Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs
by R. D. Blackmore · English · Gutenberg #49075 · 1,092,616 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs
Author: R. D. Blackmore
Release date: May 29, 2015 [eBook #49075]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALICE LORRAINE: A TALE OF THE SOUTH DOWNS ***
ALICE LORRAINE:
_A TALE OF THE SOUTH DOWNS_.
BY
RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE,
AUTHOR OF “THE MAID OF SKER,” “LORNA DOONE,” ETC.
οὕτως ἔχει σοι ταῦτα, καὶ δείξεις τάχα,
εἴτ’ εὐγενὴς πέφυκας, εἴτ’ ἐσθλῶν κακή.
SOPH. _Ant._
_NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION._
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY,
_LIMITED_,
St. Dunstan’s House,
FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1893.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
To
PROFESSOR OWEN, C.B., F.R.S., &c.,
WITH THE WRITER’S GRATITUDE,
FOR WORDS OF TRUE ENCOURAGEMENT,
AND MANY ACTS OF KINDNESS,
This Work
MOST HEARTILY IS DEDICATED
_April, 1875._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--ALL IN THE DOWNS 1
II.--COOMBE LORRAINE 3
III.--LINEAGE AND LINEAMENTS 5
IV.--FATHER AND FAVOURITE 7
V.--THE LEGEND OF THE ASTROLOGER 11
VI.--THE LEGEND CONTINUED 14
VII.--THE LEGEND CONCLUDED 17
VIII.--ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST 20
IX.--THE LEGACY OF THE ASTROLOGER 24
X.--A BOY AND A DONKEY 27
XI.--CHAMBER PRACTICE 35
XII.--WITH THE COSTERMONGERS 45
XIII.--TO THE CHERRY-ORCHARDS 49
XIV.--BEAUTIES OF THE COUNTRY 55
XV.--OH, RUDDIER THAN THE CHERRY! 59
XVI.--OH, SWEETER THAN THE BERRY! 66
XVII.--VERY SHY THINGS 72
XVIII.--THE KEY OF THE GATE 78
XIX.--FOUR YOUNG LADIES 84
XX.--A RECTOR OF THE OLDEN STYLE 92
XXI.--A NOTABLE LADY 96
XXII.--A MALIGNANT CASE 100
XXIII.--THE BAITER BAITED 105
XXIV.--A FATHERLY SUGGESTION 109
XXV.--THE WELL OF THE SIBYL 112
XXVI.--AN OPPORTUNE ENVOY 117
XXVII.--A GOOD PARSON’S HOLIDAY 121
XXVIII.--NOT TO BE RESISTED 126
XXIX.--ABSURD SURDS 130
XXX.--OUR LAD STEENIE 135
XXXI.--IN A MARCHING REGIMENT 139
XXXII.--PUBLIC AND PRIVATE OPINION 144
XXXIII.--RAGS AND BONES 149
XXXIV.--UNDER DEADLY FIRE 157
XXXV.--HOW TO FRY NO PANCAKES 161
XXXVI.--LADY COKE UPON LITTLETON 166
XXXVII.--ACHES _v._ ACRES 172
XXXVIII.--IN THE DEADLY BREACH 177
XXXIX.--SHERRY SACK 183
XL.--BENEATH BRIGHT EYES 191
XLI.--DONNAS PRAY AND PRACTISE 195
XLII.--AN UNWELCOME ESCORT 200
XLIII.--IN AMONG THE BIG-WIGS 209
XLIV.--HOW TO TAKE BAD TIDINGS 216
XLV.--INNOCENCE IN NO SENSE 220
XLVI.--HARD RIDING AND HARD READING 226
XLVII.--TRY TO THINK THE BEST OF ME 234
XLVIII.--SOMETHING WORTH KISSING 239
XLIX.--A DANGEROUS COMMISSION 245
L.--STERLING AND STRIKING AFFECTION 250
LI.--EMPTY LOCKERS 259
LII.--BE NO MORE OFFICER OF MINE 264
LIII.--FAREWELL, ALL YOU SPANISH LADIES 268
LIV.--GOING UP THE TREE 275
LV.--THE WOEBURN 281
LVI.--GOING DOWN THE HILL 290
LVII.--THE PLEDGE OF A LIFE 297
LVIII.--A HERO’S RETURN 304
LIX.--THE GRAVE OF THE ASTROLOGER 312
LX.--COURTLY MANNERS 316
LXI.--A SAMPLE FROM KENT 322
LXII.--A FAMILY ARRANGEMENT 327
LXIII.--BETTER THAN THE DOCTORS 332
LXIV.--IMPENDING DARKNESS 335
LXV.--A FINE CHRISTMAS SERMON 341
LXVI.--COMING DOWN IN EARNEST 344
LXVII.--THE LAST CHANCE LOST 348
LXVIII.--THE DEATH-BOURNE 353
LXIX.--BOTTLER BEATS THE ELEMENTS 357
LXX.--OH, HARO! HARO! HARO! 361
LXXI.--AN ARGUMENT REFUTED 367
LXXII.--ON LETHE’S WHARF 370
LXXIII.--POLLY’S DOLL 374
LXXIV.--FROM HADES’ GATES 377
LXXV.--SOMETHING LIKE A LEGACY 380
LXXVI.--SCIENTIFIC SOLUTION 385
LXXVII.--HER HEART IS HIS 387
LXXVIII.--THE LAST WORD COMES FROM BONNY 390
ALICE LORRAINE.
CHAPTER I.
ALL IN THE DOWNS.
Westward of that old town Steyning, and near Washington and Wiston, the
lover of an English landscape may find much to dwell upon. The best way
to enjoy it is to follow the path along the meadows, underneath the
inland rampart of the Sussex hills. Here is pasture rich enough for
the daintiest sheep to dream upon; tones of varied green in stripes
(by order of the farmer), trees as for a portrait grouped, with the
folding hills behind, and light and shadow making love in play to one
another. Also, in the breaks of meadow and the footpath bendings,
stiles where love is made in earnest, at the proper time of year, with
the dark-browed hills imposing everlasting constancy.
Any man here, however sore he may be from the road of life, after
sitting awhile and gazing, finds the good will of his younger days
revive with a wider capacity. Though he hold no commune with the
heights so far above him, neither with the trees that stand in quiet
audience soothingly, nor even with the flowers still as bright as
in his childhood, yet to himself he must say something--better said
in silence. Into his mind, and heart, and soul, without any painful
knowledge, or the noisy trouble of thinking, pure content with his
native land and its claim on his love are entering. The power of the
earth is round him with its lavish gifts of life,--bounty from the lap
of beauty, and that cultivated glory which no other land has earned.
Instead of panting to rush abroad and be lost among jagged obstacles,
rather let one stay within a very easy reach of home, and spare an
hour to saunter gently down this meadow path. Here in a broad bold gap
of hedge, with bushes inclined to heal the breach, and mallow-leaves
hiding the scar of chalk, here is a stile of no high pretence, and
comfortable to gaze from. For hath it not a preface of planks,
constructed with deep anatomical knowledge, and delicate study of
maiden decorum? And lo! in spite of the planks--as if to show what
human nature is--in the body of the stile itself, towards the end of
the third bar down, are two considerable nicks, where the short-legged
children from the village have a sad habit of coming to think. Here,
with their fingers in their mouths, they sit and muse, and scrape their
heels, and stare at one another, broadly taking estimate of life. Then
with a push and scream, the scramble and the rush down hill begin,
ending (as all troubles should) in a brisk pull-up of laughter.
However, it might be too much to say that the cleverest child beneath
the hills, or even the man with the licence to sell tea, coffee, snuff,
and tobacco, who now comes looking after them, finds any conscious
pleasure, or feels quickening influence from the scene. To them it is
but a spread of meadows under a long curve of hill, green and mixed
with trees down here, brown and spotted with furze up there; to the
children a play-ground; to the men a farm, requiring repairs and a good
bit of manure.
So it is: and yet with even those who think no more of it, the place,
if not the scenery, has its aftermath of influence. In later times,
when sickness, absence, or the loss of sight debars them, men will
feel a deep impression of a thing to long for. To be longed for with
a yearning stronger than mere admiration, or the painter’s taste can
form. For he, whatever pleasure rises at the beauty of the scene,
loses it by thinking of it; even as the joy of all things dies in the
enjoying.
But to those who there were born (and never thought about it),
in the days of age or ailment, or of better fortune even in a
brighter climate, how at the sound of an ancient name, or glimpse
of faint resemblance, or even on some turn of thought untraced and
unaccountable--again the hills and valleys spread, to aged vision truer
than they were to youthful eyesight; again the trees are rustling in
the wind as they used to rustle; again the sheep climb up the brown
turf in their snowy zigzag. A thousand winks of childhood widen into
one clear dream of age.
CHAPTER II.
COOMBE LORRAINE.
“How came that old house up there?” is generally the first question put
by a Londoner to his Southdown friend leading him through the lowland
path. “It must have a noble view; but what a position, and what an
aspect!”
“The house has been there long enough to get used to it,” is his
host’s reply; “and it is not built, as they are where you live, of the
substance of a hat.”
That large old-fashioned house, which looks as if it had been much
larger, stands just beneath the crest of a long-backed hill in a
deep embrasure. Although it stands so high, and sees much less of
the sun than the polestar, it is not quite so weather-beaten as a
stranger would suppose. It has some little protection, and a definite
outline for its grounds, because it was built on an old and extensive
settlement of the chalk; a thing unheeded in early times, but now very
popular and attractive, under the name of “landslip.” Of these there
are a good many still to be traced on the sides of the Sussex hills,
caused (as the learned say) by the shifting of the green-sand, or silt,
which generally underlies the more stable chalk. Few, however, of them
are so strongly marked and bold as this one, which is known as “Coombe
Lorraine.” It is no mere depression or irregular subsidence, but a
sheer vertical drop, which shows as if a broad slice had been cut out
from the chine to the base of the highland.
Here, in the time of William Rufus, Roland de Lorraine, having a
grant from him, or from the Conqueror, and trusting the soil to
slide no more, or ignorant that it had ever slidden, built himself
a dwelling-place to keep a look-out on his property. This abode, no
doubt, was fitted for warlike domesticity, being founded in the fine
old times when every gentleman was bound to build himself a castle.
It may have been that a little jealousy of his friend, De Braose (who
had taken a larger grant of land, although he was of newer race, and
had killed fewer men than Sir Roland), led this enterprising founder
to set up his tower so high. At any rate, he settled his Penates so
commandingly, that if Bramber Castle had been in sight, he might have
looked down its chimneys as freely as into his villeins’ sheepcotes.
Bramber Castle, however, happened to be round the corner.
This good knight’s end, according to the tradition of the family, was
not so thoroughly peaceful as a life of war should earn. One gentle
autumnal evening, Sir Roland and his friend and neighbour, William de
Braose, were riding home to a quiet supper, both in excellent temper
and spirits, and pleasant contempt of the country. The harvest-moon was
rising over breadths of corn in grant to them, and sheep and cattle
tended by their villeins, once the owners. Each congratulated the other
upon tranquil seizin, and the goodwill of the neighbourhood; when
suddenly their way was stopped by a score of heavy Englishmen.
These, in their clumsy manner, sued no favour, nor even justice; only
to be trodden down with fairness and show of reason.
“Ye shall be trodden all alike,” De Braose shouted fiercely, having
learned a good deal of English from the place he lived in; “clods are
made to be trodden down. Out of my road, or I draw my sword!”
The men turned from him to Sir Roland, who was known to be kind of
heart.
“Ye do the wrong thing to meet me thus,” he answered in his utmost
English; “the thing, that is to say I hearken; but not with this
violence.”
Speaking thus he spurred his horse, and the best of the men made way
for him. But one of them had an arrow straining on the cord, with
intent to shoot--as he said to the priest at the gallows--De Braose,
and him only. As the two knights galloped off, he let his arrow, in
the waning of the light, fly after them; and it was so strongly sped
that it pierced back-harness, and passed through the reins of Roland de
Lorraine. Thus he died; and his descendants like to tell the story.
It is not true, although maintained by descendants of De Braose, that
he was the man that was shot, and the knight who ran away Sir Roland.
The pious duties rendered by the five brave monks from Fécamp were for
the soul of Sir Roland, as surely as the arrow was for the body of
De Braose. But after eight hundred years almost, let the benefit go
between them.
Whichever way this may have chanced, in an age of unsettled principles,
sure it is that the good knight died, either then or afterwards. Also,
that a man was hanged at a spot still shown in his behalf, and that
he felt it such an outrage on his sense of justice, after missing his
proper shot, that even now he is often seen, when the harvest-moon is
lonely, straining a long bow at something, but most careful not to
shoot.
These, however, are mere legends, wherewith we have nought to do. And
it would have been as well to leave them in their quiet slumber, if it
could have been shown without them how the house was built up there.
Also one may fairly fancy that a sweet and gallant knight may have
found his own vague pleasure in a fine and ample view. Regarding which
matter we are perhaps a little too hard on our ancestors; presuming
that they never owned such eyes as ours for “scenery,” because they
knew the large impossibility of describing it.
CHAPTER III.
LINEAGE AND LINEAMENTS.
Whether his fathers felt, or failed to see, the beauty beneath their
eyes, the owner of this house and land, at the time we have to speak
of, deserved and had the true respect of all who dwelled below him.
It is often said that no direct descendant, bred from sire to son,
still exists (or at any rate can show that he has right to exist) from
any knight, or even cook, known to have come with the Conqueror. The
question is one of delicacy, and therefore of deep feeling. But it must
be owned, in candour, upon almost every side, that there are people,
here and there, able to show something. The present Sir Roland Lorraine
could show as much in this behalf as any other man in England. Here was
the name, and here the place; and here that more fugitive being, man,
still belonging to both of them.
Whether could be shown or not the strict red line of lineage, Sir
Roland Lorraine was the very last man likely to assert it. He had his
own opinions on that all-important subject, and his own little touches
of feeling when the matter came into bearing. His pride was of so
large a nature, that he seldom could be proud. He had his pleasant
vein of humour about almost everything, wholly free from scoffing, and
most sensitive of its limit. Also, although he laid no claim to any
extensive learning, or especially accurate scholarship, his reading had
been various; and his knowledge of the classics had not been allowed to
fade away into misty memory.
Inasmuch as he added to these resources the further recommendation of
a fine appearance and gentle manners, good position and fair estates,
it may be supposed that Sir Roland was in strong demand among his
neighbours for all social purposes. He, however, through no petty
feeling or small exclusiveness, but from his own taste and likings,
kept himself more and more at home, and in quietude, as he grew older.
So that ere he turned sixty years, the owner of Coombe Lorraine had
ceased to appear at any county gatherings, or even at the hospitable
meetings of the neighbourhood.
His dinner-party consisted only of himself and his daughter Alice.
His wife had been dead for many years. His mother, Lady Valeria, was
still alive and very active, and having just numbered fourscore years,
had attained the right of her own way. By right or wrong, she had
always contrived to enjoy that special easement; and even now, though
she lived apart, little could be done without her in the household
management.
Hilary, Sir Roland’s only son, was now at the Temple, eating his way
to the bar, or feeding for some other mischief; and Alice, the only
daughter living, was the baronet’s favourite companion, and his darling.
Now, whether from purity of descent, or special mode of selection,
or from living so long on a hill with northern consequences, or
from some other cause, to be extracted by philosophers from bestial
analogies--anyhow, one thing is certain, these Lorraines were not,
and had not for a long time been, at all like the rest of the world
around them. It was not pride of race that made them unambitious, and
well content, and difficult to get at. Neither was it any other ill
affection to mankind. They liked a good man, when they saw him; and
naturally so much the more, as it became harder to find him. Also they
were very kind to all the poor people around them, and kept well in
with the Church, and did whatever else is comely. But long before Sir
Roland’s time all Sussex knew, and was content to know, that, as a
general rule, “those Lorraines went nowhere.”
Neighbours who were conscious of what we must now begin to call
“co-operative origin” felt that though themselves could claim justices
of the peace, high sheriffs, and knights of the shire among their
kin, yet they could not quite leap over that romantic bar of ages
which is so deterrent, perhaps because it is so shadowy. Neither did
they greatly care to press their company upon people so different
from themselves, and so unlikely to admire them. But if any one asked
where lay the root of the difference, which so long had marked the old
family on the hill, perhaps no one (least of all any of the Lorraines
themselves) could have given the proper answer. Plenty of other folk
there were who held aloof from public life. Simplicity, kindness, and
chivalry might be found, by a man with an active horse, in other places
also: even a feeling, as nearly akin as our nature admits to contempt
of money, at that time went on somewhere. How, then, differed these
Lorraines from other people of equal rank and like habits with them?
Men who differ from their fellows seem, by some law of nature, to
resent and disclaim the difference. Those who are proud, and glory in
their variance from the common type, seldom vary much from it. So that
in the year of grace 1811, the mighty comet that scared the world,
spreading its tail over good and bad, overhung no house less conscious
of anything under its roof peculiar, than the house of Coombe Lorraine.
With these Lorraines there had been a tradition (ripened, as traditions
ripen, into a small religion), that a certain sequence of Christian
names must be observed, whenever allowed by Providence, in the
heritage. These names in right order were Roland, Hilary, and Roger;
and the family had long believed, and so had all their tenants, that
a certain sequence of character, and the events which depend upon
character, might be expected to coincide with the succession of these
names. The Rolands were always kindly proud, fond of home and of their
own people, lovers of a quiet life, and rather deep than hot of heart.
A Hilary, the next of race, was prone to the opposite extremes, though
still of the same root-fibre. Sir Hilary was always showy, affable,
and romantic, eager to do something great, pleased to give pleasure to
everybody, and leaving his children to count the cost. After him there
ought to arise a Roger, the saviour of the race; beginning to count
pence in his cradle, and growing a yard in common-sense for every inch
of his stature, frowning at every idea that was not either of land or
money, and weighing himself and his bride, and most of his principles,
by troy-weight.
CHAPTER IV.
FATHER AND FAVOURITE.
Upon a very important day (as it proved to be, in his little world),
the 18th of June, 1811, Sir Roland Lorraine had enjoyed his dinner with
his daughter Alice. In those days men were not content to feed in the
fashion of owls, or wild ducks, who have lain abed all day. In winter
or summer, at Coombe Lorraine, the dinner-bell rang at half-past four,
for people to dress; and again at five, for all to be down in the
drawing-room. And all were sure to be prompt enough; for the air of the
Southdown hills is hungry; and Nature knew what the demand would be,
before she supplied her best mutton there.
When the worthy old butler was gone at last, and the long dark room lay
silent, Alice ran up to her father’s side, to wish him, over a sip of
wine, the good old wish that sits so lightly on the lips of children.
“Darling papa, I wish you many happy, happy returns of the day, and
good health to enjoy them.”
Sir Roland was sixty years old that day; and being of a cheerful, even,
and pleasant, though shy temperament, he saw no reason why he should
not have all the bliss invoked on him. The one great element in that
happiness now was looking at him, undeniably present and determined to
remain so.
His quick glance told that he felt all this; but he was not wont to
show what he felt; and now he had no particular reason to feel more
than usual. Nevertheless he did so feel, without knowing any reason,
and turned his eyes away from hers, while he tried to answer lightly.
This would not do for his daughter Alice. She was now in that blush of
time, when everything is observed by maidens, but everything is not
hinted at. At least it used to be so then, and still is so in good
places. Therefore Alice thought a little, before she began to talk
again. The only trouble, to her knowledge, which her father had to deal
with, was the unstable and romantic character of young Hilary. This he
never discussed with her, nor even alluded to it; for that would have
been a breach of the law in all duly-entailed conservatism, that the
heir of the house, even though a fool, must have his folly kept sacred
from the smiles of inferior members. Now, Hilary was not at all a fool;
only a young man of large mind.
Knowing that her father had not any bad news of Hilary, from whom
he had received a very affectionate letter that morning, Alice was
sorely puzzled, but scarcely ventured to ask questions; for in this
savage island then, respect was shown and reverence felt by children
towards their parents; and she, although such a petted child, was full
of these fine sentiments. Also now in her seventeenth year, she knew
that she had outgrown the playful freedoms of the babyhood, but was
not yet established in the dignity of a maiden, much less the glory
of womanhood. So that her sunny smile was fading into the shadow of a
sigh, when instead of laying her pretty head on her father’s shoulder,
she brought the low chair and favourite cushion of the younger times,
and thence looked up at him, hoping fondly once more to be folded back
into the love of childhood.
Whatever Sir Roland’s trouble was, it did not engross his thoughts so
much as to make him neglect his favourite. He answered her wistful gaze
with a smile, which she knew to be quite genuine; and then he patted
her curly hair, in the old-fashioned way, and kissed her forehead.
“Lallie, you look so profoundly wise, I shall put you into caps after
all, in spite of your sighs, and tears, and sobs. A head so mature in
its wisdom must conform to the wisdom of the age.”
