Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

No sooner said than done; he tore out the fly-leaf of his sermon, and under his text, inculcating the duty of Christian vigilance, wrote in pencil, “Whatever you do, don’t put on the asparagus.”

This he committed to the care of Jem; and then grasping his hunting-whip steadfastly, he rode up the lane, with Maggie neighing at this unaccustomed excursion. For horses know Sunday as well as men do, and a great deal better.

Struan Hales was a somewhat headlong man; as most men of kind heart, and quick but not very large understanding, are apt to be. Like most people of strong prejudices, he was also of strong impulses; for the lowest form of prejudice is not common – the abstract one, and the negative. His common sense and his knowledge of the world might have assured him that Captain Chapman would do nothing to hurt or even to offend young Alice. And yet, because he regarded Stephen with inveterate dislike, he really did for the moment believe it his duty thus to ride after him.

Meanwhile the gallant and elegant captain had done at least one thing according to the Rector’s anticipation. By laying a guinea in Trotman’s palm, he had sent all the servants home over the hill, and thus secured for himself a private walk with his charmer along the lane that winds so prettily under the high land. Now his dress was enough to win the heart of any rustic damsel, and as he passed the cottage-doors, all the children said, “Oh my!” This pleased him greatly, and could not have added less than an inch to his stature and less than a pound to the weight of his heel at each strut. This proves that he was not a thorough villain; for thorough villains attach no importance to the opinion of children.

Unaware of the enemy in advance, Alice walked through the little village, with her aunt and two cousins, as usual; and she said “Good-bye” to them at the rectory gate; knowing that they wanted to please her uncle with his early Sunday dinner. Country parsons, unless they are of a highly distinguished order, like to dine at half-past one very punctually on a Sunday. Throughout the week (when they shoot or fish, or ride to hounds, etc.) they manage to retard their hunger to five, or even six o’clock. On Sunday it is healthily otherwise. A sinking feeling begins to set in, about halfway through the sermon. And why? In an eloquent period, the parson looks round, to infect his congregation. He forgets for the moment that he is but a unit, while his hearers are an hundredfold. What happens? All humanity is, at eloquent moments, contagious, sensitive, impressible. A hundred people in the church have got their dinner coming on at one o’clock; they are thinking of it, they are dwelling on the subject; and the hundred and first, the parson himself (without knowing it, very likely, and even while seven heavens above it) receives the recoil of his own emotions, in epidemic appetite.

That may be all wrong of course, even unsacerdotal, or unscientific (until the subject is tabulated); but facts have large bones: and the fact stands thus. Alice Lorraine was aware of it, though without scent of the reason; so she kissed her aunt and cousins two – Cecil being (as hath been seen) in clerical attendance – and lightly went her homeward way. She stopped for a minute at Nanny Stilgoe’s, to receive the usual grumbling sauced with the inevitable ingratitude. And then, supposing the servants to be no very great distance before her, she took to the lonely Ashwood lane with a quick light step, as usual.

Presently she came to a place where the lane dipped suddenly into the hollow of a dry old watercourse – the course of the Woeburn, according to tradition, if anybody could believe it. There was now not a thread of open water: but a little dampness, and a crust of mud, as if some underground duct were anxious to maintain use of its right of way. By the side of the lane, an old oak-trunk (stretched high above the dip, and furnished with a broken handrail) showed that there must have been something to cross; though nobody now could remember it. In this hollow lurked the captain, placid and self-contented, and regarding with much apparent zest a little tuft of forget-me-not.

Alice, though startled for a moment by this unexpected encounter, could not help smiling at the ill-matched brilliance of her suitor’s apparel. He looked like a smaller but far more costly edition of Mr. Bottler, except that his waistcoat was of crimson taffety, with a rolling collar of lace; and instead of white stockings, he displayed gold-buttoned vamplets of orange velvet. Being loth to afford him the encouragement of a smile, the young lady turned away her face as she bowed, and with no other salutation continued her homeward course, at a pace which certainly was not slower. But Stephen Chapman came forth, and met her with that peculiar gaze which would have been insolent from a more powerful man, but as proceeding from a little dandy bore rather the impress of impudence.

