Cripps, the Carrier

D. Blackmore R.

Description

Set in rural Oxfordshire, Cripps, the Carrier centers around a diabolical kidnapping plot set in motion by nefarious lawyer Luke Sharp. However, an eccentric salt-of-the-earth type named Cripps catches wind of the scheme. Will he be able to stymie Sharp's crime before it's too late?

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776596218
• Langue: English

Extrait

CRIPPS, THE CARRIER
A WOODLAND TALE
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R. D. BLACKMORE
 
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Cripps, the Carrier A Woodland Tale From an 1892 edition Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-621-8 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-622-5 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - The Head of the Family Chapter II - The Swing of the Pickaxe Chapter III - Oakleaf Potatoes Chapter IV - Cripps in a Quandary Chapter V - A Ride through the Snow Chapter VI - The Public of the "Public" Chapter VII - The Best Foot Foremost Chapter VIII - Balderdash Chapter IX - Cripps in Affliction Chapter X - All Dead Against Him Chapter XI - Knocker Versus Bell-Pull Chapter XII - Mr. John Smith Chapter XIII - Mr. Smith is Active Chapter XIV - So is Mr. Sharp Chapter XV - A Spotted Dog Chapter XVI - A Grand Smock-Frock Chapter XVII - Installed at Brasenose Chapter XVIII - A Flash of Light Chapter XIX - A Stormy Night Chapter XX - Cripps Draws the Cork Chapter XXI - Cinnaminta Chapter XXII - A Delicate Subject Chapter XXIII - Quite Another Pair of Socks! Chapter XXIV - Suo Sibi Baculo Chapter XXV - Miss Patch Chapter XXVI - Ruts Chapter XXVII - Rats Chapter XXVIII - Boots On Chapter XXIX - A Spider's Dinner-Party Chapter XXX - The Fire-Bell Chapter XXXI - Throw Physic to the Dogs Chapter XXXII - Cripps on Celibacy Chapter XXXIII - Kit Chapter XXXIV - A Woolhopian Chapter XXXV - Nightingales Chapter XXXVI - May Morn Chapter XXXVII - May-Day Chapter XXXVIII - The Dignity of the Family Chapter XXXIX - A Tombstone Chapter XL - Let Me Out Chapter XLI - Reason and Unreason Chapter XLII - Meeting the Coach Chapter XLIII - The Motive Chapter XLIV - The Manner Chapter XLV - The Position Chapter XLVI - In the Meshes Chapter XLVII - Combined Wisdom Chapter XLVIII - Masculine Error Chapter XLIX - Prometheus Vinctus Chapter L - Feminine Error Chapter LI - Unfilial Chapter LII - Unpaternal Chapter LIII - "This Will Do" Chapter LIV - Cripps Brings Home the Crown Chapter LV - Smith to the Rescue Chapter LVI - Fatal Accident to the Carrier
Chapter I - The Head of the Family
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The little village of Beckley lies, or rather lay many years ago, inthe quiet embrace of old Stow Wood, well known to every Oxford man wholoves the horn or fusil. This wood or forest (now broken up into manystraggling copses) spread in the olden time across the main breadth ofthe highland to the north of Headington, between the valley of theCherwell and the bogs of Otmoor. Beckley itself, though onceapproached by the Roman road from Alchester, must for many a centuryhave nursed its rural quietude, withdrawn as it was from thestage-waggon track from High Wycombe to Chipping Norton, throughWheatley, Islip, and Bletchingdon, and lying in a tangle of narrowlanes leading only to one another. So Beckley took that cheerful viewof life which enabled the fox to disdain the blandishments of thevintage, and prided itself on its happy seclusion and untutoredhonesty.
But as all sons of Adam must have something or other to say to therest, and especially to his daughters, this little village carried onsome commerce with the outer world; and did it through a carrier.
The name of this excellent man was Cripps; and the Carrier's mantle,or woolsey coat, had descended on this particular Cripps from manygenerations. All the Cripps family had a habit of adding largely totheir number in every generation. In this they resembled most otherfamilies which have to fight the world, and therefore recruit theirforces zealously; but in one great point they were very distinct—theyagreed among one another. And ever since roads were made, or ratherlanes began trying to make themselves, one great tradition hadconfirmed the dynasty of Crippses.
This was that the eldest son should take the carrying business; thesecond son (upon first avoidance) should have the baker's shop inOxford over against old Balliol College; the third should have thequeer old swine-farm in the heart of Stow Forest; the fourth should bethe butcher of Beckley, and the fifth its shoemaker. If ever itpleased the Lord to proceed with the masculine fork of the family (ashad happened several times), the sixth boy and the rest were expectedto start on their travels, when big enough. As for the girls, theCarrier, being the head of the family, and holding the house and thestable and cart, was bound to take the maids, one by one, to and frounder his tilt twice a week, till the public fell in love with them.