“Papa, they are such hideous things! and you hate them as much as I do.
And only the other day you said that even married people had no right
to make such frights of themselves.”
“Married people have a right to please one another only. A narrow view,
perhaps, of justice; but--however, that is different. Alice, you never
will attend when I try to teach you anything.”
Sir Roland broke off lamely thus, because his child was attending,
more than himself, to what he was talking of. Like other men, he was
sometimes given to exceed his meaning; but with his daughter he was
always very careful of his words, because she had lost her mother, and
none could ever make up the difference.
“Papa!” cried Alice, with that appealing stress upon the paternity
which only a pet child can throw, “you are not at all like yourself
to-day.”
“My dear, most people differ from themselves, with great advantage. But
you will never think that of me. Now let me know your opinion as to all
this matter, darling.”
Her father softened off his ending suddenly thus, because he saw the
young girl’s eyes begin to glisten, as if for tears, at his strange new
way.
“What matter, papa? The caps? Oh no; the way you are now behaving. Very
well then, are you quite sure you can bear to hear all you have done
amiss?”
“No, my dear, I am not at all sure. But I will try to endure your most
heartrending exaggerations.”
“Then, dear papa, you shall have it all. Only tell me when to stop. In
the first place, did you or did you not, refuse to have Hilary home for
your birthday, much as you knew that I wanted him? You confess that you
did. And your only reason was something you said about Trinity term,
sadly incomprehensible. In the next place, when I wanted you to have a
little change to-day, Uncle Struan for dinner, and Sir Remnant, and one
or two others----”
“My dear, how could I eat all these? Think of your Uncle Struan’s size.”
“Papa, you are only trying now to provoke me, because you cannot
answer. You know what I mean as well as I do, and perhaps a little
better. What I mean is, one or two of the very oldest friends and
relations to do what was nice, and help you to get on with your
birthday; but you said, with unusual ferocity, ‘Darling, I will have
none but you!’”
“Upon my word, I believe I did! How wonderfully women--at least I mean
how children--astonish one, by the way they touch the very tone of
utterance, after one has forgotten it.”
“I don’t know what you mean, papa. And your reflection seems to be
meant for yourself, as everything seems to be for at least a week, or I
might say----”
“Come, Lallie, come now, have some moderation.”
“Well, then, papa, for at least a fortnight. I will let you off with
that, though I know it is much too little. And when you have owned
to that, papa, what good reason can you give for behaving so to
me--me--me, as good a child as ever there was?”
“Can ‘me, me, me,’ after living through such a fortnight of
mortification--the real length of the period being less than four
hours, I believe--can she listen to a little story without any
excitement?”
“Oh, papa, a story, a story! That will make up for everything. What a
lovely pleasure! There is nothing I love half so much as listening to
old stories. I seem to be living my old age over, before I come to any
age. Papa, I will forgive you everything, if you tell me a story.”
“Alice, you are a little too bad. I know what a very good girl you are;
but still you ought to try to think. When you were only two years old,
you looked as if you were always thinking.”
“So I am now, papa; always thinking--how to please you, and do my
best.”
Sir Roland was beaten by this, because he knew the perfect truth of it.
Alice already thought too much about everything she could think of.
Her father knew how bad it is when the bright young time is clouded
over with unreasonable cares; and often he had sore misgivings, lest
he might be keeping his pet child too much alone. But she only laughed
whenever he offered to find her new companions, and said that her
cousins at the rectory were enough for her.
“If you please, papa,” she now broke in upon his thinking, “how long
will it be before you begin to tell me this beautiful story?”
“My own darling, I forgot; I was thinking of you, and not of any
trumpery stories. But this is the very day of all days to sift our
little mystery. You have often heard, of course, about our old
astrologer.”
“Of course I have, papa--of course! And with all my heart I love him.
Everything the shepherds tell me shows how thoroughly good he was.”
“Very well, then, all my story is about him, and his deeds.”
“Oh, papa, then do try, for once in your life, to be in a hurry. I do
love everything about him; and I have heard so many things.”
“No doubt you have, my dear; but perhaps of a somewhat fabulous order.
His mind, or his manners, or appearance, or at any rate something seems
to have left a lasting impression upon the simple folk hereabout.”
“Better than a pot of money; an old woman told me the other day it was
better than a pot of money for anybody to dream of him.”
“It would do them more good, no doubt. But I have not had a pinch of
snuff to-day. You have nearly broken me, Alice; but still you do allow
me one pinch, when I begin to tell you a good story.”
“Three, papa; you shall have three now, and you may take them all at
once, because you never told such a story, as I feel sure it is certain
to be, in all the whole course of your life before. Now come here,
where the sun is setting, so that I may watch the way you are telling
every word of it; and if I ask you any questions you must nod your
head, but never presume to answer one of them, unless you are sure
that it will go on without interrupting the story. Now, papa, no more
delay.”
CHAPTER V.
THE LEGEND OF THE ASTROLOGER.
Two hundred years before the day when Alice thus sat listening, an
ancestor of hers had been renowned in Anatolia. The most accomplished
and most learned prince in all Lesser Asia was Agasicles Syennesis,
descended from Mausolus (made immortal by his mausoleum), and from
that celebrated king, Syennesis of Cilicia. There had been, after both
these were dead, and much of their repute gone by, creditable and happy
marriages in and out their descendants, at a little over and a little
under, twenty-two centuries ago; and the best result and issue of all
these was now embodied in Prince Agasicles.
The prince was not a patron only, but also an eager student of the
more recondite arts and sciences then in cultivation. Especially he
had given his mind to chemistry (including alchemy), mineralogy, and
astrology. Devoting himself to these fine subjects, and many others,
he seems to have neglected anthropology; so that in his fiftieth year
he was but a lonesome bachelor. Troubled at this time of his life with
many expostulations--genuine on the part of his friends, and emphatic
on that of his relatives--he held a long interview with the stars, and
taking their advice exactly as they gave and meant it, married a wife
the next afternoon, and (so far as he could make out) the right one.
This turned out well. His wife went off on the occasion of her first
confinement, leaving him with a daughter, born A.D. 1590, and all women
pronounced her beautiful.
The prince now spent his leisure time in thought and calculation.
He had almost made his mind up that he was sure to have a son; and
here was his wife gone; and how could he risk his life again so? Upon
the whole, he made up his mind, that matters might have been worse,
although they ought to have been much better, and that he must thank
the stars, and not be too hard upon any one; and so he fell to at his
science again, and studied almost everything.
In that ancient corner of the world, old Caria, the fine original
Leleges looked up to the prince, and loved him warmly, and were ready
by night or day to serve him, or to rob him. They saw that now was the
finest chance (while he was looking at the stars, with no wife to look
out for him) for them to do their duty to their families by robbing
him; and this they did with honest comfort, and a sense of going home
in the proper way to go.
Prince Agasicles, growing older, felt these troubles more and more.
As a general rule, a man growing older has a more extensive knowledge
that he must be robbed of course; and yet he scarcely ever seems to
reconcile himself with maturing wisdom to the process. And so it
happened to this good prince; not that he cared so very much about
little trifles that might attract the eye of taste and the hand of
skill, but that he could not (even with the aid of all the stars) find
anything too valuable to be stolen. Hence, as his daughter, Artemise,
grew to the fulness of young beauty, he thought it wise to raise the
most substantial barrier he could build betwixt her and the outer world.
There happened to be in that neighbourhood then an active supply of
villains. Of this by no means singular fact the prince might well
assure himself, by casting his eyes down from the stars to the narrow
bosom of his mother earth. But whether thus or otherwise forewarned
of local mischief, the Carian prince took a very strong measure, and
even a sacrilegious one. In or about the year of our reckoning, 1606,
he walled off his daughter, and other goods, in a certain peninsula of
his own, clearly displayed in our maps, and as clearly forbidden to be
either trenched or walled by a Pythia skilled in trimeter tone, who
seems to have been a lady of exceptionally clear conservatism.
The prince, as the sage of the neighbourhood, knew all about this
prohibition, and that it was still in force, and must have acquired
twenty-fold power by the lapse of twenty centuries; and as the sea
had retreated a little during that short period, it was evident that
Jove had been consistent in the matter. “He never meant it for an
island, else he would have made it one.” Agasicles therefore felt
some doubt about the piety of his proceeding, retaining as he did, in
common with his neighbours, some respect for the classic gods. His
respect, however, for the stars was deeper, and these told him that
young Artemise was likely to be run away with by some bold adventurer.
A peninsula was the very thing to suit his purpose, and none could
be fairer or snugger than this of his own, the very site of ancient
Cnidos, whereof Venus once was queen.
Undeterred by this local affection, or even the warnings of Delphi,
the learned prince exerted himself, and by means of a tidy hedge of
paliure and aspalathus made the five stades of isthmus proof against
even thick-trousered gentlemen, _a fortiori_ against the natives all
unendowed with pantaloons. Neither might his fence be leaped by any of
the roving horsemen--Turks, Cilicians, Pamphylians, Karamanians, or
reavers from the chain of Taurus.
This being fixed to his satisfaction, with a couple of sentries at the
gate, and one at either end, prompt with matchlocks, and above all,
the young lady inside provided with many proverbs, Prince Agasicles
set forth on a visit to an Armenian sage, reputed to be as wise as
himself almost. With him he discussed Alhasen, Vitellio, and their own
contemporary, Kepler, and spent so many hours aloft, that on his return
to his native place he discovered his own little oversight. This was so
very simple that it required at least a sage and great philosopher to
commit it. The learned man appears to have forgotten that the sea is
navigable. So it chanced that a gay young Englishman, cruising about in
an armed speronera, among the Ægæan islands, and now in the Carpathian
sea, hunting after pirates, heard of this Eastern Cynosure, and her
walled seclusion. This of course was enough for him. Landing under the
promontory where the Cnidian Venus stood, he fell, and falling dragged
another, into the wild maze of love.
Mazed they seemed of course, and nearly mad no doubt to other folk. To
themselves, however, they were in a new world altogether, far above the
level and the intellect of the common world. Artemise forgot her pride,
her proverbs, and pretensions; she had lost her own way in the regions
of a higher life; and nothing to her was the same as it had been but
yesterday. Heart and soul, and height and depth, she trusted herself to
the Englishman, and even left her jewels.
Therefore they two launched their bark upon the unknown waters; the
damsel with her heart in tempest of the filial duties shattered, and
the fatherland cast off, yet for the main part anchored firmly on the
gallant fluke of love; the youth in a hurry to fight a giant, if it
would elevate him to her.
Artemise, with all her rashness, fared much better than she deserved
for leaving an adoring father the wrong side of the quickset hedge. The
bold young mariner happened to be a certain Hilary Lorraine, heir of
that old house or castle in the Southdown coombe. Possessed with the
adventurous spirit of his uncles, the famous Shirley brothers, he had
sailed with Raleigh, and made havoc here and there, and seen almost as
much of the world as was good for himself or it.
Enlarged by travel, he was enabled to suppress rude curiosity about
the wishes of the absent prince; and deferring to a better season
the pleasure of his acquaintance, he made all sail with the daughter
on board, as set forth already; and those two were made into one,
according to the rites of the old Greek Church, in the classic shades
of Ida. And to their dying day it never repented either of them--much.
When the prince returned, and found no daughter left to meet him, he
failed for a short time to display that self-command upon which he had
for years been wont to plume himself. But having improved his condition
of mind by a generous bastinado of servants, peasants, and matchlock
men, he found himself reasonably remounting into the sphere of pure
intellect. In a night or two an interesting conjunction of heavenly
bodies happened, and eclipsed this nebulous world of women.
In a few years’ time he began to get presents, eatable, drinkable, and
good. Gradually thus he showed his wisdom, by foregoing petty wrath;
and when he was summoned to meet a star, militant to his grandson, he
could not help ordering his horse.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LEGEND CONTINUED.
Although this prince knew so much more of the heaven above than the
earth beneath, he did not quite expect to ride the whole of the way
to England. At Smyrna he took ship, and after some difficulties
and dangers, landed at Shoreham, full of joy to behold his four
grandchildren, who proved to be five by the time he saw them. The
Sussex roads were as bad as need be, and worse than could be anywhere
else; but the sturdy oxen set their necks to drag through all things,
thick or thin; and the prince stuck fast to his coach, as firmly as
the coach stuck fast with him. Having never seen any roads before, he
thought them a wonderful institution, and though misled by the light of
nature to grumble at some of his worst upsets, a little reflection led
him softly back into contentment. A mind “irretrievably analytic” at
once distinguished wisdom’s element in the Sussex reasoners.
“Gin us made thase hyur radds gooder, volk ’ood be radin’ down droo
’em avery dai, a’most! The Lard in heaven never made radds as cud ever
baide the work, if stranngers cud goo along, wi’out bin vorced to zit
down, and mend ’un.”
When this was interpreted to his Highness, he was so struck with its
clear sound sense, and logical sequence, that he fell back, and for
the rest of his journey admired the grandeur of English character.
This sentiment, so deeply founded, was not likely to be impaired by
further acquaintance with our great nation. For more than a twelvemonth
Prince Agasicles made his home in England, and many of his quaint
remarks abode on Sussex shepherds’ tongues for generations afterwards,
recommended as they were by the vantage of princely wisdom. For he
picked up quite enough of the language to say odd things as a child
does, and with a like simplicity. With this difference, however,
that while the great hits of the little ones, by the proud mother
chronicled, are the lucky outbursts of happy inexperience, the old
man’s sage words were the issue of unhappy experience.
Nevertheless he must have owned a genial nature still at work. For
he loved to go down the village lane, when the wind was cold on the
highland, and there to wait at a cottage door, till the children came
to stare at him. And soon these children had courage to spy that,
in spite of his outlandish dress, pockets were about him, and they
whispered as much to one another, while their eyes were testing him. At
other times when the wind was soft, and shadows of gentle clouds were
shed in chase of one another, this great man who had seen the world,
and knew all the stars hanging over it--his pleasure was to wander in
and out of the ups and downs and nooks of quaintly-plaited hills, and
feast his eyes upon their verdure. After that, when the westering light
was spreading the upland ridge with gold, and the glades with grey
solemnity, this man of declining years was well content to lean on a
bank of turf, and watch the quiet ways of sheep. Often thus his mind
was carried back to the land of childhood, soothed as in his nurse’s
arms by nature’s peace around him. And if his dreams were interrupted
by the crisp fresh sound of browsing, and the ovine tricks as bright
as any human exploits, he would turn and do his best to talk with the
lonely shepherds.
These, in their simple way, amused him, with their homely saws, and
strange content, and independence: and he no less delighted them by
unaccustomed modes of speech, and turns of thought beyond their minds,
and distant wisdom quite brought home. Thus, and by many other means,
this ancient prince, of noble presence, and of flowing snow-white hair,
and vesture undisgraced by tailors, left such trace upon these hills,
that even his ghost was well believed to know all the sheep-tracks
afterwards.
Pleased with England, and with English scenery and customs, as well as
charmed with having five quite baby stars to ephemerise, this great
astrologer settled to stay in our country as long as possible. He
sent his trusty servant, Memel, in a merchant-ship from Shoreham to
fetch his implements and papers, precious things of many kinds, and
curiosities long in store. Memel brought all these quite safe, except
one little thing or two, which he accounted trifles; but his master was
greatly vexed about them.
The prince unpacked his goods most carefully in his own eight-sided
room, allowing none but his daughter to help him, and not too sure
about trusting her. Then forth he set for a real campaign among the
stars of the Southdowns--and supper-call and breakfast-bell were no
more than the bark of a dog to him. And thus he spent his nights, alas!
forgetful of the different clime, under the cold stars, when by rights
he should have been under the counterpane.
This grew worse and worse, until towards the middle of the month
of June, A.D. 1611, his mind was altogether much above the proper
temperature. Great things were pending in the heavens, which might be
quoted as pious excuse for a little human restlessness. The prince,
with his implements always ready either in his lantern-chamber, or at
his favourite spot of the hills, according to the weather, grew more
and more impatient daily for the sun to be out of the way, and more
and more intolerant every night of any cloudiness. Self-perplexed,
downcast, and moody (except when for a few brief hours a brighter
canopy changed his gloom into a nervous rapture), he wasted and waned
away in body, as his mind grew brighter. After the hurried night, he
dragged his faint way home in the morning, and his face of exhausted
power struck awe into the household. No one dared to ask him what had
happened, or why he looked so; and he like a true philosopher kept all
explanations to himself. And then he started anew, and strode with his
Samian cloak around him, over the highest, darkest, and most lonesome
hill, out of people’s sight.
One place there was which beyond all others suited his purposes and
his mood. A well-known land-mark now, and the scene of many a merry
picnic, Chanctonbury Ring was then a lonely spot imbued with terror
of a wandering ghost,--an ancient ghost with a long white beard
walking even in the afternoon, with its head bowed down in search of
something--a vain search of centuries. This long-sought treasure has
now been found; not by the ghost, however, but a lucky stroke of the
ploughshare; and the spectral owner roves no more. He is supposed, with
all the assumption required to make a certainty, to have been a tenant
on Chancton Manor, under Earl Gurth, the brother of Harold, and being
slain at Hastings, to have forgotten where his treasure lay.
The Ring, as of old, is a height of vantage for searching all the
country round with a telescope on a breezy day. It is the salient
point and foreland of a long ridge of naked hills, crowned with darker
eminence by a circle of storm-huddled trees. But when the astrologer
Agasicles made his principal night-haunt here, the Ring was not
overhung with trees, but only outlined by them; and the rampart of the
British camp (if such it were) was more distinct, and uninvaded by
planters. So that here was the very place for a quiet sage to make his
home, sweeping a long horizon and secure from interruption. To such a
citadel of science, guarded by the fame of ghosts, even his daughter
Artemise, or his trusty servant Memel, would scarce dare to follow him;
much less any of the peasants, who, from the lowland, seeing a distant
light, crossed themselves; for that fine old custom flourished still
among them. Therefore, here his tent was pitched, and here he spent the
nights in gazing, and often the days in computation, not for himself,
but for his descendants; until his frame began to waste, and his great
dark eyes grew pale with it.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LEGEND CONCLUDED.
Artemise, and all around the prince, had been alarmed of late by many
little symptoms. He always had been rashly given to take no heed of his
food or clothes; but now he went beyond all that, and would have no one
take heed for him, or dare to speak of the matter much. Hence, without
listening to any nonsense, all the women were sure of one thing--the
prince was wearing himself away.
The country people who knew him, and loved him with a little mystery,
said it was no wonder that he should worry himself, for being so long
away from home, in manners, and in places also. “Sure it must be a
trial for him; out all night in the damp and fog; and he no sense of
breeches!”
There was much of truth in this, no doubt, as well as much outside it.
Yet none of them could enter into his peculiar state of mind. So that
he often reproached himself for having been rude, but could not help
it. Every one made allowance for him, as Englishmen do for a foreigner,
as being of a somewhat lower order, in many ways, in creation. Yet with
a mixture of mind about it, they admired him more and more.
The largeness of his nature still was very conspicuous in this,--he
never brought his telescope to bear on his own planet. His heart was
reaching so far forward into future ages, that he strove to follow
downwards nine or ten entails of stars. To know what was to become of
all that were to be descended from him; a highly interesting, but also
a deeply exhausting question. This perpetual effort told very hard
upon his constitution, for nothing less than fatal worry could have so
impaired his native grace and lofty courtesy.
Yet before his sudden end, a softer and more genial star was culminant
one evening. When one’s time comes to be certain--whether by earthly
senses, or by influence of heaven--of the buoyant balance turning,
and the slender span outspun, tender thinkings, and kind wishes,
flow to the good side of us. Through this power, the petty troubles,
and the crooked views of life, and the ambition to make others
better than we care to be, and every other little turn of wholesome
self-deception--these drop off, and leave us sinking into a sense of
having lived, and made a humble thing of it.
Whether this be so or not, upon the 18th day of June in the year 1611,
Prince Agasicles came home rather hot, and very tired, and fain for
a little sleep, if such there were, to wear out weariness. But still
he had heavy work left for that night; as a mighty comet had lately
appeared, and scared the earth abundantly; yet now he had two or three
hours to spare, and they might as well be happy ones. Therefore he sent
for his daughter to come, and see to his food and such like, and then
to sit with him some few minutes, and to watch the sunset.
Artemise, still young and lovely, knew of course, from Eastern wisdom,
that woman’s right is to do no wrong. So that she came at once when
called, and felt as a mother ought to feel, that she multiplied her
obedience vastly, by bringing all her children. Being in a soft state
of mind, the old man was glad to see them all, and let them play with
him as freely as childhood’s awe of white hair allowed. Then he laid
his hand upon Roger, the heir of the house, and blessed him on his
way to bed; and after that he took his supper, waited on by Artemise,
who was very grateful for his kindness to her children. So that she
brought him the right thing, exactly at the right moment, without
overcrowding him; and then she poured him sparkling wine, and comforted
his weary feet, and gave him a delicious pipe of Persian meconopsis,
free from the bane of opium, yet more dreamy than tobacco. Also she
sprinkled round him delicate attar of the Vervain (sprightlier and less
oppressive than the scent of roses), until his white beard ceased to
flutter, and the strong lines of his face relaxed into soft drowsiness.