“Miss Lorraine, you will not refuse me the honour of escorting you to your home. This road is lonely. There still are highway men. One was on the Brighton road last week. I took the liberty of thinking, or rather, perhaps, I should say of hoping, that you might not altogether object to a military escort.”

“Thank you,” said Alice; “you are very kind; but I have not the least fear; and our servants are not very far away, I know. They have orders to keep near me.”

“They must have mistaken your route, I think. I am rather famous for long sight; and I saw the Lorraine livery just now going up the footpath that crosses the hill.”

Alice was much perplexed at this. She by no means enjoyed the prospect of a long and secluded walk in the company of this gallant officer. And yet her courage would not allow her to retrace her steps, and cross the hill; neither could she well affront him so; for much as she disliked this man, she must treat him as any other lady would.

“I am much obliged to you, Captain Chapman,” she answered as graciously as she could; “but really no kind of escort is wanted, either military or civilian, in a quiet country road like this, where everybody knows me. And perhaps it will be more convenient for you to call on my father in the afternoon. He is always glad when you can stay to dinner.”

“No, thank you; I must dine at home to-day. I wish to see Sir Roland this morning, if I may. And surely I may accompany you on your way home; now, may I not?”

“Oh yes,” she answered with a little sigh, as there seemed to be no help for it; but she determined to make the Captain walk at a speed which should be quite a novelty to him.

“Dear me, Miss Lorraine! I had no idea that you were such a walker. Why, this must be what we call in the army ‘double-quick march’ almost. Too fast almost to keep the ranks unbroken, when we charge the enemy.”

“How very dreadful!” cried Alice, with a little grimace, which greatly charmed the Captain. “May I ask you one particular favour?”

“You can ask none,” he replied, with his hand laid on his crimson waistcoat; “or to put it more clearly, to ask a favour, is to confer a greater one.”

“How very kind you are! You know that my dear brother Hilary is in the thick of very, very sad fighting. And I thought that perhaps you would not mind (as a military escort), describing exactly how you felt when first you charged the enemy.”

“The deuce must be in the girl,” thought the Captain; “and yet she looks so innocent. It can be only an accident. But she is too sharp to be romanced with.”

“Miss Lorraine,” he answered, “I belonged to the Guards; whose duty lies principally at home. I have never been in action.”

“Oh, I understand; then you do not know what a sad thing real fighting is. Poor Hilary! We are most anxious about him. We have seen his name in the despatches; and we know that he was wounded. But neither he, nor Major Clumps (a brave officer in his regiment) has sent us a line since it happened.”

“He was first through the breach at Badajos. He has covered himself with glory.”

“We know it,” said Alice, with tears in her eyes; and for a moment she liked the Captain. “But if he has covered himself with wounds, what is the good of the glory?”

“A most sensible question,” Chapman answered, and fell once more to zero in the opinion of his charmer. With all the contempt that can be expressed by silence, when speech is expected, she kept on so briskly towards Bonny’s castle, that her suitor (who, in spite of all martial bearing, walked in the manner of a pigeon) became hard set to keep up with her.

“The view from this spot is so lovely,” he said, “I must really beg you to sit down a little. Surely we need not be in such a hurry.”

“The air is chilly, and I must not loiter. My father has a bad headache to-day. That was the reason he was not at church.”

“Then surely he can be in no hurry for his luncheon. I have so many things to say to you. And you really give me quite a pain in my side.”

“Oh, I am so sorry! I beg your pardon. I never could have thought that I was doing that. Rest a little, and you will be better.”

The complaint would have been as a joke passed over, if it had come from anybody else. But she knew that the Captain was not strong in his lungs, or his heart, or anything; therefore she allowed him to sit down, while she stood and gazed back through the Ashwood lane, fringed, and arched, and dappled by the fluttering approach of spring.

“The beautiful gazing at the beautiful!” said Chapman, with his eyes so fixed as to receive his view of the landscape (if at all) by deputy. And truly his judgment was correct. For Alice, now in perfect health, with all the grace of young vigour and the charm of natural quickness, and a lovely face, and calm eyes beaming, not with the bright uncertain blue (that flashing charm of poor Hilary), but the grand ash-coloured grey – the tint that deepens with the depth of life, and holds more love than any other – Alice, in a word, was something for a man to look at. The greatest man that ever was born of a woman, and knew what women are, as well as what a man is; the only one who ever combined the knowledge of both sexes; the one true poet of all ages (compared with whom all other poets are but shallow surfacers), Nature’s most loving and best-loved child, – even he would have looked at Alice, with those large sad loving eyes, and found her good to dwell upon.

