all Cross Duck Lane, and she saw him striding along towards the quickest outlet to the country.
"How wonderful it is!" she said to herself, with tears all ready; "only the other day he was quite a little boy, and whipped a top, and cried if a pin ran into him. And now he is, far beyond all dispute, the finest young man in Oxford; he has the highest contempt for all vulgar sports, and he bolts the door of his bedroom. His father calls him thick and soft! Ah, he cannot understand his qualities! There is the deepest and purest well-spring of unintelligible poetry in Kit. His great mind is perturbed, and has hurried him into commune with the evening star. Thank goodness that he has got his pipe!"
Before Mrs. Sharp had turned one page of her truly voluminous thoughts about her son, a sharp click awoke the front-door lock, and a steady and well-jointed step made creaks on the old oak staircase. Mrs. Sharp drew back from her meditative vigil, and trimmed her little curls aright.
"Miranda, I have some work to do to-night," said Mr. Sharp, in his quiet even voice; "and I thought it better to come up and tell you, so that you need not expect me again. Just have the fire in the office lighted. I can work better there than I can upstairs; and I find the evenings damp, although the long cold winter is gone at last. If I should ring about ten o'clock it will be for a cup of coffee. If I do not ring then, send everybody to bed. And do not expect me until you see me."
"Certainly, Luke, I quite understand," answered Mrs. Sharp, having been for years accustomed to such arrangements; "but, my dear, before you begin, can you spare me five minutes, for a little conversation?"
"Of course I can, Miranda! I am always at your service."
Mrs. Sharp thought to herself that this was a slight exaggeration. Still on the whole she had little to complain of. Mr. Sharp always remembered the time when he cast sad distant eyes at her, Miranda Piper, – more enchanting than a will-case, more highly cherished than the deed-box of an Earl. Nothing but impudence had enabled him to marry her; thereby his impudence was exhausted in that one direction, and he ever remained polite to her.
"Then, Luke, will you just take your favourite chair, and answer me only one question?" As she said these words, Mrs. Sharp took care to set the chair so that she could get the last gleam of sunset on her dear lord's face. Her husband thoroughly understood all this, and accepted the situation.
"Now, do tell me, Luke – you notice everything, though you do not always speak of it – have you observed how very strangely Kit has been going on for some time now? And have you any idea of the reason? And do you think that we ought to allow it, my dear?"
"Yes, Mrs. Sharp, I have observed it. You need not be at all uneasy about it. I am observing him very closely. When I disapprove, I shall stop it at once."
"But surely, my dear, surely I, his mother, am not to be kept in the dark about it? I know that you always take your own course, and your course is quite sure to be the right one; but surely, my dear, when something important is evidently going on about my own child, you would never have the heart to keep it from me. I could not endure it; indeed, I could not. I should fret myself away to skin and bone."
"It would take a long time to do that, my dear," replied Mr. Sharp, as he looked with satisfaction at her fine plump figure. It pleased him to hear, as he often did, that there was not in Oxford a finer couple of middle-aged people than Mr. and Mrs. Sharp. "However, I should be exceedingly grieved ever to initiate such a process. But first, before I tell you anything at all, I will ask you to promise two things most clearly."
"My dear, I would promise fifty things rather than put up with this cruel anxiety."
"Yes, I dare say. But I do not want rash promises, Miranda. You must pledge yourself to two things, and keep your pledges."
"I will do so in a moment, with the greatest pleasure. You would never ask anything wrong, I am sure. Only do not keep me waiting so."
"In the first place, then, you must promise me, whether my plan turns out well or ill, on no account to blame me for it, but to give me the credit of having acted for the best throughout."
"Nothing can be easier than to promise that. My dear, you always do act for the best; and what is more, the best always comes of it."
"Very well, you promise that; also, you must pledge yourself to conceal from every one, and most of all from Christopher, everything I am about to tell you, and to act under my directions."
"To be sure, my dear; to be sure, I will. Nothing is more reasonable than that I should keep your secrets."
"I know that you will try, Miranda; and I know that you have much self-command. Also, you will see the importance of acting as I direct you. All I fear is that when you see poor Kit moping, or sighing, and groaning, it may be almost beyond your power to refrain your motherly heart."
"Have no fear, Luke; have no fear whatever. When I know that it is for his true interest, as of course it will be, I shall be exceedingly sorry for him; but still he may go on as much as he pleases; and of course, he has not behaved well at all, in being so mysterious to his own mother."
Luke Sharp looked at his wife, to ask whether any offshoot of this reproach was intended at all to come home to him. If he had discovered any sign of that, the wife of his bosom would have waited long without getting another word from him. For seldom as Mr. Sharp showed temper, he held back, with the chain-curb of expedience, as quick a temper as ever threatened to bolt with any man's fair repute. But now he received no irritation. His wife looked back at him kindly and sweetly, with moist expressive eyes; and he saw that she still was in her duty.
"Miranda," he said, being touched by this, for he had a great deal of conscience, "my darling, I will tell you something such as you never heard before. I have made a bold stroke, a very bold one; but I think it must succeed. And justice is with me, as you will own, after all the attempts to rob us. Perhaps you never heard a stranger story; but still I am sure you will agree with me, that in every step I have taken I am most completely and perfectly justified."