Observing thence the proper time when sweet sleep was encroaching, and
haste, and heat, and sudden temper were as far away as can be from a
man of Eastern blood, Artemise, his daughter, touched him with the
smile which he used to love, when she was two years old and upward; and
his thoughts without his knowledge flew back to her mother.
“Father to me, father dearest,” she was whispering to him, in the
native tongue which charms the old, as having lulled their cradles;
“father to me, tell what trouble has together fallen on you in this
cold and foreign land.”
Melody enough was still remaining, in the most melodious of all mortal
languages, for a child to move a father into softer memories, at the
sound of ancient music thus revived, and left to dwell.
“Child of my breast,” the prince replied, in the very best modern
Hellenic, “a strong desire to sleep again hath overcome mine intellect.”
“Thus is it the more suited, father, for discourse with such as mine.
Let your little one share the troubles of paternal wisdom.”
Suasion more than this was needed, and at every stage forthcoming, more
skilfully than English words or even looks could render, ere ever the
paternal wisdom might be coaxed to unfold itself; and even so it was
not disposed to be altogether explicit.
“Ask me no more,” he said at last; “enough that I foresee great
troubles overhanging this sad house.”
“Oh, father, when, and how, and what? How shall we get over them, and
why should we encounter them? And will my husband or my children----”
The prince put up one finger as if to say, “Ask one thing at a time,”
the while he ceased not to revolve many and sad counsels in his
venerable head; and in his gaze deep pity mingled with a father’s pride
and love. Then he spoke three words in a language which she did not
comprehend, but retained their sound, and learned before her death that
they meant this--“Knowledge of trouble trebles it.”
“Now best-loved father,” she exclaimed, perceiving that his face was
set to tell her very little, “behold how many helpless ones depend upon
my knowledge of the evils I must shield them from. It is--nay, by your
eyes--it is the little daughter whom you always cherished with such
love and care, who now is the cause of a mind perplexed, as often she
has been to you. Father, let not our affairs lay such burden on your
mind, but spread them out and lighten it. Often, as our saying hath it,
oftentimes the ear of folly is the purse for wisdom’s gems.”
“I hesitate not, I doubt no longer. I do not divide my mind in twain.
The wisdom of them that come after me carries off and transcends mine
own, as a mountain doth a half-peck basket. Wherefore, my daughter,
Artemise, wife of the noble Englishman with whom she ran away from
Caria, and mother of my five grandchildren, she is worthy to know all
that I have learned from heaven; ay, and she shall know it all.”
“Father to me dearest, yes! Oh, how noble and good of you!”
“She shall know all,” continued the prince, with a gaze of ingenuous
confidence, and counting on his fingers slowly; “it may be sooner, or
it may be later; however, I think one may safely promise a brilliant
knowledge of everything in five years after we have completed the
second century from this day. But now the great comet is waiting for
me. Let me have my boots again. Uncouth, barbarous, frightful things!
But in such a country needful.”
His daughter obeyed without a word, and hid her disappointment. “It
is only to wait till to-morrow,” she thought, “and then to fill him a
larger pipe, and coax him a little more perhaps, and pour him more wine
of Burgundy.”
To-morrow never came for him, except in the way the stars come. In the
morning he was missed, and sought for, and found dead and cold at the
end of his longest telescope. In Chanctonbury Ring he died, and must
have known, for at least a moment, that his death was over him; for
among the stars of his jotting-chart was traced, in trembling charcoal,
“Sepeli, ubi cecidi”--“Bury me where I have fallen.”
CHAPTER VIII.
ASTROLOGICAL FORECAST.
Alice Lorraine, with no small excitement, heard from her father’s lips
this story of their common ancestor. Part of it was already known to
her through traditions of the country; but this was the first time the
whole had been put into a connected narrative. She wondered, also, what
her father’s reason could be for thus recounting to her this piece of
family history, which had never been (as she felt quite sure) confided
to her brother Hilary; and, like a young girl, she was saying to
herself as he went on--“Shall I ever be fit to compare with that lovely
Artemise, my ever-so-long-back grandmother, as the village people call
it? and will that fine old astrologer see that the stars do their duty
to us? and was the great comet that killed him the one that frightens
me every night so? and why did he make such a point of dying without
explaining anything?”
However, what she asked her father was a different question from all
these.
“Oh, papa, how kind of you to tell me all that story! But what became
of Artemise----‘Lady Lorraine’ I suppose she was?”
“No, my dear; ‘Mistress Lorraine,’ or ‘Madame Lorraine’ perhaps they
called her. The old earldom had long been lost, and Roger, her son,
who fell at Naseby, was the first baronet of our family. But as
for Artemise herself--the daughter of the astrologer, and wife of
Hilary Lorraine, she died at the birth of her next infant, within a
twelvemonth after her father; and then it was known why he had been so
reluctant to tell her anything.”
“Oh, I am so sorry for her! Then she is that beautiful creature hanging
third from the door in the gallery, with ruches beautifully picked out
and glossy, and wonderful gold lace on her head, and long hair, and
lovely emeralds hanging down as if they were nothing?”
“Yes,” said Sir Roland, smiling at his daughter’s style of description,
“that of course is the lady; and the portrait is clearly a likeness. At
one time we thought of naming you after her--‘Artemise Lorraine’--for
your nurse discovered that you were like her at the mature age of three
days.”
“Oh, papa, how I wish you had! It would have sounded so much nicer, and
so beautifully romantic.”
“Just so, my child; and therefore, in these matter-of-fact times, so
deliciously absurd. Moreover, I hope that you will not be like her,
either in running away from your father, or in any other way--except
her kindness and faithfulness.”
He was going to say, “in her early death;” but a sudden touch of our
natural superstition stopped him.
“Papa, how dare you speak as if any one ever, in all the world, could
be fit to compare with you? But now you must tell me one little
thing--why have you chosen this very day, which ought to be such a
happy one, for telling me so sad a tale, that a little more would have
made me cry?”
“The reason, my Lallie, is simple enough. This happens to be the very
day when the two hundred years are over; and the astrologer’s will, or
whatever the document is, may now be opened.”
“His will, papa! Did he leave a will? And none of us ever heard of it!”
“My dear, your acquaintance with his character is, perhaps, not
exhaustive. He may have left many wills without wishing to have them
published; at any rate, you shall have the chance, before it grows
dark, to see what there is.”
“Me! or I--whichever is right?--me, or I, to do such a thing! Papa,
when I was six years old I could stand on my head; but now I have lost
the art, alas!”
“Now, Alice, do try to be sensible, if you ever had such an opening.
You know that I do not very often act rashly; but you will make me
think I have done so now, unless you behave most steadily.”
“Papa, I am steadiness itself; but you must make allowance for a little
upset at the marvels heaped upon me.”
“My dear child, there are no marvels; or, at any rate, none for you to
know. All you have to do is to go, and to fetch a certain document.
Whether you know any more about it, is a question for me to consider.”
“Oh, papa--to raise me up so, and to cast me down like that! And I was
giving you credit for having trusted me so entirely! And very likely
you would not even have sent me for this document, if you had your own
way about it.”
“Alice,” Sir Roland answered, smiling at her knowledge of him, “you
happen to be particularly right in that conjecture. I should never
have thought of sending you to a lonely and forsaken place, if I were
allowed to send any one else, or to go myself. And I have not been
happy at thinking about it, ever since the morning.”
“My father, do you think that I could help rejoicing in such an errand?
It is the very thing to suit me. Where are the keys, papa? Do be quick.”
“I have no intention, my dear child, of hurrying either you or myself.
There is plenty of time to think of all things. The sun has not set,
and that happens to be one of the little things we have to look to.”
“Oh, how very delightful, papa! That makes it so much more beautiful.
And it is the astrologer’s room, of course.”
“My dear, it strikes me that you look rather pale, in the midst of all
your transports. Now, don’t go if you are at all afraid.”
“Afraid, papa! Now you want to provoke me. You quite forget both my
age, it appears, and the family I belong to.”
“My pet, you never allow us to be very long forgetful of either of
those great facts; but I trust I have borne them both duly in mind, and
I fear that I should even enhance, most needlessly, your self-esteem,
if I were to read you the directions which I now am following. For,
strangely enough, they do contain predictions as to your character such
as we cannot yet perceive (much as we love you) to have come to pass.”
“Oh, but who are the ‘we,’ papa? If everybody knows it--even
grandmamma, for instance--what pleasure can I hope to find in ever
having been predicted?”
“You may enjoy that pleasure, Alice, as exclusively as you please. Even
your grandmother knows nothing of the matter we have now in hand; or
else--at least I should say perhaps that, if it were otherwise----”
“She would have been down here, of course, papa, and have marched up
to the room herself; but, if the whole thing belongs to one’s self,
nothing can be more delightful than to have been predicted, especially
in glowing terms, such as I beg you now, papa, to read in glowing tones
to me.”
“Alice, I do not like that style of--what shall I call it?--on your
part. _Persiflage_, I believe, is the word; and I am glad that there
is no English one. It is never graceful in any woman, still less in a
young girl like you. Hilary brought it from Oxford first: and perhaps
he thought it excellent. Lay it aside now, once and for all. It hopes
to seem a clever thing, and it does not even succeed in that.”
At these severe words, spoken with a decided attempt at severity, Alice
fell back, and could only drop her eyes, and wonder what could have
made her father so cross upon his birthday. But, after the smart of the
moment, she began to acknowledge to herself that her father was right,
and she was wrong. This flippant style was foreign to her, and its
charms must be foregone.
“I beg your pardon, father dear,” she said, looking softly up at him;
“I know that I am not clever, and I never meant to seem so.”
“Quite right, Alice; never attempt to do anything impossible.” Saying
this to her, Sir Roland said to himself that, after all, he should like
to know very much where to find any girl half so clever as Lallie, or
any girl even a quarter so good, and so loving, and so beautiful.
“The sun is almost gone behind the curve of the hill, and the scrubby
beech, and the nick cut in the gorsebush. Alice, you know we only see
it for just the Midsummer week like that.”
Alice came, with her eyes already quit of every trace of tears; with
vanity and all petty feelings melting into larger thought. The beauty
of the world would often come around and overcome her, so that she felt
nothing else.
“The sun must always be the same,” Sir Roland said, rather doubtfully,
after waiting for Alice to begin. “No doubt he must always be the
same; but still the great Herschel seems to think that even the sun is
changing. If he is fed by comets (as our old astronomers used to say),
he ought to be doing very well just now. Alice, the sun is above ground
still, for people on the hill-top, and there is the comet already
kindling!”
“Of course he is, papa; he never waits for the sun’s convenience. But
I must not say that--I forgot. There would be no English name for
it--would there now, papa?”
“You little tyrant, what troubles I would inflict upon you if I studied
the stars! But I scarcely know the belt of Orion from the Northern
Crown. Astronomy does not appear to have taken deep root in our family;
but look, there is part of the sun again emerging under Chancton! In
five minutes more he will be quite gone; now is the time for me to read
these queer directions, which contain so poetical an account of you.”
Alice, warned by his former words, and reduced to proper humility, did
not speak while her father opened the small strip of parchment, at
which she had so long been peeping curiously.
“It is written in Latin,” Sir Roland said, “and has been handed from
father to son unsealed, and as you see it, from the time of the prince
till our time.”
“May I see it, papa? What a very clear hand! but you must translate it
for me.”
“Then here it is:--‘To the father and master of the family of Lorraine,
whoever shall be in the year, according to Christian computation, 1811,
Agasicles Syennesis, the Carian, bids hail. Do thou, on the 18th day
of June, when the sun has well descended, or departed’--_decesserit_,
the word is--‘send thy eldest daughter, without any companion, to the
astronomer’s _cœnaculum_’--why, he never ate supper, the poor old
fellow, unless it was the one he died of--‘and there let her search
in a closet or cupboard’--_in secessu muri_, the words are, as far as
I can make out--‘and she will find a small document, which to me has
been in great price. There will also be something else, to be treated
_pro re nata_’--that means according to circumstances--‘and according
to the orders in the document aforesaid. The virgin will be brave, and
beautiful, ready to give herself for the house, and of swiftly-growing
prudence. If there be no such virgin then the need for her will not
have arisen. It is necessary that no young man should go, and my
document must lie hidden for another century. It is not possible that
any one of uncertain skill should be certain. But there ought to be a
great comet also burning in the sky, of the same complexion as the one
that makes my calculations doubtful. Farewell, whosoever thou shalt be,
from me descended, and obey me.’”
“Papa, I declare it quite frightens me. How could he have predicted me,
for instance, and this great comet, and even you?”
“Then you think that you answer to your description! My darling, I do
believe that you do. But you never shall ‘give yourself for the house,’
or for fifty thousand houses. Now, will you have anything to do with
this strange affair; or will you not? Much rather would I hear you say
that you will have nothing to do with it, and that the old man’s book
may sleep for at least another century.”
“Now, papa, you know how much you would be disappointed in me. And do
you think that I could have any self-respect remaining? And beside all
that, how could I hope to sleep in my bed with all those secrets ever
dangling over me?”
“That last is a very important point. With your excitable nature, you
had better go always through a thing. It was the same with your dear
mother. Here are the keys, my daughter. I really feel ashamed to dwell
so long on a mere superstition.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE LEGACY OF THE ASTROLOGER.
The room known as the Astrologer’s (by the maids, less reverently
entitled the “star-gazer’s closet”) was that old eight-sided, or
lantern-chamber, which has been mentioned in the short account of the
Carian sage and his labours. He had used it alternately, with his other
quarters in the Chancton Ring; for this had outlook of the rising, as
the other had of the setting stars. At the eastern end of the house, it
stood away from roofs and chimney-tops, commanding the trending face of
hill, and the amplitude of the world below, from north-west round the
north and east, to the rising point of Fomalhault.
To this room Alice now made her way, as if she had no time to spare.
With quick, light steps she passed through the hall, and then the
painted library, as it was called from some old stained glass--and
at the further end she entered a little room with double doors, her
father’s favourite musing-place. In the eastern end of this quiet
chamber, and at the eastern end of all, there was a low and narrow
door. This was seldom locked, because none of the few who came so far
would care to go any further. For it opened to a small landing-place,
dimly lit, as well as damp, and leading to a newel staircase, narrow,
and made of a chalky flint, angular and irregular.
Alice stopped to think a little. All things looked so uninviting
that she would rather keep her distance. Surely now that the sun had
departed--whether well or otherwise--some other time would do as nicely
for going on with the business. There was nothing said of any special
hurry, so far as she could remember; and what could be a more stupid
thing than to try to unlock an ancient door without any light for the
keyhole? She had a very great mind to go back, and to come again in the
morning.
She turned with a quick turn towards the light, and the comfort, and
the company; then suddenly she remembered how she had boasted of her
courage; and who would be waiting to laugh at her, if she came back
without her errand. Fearing further thought, she ran like a sunset
cloud up the stairway.
Fifty or sixty steps went by her before she had time to think of them;
a few in the light of loopholes, but the greater part in governed
gloom, or shadowy mixture flickering. Then at the top she stopped to
breathe, and recover her wits, for a moment. Here a long black door
repelled her--a door whose outside she knew pretty well, but had no
idea of the other side. Upon this, she began to think again; and her
thoughts were almost too much for her.
With a little sigh that would have moved all imaginable enemies, the
swiftly sensitive girl called up the inborn spirit of her race, and her
own peculiar romance. These in combination scarcely could have availed
her to turn the key, unless her father had happened to think of oiling
it with a white pigeon’s feather.
When she heard the bolt shoot back, she made the best of a bad affair.
“In for a penny, in for a pound;” “faint heart is fain;” “two bites at
a cherry;” and above all, “noblesse oblige.” With all these thoughts to
press her forward, in she walked, quite dauntlessly.
And lo, there was nothing to frighten her. Everything looked as old and
harmless as the man who had loved them all; having made or befriended
them. His own little lathe, with its metal bed (cast by himself from
a mixture of his own, defying the rust of centuries), wanted nothing
more than dusting, and some oil on the bearings. And the speculum he
had worked so hard at, for a reflecting telescope--partly his own
idea, and partly reflected (as all ideas are) some years ere the time
of Gregory--the error in its grinding, which had driven him often to
despair, might still be traced by an accurate eye through the depth of
two hundred dusty years. Models, patterns, moulds, and castings,--many
of which would have shown how slowly our boasted discoveries have
grown,--also favourite tools, and sundry things past out of their
meaning, lay about among their fellows, doomed alike to do no work,
because the man who had kept them moving was shorter-lived than they
were.
Now young Alice stood among them, in a reverential way. They were, of
course, no more than other things laid by to rust, according to man’s
convenience. And yet she could not make up her mind to meddle with any
one of them. So that she only looked about, and began to be at home
with things.
Her eager mind was always ready to be crowded with a rash young
interest in all things. It was the great fault of her nature that she
never could perceive how very far all little things should lie beneath
her notice. So that she now had really more than she could contrive to
take in all at once.
But while she stood in this surprise, almost forgetting her errand
among the multitude of ideas, a cloud above the sunset happened to be
packed with gorgeous light. Unbosoming itself to the air in the usual
cloudy manner, it managed thereby to shed down some bright memories of
the departed one. And hence there came a lovely gleam of daylight’s
afterthought into the north-western facet of the old eight-sided room.
Alice crossed this glance of sunset, wondering what she was to do,
until she saw her shadow wavering into a recess of wall. There, between
the darker windows to the right hand of the door, a little hover of
refraction, striking upon reflection, because it was fugitive, caught
her eyes. She saw by means of this a keyhole in a brightened surface,
on a heavy turn of wall that seemed to have no meaning. In right of
discovery up she ran, passed her fingers over a plate of polished
Sussex iron, and put her key into the hole, of course.
The lock had been properly oiled perhaps, and put into working order
sometimes, even within the last hundred years. But still it was so
stiff that Alice had to work the key both ways, and with both hands,
ere it turned. And even after the bolt went back, she could not open
the door at once, perhaps because the jamb was rusty, or the upper
hinge had given forward. Whatever the hesitation was, the girl would
have no refusal. She set the key crosswise in the lock, and drew one
corner of her linen handkerchief through the loop of it, and then tied
a knot, and, with both hands, pulled. Inasmuch as her handkerchief
was not made of gauze, or lace, or gossamer, and herself of no feeble
material, the heavy door gave way at last, and everything lay before
her.
“Is that all? oh, is that all?” she cried in breathless disappointment,
and yet laughing at herself. “No jewels, no pearls, no brooches, or
buckles, or even a gold watch! And the great Astrologer must have
foreseen how sadly, in this year of our reckoning, I should be longing
for a gold watch! Alas! without it, what is the use of being ‘brave and
beautiful’? Here is nothing more than dust, mouldy old deeds, and a
dirty cushion!”
Alice had a great mind at first to run back to her father and tell
him that, after all, there was nothing found that would be worth the
carrying. And she even turned, and looked round the room, to support
this strong conclusion. But the weight of ancient wisdom (pressed on
the young imagination by the stamp of mystery) held her under, and made
her stop from thinking her own thoughts about it. “He must have known
better, of course, than I do. Only look at his clever tools! I am sure
I could live in this room for a week, and never be afraid of anything.”
But even while she was saying this to herself, with the mind in command
of the heart, and a fine conscientious courage, there came to her ears,
or seemed to come, a quiet, low, unaccountable sound. It may have
been nothing, as she tried to think, when first she began to recover
herself; or it may have been something, quite harmless, and most easily
traced to its origin. But whatever it was, in a moment it managed to
quench her desire to live in that room. With quick hands, now delivered
from their usual keen sense of grime, she snatched up whatever she saw
in the cupboard, and banged the iron door and locked it, with a glance
of defiant terror over the safer shoulder first, and then over the one
that was nearer the noise.
Then she knew that she had done her duty very bravely; and that it
would be a cruel thing to expect her to stay any longer. And, so to
shut out all further views of anything she had no right to see, she
slipped back the band of her beautiful hair, and, under that cover,
retreated.
CHAPTER X.
A BOY AND A DONKEY.