The Captain (though he bore the name of a great and grossly-neglected poet) had not in him so much as half a pennyweight of poetry. He looked upon Alice as a handsome girl, of good birth and good abilities, who might redeem him from his evil ways, and foster him, and make much of him. He knew that she was far above him, “in mind, and views, and all that sort of thing;” and he liked her all the more for that, because it would save him trouble.

“Do let me say a few words to you,” he began, with his most seductive and insinuating glance (for he really had fine eyes, as many weak and wanton people have); “you are apt to be hard on me, Miss Lorraine, while all the time my first desire is to please, and serve, and gratify you.”

“You are very kind, I am sure, Captain Chapman. I don’t know what I have done to deserve it.”

“Alas!” he answered with a sigh, which relieved him, because he was much pinched in, as well as a good deal out of breath, for his stays were tighter than the maiden’s. “Alas! Is it possible that you have not seen the misery you have caused me?”

“Yes, I know that I have been very rude. I have walked too fast for you. I beg your pardon, Captain Chapman. I will not do so any more.”

“I did not mean that; I assure you, I didn’t. I would climb the Andes or the Himalayas, only to win one smile from you.”

“I fear that I should smile many times,” said Alice, now smiling, wickedly; “if I could only have a telescope – still, I should be so sorry for you. They are much worse than the Southdown hills.”

“There, you are laughing at me again! You are so clever, Miss Lorraine; you give me no chance to say anything.”

“I am not clever; I am very stupid. And you always say more than I do.”

“Well, of course – of course I do; until you come to know me. After that, I always listen; because the ladies have more to say. And they say it so much better.”

“Is that so?” said Alice, thinking, while the Captain showed his waist, as he arose and shook himself, “it may be so: he may be right; he seems to have some very good ideas.” He saw that she thought more kindly of him; and that his proper course with her was to play humility. He had never known what pure love was; he had lessened his small capacity for it, by his loose and wicked life; but in spite of all that, for the first time Alice began to inspire him with it. This is a grand revolution in the mind, or the heart, of a “man of pleasure;” the result may save him even yet (if a purer nature master him) from that deadliest foe, himself. And the best (or the worst of it) is, that if a kind, and fresh, and warm, and lofty-minded girl believes herself to have gained any power of doing good in the body of some low reprobate, sweet interest, Christian hankerings, and the feminine love of paradoxes, succeed the legitimate disgust. Alice, however, was not of a weak, impulsive, and slavish nature. And she wholly disdained this Stephen Chapman.

“Now, I hope that you will not hurry yourself,” she said to the pensive captain; “the real hill begins as soon as we are round the corner. I must walk fast, because my father will be looking out for me. Perhaps, if you kindly are coming to our house, you would like to come more at your leisure, sir.”

Stephen Chapman looked at her – not as he used to look, as if she were only a pretty girl to him – but with some new feeling, quite as if he were afraid to answer her. His dull, besotted, and dissolute manner of regarding women lay for the moment under a shock; and he wondered what he was about. And none of his stock speeches came to help him – or to hurt him – until Alice was round the corner.

“Holloa, Chapman! what are you about? Why, you look like one of Bottler’s pigs, when they run about with their throats cut! Where is my niece? What have you been doing?” The Rector drew up his pony sharply; and was ready to seize poor Stephen by the throat.

“You need not be in such a hurry, parson,” said Captain Chapman, recovering himself. “Miss Lorraine is going up the hill a great deal faster than I can go.”

“I know what a dissolute dog you are,” cried the Parson, smoking with indignation at having spoiled his Sunday dinner, and made a scene, for nothing. “You forced me to ride after you, sir. What do you mean by this sort of thing?”

“Mr. Hales, I have no idea what you mean. You seem to be much excited. Pray oblige me with the reason.”