Now, so many things come cross and across in the countless ins andouts of life, that even the laws of the Crippses failed sometimes, insome jot or tittle. Still there they stuck, and strong cause wasneeded ere they could be departed from. Of course the side-shoots ofthe family (shoemakers' sons, and so on) were not to be bound by thisgreat code, however ambitious to be so. To deal with such rovers isnot our duty. Our privilege is to trace the strict succession of theCrippses, the deeds of the Carrier now on the throne and his secondbest brother, the baker, with a little side-peep at the man on thefarm, and a shy desire to be very delicate to the last unmarried"female."
The present head of the family, Zacchary Cripps, the Beckley carrier,under the laws of time (which are even stricter than the Cripps'code), was crossing the ridge of manhood towards the western side offorty, without providing the due successor to the ancestraldriving-board. Public opinion was already beginning to exclaim at him;and the man who kept the chandler's shop, with a large small family tomaintain, was threatening to make the most of this, and set up his owneldest son on the road; though "dot and carry one" was all he knewabout the business. Zacchary was not a likely man to be at all upsetby this; but rather one of a tarrying order, as his name mightindicate.
Truly intelligent families living round about the city of Oxford had,and even to this day have, a habit of naming their male babies afterthe books of the Bible, in their just canonical sequence; whileinfants of the better sex are baptized into the Apocrypha, or even theEpistles. So that Zacchary should have been "Genesis," only his fatherhad suffered such pangs of mind at being cut down, by theever-strengthening curtness of British diction, into "Jenny Cripps,"that he laid his thumb to the New Testament when his first man-childwas born to him, and finding a father in like case, quite relieved ofresponsibility, took it for a good sign, and applied his nametriumphantly.
But though the eldest born was thus transferred into the NewTestament, the second son reverted to the proper dispensation; and theone who went into the baker's shop was Exodus, as he ought to be. Thechildren of the former Exodus were turned out testamentarily, savethose who were needed to carry the bread out till their cousin's boysshould be big enough.
All of these doings were right enough, and everybody approved of them.Leviticus Cripps was the lord of the swine, and Numbers bore thecleaver, while Deuteronomy stuck to his last, when the public-housecould spare him. There was only one more brother of the dominantgeneration, whose name was "Pentachook," for thus they pronounced thecollective eponym, and he had been compendiously kicked abroad, toseek his own fortune, right early.
But as for the daughters (who took their names from the best women ofthe Apocrypha, and sat up successively under the tilt until they weredisposed of), for the moment it is enough to say that all except onewere now forth and settled. Some married farmers, some marriedtradesmen, one took a miller's eldest son, one had a gentleman more orless, but all with expectations. Only the youngest was still in thetilt, a very pretty girl called Esther.
All Beckley declared that Esther's heart had been touched by a Collegelad, who came some five years since to lodge with Zacchary for thelong vacation, and was waited on by this young girl, supposed to bethen unripe for dreaming of the tender sentiment. That a girl of onlyfifteen summers should allow her thoughts to stray, contrary to allcommon sense and her duty to her betters, for no other reason (toanybody's knowledge) than that a young man ate and drank with lessnoise than the Crippses, and went on about the moonlight and thestars, and the rubbishy things in the hedges—that a child like thatshould know no better than to mix what a gentleman said with his innermeaning—put it right or left, it showed that something was amiss withher. However, the women would say no more until it was pulled out ofthem. To mix or meddle with the Crippses was like putting one'sfingers into a steel trap.
With female opinion in this condition, and eager to catch at anything,Mrs. Exodus Cripps, in Oxford, was confined rather suddenly. She hadkneaded a batch of two sacks of flour, to put it to rise for themorning, and her husband (who should not have let her do it) wassmoking a pipe, and exciting her. Nevertheless, it would not haveharmed her (as both the doctor and the midwife said) if only she hadkept herself from arguing while about it. But, somehow or other, herhusband said a thing she could not agree with, and the strength of herreason went the other way, and it served him right that he had to rushoff in his slippers to the night-bell.
On the next day, although things were quite brought round, and theworld was the richer by the addition of another rational animal, Mr.Exodus sent up the crumpet-boy all the way from Broad Str