At this very time there happened to be a boy of no rank, and of unknown
order, quietly jogging homeward. He differed but little from other
boys; and seemed unworthy of consideration, unless one stopped to
consider him. Because he was a boy by no means virtuous, or valiant,
neither gifted by nature with any inborn way to be wonderful. Having
nothing to help him much, he lived among the things that came around
him, to his very utmost; and he never refused a bit to eat, because it
might have been a better bit. And now and then, if he got the chance
(without any more in the background than a distant view of detection),
he had been imagined perhaps to lay hand upon a stray trifle that would
lie about, and was due, but not paid, to his merits. Nobody knew where
this boy came from, or whether he came at all indeed, or was only the
produce of earth or sky, at some improper conjuncture. Nothing was
certain about him; except that there he was; and he meant to stay; and
people, for the most part, liked him. And many women would been glad
to love him, in a protective way, but for the fright by all of them
felt, by reason of the magistrates.
These had settled it long ago, at every kind of session, that this boy
(though so comparatively honest) must not be encouraged much. He had
such a manner of looking about, after almost anything; and of making
the most of those happy times when luck embraces art; above all, he
had such exhaustive knowledge of apple-trees, and potato-buries, and
cows that wanted milking, as well as of ticklish trout, and occasional
little ducks that had lost their way--that after long-tried lenience,
and allowance for such a neglected child, justice could no longer take
a large and loving view of “Bonny.”
Bonny held small heed of justice (even in the plural number) whenever
he could help it. The nature of his birth and nurture had been such as
to gift him with an outside view of everything. If people liked him, he
liked them, and would be the last to steal from them; or at any rate
would let them be the last for him to steal from. His inner meaning was
so honest, that he almost always waited for some great wrong to be done
to him, before he dreamed of making free with almost anybody’s ducks.
Widely as he was known, and often glanced at from a wrong point of
view, even his lowest detractor could not give his etymology. Many
attempted to hold that he might have been called, in some generative
outburst, “Bonnie,” by a Scotchman of imagination. Others laughed this
idea to scorn, and were sure that his right name was “Boney,” because
of his living in spite of all terror of “Bonyparty.” But the true
solution probably was (as with all analytic inquiries) the third,--that
his right name was “Bony,” because his father, though now quite a
shadowy being, must have, at some time or other, perhaps, gone about
crying, “Rags and Bones, oh!”
These little niceties of origin passed by Bonny as the idle wind. He
was proud of his name, and it sounded well; and wherever he went, the
ladies seemed to like him as an unknown quantity. Also (which mattered
far more to him) the female servants took to him. And, with many of
these, he had such a way, that it found him in victuals, perhaps twice
in a week.
Nevertheless, he was forced to work as hard as could be, this summer.
The dragging weight of a hopeless war (as all, except the stout
farmers, now were beginning to consider it) had been tightening, more
and more, the strain upon the veins of trade, and the burden of the
community.
This good boy lived in the side of a hill, or of a cliff (as some might
call it), white and beautiful to look at from a proper distance. Here
he had one of those queer old holes, which puzzle the sagest antiquary,
and set him in fiercest conflict with the even sager geologist. But in
spite of them all, the hole was there; and in that hole lived Bonny.
Without society, what is life? Our tenderest and truest affections
were not given us for naught. The grandest of human desires is to have
something or other to wallop; and fate (in small matters so hard upon
Bonny) had known when to yield, and had granted him this; that is to
say, a donkey.
A donkey of such a clever kind, and so set up with reasoning powers
and a fine heart of his own, that all his conclusions were almost
right, until they were beaten out of him. His name was “Jack,” and his
nature was of a level and sturdy order, resenting wrongs, accepting
favours, with all the teeth of gratitude, and braying (as all clever
asses do) at every change of weather. His personal appearance also was
noble, striking, and romantic; and his face reminded all beholders of a
well-coloured pipe-bowl upside down. For all his muzzle and nose were
white, as snowy white as if he always wore a nosebag newly floured from
the nearest windmill. But just below his eyes, and across the mace of
his jaws, was a ring of brown, and above that not a speck of white,
but deepening into cloudy blackness, throughout all his system. Then
(like the crest of Hector) rose a menacing frontlet of thick hair, and
warlike ears as long as horns, yet genially revolving; and body and
legs, to complete the effect, conceived in the very best taste to match.
These great virtues of the animal found their balance in small
foibles. A narrow-minded, self-seeking vein, a too vindictive memory,
an obstinacy more than asinine, no sense of honour, and a habit of
treating too many questions with the teeth or heels. These had lowered
him to his present rank; as may be shown hereafter.
To any worked and troubled mind, escaping into the country, it would
have been a treat to happen (round some corner suddenly, when the sun
throws shadows long) upon Bonny and his jackass. In the ripe time
of the evening, when the sun is at his kindest, and the earth most
thankful, and the lines of every shadow now are well accustomed;
when the air has summer hope of never feeling frost again; and every
bush, and tump, and hillock quite knows how to stand and look; when
the creases of yellow grass, and green grass, by the roadside, leave
themselves for explanation, till the rain shall settle it; and the
thick hedge in the calm air cannot rustle, unless it holds a rabbit
or a hare at play,--when all these things, in their quiet way, guide
the shadowy lines of evening, and the long lanes of farewell, what can
soothe the spirit more than the view of a boy on a donkey?
Bonny, therefore, was in keeping with the world around him (as he
always contrived to be) when he came home on Jack, that evening from
a long day’s work at Shoreham. The lane was at its best almost, with
all the wild flowers that love the chalk, mixed with those that hug
the border where the chalk creams into loam. Among them Bonny whistled
merrily, as his favourite custom was; to let the Pixies and the
Fairies, ere he came under the gloom of the hill, understand that he
was coming and nobody else to frighten them.
Soothed with the beauty of the scene and the majesty of the sunset,
Jack drew back his ears and listened drowsily to his master. “Britannia
rule the waves” was then the anthem of the nation; and as she seemed to
rule nothing else, though fighting very grandly, all patriotic Britons
found main comfort in commanding water.
The happiness of this boy and donkey was of that gleeful see-saw
chancing, which is the heartiest of all. This has a snugness of its
own, which nothing but poverty can afford, and luck rejoice to revel
in. As a rich man hugs his shivers, when he has taken a sudden chill,
and huddles in over a roaring fire, and boasts that he cannot warm
himself, so a poor fellow may cuddle his home, and spread his legs as
he pleases, for the sake of its very want of comfort, and the things
it makes him think of; all to be hoped for by-and-by. And Bonny was so
destitute, that he had all the world to hope for. He lived in a hole
in the scarp of chalk, at the foot of the gully of Coombe Lorraine;
and many of his delightful doings might have been seen from the lofty
windows, if anyone ever had thought it worth while to slope a long
telescope at him. But nobody cared to look at Bonny and scatter his
lowly happiness--than which there is no more fugitive creature, and
none more shy of inspection.
Being of a light and dauntless nature, Bonny kept whistling and singing
his way, over the grass and through the furze, and in and out the
dappled leafage of the summer evening; while Jack, with his brightest
blinkings, picked the parts of the track that suited him. The setting
sun was in their eyes, and made them wink every now and then, and threw
the shadow of long ears, and walking legs, and jogging heads, here
and there and anywhere. Also a very fine lump of something might in
the shadows be loosely taken to hang across Jack in his latter parts,
coming after Bonny’s legs, and choice things stowed in front of them.
The meaning of this was that they had been making a very lucky
’long-shore day at the mouth of the river Adur; and on their way home
had received some pleasing tribute to their many merits in the town
of Steyning, and down the road. Jack had no panniers, for his master
could not provide such luxuries; but he had what answered as well, or
better--a long and trusty meal-sack, strongly stitched at the mouth,
and slit for inlet some way down the middle. So that as it hung well
balanced over his sturdy quarters, anything might be popped in quickly;
and all the contents must abide together, and churn up into fine
tenderness.
As for Bonny himself, the shadows did him strong injustice, such as he
was wont to take from all the world, and make light of. The shadows
showed him a ragged figure, flapping and flickering here and there,
and random in his outlines. But the true glow of the sunset, full upon
his face, presented quite another Bonny. No more to be charged as a
vagabond than the earth and the sun himself were; but a little boy who
loved his home, such as it was, and knew it, and knew little else.
Dirty, perhaps, just here and there, after the long dry weather--but if
he had been ugly, could he have brought home all that dripping?
To the little fellow himself as yet the question of costume was more
important than that of comeliness. And his dress afforded him many
sources of pride and self-satisfaction. For his breeches were possessed
of inexhaustible vitality, as well as bold and original colour, having
been adapted for him by the wife of his great patron, Bottler the
pigman, from a pair of Bottler’s leggings, made of his own pigskin.
The skin had belonged, in the first place, to a very remarkable boar,
a thorough Calydonian hog, who escaped from a farm-yard, and lived
for months a wild life in St. Leonard’s Forest. Here he scared all
the neighbourhood, until at last Bottler was invoked to arise like
Meleager, and to bring his pig-knife. Bottler met him in single combat,
slew him before he had time to grunt, and claiming him as the spoils
of war, pickled his hams at his leisure. Then he tanned the hide which
was so thick that it never would do for cracklings, and made himself
leggings as everlasting as the fame of his exploit.
With these was Bonny now endued over most of his nether moiety. Shoes
and stockings he scorned, of course, but his little shanks were clean
and red, while his shoulders and chest were lost in the splendour of a
coachman’s crimson waistcoat. At least they were generally so concealed
when he set forth in the morning, for he picked up plenty of pins, and
showed some genius in arranging them; but after a hard day’s work,
as now, air and light would always reassert their right of entrance.
Still, there remained enough of the mingled charm of blush and plush to
recall in soft domestic bosoms bygone scenes, for ever past--but oh, so
sweet among the trays!
To judge him, however, without the fallacy of romantic tenderness--the
breadth of his mouth, and the turn of his nose, might go a little way
against him. Still, he had such a manner of showing bright white teeth
in a jocund grin, and of making his frizzly hair stand up, and his
sharp blue eyes express amazement, at the proper moment; moreover, his
pair of cheeks was such (after coming off the downs), and his laugh
so dreadfully infectious, and he had such tales to tell--that several
lofty butlers were persuaded to consider him.
Even the butler of Coombe Lorraine--but that will come better
hereafter. Only as yet may be fairly said, that Bonny looked up at
the house on the hill with a delicate curiosity; and felt that his
overtures might have been somewhat ungraceful, or at least ill-timed,
when the new young footman (just taken on) took it entirely upon
himself to kick him all the way down the hill. This little discourtesy,
doubling of course Master Bonny’s esteem and regard for the place, at
the same time introduced some constraint into his after intercourse.
For the moment, indeed, he took no measures to vindicate his honour;
although, at a word (as he knew quite well), Bottler, the pigman, would
have brought up his whip and seen to it. And even if any of the maids
of the house had been told to tell Miss Alice about it, Bonny was sure
of obtaining justice, and pity, and even half-a-crown.
Quick as he was to forget and forgive the many things done amiss to
him, the boy, when he came to the mouth of the coombe, looked pretty
sharply about him for traces of that dreadful fellow, who had proved
himself such a footman. With Jack to help him, with jaw and heel,
Bonny would not have been so very much afraid of even him; such a
“strong-siding champion” had the donkey lately shown himself. Still, on
the whole, and after such a long day’s work by sea and shore, the rover
was much relieved to find his little castle unleaguered.
The portal thereof was a yard in height, and perhaps fifteen inches
wide; not all alike, but in and out, according to the way the things,
or the boy himself, went rubbing it. A holy hermit once had lived
there, if tradition spoke aright. But if so, he must have been as
narrow of body to get in, as wide of mind to stop there. At any rate,
Bonny was now the hermit, and less of a saint than a sinner.
The last glance of sunset was being reflected under the eaves of
twilight, when these two came to their home and comfort in the bay of
the quiet land. From the foot of the steep white cliff, the green sward
spread itself with a gentle slope, and breaks of roughness here and
there, until it met the depth of cornland, where the feathering bloom
appeared--for the summer was a hot one--reared upon its jointed stalk,
and softened into a silver-grey by the level touch of evening. The
little powdered stars of wheat bloom could not now be seen, of course;
neither the quivering of the awns, nor that hovering radiance, which
in the hot day moves among them. Still the scent was on the air, the
delicate fragrance of the wheat, only caught by waiting for it, when
the hour is genial.
Bonny and Jack were not in the humour now to wait for anything. The
scent of the wheat was nothing to them; but the smell of a loaf was
something. And Jack knew, quite as well as Bonny, that let the time
be as hard as it would--and it was a very hard time already, though
nothing to what came afterward--nevertheless, there were two white
loaves, charmed by their united powers, out of maids who were under
notice to quit their situations. Also on their homeward road, they had
not failed entirely of a few fine gristly hocks of pork, and the bottom
of a skin of lard, and something unknown, but highly interesting, from
a place where a pig had been killed that week--a shameful outrage to
any pig, in the time of hearted cabbages.
“Now, Jack, tend thee’zell,” said Bonny, with the air of a full-grown
man almost, while he was working his own little shoulders in betwixt
the worn hair on the ribs, and the balanced bag overhanging them. Jack
knew what he was meant to do; for he brought his white nose cleverly
round, just where it was wanted, and pushed it under one end of the
bag, and tossed it carefully over his back, so that it slid down
beautifully.
When this great bag lay on the ground (or rather, stood up, in a clumsy
way, by virtue of what was inside of it), the first thing everybody did
was to come, and poke, and sniff at it. And though the everybody was no
more than Bonny and his donkey, the duty was not badly done, because
they were both so hungry.
When the strings were cut, and the bag in relief of tension panted,
ever so many things began to ooze, and to ease themselves, out of it.
First of all two great dollops of oar-weed, which had well performed
their task of keeping everything tight and sweet with the hungry
fragrance of the sea. Then came a mixture of almost anything, which a
boy of no daintiness was likely to regard as eatable, or a child of no
kind of “culture” to look upon as a rarity. Bonny was a collector of
the grandest order; the one who collects everything. Here was food of
the land, and food of the sea, and food of the tidal river, mingled
with food for the mind of a boy, who had no mind--to his knowledge. In
the humblest way he groped about, and admired almost everything.
Now he had things to admire which (in the heat of the day and the
work) had been caught and stowed away anyhow. The boy and the donkey
had earned their load with such true labour that now they could not
remember even half of it. Jack, by hard collar-work at the nets;
Bonny, by cheering him up the sand, and tugging himself with his puny
shoulders, and then by dancing, and treading away, and kicking with
naked feet among the wastrel fish, full of thorns and tails, shed from
the vent of the drag-net by the spent farewell of the shoaling wave.
For, on this very day, there had been the great Midsummer haul at
Shoreham. It was the old custom of the place; but even custom must
follow the tides, and the top of the summer spring-tides (when the fish
are always liveliest) happened, for the year 1811, to come on the 18th
day of June. Bonny for weeks had been looking forward and now before
him lay his reward!
After many sweet and bitter uses of adversity, this boy, at an early
age, had caught the tail of prudence. It had been to his heart at
first, a friendly and a native thing, to feast to the full (when he got
the chance) and go empty away till it came again. But now, being grown
to riper years, and, after much consideration, declared to be at least
twelve years old by the only pork-butcher in Steyning, Bonny began to
know what was what, and to salt a good deal of his offal.
For this wise process he now could find a greater call than usual;
because, through the heat of the day, he had stuck to his first and
firmly-grounded principle--never to refuse refuse. So that many other
fine things were mingled, jumbled, and almost churned, among the sundry
importations of the flowing tide and net. All these, now, he well
delivered (so far as sappy limbs could do it) upon a cleanish piece of
ground, well accustomed to such favours. Then Bonny stood back, with
his hands on his knees, and Jack spread his nose at some of it.
Loaves of genuine wheaten bread were getting scarce already. Three or
four bad harvests, following long arrears of discontent, and hanging on
the heavy arm of desperate taxation, kept the country, and the farmers,
and the people that must be fed, in such a condition that we (who
cannot be now content with anything) deserve no blame when we smack our
lips in our dainty contempt of our grandfathers.
Bonny was always good to Jack, according to the way they had of looking
at one another; and so, of the choicest spoils, he gave him a half-peck
loaf, of a fibre such as they seldom softened their teeth with. Jack
preferred this to any clover, even when that luxury could be won by
clever stealing; and now he trotted away with his loaf to the nearest
stump where backing-power against his strong jaws could be got. Here he
laid his loaf against the stump, and went a little way back to think
about it, and to be sure that every atom was for him. Then, without
scruple or time to spare, he tucked up his lips, and began in a hurry
to make a bold dash for the heart of it.
“More haste, less speed,” is a proverb that seems, at first sight, one
of the last that need be impressed upon a donkey. Yet, in the present
instance, Jack should have spared himself time to study it; for in less
than a moment he ran up to Bonny, with his wide mouth at its widest,
snorting with pain, and much yearning to bellow, but by the position
disabled. There was something stuck fast in the roof of his mouth, in a
groove of the veiny black arches; and work as he might with his wounded
tongue, he was only driving it further in. His great black eyes, as
he gasped with fright, and the piteous whine of his quivering nose,
and his way altogether so scared poor Bonny, that the chances were he
would run away. And so, no doubt, he must have done (being but a little
boy as yet), if it had not chanced that a flash of something caught
his quick eye suddenly, something richly shining in the cavern of the
donkey’s mouth.
This was enough, of course, for Bonny. His instinct of scratching,
and digging, and hiding was up and at work in a moment. He thrust his
brown hand between Jack’s great jaws, and drew it back quickly enough
to escape the snap of their glad reunion. And in his hand was something
which he had drawn from the pouch of the net that day, but scarcely
stopped to look at twice, in the huddle of weeds and the sweeping.
It had lain among many fine gifts of the sea--skates, and dog-fish,
sea-devils, sting-rays, thorn-backs, inky cuttles, and scollops,
cockles, whelks, green crabs, jelly-fish, and everything else that
makes fishermen swear, and then grin, and then spit on their palms
again. Afterwards in Bonny’s sack it had lain with manifold boons of
the life-giving earth, extracted from her motherly feeling by one or
two good butchers.
Bonny made no bones of this. Fish, flesh, fowl, or stale
red-herring--he welcomed all the works of charity with a charitable
nose, and fingers not of the nicest. So that his judgment could
scarcely have been “prejudicially affected by any preconceived
opinion”--as our purest writers love to say--when he dropped this
thing, and smelled his thumb, and cried, “Lord, how it makes my hands
itch!”
After such a strong expression, what can we have to say to him? It is
the privilege of our period to put under our feet whatever we would
rather not face out. At the same time, to pretend to love it, and lift
it by education. Nevertheless, one may try to doubt whether Bonny’s
grandchildren (if he ever presumed to have any) thrive on the lesson,
as well as he did on the loaf, of charity.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAMBER PRACTICE.
There used to be a row of buildings, well within the sacred precincts
of the Inner Temple, but still preserving a fair look-out on the
wharves, and the tidal gut at their back, till the whole view was
swallowed by gas-works. Here for long ages law had flourished on the
excrete things of outlawry, fed by the reek of Whitefriars, as a good
nettle enjoys the mixen.
Already, however, some sweeping changes had much improved this
neighbourhood; and the low attorneys who throve on crime, and of whom
we get unpleasant glimpses through our classic novelists, had been
succeeded by men of repute, and learning, and large practice. And
among all these there was not one more widely known and respected than
Glanvil Malahide, K.C.; an eminent equity-barrister, who now declined
to don the wig in any ordinary cause. He had been obliged, of course,
to fight, like the rest of mankind, for celebrity; but as soon as this
was well assured, he quitted the noisier sides of it. But his love of
the subtleties of the law (spun into fairer and frailer gossamer by the
soft spider of equity), as well as the power of habit, kept him to his
old profession; so that he took to chamber practice, and had more than
he could manage.
Sir Roland Lorraine had known this gentleman by repute at Oxford, when
Glanvil Malahide was young, and believed to be one of the best scholars
there; in the days when scholarship often ripened (as it seldom does
now) to learning. For the scholarship now must be kept quite young, for
the smaller needs of tuition.
Hence it came to pass that as soon as Hilary Lorraine was quite acquit
of Oxford leading-strings, and had scrambled into some degree, his
father, who especially wished (for some reasons of his own) to keep the
boy out of the army, entered him gladly among the pupils of Mr. Glanvil
Malahide. Not that Hilary was expected ever to wear the horsehair much
(unless an insane desire to do so should find its way into his open
soul), but that the excellent goodness of law might drop, like the
gentle dew from heaven, and grow him into a Justice of the Peace.
Hilary looked upon this matter, as he did on too many others, with a
sweet indifference. If he could only have had his own way, he would
have been a soldier long ago; for that was the time when all the spirit
of Britain was roused up to arms. But this young fellow’s great fault
was, to be compact of so many elements that nothing was settled amongst
them. He had “great gifts,” as Mr. Malahide said--“extraordinary
talents,” we say now--but nobody knew (least of all their owner) how to
work them properly. This is one of the most unlucky compositions of the
human mind--to be applicable to everything, but applied to nothing. If
Hilary had lain under pressure, and been squeezed into one direction,
he must have become a man of mark.