“The reason, indeed! when I know what you are! Two nice good girls, as ever lived, you have stolen out of my gallery, sir; and covered my parish with shame, sir. And are you fit to come near my niece? I have not told Sir Roland of it, only for your father’s sake; but now I will tell him, and quiet as he is, how long do you suppose he will be in kicking you down the Coombe, sir?”

“Come, now,” said Stephen, having long been proof against righteous indignation; “you must be well aware, Rector, that the whole of that ancient scandal was scattered to the winds, and I emerged quite blameless.”

“Indeed, I know nothing of the sort. You did what money could do – however, it is some time back; and perhaps I had better have let an old story – Camerina – eh, what is it? On the other hand, if only – ”

“Rector, you always mean aright, though you may be sometimes ungenerous. In your magnificent sermon to-day what did you say? Why, you said distinctly, in a voice that came all round the pillars – there is mercy for him that repenteth.”

“To be sure I did, and I meant it too; but I meant mercy up above, not in my own parish, Stephen. I can’t have any mercy in my own parish.”

“Let us say no more about it, sir; I am not a very young man now, and my great desire is to settle down. I now have the honour of loving your niece, as I never loved any one before. And I put it to you in a manly way, and as one of my father’s most valued friends, whether you have anything to say against it?”

“You mean to say that you really want to settle down with Alice! A girl of half your age and ten times your power of life! Come, Stephen!”

“Well, sir, I know that I am not in as vigorous health as you are. You will walk me down, no doubt, when we come to shoot together on my father’s land; but still, all I want is a little repose, and country life, and hunting; a little less of the clubs, and high play, and the company of the P.R., who makes us pay so hard for his friendship. I wish to leave all these bad things – once for all to shake them off – and to get a good wife to keep me straight, until my dear father drops off at last. And the moment I marry I shall start a new hunt, and cut out poor Lord Unicorn, who does not know a foxhound from a beagle. This country is most shamefully hunted now.”

“It is, my dear Stephen; it is, indeed. It puts me to the blush every time I go out. Really there is good sense in what you say. There is plenty of room for another pack; and I think I could give you some sound advice.”

“I should act entirely, sir, by your opinion. Horses I understand pretty well: but as to hounds, I should never pretend to hold a candle to my Uncle Hales.”

“Ah, my dear boy, I could soon show you the proper way to go to work. The stamp of dog we want is something of this kind – ”

The Rector leaned over Maggie’s neck, and took the Captain by the button-hole, and fondly inditing of so good a matter, he delivered a discourse which was too learned and confidential to be reported rashly. And Stephen hearkened so well and wisely, that Mr. Hales formed a better opinion than he ever before had held of him, and began to doubt whether it might not be a sensible plan in such times as these, to close the ranks of the sober thinkers and knit together all well-affected, stanch, and loyal interests, by an alliance between the two chief houses of the neighbourhood – the one of long lineage, and the other of broad lands; and this would be all the more needful now, if Hilary was to make a mere love-match.

But in spite of all wisdom, Mr. Hales was full of strong warm feelings: and loving his niece as he did, and despising in his true heart Stephen Chapman, and having small faith in converted rakes, he resolved to be neutral for the present; and so rode home to his dinner.

CHAPTER XLIII.

IN AMONG THE BIG-WIGS

If any man has any people who ought to care about him, and is not sure how far they exert their minds in his direction, to bring the matter to the mark, let him keep deep silence when he is known to be in danger. The test, as human nature goes, is perhaps a trifle hazardous, at any rate when tried against that existence of the wiry order which is called the masculine; but against the softer and better portion of the human race – the kinder half – whose beauty is the absence of stern reason, this bitter test (if strongly urged) is sure to fetch out something; at least, of course, if no suspicion arises of a touchstone. Wherefore now there were three persons, all of the better sex, in much discomfort about Hilary.

Of these, the first was his excellent grandmother, Lady Valeria Lorraine, whose mind (though fortified with Plowden, and even the strong Fortescue) was much amiss about his being dead, and perhaps “incremated,” leaving for evidence not even circumstantial ashes. Proof of this, however invalid, would have caused her great distress – for she really loved and was proud of the youth; but the absence of proof, and the probability of its perpetual absence (for to prove a man dead is to prove a negative, according to recent philosophers), as well as the prospect of complications after the simplest solution, kept this admirable lady’s ever active mind in more activity than was good for it.