This his father could not see. As a general rule a father fails to
know what his son is fit for; and after disappointment, fancies (for a
little time at least) himself a fool to have taken the boy to be all
that the mother said of him. Nevertheless, the poor mother knows how
right she was, and the world how wrong.
But Hilary Lorraine, from childhood, had no mother to help him. What
he had to help him was good birth, good looks, good abilities, a very
sweet temper, and a kind and truly genial nature. Also a strongish
will of his own (whenever his heart was moving), yet ashamed to stand
forth boldly in the lesser matters. And here was his fatal error; that
he looked upon almost everything as one of the lesser matters. He had,
of course, a host of friends, from the freedom of his manner; and
sometimes he would do such things that the best, or even the worst of
them, could no longer walk with him. Things not vicious, but a great
deal too far gone in the opposite way--such as the snatching up of a
truly naked child and caressing it, or any other shameful act, in the
face of the noblest Christendom. These things he would do, and worse;
such as no toady with self-respect could smile at in broad daylight,
and such as often exposed the lad to laughter in good society. One of
his best friends used to say that Hilary wanted a vice or two to make
his virtues balance. This may have been so; but none the less, he had
his share of failings.
For a sample of these last, he had taken up and made much of one of his
fellow-pupils in these well-connected chambers. This was one Gregory
Lovejoy, a youth entirely out of his element among fashionable sparks.
Steadfast ambition of a conceptive mother sent him, against his stars,
to London; and here he became the whetstone for those brilliant blades,
his fellow-pupils; because he had been at no university, nor even so
much as a public school, and had no introduction to anybody who had
never heard of him.
Now the more the rest disdained this fellow, the more Lorraine regarded
him; feeling, with a sense too delicate to arise from any thought,
that shame was done to good birth even by becoming conscious of it,
except upon great occasions. And so, without giving much offence, or
pretending to be a champion, Hilary used to shield young Lovejoy from
the blunt shafts of small humour continually levelled at him.
Mr. Malahide’s set of chambers was perhaps the best to be found in
Equity Walk, Inner Temple. His pupils--ten in number always, because
he would accept no more, and his high repute insured no less--these
worthy youths had the longest room, facing with three whitey-brown
windows into “Numa Square.” Hence the view, contemning all “utilitarian
edifices,” freely ranged, across the garden’s classic walks of
asphodel, to the broad Lethean river on whose wharves we are such
weeds. For “Paper Buildings,” named from some swift sequence of
suggestion, reared no lofty height as yet to mar the sedentary view.
All who have the local key will enter into the scene at once; so far,
at least, as necessary change has failed to operate. But Mr. Malahide’s
pupils scarcely ever looked out of the windows. None, however, should
rashly blame them for apathy as to the prospect. They seldom looked out
of the windows, because they were very seldom inside them.
In the first place, their attendance there was voluntary and
precarious. They paid their money, and they took their choice whether
they ever did anything more. Each of them paid--or his father for
him--a fee of a hundred guineas to have the “run of the chambers,” and
most of them carried out their purpose by a runaway from them. The
less they came, the less trouble they caused to Mr. Glanvil Malahide;
who always gave them that much to know, when they paid their fee of
entrance. “If you mean to be a lawyer,” he said, “I will do my best
to make you one. If you only come for the name of it, I shall say but
little more to you.” This, of course, was fair enough, and the utmost
that could be expected of him: for most of his pupils were young men
of birth, or good position in the English counties, to whom in their
future condition of life a little smattering of law, or the credit of
owning such smattering, would be worth a few hundred guineas. Common
Law, of course, was far more likely to avail them, in their rubs of
the world, than equity; but of that fine drug they had generally taken
their dose in Pleaders’ Chambers, and were come to wash the taste away
in the purer shallows of equity.
Hilary, therefore, might be considered, and certainly did consider
himself, a remarkably attentive pupil, for he generally was to be
found in chambers four or even five days of the week, coming in time
to read all the news, before the five o’clock dinner in Hall. Whereas
the Honourable Robert Gumption, and Sir Francis Kickabout, two of his
fellow-pupils, had only been seen in chambers once since they paid
their respective fees; and the reason of their attendance then was
that they found the towels too dirty to use at the billiard-rooms in
Fleet Street. The clerks used to say among themselves, that these young
fellows must be dreadful fools to pay one hundred guineas, because
any swell with the proper cheek might easy enough have the go of the
chambers, and nobody none the wiser; for they wouldn’t know him, nor
the other young gents, and least of all old “horsewig.”
However, there chanced to be two or three men who made something more
than a very expensive lounge of these eminent chambers. Of these
worthy fellows, Rice Cockles was one (who had been senior wrangler
two years before, and from that time knew not one good night’s rest,
till the Woolsack broke his fall into his grave), and another was
Gregory Lovejoy. Cockles was thoroughly conscious--as behoves a senior
wrangler--of possessing great abilities; and Lovejoy knew, on his own
behalf, that his mother at least was as sure as could be of all the
wonders he must do.
Hilary could not bear Rice Cockles, who was of a dry sarcastic vein;
but he liked young Lovejoy more and more, the more he had to defend
him. Youths who have not had the fortune to be at a public school or
a college seldom know how to hold their tongues, until the world has
silenced them. Gregory, therefore, thought no harm to boast opportunely
one fine May morning (when some one had seen a tree blossoming
somewhere) of the beauty of his father’s cherry-trees. How noble and
grand they must be just now, one sheet of white, white, white, he said,
as big as the Inner and the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, all put
together! And then how the bees were among them buzzing, knowing which
sorts first to milk; and the tortoiseshell butterflies quite sure to
be out, for the first of their summering. But in the moonlight, best
of all, when the moon was three days short of full, then was the time
an unhappy Londoner must be amazed with happiness. Then to walk among
them was like walking in a fairy-land, or being lost in a sky of snow,
before a flake begins to fall. A delicate soft world of white, an
in-and-out of fancy lace, a feeling of some white witchery, and almost
a fright that little white blossoms have such power over one.
“Where may one find this grand paradise?” asked Rice Cockles, as if he
could scarcely refrain his feet from the road to it.
“Five miles the other side of Sevenoaks,” Gregory answered, boldly.
“I know the country. Does your father grow cherries for Covent Garden
market?”
“Of course he does. Didn’t you know that!” Thenceforth in chambers
Lovejoy was always known as “Cherry Lovejoy.” And he proudly answered
to that name.
It was now the end of June, and the cherries must be getting ripe. The
day had been very hot and sultry, and Hilary came into chambers later
than his usual time, but fresh as a lark, as he always was. Even Mr.
Malahide had felt the weight of the weather, and of his own threescore
years and five, and in his own room was dozing. The three clerks, in
their little den, were fit for next to nothing, except to be far away
in some meadow, with sleepy beer, under alder-trees. Even Rice Cockles
had struck work with one of those hopeless headaches which are bred by
hot weather from satire, a thing that turns sour above freezing-point;
and no one was dwelling in the long hot room save the peaceful and
steady Gregory.
Even he, with his resolute will to fulfil his mother’s prophecies,
could scarcely keep his mind from flagging, or his mouth from yawning,
as he went through some most elaborate answer to a grand petition
in equity--the iniquity being, to a common mind, that the question
could have arisen. But Mr. Malahide, of course, regarded things
professionally.
“Lovejoy, thy name is ‘Love misery,’” cried young Lorraine, who never
called his fellow-pupil “Cherry,” though perfectly welcome to do so. “I
passed an optician’s shop just now, and the thermometer stands at 96°.
That quill must have come from an ostrich to be able to move in such
weather. Even the Counsellor yields to the elements. Hark how he winds
his sultry horn! Is it not a great and true writer who says, ‘I tell
thee that the quills of the law are the deadliest shafts of the Evil
One’? Come, therefore, and try a darting match.”
Gregory felt no inclination for so hot a pastime; he had formed,
however, a habit of yielding to the impulsive and popular Hilary,
which led him into a few small scrapes, and one or two that were not
small. Lorraine’s unusual brightness of nature, and personal beauty,
and gentle bearing, as well as an inborn readiness to be pleased with
everybody, insured him a good liking with almost all kinds of people.
How then could young Lovejoy, of a fine but unshapen character, and
never introduced to the very skirts of good society, help looking up
to his champion Hilary as a charming deity? Therefore he made way at
once for Hilary’s sudden freak for darts. The whole world being at war
just then (as happens upon the average in every generation), Cherry
Lovejoy slung his target, a legal almanac for the year. Then he took
four long quills, and pared them of their plumes, and split the shafts,
and fitted each with four paper wings, cut and balanced cleverly. His
aptness in the business showed that this was not his first attempt; and
it was a hard and cruel thing that he should now have to prepare them.
But the clerks had a regular trick of stealing the “young pups’” darts
from their unlocked drawers, partly for practice among themselves, but
mainly to please their families.
“Capital! Beautifully done!” cried Hilary, as full of life as if the
only warmth of the neighbourhood were inside him. “We never turned out
such a good lot before; I could never do that like you. But now for the
tips, my dear fellow!”
“Any fool can do what I have done. But no one can cut the tip at all,
to stick in the target and not bounce back; only you, Mr. Lorraine.”
“Mister Lorraine! now, Gregory Lovejoy, I thought we liked one another
well enough to have dropped that long ago. If you will only vouchsafe
to notice, you shall see how I cut the tip, so that the well-sped
javelin pierces even cover of calf-skin.” It was done in a moment, by
some quick art, inherited, perhaps, from Prince Agasicles; and then
they took their stations.
From the further end of the room they cast (for thirty feet or more
perhaps) over two great tables scarred by keen generations of lawyers.
Hilary threw the stronger shaft, but Gregory took more careful aim; so
that in spite of the stifling heat, the contest grew exciting.
“Blest if they young donkeys knows hot from cold!” said the senior
clerk, disturbed in his little room by the prodding and walking, and
the lively voices.
“Sooner them, than you nor me!” the second clerk muttered sleepily.
When the most ungrammatical English is wanted, a copying clerk is the
man to supply it.
In spite of unkindly criticism, the brisk aconitic strife went on. And
every hit was chronicled on a long sheet of draft paper.
“Sixteen to you, eighteen to me!” cried Gregory, poising his long
shadowed spear, while his coat and waistcoat lay in the folds of a
suit that could never terminate, and his square Kentish face was even
redder than a ripe May-Duke. At that moment the door was opened, and in
came Mr. Malahide.
“Just so!” he said, in his quiet way; “I now understand the origin of a
noise which has often puzzled me. Lorraine, what a baby you must be!”
“Can a baby do that?” said Hilary, as he stepped into poor Gregory’s
place, and sped his dart into the Chancellor’s eye, the bull’s-eye of
their target.
“That was well done,” Mr. Malahide answered; “perhaps it is the only
good shot you will ever make in your profession.”
“I hope not, sir. Under your careful tuition I am laying the
foundations of a mighty host of learning.”
At this the lawyer was truly pleased. He really did believe that he
took some trouble with his pupils; and his very kind heart was always
gratified by their praises. And he showed his pleasure in his usual way
by harping on verbal niceties.
“Foundations of a host, Lorraine! Foundations of a pile, you mean; and
as yet, _lusisti pilis_. But you may be a credit to me yet. Allowance
must be made for this great heat. I will talk to you to-morrow.”
With these few words, and a pleasant smile, the eminent lawyer withdrew
to his den, feigning to have caught no glimpse of the deeply-blushing
Lovejoy. For he knew quite well that Gregory could not afford to play
with his schooling; and so (like a proper gentleman) he fell upon the
one who could. Hilary saw his motive, and with his usual speed admired
him.
“What a fine fellow he is!” he said, as if in pure self-commune; “from
the time he becomes Lord Chancellor, I will dart at no legal almanac.
But the present fellow--however, the weather is too hot to talk of him.
Lovejoy, wilt thou come with me? I must break out into the country.”
“What!” cried Gregory, drawing up at the magic word from his stool of
repentance, and the desk of his diminished head. “What was that you
said, Lorraine?”
“Fair indeed is the thing thou hast said, and fair is the way thou
saidst it. Tush! shall I never get wholly out of my ignorant knowledge
of Greek plays? Of languages that be, or have been, only two words
survive this weather, in the streets of London town; one is ‘rus,’ and
the other ‘country.’”
“‘It is a sweet and decorous thing to die on behalf of the country.’
That line I remember well; you must have seen it somewhere?”
“It is one of my earliest memories, and not a purely happy one. But
that is ‘patria,’ not ‘rus.’ ‘Patria’ is the fatherland; ‘rus’ is a
fellow’s mother. None can understand this parable till they have lived
in London.”
“Lorraine,” said Gregory, coming up shyly, yet with his brown eyes
sparkling, and a steadfast mouth to declare himself, “you are very much
above me, of course, I know.”
“I am uncommonly proud to hear it,” Hilary answered, with his most
sweet smile, “because I must be a much finer fellow than I ever could
have dreamed of being.”
“Now, you know well enough what I mean. I mean, in position of life,
and all that, and birth, and society--and so on.”
“To be sure,” said Hilary gravely, making a trumpet of blotting paper;
“any other advantage, Gregory?”
“Fifty, if I could stop to tell them. But I see that you mean to argue
it. Now, argument is a thing that always----”
“Now, Gregory, just acknowledge me your superior in argument, and I
will confess myself your superior in every one of those other things.”
“Well, you know, Lorraine, I could scarcely do that. Because it was
only the very last time----”
“Exactly,” said Hilary; “so it was--the very last time, you left me no
more than a shadow caught in a cleft stick. Therefore, friend Gregory,
say your say, without any traps for the sole of my foot.”
“Well, what I was thinking was no more than this--if you would take it
into consideration now--considering what the weather is, and all the
great people gone out of London, and the streets like fire almost, and
the lawyers frightened by the comet, quite as if, as if, almost----”
“As if it were the devil come for them.”
“Exactly so. Bellows’ clerk told me, after he saw the comet, that he
could prove he had never been articled. And when you come to consider
also that there will be a row to-morrow morning--not much, of course,
but still a thing to be avoided till the weather cools--I thought; at
least, I began to think----”
“My dear fellow, what? Anxiety in this dreadful weather is fever.”
“Nothing, nothing at all, Lorraine. But you are the sweetest-tempered
fellow I ever came across; and so I thought that you would not mind--at
least, not so very much, perhaps----”
“My sweet temper is worn out. I have no mind to mind anything, Gregory;
come and dine with me.”
“That is how you stop me always, Lorraine; I cannot be for ever coming,
and come, to dine with you. I always like it; but you know----”
“To be sure, I know that I like it too. It is high time to see about
it. Who could dine in Hall to-day, and drink his bottle of red-hot
port?”
“I could, and so could a hundred others. And I mean to do it,
unless----”
“Unless what? Mysterious Gregory, by your face I know that you
have some very fine thing to propose. Have you the heart to keep me
suspended, as well as uncommonly hungry?”
“It is nothing to make a fuss about. Lorraine, you want to get out of
town, for a little wholesome air. I want to do the same; and something
came into my head quite casually.”
“Such things have an inspiration. Out with it at last, fair Gregory.”
“Well, then, if you must have it, how I should like for you to come
with me to have a little turn among my father’s cherry-trees!”
“What a noble thought!” said Hilary; “a poetic imagination only
could have hit on such a thought. The thermometer at 96°--and the
cherries--can they be sour now?”
“Such a thing is quite impossible,” Gregory answered gravely; “in a
very cold, wet summer they are sometimes a little middling. But in such
a splendid year as this, there can be no two opinions. Would you like
to see them?”
“Now, Lovejoy, I can put up with much; but not with maddening
questions.”
“You mean, I suppose, that you could enjoy half-a-dozen cool red
cherries, if you had the chance to pick them in among the long green
leaves?”
“Half-a-dozen! Half-a-peck; and half-a-bushel afterwards. Where have I
put my hat? I am off, if it costs my surviving sixpence.”
“Lorraine, all the coaches are gone for the day. But you are always in
such a hurry. You ought to think a little, perhaps, before you make up
your mind to come. Remember that my father’s house is a good house, and
as comfortable as any you could wish to see; still it may be different
from what you are accustomed to.”
“Such things are not worth thinking about. Custom, and all that, are
quite below contempt; and we are beginning to treat it so. The greatest
mistake of our lives is custom; and the greatest delight is to kick it
away. Will your father be glad to see me?”
“He has heard me talk of you, many a time; and he would have been glad
to come to London (though he hates it so abominably), to see you and
to ask you down, if he thought that you would require it. It is a very
old-fashioned place; you must please to bear that in mind. Also, my
father, and my mother, and all of us, are old-fashioned people, living
in a quiet way. You would carry on more in an hour, than we do in a
twelvemonth. We like to go all over things, ever so many times, perhaps
(like pushing rings up and down a stick), before we begin to settle
them. But when we have settled them, we never start again; as you seem
to do.”
“Now, Gregory, Gregory, this is bad. When did you know me to start
again? Ready I am to start this once, and to dwell in the orchards for
ever.”
In a few words more, these two young fellows agreed to take their luck
of it. There was nothing in chambers for Lovejoy to lose, by going away
for a day or two; and Hilary long had felt uneasy at leaving a holiday
overdue. Therefore they made their minds up promptly for an early
start next morning, ere the drowsy town should begin to kick up its
chimney-pots, like a sluggard’s toes.
“Gregory,” said Lorraine, at last, “your mind is a garden of genius. We
two will sit upon bushel-baskets, and watch the sun rise out of sacks.
Before he sets, we will challenge him to face our early waggon. Covent
Garden is our trysting spot, and the hour 4 a.m. Oh, day to be marked
with white chalk for ever!”
“I am sure I can’t tell how that may be,” answered the less fervent
Gregory. “There is no chalk in our grounds at all; and I never saw
black chalk anywhere. But can I trust you to be there? If you don’t
come, I shall not go without you; and the whole affair must be put off.”
“No fear, Gregory; no fear of me. The lark shall still be on her
nest;--but wait, my friend, I will tell the Counsellor, lest I seem to
dread his face.”
Lovejoy saw that this was the bounden duty of a gentleman, inasmuch as
the learned lawyer had promised his young friend a little remonstrance
upon the following morning. The chances were that he would forget it:
and this, of course, enhanced the duty of making him remember it.
Therefore Hilary gave three taps on the worm-eaten door of his good
tutor, according to the scale of precedence. This rule was--inferior
clerk, one tap; head-clerk, two taps; pupil (being no clerk at all, and
paying, not drawing, salary), as many taps as he might think proper, in
a reasonable way.
Hilary, of course, began, as he always managed to begin, with almost
everybody.
“I am sorry to disturb you, sir; and I have nothing particular to say.”
“In that case, why did you come, Lorraine? It is your usual state of
mind.”
“Well, sir,” said Hilary, laughing at the terse mood of the master, “I
thought you had something to say to me--a very unusual state of mind,”
he was going to say, “on your part;” but stopped, with a well-bred
youth’s perception of the unbecoming.
“Yes, I have something to say to you. I remember it now, quite clearly.
You were playing some childish game with Lovejoy, in the pupil’s room.
Now, this is all well enough for you, who are fit for nothing else,
perhaps. Your father expects no work from you; and if he did, he would
never get it. You may do very well, in your careless way, being born to
the gift of indifference. But those who can and must work hard--is it
honest of you to entice them? You think that I speak severely. Perhaps
I do, because I feel that I am speaking to a gentleman.”
“It is uncommonly hard,” said Hilary, with his bright blue eyes half
conscious of a shameful spring of moisture, “that a fellow always gets
it worse for trying to be a gentleman.”
“You have touched a great truth,” Mr. Malahide answered, labouring
heavily not to smile; “but so it always must be. My boy, I am sorry
to vex you; but to be vexed is better than to grieve. You like young
Lovejoy--don’t make him idle.”
“Sir, I will dart at him henceforth, whenever I see him lazy; instead
of the late Lord Chancellor, now sitting upon asphodel.”
“Lorraine,” the great lawyer suddenly asked, in a flush of unusual
interest, “you have been at Oxford quite recently. They do all sorts of
things there now. Have they settled what asphodel is?”
“No, sir, I fear that they never will. There are several other moot
questions still. But with your kind leave, I mean to try to settle that
point to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XII.
WITH THE COSTERMONGERS.
Martin Lovejoy, Gregory’s father, owned and worked a pleasant farm in
that part of Kent which the natives love to call the “Garden of Eden.”
In the valley of the upper Medway, a few miles above Maidstone, pretty
hamlets follow the soft winding of the river. Here an ancient race of
settlers, quiet and intelligent, chose their home, and chose it well,
and love it as dearly as ever.
To argue with such people is to fall below their mercy. They stand at
their cottage-doors, serenely as thirty generations of them have stood.
A riotous storm or two may have swept them; but it never lasted long.
The bowers of hop and of honeysuckle, trimmed alleys, and rambling
roses, the flowering trees by the side of the road, and the truest of
true green meadows, the wealth of deep orchards retiring away--as all
wealth does--to enjoy itself; and where the land condescends to wheat,
the vast gratitude of the wheat-crop,--nobody wonders, after a while,
that these men know their value.
The early sun was up and slurring light upon London housetops, as a
task of duty only, having lost all interest in a thing even he can make
no hand of. But the brisk air of the morning, after such a night of
sweltering, and of strong smells under slates, rode in the perpetual
balance of the clime, and spread itself. Fresh, cool draughts of
new-born day, as vague as the smile of an infant, roved about; yet
were to be caught according to the dew-lines. And of these the best
and truest followed into Covent Garden, under the force of attraction
towards the green stuff they had dwelt among.
Here was a wondrous reek of men before the night had spent itself. Such
a Babel, of a market-morning in “the berry-season,” as makes one long
to understand the mother-tongue of nobody. Many things are nice and
handsome; fruit and flowers are fair and fresh; life is as swift as
life can be; and the pulse of price throbs everywhere. Yet, upon the
whole, it is wiser not to say much more of it.
Martin Lovejoy scarcely ever ventured into this stormy world. In summer
and autumn he was obliged to send some of his fruit to London; but he
always sent it under the care of a trusty old retainer, Master John
Shorne, whose crusty temper and crisp wit were a puzzle to the Cockney
costermonger. Throughout the market, this man was known familiarly as
“Kentish Crust,” and the name helped him well in his business.
Now, in the summer morning early, Hilary Lorraine, with his most
sprightly walk and manner, sought his way through the crowded alleys,
and the swarms of those that buy and sell. Even the roughest of rough
customers (when both demand and supply are rough), though they would
not yield him way, at any rate did not shove him by. “A swell, to buy
fruit for his sweetheart,” was their conclusion in half a glance at
him. “Here, sir, here you are! berries for nothing, and cherries we
pays you for eating of them!”
With the help of these generous fellows, Hilary found his way to John
Shorne and the waggon. The horses, in unbuckled ease, were munching
their well-earned corn close by; for at that time Covent Garden was not
squeezed and driven as now it is. The tail-board of the waggon was now
hanging upon its hinges, and “Kentish Crust,” on his springy rostrum,
dealt with the fag-end of his goods. The market, in those days, was not
flooded with poor foreign produce, fair to the eye, but a fraud on the
belly, and full of most dangerous colic. Englishmen, at that time, did
not spend their keenest wits upon the newest and speediest measures for
robbing their brother Englishmen; and a native would really buy from
his neighbour as gladly as from his born enemy.
Master John Shorne had a canvas bag on the right side of his breeches,
hanging outside, full in sight, defying every cut-purse. That age was
comparatively honest; nevertheless, John kept a club, cut in Mereworth
wood, quite handy. And, at every sale he made, he rang his coin of the
realm in his bag, as if he were calling bees all round the waggon. This
generally led to another sale. For money has a rich and irresistible
joy in jingling.
Hilary was delighted to watch these things, so entirely new to him. He
had that fatal gift of sliding into other people’s minds, and wondering
what to do there. Not as a great poet has it (still reserving his own
strength, and playing on the smaller nature kindly as he loves it),
but simply as a child rejoices to play with other children. So that
he entered eagerly into the sudden changes of John’s temper, according
to the tone, the bidding, and, most of all, the importance of the
customers that came to him. By this time the cherries were all sold
out, having left no trace except some red splashes, where an over-ripe
sieve had been bleeding. But the Kentish man still had some bushels of
peas, and new potatoes, and bunches of coleworts, and early carrots,
besides five or six dozens of creamy cauliflowers, and several scores
of fine-hearted lettuce. Therefore he was dancing with great excitement
up and down his van, for he could not bear to go home uncleared; and
some of his shrewder customers saw that by waiting a little longer they
would be likely to get things at half-price. Of course he was fully
alive to this, and had done his best to hide surplus stock, by means of
sacks, and mats, and empty bushels piled upon full ones.
“Crusty, thou must come down, old fellow,” cried a one-eyed
costermonger, winking first at John and then through the rails, and
even at the springs of the van; “half the load will go back to Kent, or
else to the cowkeeper, if so be you holds on so almighty dear.”
“Ha, then, Joe, are you waiting for that? Go to the cow-yard and take
your turn. They always feeds the one-eyed first. Gentlemen, now--while
there’s anything left! We’ve kept all the very best back to the last,
’cos they chanced to be packed by an Irishman. ‘First goes in, must
first come out.’ Paddy, are you there to stick to it?”
“Be jabers, and how could I slip out, when the hape of you was atop of
me? And right I was, be the holy poker; there it all is the very first
in the bottom of the vhan!”
“Now, are you nearly ready, John?” asked Gregory, suddenly appearing
through the laughter of the crowd; “here is the gentleman going with
us, and I can’t have him kept waiting.”
“Come up, Master Greg, and help sell out, if you know the time better
than I do.” John Shorne was vexed, or he would not so have spoken to
his master’s son.
To his great surprise, with a bound up came not Gregory Lovejoy, who
was always a little bit shy of the marketing, but Hilary Lorraine,
declared by dress and manner (clearly marked, as now they never can be)
of an order wholly different from the people round him.
“Let me help you, sir,” he said; “I have long been looking on; I am
sure that I understand it.”
“Forty years have I been at ’un, and I scarcely knows ’un now. They
takes a deal of mannerin’, sir, and the prices will go in and out.”
“No doubt; and yet for the sport of it, let me help you, Master Shorne.
I will not sell a leaf below the price you whisper to me.”
In such height of life and hurry, half a minute is enough to fetch a
great crowd anywhere. It was round the market in ten seconds that
a grand lord was going to sell out of Grower Lovejoy’s waggon. For
a great wager, of course it must be; and all who could rush, rushed
to see. Hilary let them get ready, and waited till he saw that their
money was burning. Meanwhile Crusty John was grinning one of his most
experienced grins.
“Don’t let him; oh, don’t let him,” Gregory shouted to the salesman, as
Hilary came to the rostrum with a bunch of carrots in one hand and a
cauliflower in the other--“What would his friends say if they heard it?”
“Nay, I’ll not let ’un,” John Shorne answered, mischievously taking the
verb in its (now) provincial sense; “why should I let ’un? It can’t
hurt he, and it may do good to we.”
In less than ten minutes the van was cleared, and at such prices as
Grower Lovejoy’s goods had not fetched all through the summer. Such
competition arose for the honour of purchasing from a “nobleman,” and
so enchanted were the dealers’ ladies, many of whom came thronging
round, with Hilary’s bright complexion, gay address, and complaisancy.
“Well done, my lord! well done indeed!” Crusty John, to keep up the
fiction, shouted when he had pouched the money--“Gentlemen and ladies,
my lord will sell again next week; he has a heavy bet about it with the
Prince Reg----tush, what a fool I am! they will send me to prison if I
tell!”
As a general rule, the more suspicious people are in some ways, the
more credulous are they in all the rest. Kentish Crust was aware of
this, and expected and found for the next two months extraordinary
inquiry for his goods.
“Friend Gregory, wherefore art thou glum?” said Hilary to young
Lovejoy, while the horses with their bunched-up tails were being
buckled to again. Lorraine was radiant with joy, both at his recent
triumph in a matter quite unknown to him, and even more because of many
little pictures spread before him by his brisk imagination far away
from London. Every stamp of a horse’s hoof was as good as a beat of the
heart to him.
“Lorraine,” the sensible Gregory answered, after some hesitation, “I am
vexed at the foolish thing you have done. Not that it really is at all
a disgrace to you, or your family, but that the world would take it so;
and we must think as the world does.”
“Must we?” asked Hilary, smiling kindly; “well, if we must, let us
think it on springs.”
At the word he leaped into the fruit-van so lightly that the strong
springs scarcely shook; and Gregory could do no better than climb in
calmly after him. “Gee-wugg,” cried Master Shorne; and he had no need
to say it twice; the bright brass harness flashed the sun, and the
horses merrily rang their hoofs, on the road to their native land of
Kent.
CHAPTER XIII.
TO THE CHERRY-ORCHARDS.
Hilary Lorraine enjoyed his sudden delivery from London, and the fresh
delight of the dewy country, with such loud approval, and such noisy
lightsomeness of heart, that even Crusty John, perched high on the
driving-box above him, could not help looking back now and then into
the van, and affording the horses the benefit of his opinion. “A right
down hearty one he be, as’ll make some of our maids look alive. And the
worst time of year for such work too, when the May-Dukes is in, and the
Hearts a colouring!”
Hilary was sitting on an empty “half sieve,” mounted on an empty
bushel, and with his usual affability enjoying the converse of “Paddy
from Cork,” as everybody called the old Irishman, who served alike for
farm, road, or market, as the “lad of all work.” But Gregory Lovejoy,
being of a somewhat grave and silent order, was already beginning to
doubt his own prudence in bringing their impulsive friend so near
to a certain fair cousin of his now staying at the hospitable farm,
in whom he felt a tender interest. Poor Lovejoy feared that his
chance would be small against this dashing stranger; and he balanced
uncomfortably in his mind whether or not he should drop a hint, at the
first opportunity, to Lorraine, concerning his views in that quarter.
Often he almost resolved to do so; and then to his diffidence it seemed
presumptuous to fancy that any young fellow of Hilary’s birth and
expectations would entangle himself in their rustic world.
At Bromley they pulled up, to bait “man and beast,” three fine horses
and four good men, eager to know the reason why they should not have
their breakfast. Lorraine, although very short of cash (as he always
found the means to be), demanded and stood out for leave to pay for
everybody. This privilege was obtained at last--as it generally is by
persistency--and after that it was felt that Hilary could no longer be
denied his manifest right to drive the van. He had driven the Brighton
four-horse coach, the whole way to London, times and again; and it was
perfectly absurd to suppose that he could not manage three horses.
Master John Shorne yielded his seat, apparently to this reasoning,
but really to his own sure knowledge that the horses after so long
a journey would be, on their way to stall, as quiet as lambs in the
evening. Therefore he rolled himself up in the van, and slept the sleep
of the man who has been up and wide-awake all night, for the sake of
other people.
The horses well knew the true way home, and offered no cause for bit
or whip; and they seemed to be taken sometimes with the pleasure which
Hilary found in addressing them. They lifted their tails, and they
pricked their ears, at the proper occasions genially; till the heat of
the day settled down on their backs, and their creases grew dark and
then lathery. And the horsefly (which generally forbears the pleasure
of nuisance till July) in this unusually hot summer was earnest in his
vocation already. Therefore, being of a leisurely mind, as behoves all
genuine sons of the soil, Master Shorne called a halt, through the
blazing time of noon, before battling with the “Backbone of Kent,” as
the beautiful North Down range is called. Here in a secluded glen they
shunned the heats of Canicula under the sign of the “Pig and Whistle.”
Thus the afternoon was wearing when they came to Sevenoaks, and passing
through that pleasant town descended into the weald of Kent. No one but
Hilary cared for the wonderful beauty and richness of the view, breadth
upon breadth of fruit-land, woven in and out with hops and corn; and
towards the windings of the Medway, pastures of the deepest green even
now after the heat of the sun, and thirst of the comet that drank the
dew. Turning on the left from the Tunbridge road, they threaded their
way along narrow lanes, where the hedges no longer were scarred with
chalk, but tapestried with all shades of green, and even in the broken
places, rich with little cascades of loam. Careless dog-rose played
above them with its loose abandonment; and honeysuckle was almost ready
to release its clustered tongues. But “Travellers Joy”--the joy that
makes all travellers long to rest in Kent--abode as yet in the hopeful
bud, a pendent shower of emerald.
These things were not heeded much, but pleasantly accepted, by the four
men and three horses. All felt alike that the world was made for them,
and for them to enjoy themselves; and little they cared to go into the
reason, when they had the room for it. With this large sense of what
ought to be, they came to the gate of Old Applewood farm, a great white
gate with a padlock on it. This stopped the road, and was meant to do
so; for Martin Lovejoy, Gregory’s father, claimed the soil of the road
from this point, and denied all right of way, public or even private,
to all claimants of whatsoever kind. On the other hand the parish
claimed it as a public thoroughfare, and two farmers further on vowed
that it was an “occupation road;” and what was more they would use it
as such. “Grower Lovejoy,” as the neighbourhood called him--not that he
was likely to grow much more, but because of his cherry-orchards--here
was the proper man to hold the gate against all his enemies. When they
sawed it down, he very promptly replaced it with cast iron; and when
this was shattered with a fold-pitcher, he stopped their premature
triumph by a massive barrier of wrought metal case-hardened against
rasp or cold chisel. Moreover he painted it white, so that any
nocturnal attack might be detected at a greater distance.
When Paddy had opened this gate with a key which he had carried to
London, they passed through an orchard of May-Duke cherries, with the
ripe fruit hanging quite over the road. “No wonder you lock the gate,”
said Lorraine, as Crusty John, now on the box again, handed him a noble
cluster with the dark juice mantling richly under the ruddy gloss of
skin.
“Do you mean that we should get them stolen?” Gregory asked, with some
indignation; for his Kentish pride was touched: “oh, no, we should
never get them stolen. Nobody about here would do such a thing.”
“Then they don’t know what’s good,” answered Hilary, jumping at another
cluster; “I was born to teach the Kentish public the proper way to
steal cherries.”
“Well, they do take them sometimes,” the truthful Gregory confessed;
“but we never call it stealing, any more than we do what the birds
take.”
“Valued fellow-student, thy strong point will not be the criminal law.
But you must have a criminal love of the law, to jump at it out of
these cherry-trees.”
“It was my mother’s work, as you know. Ah, there she is, and my Cousin
Phyllis!”
For the moment Lovejoy forgot his duty to his friend and particular
guest, and slipping down from the tail of the van, made off at full
speed through the cherry-trees. Hilary scarcely knew what to do. The
last thing that ever occurred to him was that any one had been rude
to him; still it was rather unpleasant to drive, or be driven, up to
the door of his host, sitting upon a bushel basket, and with no one
to say who he was. Yet to jump out and run after Gregory, and collar
him while he saluted his mother, was even a worse alternative. In a
very few moments that chance was gone; for the team, with the scent of
their corn so nigh, broke into a merry canter, and rattled along with
their ears pricked forward, and a pleasant jingling. Neither did they
stop until they turned into a large farm-yard, with an oast-house at
the further end of it. The dwelling-house was of the oldest fashion,
thatched in the middle, at each end gabled, tiled in some places, and
at some parts slabbed. Yet, on the whole, it looked snug, dry, and
happy. Here, with one accord, halted the nags, and shook themselves in
their harness, and answered the neighs of their friends in the stables.
Hilary, laughing at his own plight, but feeling uncommonly stiff in the
knees, arose from his basket, and looked around; and almost the first
thing that met his gaze destroyed all his usual presence of mind. This
was a glance of deep surprise, mingled with timid inquiry and doubt,
from what Master Hilary felt at once to be the loveliest, sweetest, and
most expressive brown eyes in the universe. The young girl blushed
as she turned away, through fear of having shown curiosity; but the
rich tint of her cheeks was faint, compared with the colour of poor
Lorraine’s. That gay youth was taken aback so utterly by the flash of
a moment, that he could not find a word to say, but made pretence in a
wholesale manner to see nothing at all particular. But the warm blood
from his heart belied him, which he turned away to hide, and worked
among the baskets briskly, hoping to be looked at, and preparing to
have another look as soon as he felt that it could be done.
Meanwhile, that formidable creature, whose glance had produced such a
fine effect, recovered more promptly from surprise, and felt perhaps
the natural pride of success, and desire to pursue the fugitive. At any
rate, she was quite ready to hear whatever he might have to say for
himself.
“I must ask you to forgive me,” Lorraine began in a nervous manner,
lifting his hat, and still blushing freely, “for springing so suddenly
out of the earth--or rather, out of this van, I mean; though that can’t
be right, for I still am in it. I believe that I have the pleasure of
speaking to Miss Phyllis Catherow. Your cousin, Mr. Lovejoy, is a very
great friend of mine indeed; and he most kindly asked, or rather, what
I mean to say is, invited me to come down for a day or two to this
delightful part of the world; and I have enjoyed it so much already,
that I am sure--that--that in fact----”
“That I hope you may soon enjoy it more.” She did not in the least mean
any sarcasm or allusion to Hilary’s present state; still he fancied
that she did; until the kind look, coming so sweetly from the kind warm
heart, convinced him that she never could be so cruel.
“I see the most delightful prospect I ever could imagine of enjoying
myself,” Lorraine replied, with a glance, imparting to his harmless
words the mischief of that which nowadays we call “a most unwarrantable
personal allusion.” But she did not, or would not, take it so.
“How kind of you to be pleased so lightly! But we do our best, in our
simple way, when any one kindly comes to see us.”
“Why, Miss Catherow, I thought from what your cousin said to me that
you were only staying here for a little time yourself.”
“You are quite right as to Miss Catherow. But I am not my Cousin
Phyllis. I am only Mabel Lovejoy, Gregory Lovejoy’s sister.”
“By Jove, how glad I am!” cried Hilary, in his impetuous way; “what a
fool I must have been not to know it, after I saw him run to meet his
cousin in the orchard! But that treacherous Gregory never told me that
he even had a sister. Now, won’t I thoroughly give it to him?”
“You must not be angry, Mr. Lorraine, with poor Gregory,
because--because Phyllis is such a beautiful girl.”
“Don’t let me hear about beautiful girls! As if--as if there could be
any----”
“Good enough for Gregory,” she answered, coming cleverly to his rescue,
for he knew that he had gone too far; “but wait till you have seen
Cousin Phyllis.”
“There is one thing I shall not defer for the glory of seeing a
thousand Miss Catherows, and that is the right that I have to shake
hands with my dear friend Gregory’s sister.”
He had leaped from the van some time ago, and now held out his hand (a
good strong one, pleasingly veined with cherry-juice), and she, with
hospitable readiness, laid her pretty palm therein. He felt that it was
a pretty hand, and a soft one, and a hearty one; and he found excuse to
hold it longer while he asked a question.
“Now, how did you know my name, if you please, while I made such a
stupid mistake about yours?”
“By your bright blue eyes,” she was going to answer, with her native
truthfulness; but the gaze of those eyes suggested that the downright
truth might be dangerous. Therefore, for once, she met a question with
a question warily.
“Was it likely that I should not know you, after all I have heard of
you?” This pleased him well in a general way. For Hilary, though too
free (if possible) from conceit and arrogance, had his own little share
of vanity. Therefore, upon the whole, it was lucky, and showed due
attention to his business, that Grower Lovejoy now came up, to know
what was doing about the van.
Martin Lovejoy was not a squatter, by seven years stamped into “tenant
right,” which means very often landlord’s wrong. Nor was he one of
those great tenant farmers who, even then, were beginning to rise, and
hold their own with “landed gentry.” His farm was small, when compared
with some; but it was outright his own, having descended to him through
long-buried generations. So that he was one of the ever-dwindling class
of “franklins,” a class that has done good work for England, neither
obtaining nor craving thanks.
Old Applewood farm contained altogether about six hundred acres,
whereof at least two-thirds lay sweetly in the Vale of Medway, and
could show root, stem, or bine against any other land in Kent, and,
therefore, any in England. Here was no fear of the heat of the sun or
the furious winter’s rages, such a depth of nature underlay the roots
of everything. Nothing ever suffered from that poverty of blood which
makes trees canker on a shallow soil; and no tree rushed into watery
strength (which very soon turns to weakness), through having laid hold
upon something that suited only a particular part of it.
And not the trees alone, but all things, grew within that proper usage
of a regulated power (yet with more of strength to come up, if it
should be called for), which has made our land and country fertile
over all the world; receiving submissively the manners and the manure
of all nations. This is a thing to be proud of; but the opportunity for
such pride was not open to the British mind at the poor old time now
dealt with.
Martin Lovejoy knew no more than that the rest of Europe was amassed
against our island; and if England meant to be England, every son of
that old country must either fight himself or pay. Martin would rather
have fought than paid, if he had only happened to be a score and a half
years younger.
Hilary Lorraine knew well (when Martin Lovejoy took his hand, and
welcomed him to Old Applewood) that here was a man to be relied on, to
make good his words and mind. A man of moderate stature, but of sturdy
frame, and some dignity; ready to meet everybody pretty much as he was
met.
“Glad to see you, sir,” he said; “I have often heard of you, Master
Lorraine; it is right kind of you to come down. I hope that you are
really hungry, sir.”
“To the last degree,” answered Hilary; “I have been eating off and
on, but nothing at all to speak of, in the noble air I have travelled
through.”
“Our air has suited you, I see by the colour of your cheeks and eyes.
Aha! the difference begins, as I have seen some scores of times, at
ten miles out of London. And we are nearly thirty here, sir, from that
miserable place. Excuse me, Master Lorraine, I hope I say nothing to
offend you.”