The second of the three who fretted with anxiety and fear, was Hilary’s young sister Alice. Proud as she was of birth, and position, and spotless honour, and all good things, her brother’s life was more precious to her than any of those worldly matters. She knew that he was rash and headlong, too good-natured, and even childish when compared with men of the world. But she loved him all the more for that; and being herself of a stronger will, had grown (without any sense thereof) into a needful championship and vigilance for his good repute. And this, of course, endeared him more, and made her regard him as a martyr, sinned against, but sinless.

But of all these three the third was the saddest, and most hard to deal with. Faith in Providence supports the sister, or even the mother of a man – whenever there is fair play for it – but it seems to have no locus standi in the heart of his sweetheart. That delicate young apparatus (always moving up and down, and as variable as the dewpoint) is ever ready to do its best, and tells itself so, and consoles itself, and then from reason quoted wholesale, breaks into petty unassorted samples of absurdity.

In this condition, without a dream of jealousy or disloyalty, Mabel Lovejoy waited long, and wondered, hoped, despaired, and fretted; and then worked hard, and hoped again. She had no one to trust her troubles to, no cheerful and consoling voice to argue and grow angry with, and prove against it how absurd it was to speak of comfort; and yet to be imbibing comfort, even while resenting it. Her mother would not say a word, although she often longed to speak, because she thought it wise and kind to let the matter die away. While Hilary was present, or at any rate in England, Mrs. Lovejoy had yielded to the romance of these young doings; but now that he was far away, and likely in every weekly journal to be returned as killed and buried, the Kentish dame, as a sensible woman, preferred the charm of a bird in hand.

Of these there were at least half-a-dozen ensnared and ready to be caged for life, if Mabel would only have them; and two of them could not be persuaded that her nay meant anything; for one possessed the mother’s yea, and the other that of the father.

The suitor favoured by Mrs. Lovejoy was a young physician at Maidstone, Dr. Daniel Calvert, a man of good birth and connections, and having prospects of good fortune. The Grower, on the other hand, had now found out the very son-in-law he wanted – Elias Jenkins, a steady young fellow, the son of a maltster at Sevenoaks, who had bought all the barley of Old Applewood farm for forty years and upwards. Elias was terribly smitten with Mabel, and suddenly found quite a vigorous joy in the planting and pruning of fruit-trees, and rode over almost every day, throughout both March and April, to take lessons, as he said, in grafting and training pears, and planting cherries, and various other branches of the gentle craft of gardening. Of course the Grower could do no less than offer him dinner, at every visit, in spite of Mrs. Lovejoy’s frowns; and Elias, with a smiling face and blushing cheeks, would bring his chair as close as he could to Mabel’s, and do his best in a hearty way to make himself agreeable. And in this he succeeded so far, that his angel did not in the least dislike him; but to think of him twice, after Hilary, was such an insult to all intelligence! The maiden would have liked the maltster a great deal better than she did, if only he would have dropped his practice of “popping the question” before he left every Saturday afternoon. But he knew that Sunday is a dangerous day; and as he could not well come grafting then, he thought it safer to keep a place in her thoughts until the Monday.

“Try her again, lad,” the Grower used to say. “Odds, bobs, my boy, don’t run away from her. Young gals must be watched for, and caught on the hop. If they won’t say ‘yes’ before dinner, have at them again in the afternoon, and get them into the meadows, and then go on again after supper-time. Some take the courting kindest of a morning, and some at meal-time, and some by the moonlight.”

“Well, sir, I have tried her in all sorts of ways, and she won’t say ‘yes’ to one of them. I begin to be tired of Saturdays now. I have a great mind to try of a Friday.”

“Ay!” cried the Grower, looking at him, as the author of a great discovery. “Sure enough now, try on Fridays – market-day, as I am a man!”

“Well now, to think of that!” said Elias; “what a fool I must have been, to keep on so with Saturday! The mistress goes against me, I know; and that always tells up with the maidens, but I must have something settled, squire, before next malting season.”