“My dear sir, how can you offend me? I hate London heartily. There must
be a million people there a great deal too good to live in it. We are
counting everybody this year; and I hear that when it is made up there
will be a million and a quarter!”
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. There never was such a deal
before. And how can there want to be so many now? This numbering of
the people is an unholy thing, that leads to plagues. All the parsons
around here say that this has brought the comet. And they may show
something for it; and they preach of Jerusalem when it was going to be
destroyed. They have frightened all our young maids terribly. What is
said in London, sir?”
“Scarcely anything, Mr. Lovejoy: scarcely anything at all. We only see
him every now and then, because of the smoke between us. And when we
see him, we have always got our own work to attend to.”
“Wonderful, wonderful!” answered the Grower; “who can make out them
Londoners? About their business they would go, if Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram were all swallowed up in front of them. For that I like them. I
like a man--but come in to our little supper, sir.”
CHAPTER XIV.
BEAUTIES OF THE COUNTRY.
The next day was Sunday; and Hilary (having brought a small bag of
clothes with him) spent a good deal of the early time in attending to
his adornment. For this he had many good reasons to give, if only he
had thought about them; but the only self-examination that occurred to
him was at the looking-glass. Here he beheld himself looking clean and
bright, as he always did look; and yet he was not quite satisfied (as
he ought to have been) with his countenance. “There is room for a lot
of improvement,” he exclaimed at himself, quite bitterly: “how coarse,
and how low, I begin to look! But there is not a line in her face
that could be changed without spoiling it. There again! Hairs, hairs,
coming almost everywhere! Beautiful girls have none of that stuff. How
they must despise us! All their hair is ornamental, and ours comes so
disgracefully!”
When he had no one else to talk to, Hilary always talked to himself.
He always believed that he knew himself better than anybody else could
know him. And so he had a right to do; and so he must have done just
now, if doubtful watch of himself and great shaking of his head could
help him.
At last he began to be fit to go down, according to his own ideas,
though not at all sure that he might not have managed to touch himself
up just a little bit more--which might make all the difference. He
thought that he looked pretty well; but still he would have liked
to ask Gregory before it was too late to make any change, and the
beautiful eyes fell upon him. But Gregory, and all the rest, were
waiting for him in the breakfast-room; and no one allowed him to
suspect how much he had tried their patience.
Young Lovejoy showed a great deal of skill in keeping Lorraine to the
other side of the table from Phyllis Catherow; and Hilary was well
content to sit at the side of Mabel. Phyllis, in his opinion, was a
beautiful girl enough, and clever in her way, and lively; but “lovely”
was the only word to be used at all about Mabel. And she asked him to
have just a spoonful of honey, and to share a pat of butter with her,
in such a voice, and with such a look, that if she had said, “Here are
two ounces of cold-drawn castor oil--if you take one, I’ll take the
other,” he must have opened his mouth for it.
So they went on; and neither knew the deadly sin they were dropping
to--that deadly sin of loving when the level and entire landscape of
two lives are different.
Through the rich fields, and across a pretty little wandering brook,
which had no right to make a quarter of the noise it was making, this
snug party went to church. Accurate knowledge of what to do, as well as
very pretty manners, and a sound resolve to be over-nice (rather than
incur the possibility of pushing), led the two young men from London
rather to underdo the stiles, and almost go quite away, than to express
their feelings by hands, whenever the top-bar made a tangle, according
to the usual knot of it. The two girls entered into this, and said to
themselves, what a very superior thing it was to have young men from
London, in comparison with young hop-growers, who stood here and there
across them and made them so blush for each inch of their legs. What
made it all the more delicate, and ever so much more delightful, was,
that the excellent Grower was out of the way, and so was Mrs. Lovejoy.
For the latter, being a most kind-hearted woman, had rheumatic pains
at the first church-bell, all up the leaders of her back; so that the
stiles were too many for her, and Master Lovejoy was compelled to drive
her in the one-horse shay.
By the time these staid young men and maidens came to the little
churchyard gate, everything was settled between them, as if by deed
under hand and seal, although not so much as a wave of the air, much
less any positive whisper of the wind, had stirred therein. The import
of this unspoken and even undreamed covenant was, that Gregory now must
walk with Phyllis, and see to her, and look at her, without her having
any second thoughts concerning Hilary. Hilary, on the other hand, was
to be acknowledged as the cavalier of Mabel; to help her when she
wanted helping, and to talk when she wanted talking; although it might
be assumed quite fairly that she could do most of that for herself.
Feeling the strength of good management, all of them marched into
church accordingly.
In the very same manner they all marched out, after behaving uncommonly
well, and scarcely looking at one another, when the clergyman gave
out that the heat of the weather had not allowed him to write a
new discourse that week; but as the same cause must have made them
forgetful of what he had said last Sunday (when many of them seemed
inattentive), he now proposed, with the divine assistance, to read the
same sermon again to them.
With the unconverted youthful mind, a spring (like that of
Jack-out-of-the-box) at the outer door of the church jumps up, after
being so long inside, into that liberal goodwill, which is one of our
noblest sentiments. Anybody is glad to see almost everybody; and people
(though of one parish) in great joy forego their jangling. The sense of
a grand relief, and a conscience wiped clean for another week, leads
the whole lot to love one another as far as the gate of the churchyard.
But our young people were much inclined to love one another much
further. The more they got into the meadow-land, and the strength of
the summer around them, with the sharp stroke of the sun, and the brisk
short shadows of one another, the more they were treading a dangerous
path, and melting away to each other. Hilary saw with romantic pride
that Mabel went on as well as ever, and had not a bead on her clear
bright cheeks; while at the same time Phyllis, though stopping to rest
every now and then--but Hilary never should have noticed this. Such
things are below contempt.
In this old and genial house, the law was that the guest should appoint
the time for dinner, whenever the cares of the outer work permitted it.
And as there were no such cares on Sunday, Hilary had to choose the
time for the greatest event of the human day. This had been talked of
and settled, of course, before anybody got the prayer-books; and now
the result at two o’clock was a highly excellent repast. To escape the
power of the sun they observed this festival in the hall of the house,
which was deliciously cool even now, being paved with stone, and shaded
by a noble and fragrant walnut-tree. Mrs. Lovejoy knew, what many even
good housekeepers seem not to know--to wit that, to keep a room cool,
it is not necessary to open the windows when the meridian sun bombards.
“For goodness’ sake, let us have some air in such weather as this!”
they cry, when they might as well say, “let us cool the kitchen by
opening the door of the oven.”
Lorraine was one of those clever fellows who make the best of
everything; which is the cleverest thing that can be done by a human
being. And he was not yet come to the time of life when nothing is good
if the dinner is bad; so that he sat down cheerily, and cheered all the
rest by doing so.
Of course there were many things said and done, which never would have
been said, or thought of, at the dinner-table of Coombe Lorraine. But
Hilary (though of a very sensitive fibre in such matters) neither saw,
nor heard, nor felt, a single thing that irked him. There was nothing
low about anybody; whereas there was something as high as the heavens
ambrosially busy with the very next plate. He made himself (to the very
utmost of his power) agreeable, except at the moments when his power
of pleasing quite outran himself. Then he would stop and look at his
fork--one of the fine old two-pronged fellows--and almost be afraid to
glance, to ask what she was thinking.
She was thinking the very things that she should have known so much
better than to think. But what harm could there possibly be in scarcely
thinking, so much as dreaming, things that could have nothing in them?
Who was she, a country-girl, to set herself up, and behave herself,
as if anybody meant anything? And yet his eyes, and the bend of his
head, and his choice of that kidney-potato for her (as if he were born
a grower)--and then the way he poured her beer--if there was nothing
in all this, why then there was nothing in all the world, save empty
delusion and breaking of heart.
Hilary, sitting at her knife-hand, felt a whole course of the like
emotions, making allowance for gender. How beautifully she played
her knife, with a feminine tenderness not to make a cruel slice of
anything! And how round her little wrist was, popping in and out of
sleeves, according as the elbow went; and no knob anywhere to be seen,
such as women even of the very latest fashion have. And then her hair
was coming towards him (when she got a bit of gristle) so that he could
take a handful, if the other people only would have the manners not
to look. And oh, what lovely hair it was! so silky, and so rich, and
bright, and full of merry dances to the music of her laugh! And he did
not think he had ever seen anything better than her style of eating,
without showing it. Clearly enjoying her bit of food, and tempting all
to feed their best; yet full of mind at every mouthful, and of heart at
every help. But above all, when she looked up, quite forgetting both
knife and fork, and looked as if she could look like that into no other
eyes but his; with such a gentle flutter, and a timid wish to tell no
more, and yet a sudden pulse of glad light from the innocent young
heart--nothing could be lovelier than the way in which she raised her
eyes, except her way of dropping them.
These precious glances grew more rare and brief the more he sought for
them; and he wondered whether anybody else ever could have been treated
so. Then, when he would seem to be doubtful, and too much inclined to
stop, a look of surprise, or a turn of the head, would tempt him to go
on again. And there would be little moments (both on his side and on
hers) of looking about at other people with a stealthy richness. With
a sense of some great treasure, made between them, and belonging to
themselves in private; a proud demand that the rest of the world should
attend to its proper business; and then, with one accord, a meeting of
the eyes that were beginning, more and more, to mean alike.
All this was as nice as could be, and a pretty thing to see. Still, in
a world that always leaves its loftiest principles to accumulate, at
the lowest interest (and once in every generation to be a mere drug
in the market), “love” is used, not in games alone, as the briefest
form of “nothing.” All our lovers (bred as lovers must be under school
boards) know what they are after now, and who can pay the ninepence.
But in the ancient time, the mothers had to see to most of that.
Mrs. Lovejoy, though she did not speak, or look particularly, had her
own opinion as to what was going on close by. And she said to herself,
“I will see to this. It is no good interfering now. I shall have Miss
Mabel all to myself in three-quarters of an hour.”
CHAPTER XV.
OH, RUDDIER THAN THE CHERRY!
Mrs. Lovejoy’s lecture to her daughter seemed likely to come just a
little too late, as so many excellent lessons do. For as soon as he
saw that all had dined, the host proposed an adjournment, which was
welcomed with no small delight by all except the hostess.
“Now, Master Lorraine, and my niece Phyllis, what say you, if we gather
our fruit for ourselves in the shady places; or rather, if we sit on
the bank of the little brook in the orchard, where there is a nice
sheltered spot; and there we can have a glass of wine while the maidens
pick the fruit for us?”
“Capital,” answered Hilary; “what a fine idea, Mr. Lovejoy! But surely
we ought to pick for the ladies, instead of letting them pick for us.”
“No, sir, we will let them have the pleasure of waiting upon us. It is
the rule of this neighbourhood, and ought to be observed everywhere.
We work for the ladies all the week, serve, honour, and obey them. On
Sundays they do the like for us, and it is a very pleasant change.
Mabel, don’t forget the pipes. Do you smoke, Master Lorraine? If so, my
daughter will fill a pipe for you.”
“That would be enough to tempt me, even if I disliked it, whereas I
am very fond of it. However, I never do smoke, because my father has
a most inveterate prejudice against it. I promised him some time ago
to give it up for a twelvemonth. And the beauty of it is that there is
nothing he himself enjoys so much as a good pinch of snuff. Ah, there I
am getting my revenge upon him. My sister will do anything I ask her;
and he will do anything she asks him: and so, without his knowledge, I
am breaking him of his snuff-box.”
“Aha, well done! I like that. And I like you too, young man, for your
obedience to your father. That virtue is becoming very rare; rarer and
rarer every year. Why, if my father had knocked me down I should have
lain on the ground, if it was a nettle-bed, till he told me to get up.
Now, Greg, my boy, what would you do?”
“Well, sir, I think that I should get up as quick as I could, and tell
my mother.”
“Aha! and I should have the nettles then. Well said, Greg, my boy; I
believe it is what all the young fellows nowadays would do. But I don’t
mean you, of course, Master Lorraine. Come along, come along. Mabel,
you know where that old Madeira is that your poor Uncle Ambrose took
three times to Calcutta. Ah, poor man, I wish he was here! As fine a
fellow as ever shotted a cannon at a Frenchman. Nelson could have done
no better. And it did seem uncommonly hard upon him never to go to
churchyard. However, the will of the Lord be done! Now mind, the new
patent cork-screw.”
Mabel was only too glad to get this errand to the cellar. With filial
instinct she perceived how likely she was to “catch it,” as soon as
her mother got the chance. Not that she deserved it. Oh no, not in the
least; her conscience told her that much. Was she to be actually rude
to her father’s guest, and her brother’s friend? And as if she was not
old enough now, at eighteen and a quarter, to judge for herself in such
childish matters as how to behave at dinner-time!
By the side of a pebbly brook--which ran within stone-throw of the
house, sparkling fresh and abundant from deep well-springs of the
hill-range--they came to a place which seemed to be made especially
for enjoyment: a bend of the grassy banks and rounded hollow of the
fruit-land, where cherry, and apple, and willow-tree clubbed their
hospitable shade, and fugitive water made much ado to quiver down
the zigzag rill. Here in cool and gentle shelter, the Grower set his
four legs down; _i.e._, the four legs of his chair, because, like
all that in gardens dwell, he found mother earth too rheumatic for
him, especially in hot weather when deep sluggish fibres radiate. The
Groweress also had her chair, borne by the sedulous Hilary. All the
rest, like nymphs and shepherds, strewed their recumbent forms on turf.
“God Almighty,” said Master Lovejoy, fearing that he might be taking
it too easy for the Sabbath-day, “really hath made beautiful things
for us His creatures to rejoice in, with praise, thanksgiving, and
fruitfulness. Mabel, put them two bottles in the brook--not there, you
stupid child; can’t you see that the sun comes under that old root? In
the corner where that shelf of stone is. Thank you, Master Lorraine.
What a thing it is to have a headpiece! But God Almighty never made,
among all His wonderful infinite works, the waters and the great
whales, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, and
the green herb for meat, which means to come to table with the meat;
His mercy endureth for ever; and He never showed it as when He made
tobacco, and clay for tobacco pipes--the white clay that He made man
of.” With this thanksgiving he began to smoke.
“Now, Martin, I never could see that,” answered Mrs. Lovejoy; “the best
and greatest work of the Lord ought to have been for the women first.”
“Good wife, then it must have been the apple. Ah, Gregory, I had your
mother there! However, we won’t dispute on a Sunday; it spoils all the
goodness of going to church, and never leaves anything settled. Mabel,
run away now for the fruit, while Gregory feels if the wine is cold.
Master Lorraine, I hope our little way of going on, and being over free
on a Sunday perhaps, does not come amiss to you.”
Hilary did not look as if anything came amiss to him, as now he lay at
the feet of Mabel, on the slope of the sweet rich sward, listening only
for her voice, more liquid than even the tone of the brook. He listened
for it, but not to it; inasmuch as one of those sudden changes, which
(at less than half a breath) vapour the glass of the feminine mind,
was having its turn with the maiden. Mabel felt that she had not kept
herself to herself, as she should have done. Who was this gentleman,
or what, that she should be taken with him so suddenly as to feel her
breath come short, every time that she even thought of her mother? A
gentleman from London too, where the whole time of the Court was spent,
as Master Shorne brought news every week, in things that only the
married women were allowed to hear of. In the present case, of course,
she knew how utterly different all things were. How lofty and how grand
of heart, how fearful even to look at her much--still, for all that, it
would only be wise to show him, or at least to let him see--that at any
rate, for the present----
“Now, Mabel, when are you going for the cherries? Phyllis--bless my
heart alive! Gregory, are you gone to sleep? What are all the young
people made of, when a touch of summer spreads them only fit to sprawl
about?”
“Bring three sorts of cherries Mabel,” Gregory shouted after her; “Mr.
Lorraine must be tired of May-Dukes, I am sure. The Black Geans must
be ripe, and the Eltons, and the Early Amber. And go and see how the
White-hearts are on the old tree against the wall.”
“Much he knows about cherries, I believe!” grumbled Mr. Lovejoy; “John
Doe and Richard Roe be more to his liking than the finest Griffins.
Why, the White-hearts haven’t done stoning yet! What can the boy be
thinking of?” It was the Grower’s leading grievance that neither of
his two sons seemed likely to take to the business after him. Here was
the elder being turned by his mother into a “thieves’ counsellor,” and
the younger was away at sea, and whenever he came home told stories
of foreign fruit which drove his father into a perfect fury. So that
now it was Martin’s main desire to marry his only daughter to some one
fitted to succeed him, who might rent the estate from Gregory the heir;
for the land had been disgavelled.
It is a pleasing thing to a young man--ay, and an old one may be
pleased--to see a pretty girl make herself useful in pretty and natural
attitudes; and that pleasure now might be enjoyed at leisure and in
duplicate. For Phyllis Catherow was a pretty, or rather a beautiful
young woman, slender, tall, and fair of hue. Not to be compared with
Mabel, according to Hilary’s judgment; but infinitely superior to her,
in the opinion of Gregory. All that depends upon taste, of course; but
Mabel’s beauty was more likely to outlast the flush of youth, having
the keeping qualities of a bright and sweet expression, and the kind
lustre of sensible eyes.
These two went among the cherry-trees, with fair knowledge what to do,
and having light scarves on their heads, brought behind their ears and
tied under the curves of their single chins. Because they knew that the
spars and sprays would spoil their lovely Sunday hats, even without
the drip of a cherry wounded by some thirsty thrush. The blackbirds
pop them off entire, and so do the starlings; but the thrushes sit and
peck at them, with the juice dripping down on their dappled breasts,
and a flavour in their throats, which they mean to sing about at
their leisure. But now the birds, that were come among them, meant to
have them wholesale. Phyllis, being a trifle taller, and less deft of
finger, bent the shady branches down, for Mabel to pluck the fruit.
Mabel knew that she must take the northern side of the trees, of
course; and the boughs where the hot sun had not beaten through the
leaves and warmed the fruit. Also she knew that she must not touch
the fruit with her hand and dim the gloss; but above all things to be
careful--as of the goose with the golden eggs--to make no havoc of the
young buds forming, at the base of every cluster, for the promise of
next year’s crop.
Hilary longed to go and help them; but his host being very proud of
the grandeur of his Madeira wine, would not even hear of it. And Mrs.
Lovejoy, for other reasons, showed much skill in holding him; so that
he could but sit down and admire the picture he longed to be part of.
Hence he beheld, in the happy distance, in and out the well-fed trees,
skill, and grace, and sprightly movements, tiny baskets lifted high,
round arms bent for drawing downward, or thrown up for a jumping catch,
and everything else that is so lovely, and safe to admire at a distance.
By-and-by the maids came back, bearing their juicy treasure, and blithe
with some sage mysticism of laughter. They had hit upon some joke
between them, or something that chanced to tickle them; and when this
happens with girls, they never seem to know when the humour is out of
it; and of course they make the deepest mystery of a diminutive jest so
harmless that it hits no one except themselves. Mrs. Lovejoy looked at
them strongly. Her time for common-sense was come; and she thought they
were stealing a march upon her, by some whispers about young men, the
last thing they should ever think of.
Whereas the poor girls had no thought of anything of the kind. Neither
would they think one atom more than they could help, of what did not
in the least concern them; if their elders, who laid down the law,
would only leave them to themselves. And it was not long till this
delightful discretion was afforded them. For, after a glass or two of
wine, the heat of the day began to tell, through the cool air of the
hollow, on that worthy couple, now kindly hand in hand, and calmly
going down the slope of life. They hoped they had got a long way to go
yet; and each thought so of the other. Neither of them had much age,
being well under threescore years; just old enough to begin to look
on the generation judiciously. But having attained this right at last,
after paying heavily, what good could they have of it, if young people
were ever so far beyond their judgment? Meditating thus they dozed;
and youthful voice, and glance, and smile, were drowned in the melody
of--nose.
The breeze that comes in the afternoon of every hot day (unless the
sky is hushing up for a thunderstorm) began to show the underside of
leaves and the upper gloss of grass, and with feeble puffs to stir the
stagnant heat into vibration, like a candle quivering. Every breath at
first was hot, and only made the air feel hotter, until there arrived a
refreshing current, whether from some water-meadows, or from the hills
where the chalk lay cool.
“The heat is gone,” said Martin Lovejoy, waking into the pleasant
change; “it will be a glorious afternoon. Pooh, what is this to call
hot weather? Only three years ago, in 1808, I remember well----”
“It may have been hotter then, my dear,” said Mrs. Lovejoy, placidly;
“but it did not make you forget your pipe, and be ungrateful to
Providence about me.”
“Why, where can the children be?” cried the Grower. “I thought they
were all here just this moment! It is wonderful how they get away
together. I thought young Lorraine and Gregory were as fast asleep as
you or I! Oh, there, I hear them in the distance, with the girls, no
doubt, all alive and merry!”
“Ay, and a little too merry, I doubt,” answered Mrs. Lovejoy; “a little
too much alive for me. Why, they must be in the wall-garden now!
Goodness, alive, I believe they are, and nobody to look after them!”
“Well, if they are, they can’t do much harm. They are welcome to
anything they can find, except the six strawberries I crossed, and
Mabel will see that they don’t eat those.”
“Crossed strawberries indeed! now, Martin,”--Mrs. Lovejoy never could
be brought to understand cross-breeding;--“they’ll do something
worse than cross your strawberries, unless you keep a little sharper
look-out. They’ll cross your plans, Master Martin Lovejoy, and it’s bad
luck for any one who does that.”
“I don’t understand you, wife, any more than you understand the
strawberries. How could they cross them at this time of year?”
“Why, don’t you see that this gay young Lorraine is falling over head
and ears in love with our darling Mabel?”
“Whew! That would be a sad affair,” the Grower answered carelessly: “I
like the young fellow, and should be sorry to have him so disappointed.
For of course he never could have our Mab, unless he made up his mind
to turn grower. Shorne says that he is a born salesman; perhaps he is
also a born grower.”
“Now, husband, why do you vex me so? You know as well as I do that he
is the only son of a baronet, belonging, as Gregory says, to one of
the proudest families in England; though he doesn’t show much pride
himself, that’s certain. Is it likely they would let him have Mabel?”
“Is it likely that we would let Mabel have him? But this is all
nonsense, wife; you are always discovering such mare’s-nests. Tush!
why, I didn’t fall in love with you till we fell off a horse three
times together.”
“I know that, of course. But that was because they wanted us to do
it. The very thing is that it happens at once when everybody’s face
is against it. However, you’ve had your warning, Martin, and you only
laugh at it. You have nobody but yourself to thank, if it goes against
your plots and plans. For my own part, I should be well pleased if
Mabel were really fond of him, and if the great people came round in
the end, as sooner or later they always do. There are very few families
in the kingdom that need be ashamed of my daughter, I think. And he is
a most highly accomplished young man. He said last night immediately
after prayer-time that I might try for an hour, and he would be most
happy to listen to me, but I never, never could persuade him that I was
over forty years old. Therefore, husband, see to it yourself. Things
may take their own course for me.”
“Trust me, trust me, good wife,” said Martin; “I can see, as far as
most folk can. What stupes boys and girls are, to be sure, to go
rushing about after watery fruit, and leave such wine as this here
Madeira. Have another glass, my dear good creature, to cheer you up
after your prophecies.”
Meanwhile, in the large old-fashioned garden, which lay at the east
end of the house, further up the course of the brook, any one sitting
among the currant-bushes might have judged which of the two was right,
the unromantic franklin, or his more ambitious but sensible wife.
Gregory and Phyllis were sitting quietly in a fine old arbour, having a
steady little flirt of their own, and attending to nothing in the world
besides. Phyllis was often of a pensive cast, and she never looked
better than in this mood, when she felt the deepest need of sympathy.
This she was receiving now, and pretending of course not to care for
it; her fingers played with moss and bark, the fruits of the earth were
below her contempt, and she looked too divine for anybody.
On the other hand, the rarest work and the most tantalizing tricks were
going on, at a proper distance, between young Mabel and Hilary. They
had straggled off into the strawberry-beds, where nobody could see
them; and there they seemed likely to spend some hours if nobody should
come after them. The plants were of the true Carolina, otherwise called
the “old scarlet pine,” which among all our countless new sorts finds
no superior, perhaps no equal; although it is now quite out of vogue,
because it fruits so shyly.
What says our chief authority?[1] “Fruit medium-sized, ovate, even,
and regular, and with a glossy neck, skin deep red, flesh pale red,
very firm and solid, with a fine sprightly and very rich pine flavour.”
What lovelier fruit could a youth desire to place between little pearly
teeth, reserving the right to have a bite, if any of the very firm
flesh should be left? What fruit more suggestive of elegant compliments
could a maid open her lips to receive, with a dimple in each mantled
cheek--lips more bright than the skin of the fruit, cheeks by no
means of a pale red now, although very firm and solid--and as for the
sprightly flavour of the whole, it may be imagined, if you please, but
is not to be ascertained as yet?
“Now, I must pick a few for you, Mr. Lorraine. You are really giving me
all you find. And they are so scarce--no, thank you; I can get up very
nicely by myself. And there can’t be any brier in my hair. You really
do imagine things. Where on earth could it have come from? Well, if you
are sure, of course you may remove it. Now I verily believe you put it
there. Well, perhaps I am wronging you. It was an unfair thing to say,
I confess. Now wait a moment, while I run to get a little cabbage-leaf!”
“A cabbage leaf! Now you are too bad. I won’t taste so much as the
tip of a strawberry out of anything but one. How did you eat your
strawberries, pray?”
“With my mouth, of course. But explain your meaning. You won’t eat what
I pick for you out of what?”
“Out of anything else in the world except your own little beautiful
palm.”
“Now, how very absurd you are! Why, my hands are quite hot.”
“Let me feel them and judge for myself. Now the other, if you please.
Oh, how lovely and cool they are! How could you tell me such a story,
Mabel, beautiful Mabel?”
“I am not at all beautiful, and I won’t be called so. And I know not
what they may do in London. But I really think, considering--at least
when one comes to consider that----”
“To consider what? You make me tremble, you do look so ferocious. Ah, I
thought you couldn’t do it long. Inconsiderate creature, what is it I
am to consider?”
“You cannot consider! Well, then, remember. Remember, it is not
twenty-four hours since you saw me for the very first time; and surely
it is not right and proper that you should begin to call me ‘Mabel,’ as
if you had known me all your life!”
“I must have known you all my life. And I mean to know you all the rest
of my life, and a great deal more than that----”
“It may be because you are Gregory’s friend you are allowed to do
things. But what would you think of me, Mr. Lorraine, if I were to call
you ‘Hilary’--a thing I should never even dream of?”
“I should think that you were the very kindest darling, and I should
ask you to breathe it quite into my ear--‘Hilary, Hilary!’--just like
that; and then I should answer just like this, ‘Mabel, Mabel, sweetest
Mabel, how I love you, Mabel!’ and then what would you say, if you
please?”
“I should have to ask my mother,” said the maiden, “what I ought
to say. But luckily the whole of this is in your imagination. Mr.
Lorraine, you have lost your strawberries by your imagination.”
“What do I care for strawberries?” Hilary cried, as the quick girl
wisely beat a swift retreat from him. “You never can enter into my
feelings, or you never would run away like that. And I can’t run after
you, you know, because of Phyllis and Gregory. There she goes, and she
won’t come back. What a fool I was to be in such a hurry! But what
could I do to help it? I never know where I am when she turns those
deep rich eyes upon me. She never will show them again, I suppose, but
keep the black lashes over them. And I was getting on so well--and here
are the stalks of the strawberries!”
Of every strawberry she had eaten from his daring fingers he had kept
the stalk and calyx, breathed on by her freshly fragrant breath, and
slyly laid them in his pocket; and now he fell to at kissing them. Then
he lay down in the Carolinas, where her skirt had moved the leaves; and
to him, weary with strong heat, and a rush of new emotions, comfort
came in the form of sleep. And when he awoke, in his open palm most
delicately laid he found a little shell-shaped cabbage-leaf piled with
the fruit of the glossy neck.
[1] That admirable writer, Dr. Hogg.
CHAPTER XVI.
OH, SWEETER THAN THE BERRY!
These doings of Hilary and his love--for his love he declared her to
be for ever, whether she would have him for hers or not--seem to have
taken more time almost in telling than in befalling. Although it had
been a long summer’s day, to them it had passed as a rapid dream. So
at least they fancied, when they began to look quietly back at it,
forgetting the tale of the golden steps so lightly flitted over by the
winged feet of love.
Martin Lovejoy watched his daughter at supper-time that Sunday; and he
felt quite sure that his wife was wrong. Why, the girl scarcely spoke
to Lorraine at all, and even neglected his plate so sadly, that her
mother was compelled to remind her sharply of her duties. Upon which
the Grower despatched to his wife a smile of extreme sagacity, which
(being fetched out of cipher and shorthand, by the matrimonial key)
contained all this,--“Well you are a silly, as you always are, when
you want to advise me. The girl is cold-shouldering that young fellow,
the same as she does all the young hop-growers. And well she knows how
to do it too. She gets her intellect from her father. Now please not to
put in your oar, Mrs. Lovejoy, another time, till it is asked for.”
Moreover, he thought that if Mabel took the smallest delight in Hilary,
she could not have answered as she had done, when that pious youth,
in the early evening, expressed his sincere desire to attend another
performance of Divine service.
“I had no idea,” said the simple Gregory, “that you made a point of
going to church at least twice every Sunday. I seldom see you of a
Sunday in London. But the very last place I should go to, to find you,
would probably be the Temple church.”
“That is quite a different thing, don’t you see? A country church, and
a church in London, are as different as a meadow and a market-place.”
“But surely, Mr. Lorraine, you would find the duty of attending just
the same.” Thus spoke Mrs. Lovejoy, who seldom missed a chance of
discharging her duty towards young people.
“Quite so, of course I do, Mrs. Lovejoy. But then we always perform
our duties best, when they are pleasures. And besides that, I have a
special reason for feeling bound, as one might say, to go to church
well in the country.”
“I suppose one must not venture to ask you what that reason is, sir.”
“Oh, yes, to be sure. It is just this. I have an uncle, my mother’s
brother, who is a country clergyman.”
“Well done, Master Lorraine!” said the Grower, while the rest were
laughing. “You take a very sensible view, sir, of things. It is too
much the fashion nowadays to neglect our trade-connections. But Gregory
will go with you, and Phyllis, and Mabel. The old people stay at home
to mind the house. For we always let the maid-servants go.”
“Oh father,” cried Mabel; “poor Phyllis is so overcome by the heat,
that she must not go. And I must stop at home to read to her.”
So that the good Lorraine took nothing by his sudden religious fervour,
except a hot walk with Gregory, and a wearisome doze in a musty pew
with nobody to look at.
With fruit-growers, Monday is generally the busiest day of the week,
except Friday. After paying all hands on the Saturday night, and
stowing away all implements, they rest them well till the Sunday is
over, having in the summer-time earned their rest by night-work as well
as day-work, through the weary hours of the week. This is not the case
with all, of course. Many of them, especially down in Kent, grow their
fruit, or let it grow itself, and then sell it by the acre, or the
hundred acres, to dealers, who take all the gathering and marketing
off their hands altogether. But for those who work off their own crops,
the toil of the week begins before the daystar of the Monday. At least
for about six weeks it is so, according to the weather and the length
of the “busy season.” Before the stars fade out of the sky, the pickers
advance through the strawberry quarters, carrying two punnets each,
yawning more than chattering even, whisking the grey dew away with
their feet, startling the lark from his nest in the row, groping among
the crisp leaves for the fruit, and often laying hold of a slug instead.
That is the time for the true fruit-lover to try the taste of a
strawberry. It should be one that refused to ripen in the gross heat of
yesterday, but has been slowly fostering goodness, with the attestation
of the stars. And now (if it has been properly managed, properly picked
without touch of hand, and not laid down profanely), when the sun
comes over the top of the hedge, the look of that strawberry will be
this--at least, if it is of a proper sort. The beard of the footstalk
will be stiff, the sepals of the calyx moist and crisp, the neck will
show a narrow band of varnish, where the dew could find no hold, the
belly of the fruit will be sleek and gentle, firm however to accept its
fate; but the back that has dealt with the dew, and the sides where the
colour of the back slopes downward, upon them such a gloss of cold and
diamond chastity will lie, that the human lips get out of patience with
the eyes in no time.
Everybody was so busy with the way the work went on, all for their
very life pretending scarcely to have time to breathe, whenever the
master looked at them, that the “berries” were picked, and packed, and
started, long before the sun grew hot--started on the road to London,
the cormorant of the universe.
Hilary helped with all his heart; enjoying it, with that triumphant
entrance into any novelty, which always truly distinguished him. He
carried his punnets, and kept his row (as soon as they had shown him
how), as well as the very best of them, dividing his fruit into firsts,
and seconds, and keeping the “toppers” separate. Of course he broke off
many trusses entire--ripe fruit, green fruit, and barren blossom--until
he learned how to “meet his nails,” and how much drag to put on the
stalks. A clever fellow learns all that from an hour or two of practice.
But one thing there is which the cleverest fellows can learn by no
experience--how to carry the head for hours upside down without hurting
it. How to make the brain so hard that it cannot shift; or else so
soft that the top is as good as the bottom. The question is one for
a great physician; who, to understand it, must keep his row, and
pick by the job. Then let him say if he has learned how to explain
the well-established fact that a woman can pick twice as fast as a
man; for who could assent to the reason assigned by one of themselves
magnanimously--that “women was generally always used to keep their
heads turned upside down”?
Leaving such speculative inquiries to go on for ever, Hilary (who knew
better than to say a word about them) came in for his breakfast at six
o’clock, and ate it as thoroughly as he had earned it. The master, a
man of true Kentish fibre, obstinate, placable, hearty, and dry, made
known to his wife and to everybody else his present opinion of Hilary.
Martin Lovejoy never swore. He never went beyond “God knows,” or “The
Lord in heaven look down on us,” or some other good exclamation,
sanctioned by the parish vicar. As a general rule--proved by many
exceptions--the Kentish men seldom swear very hard.
“Heart alive, young sir!” he exclaimed, piling Hilary’s plate, as he
spoke, with the jellied delights of cold pigeon pie; “you have been the
best man of the morning. Ah! don’t you be in a hurry, good wife. No
tea or coffee our way, thank ye. No, nor any cask-wash. We’ve worked
a little too hard for that. Mabel, whatever has come to you, that you
keep always out of the way so? And I never saw you anigh the baskets.
Now don’t pipe your eye, child. I’m not going to scold thee, if thou
didst have a little lie-a-bed. Here, take this here key, child. A
wink’s as good as a nod--ah, she knows pretty well what to do with it.”
For Mabel was glad to turn away as quickly as possible, after a
little well-managed curtsey to Hilary, whom she had not seen for the
morning--certainly through no fault of his--and without a word she
went to the dresser (for in these busy times they took their breakfast
wisely in the kitchen), and from the wooden crook unhung a quaint
little jug, with a narrow neck and a silver lip and handle. With
this she set off down a quiet passage and some steps to a snug stone
cellar, where the choicest of the home-brewed ale was kept. Although
it lay well beneath the level of the ground, and no ray of sun pierced
the wired lattice, the careful mistress of the house had the barrels
swathed closely with wetted sacks. The girl, with her neat frock
gathered up--for she always was cleanliness itself--went carefully to
the corner cask, and lifted the wet sack back from the head, lest any
dirty water should have the chance of dripping upon her sleeve. Then
she turned the tap, and a thin bright thread ran out of it sideways,
being checked by some hops in the tube perhaps, or want of air at the
vent-peg. But Mabel held the jug with all patience, although her hand
shook just a little.
“Now,” said the Grower, to Hilary, when she came back and placed the
jug at her father’s side without a word, “Master Lorraine, let me pour
you a drop, not to be matched in Kent; nor yet in all England, I do
believe. Home-grown barley, and home-grown hops, and the soft water out
of the brook that has taken the air of the sky for seven mile or more,
without a drain anigh it. Ah, those brewers can never do that! They
must buy their malt, and their musty hops, and pump up their water, and
boil it down, to get the flint-stones out of it. But our brook hath
cast the flint-stones and the other pebbles all along. That makes a
sight of difference, sir. Every water is full of stones, and if you
pump it up from the spring, the stones be all alive in it. But let it
run seven miles or eight, and then it is fit to brew with.”
“Ah, to be sure. Now that explains a great many things I never
understood.” Hilary would have swallowed a camel, rather than argue, at
this moment.
“Young sir, just let me prove it to you. Just see the colour it runs
out, and the way the head goes creaming! Lord, ha’ mercy, if she has
gived us a glass, or a stag’s horn from the mantelpiece! Why, Mabel,
child--Mabel, art thou gone? Why nobody wants to poison thee.”
“I think, sir, I saw your daughter go round the corner by the
warming-pan, this side of where the broom hangs.”
“Then all I can say is, she is daft. She worked very hard last week,
poor thing. And yesterday she was a-moving always, when the Lord’s day
bids us rest. I must beg your pardon, Master Lorraine. Our Kentish
maids always look after our guests. When I was at school, I read in the
grammar that the moon always managed the women; but now I do believe it
is the comet. Let the comet come, say I. When the markets are so bad,
I feel that I am ready to face almost anything. And now we must drink
from the jug, I reckon!”
Hilary saw that his host was vexed; but he felt quite certain in his
own heart that Mabel could never be so rude, or show such resentment
of any little excess of honey on his part, as to go away in that sour
earnest, and make the two of them angry. A dozen things might have
happened to upset her, or turn her a little askew; and her own father
ought to know her better than he seemed to do. And lo, ere the Grower
had quite finished grumbling, Mabel reached over his shoulder unseen,
and set his own pet glass before him; and then round Hilary’s side she
slid, without ever coming too nigh him, and the glass of honour of the
house, cut in countless facets, twinkled, like the Pleiads, at him!
“Adorn me!” said the Grower; “now I call that a true good girl! Girls
were always made, Master Lorraine, for the good of those around them.
If anybody treats them any way else, they come to nothing afterwards.
Mabel, dear, give me a kiss. You deserve it; and there it is for you.
Now be off, like a good maid, and see what they be at in Vale Orchard,
while Master Lorraine and I think a bit over these here two glasses.”
The rest of the day was much too busy, and too much crowded with
sharp eyes, for any fair chance of love-making. For they all set to
at the cherry-trees, with ladders, crooks, and hanging baskets, and
light boys to scale the more difficult antlers, strip them, and drop
upon feather-beds. And though the sun broke hot and bright through
the dew-cloud of the morning, and quickly drank the beaded freshness
off the face of herb and tree, yet they picked, and piled, and packed
(according to their sort and size) the long-stalked dancers that fringe
the bough, and glance in the sun so ruddily.
“You must have had a deal too much of this,” young Lovejoy said to
Hilary, when the noon-day meal had been spread forth, and dealt with,
in a patch of fern near a breezy clump: “if I had worked as you have
done, my fingers would scarcely have been fit for a quill, this side of
next Hilary term.”
“My dear fellow, be not, I pray you, so violently facetious. The brain,
when outraged, takes longer to resume its functions than the fingers
do. Moreover, I trust that my fingers will hold something nobler than a
quill, ere the period of my namesake.”
“Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt; I hope you will do nothing of the
sort;” said Gregory, with unwitting and unprecedented poetry.
“Lovejoy, my wits are unequal altogether to this encounter. The
brilliancy of your native soil has burst out so upon you, that I must
go back to the Southdown hills before I dare point a dart with you.
Nevertheless, on your native soil, I beat you at picking cherries.”
“That you do, and strawberries too. And still more so at eating them!
But if you please, you must stop a little. My mother begs, as a great
favour, to have a little private talk with you.”
Hilary’s bright face lost its radiance, as his conscience pricked him.
Was it about Mabel? Of course it must be. And what the dickens was he
to say? He could not say a false thing. That was far below his nature.
And he must own that he did love Mabel; and far worse than that--had
done his utmost to drag that young and innocent Mabel into love with
him. And if he were asked about his father--as of course he must be--on
the word of a true man he must confess that his father would be sadly
bitter if he married below his rank in life: also, that though he was
the only son, there were very peculiar provisions in the settlement
of the Lorraine estates, which might throw him entirely upon his own
wits, if his father turned against him: also, that though his father
was one of the very best men in the world, and the kindest and loftiest
you could find; still there was about him something of a cold and
determined substance. And worst of all (if the whole truth was to be
shelled out, as he must unshell it), he knew in his heart that his
father loved his sister’s little finger more than all the members put
together of his own too lively frame.
CHAPTER XVII.
VERY SHY THINGS.
Mrs. Lovejoy sat far away from all the worry, and flurry, and fun of
picking, and packing, and covering up. She had never entirely given
herself to the glories of fruit-growing; and she never could be much
convinced that any glory was in it. She belonged to a higher rank of
life than any of such sons of Cain. Her father had been a navy-captain;
and her cousin was Attorney-General. This office has always been
confounded, in the provincial mind, with rank in a less pugnacious
profession. Even Mrs. Lovejoy thought, when the land was so full of
“militiamen,” that her cousin was the General of the “Devil’s Own” of
the period. Therefore she believed herself to know more than usual
about the law; as well as the army, and of course the navy. And this
high position in the legal army of so near a relation helped, no doubt,
to foster hopes of the elevation of Gregory.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Lorraine,” she began, as Hilary entered the
bower, to which she had just retired, “for calling you away from a
scene, which you enjoy perhaps from its novelty; and where you make
yourself, I am sure, so exceedingly active and useful. But I feared, as
you must unluckily
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