Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

One of the fiercest of these Guerillas – or “Partidas,” as they called themselves – was the notorious Mina; and for lieutenant he had a man of lofty birth, and once good position, a certain Don Alcides d’Alcar, a nephew of the Count of Zamora.

This man had run through every real of a large inheritance, and had slain many gentlemen in private brawls; and his country was growing too hot to hold him, when the French invasion came. The anarchy that ensued was just the very thing to suit him; and he raised a small band of uncertain young fellows, and took to wild life in the mountains. At first they were content to rob weak foreigners without escort; but thriving thus and growing stronger, very soon they enlarged their views. And so they improved, from year to year, in every style of plunder; and being authorized by the Juntas, and favoured by British generals, did harm on a large scale to their country; and on a much smaller scale, to the French.

Hilary had heard from Camilla much about Alcides d’Alcar; but Claudia had never spoken of him – only blushing proudly when the patriot’s name was mentioned. Camilla said that he was a man of extraordinary size and valour; enough to frighten anybody, and much too large to please her. And here she glanced at Hilary softly, and dropped her eyes, in a way to show that he was of the proper size to please her – if he cared to know it. He did not care a piastre to know it; but was eager about Alcides. “Oh, then, you had better ask Claudia,” Camilla replied, with a sisterly look of very subtle import; and Claudia, with her proud walk, passed, and glanced at them both disdainfully.

Now the victory of Salamanca, and his sorry absence thence, and after that the triumphant entry of the British into Madrid (although they were soon turned out again), began to work in Hilary’s mind, and make him eager to rejoin. Three weeks ago he had been reported almost fit to do so, and had been ready to set forth; but Spanish ladies are full of subtlety, and Camilla stopped him. A cock of two lustres had been slain in some of the outer premises; and old Teresina stole down in the night, and behold, in the morning, the patient’s wound had most evidently burst forth again. Hilary was surprised, but could not doubt the testimony of his eyes; neither could the licentiate of medicine now attending him.

But now in the breath of the evening breeze, setting inland from the Atlantic, Lorraine was roving for the last time in the grounds of Monte Argento. At three in the morning he must set forth, with horses provided by his host, on his journey to head-quarters. The Count was known as a patriotic, wise, and wealthy noble, both of whose sons were fighting bravely in the Spanish army; and through his influence Lorraine had been left to hospitality instead of hospitals, which in truth had long been overworked. But Major Clumps had returned to his duty long ago, with a very sore heart, when he found from the Donna Camilla that “she liked him very much indeed, but could never induce herself to love him.” With the sharp eye of jealousy, that brave Major spied in Hilary the cause of this, and could not be brought to set down his name any more in his letters homeward; or at any rate, not for a very long time.

Lorraine, in the calm of this summer evening, with the heat-clouds moving eastward, and the ripple of refreshment softly wooing the burdened air, came to a little bower, or rather a natural cove of rock and leaf, wherein (as he knew) the two fair sisters loved to watch the eventide weaving hill and glen with shadow, before the rapid twilight waned. There was something here that often brought his native Southdowns to his mind, though the foliage was so different. Instead of the rich deep gloss of the beech, the silvery stir of the aspen-tree, and the feathery droop of the graceful birch, here was the round monotony of the olive and the lemon-tree, the sombre depth of the ilex, and the rugged lines of the cork-tree, relieved, it is true, just here and there by the symmetry of the silver fir, and the elegant fan of the palm. But what struck Lorraine, and always irked him under these southern trees and skies, was the way in which the foliage cut its outline over sharply; there was none of that hovering softness, and sweetly fluctuating margin, by which a tree inspires affection as well as admiration.

Unluckily now Lorraine had neither affection nor admiration left for the innocent beauty of nature’s works. His passion for Claudia was become an overwhelming and noxious power – a power that crushed for the time and scattered all his better elements. He had ceased to be light-hearted, and to make the best of everything, to love the smiles of children, and to catch a little joke and return it. He had even ceased to talk to himself, as if his conscience had let him know that he was not fit to be talked to. All the waking hours he passed, in the absence of his charmer, were devoted to the study of Spanish; and he began to despise his own English tongue. “There is no melody in it, no rhythm, no grand sonorous majesty,” he used to complain; “it is like its owners, harsh, uncouth, and countrified.” After this, what can any one do but pity him for his state of mind?

Whether Claudia returned his passion – for such it was rather than true affection – was still a very doubtful point, though the most important in all the world. Generally she seemed to treat him with a pleased contempt, as if he were a pleasant boy, though several years older than herself. Her clear dark eyes were of such a depth that, though she was by no means chary of their precious glances, he had never been able to reach that inmost light which comes from the very heart. How different from somebody’s – of whom he now thought less and less, and vainly strove to think no more, because of the shame that pierced him! But if this Spanish maiden really did not care about him, why did she try, as she clearly did, to conquer and subdue him? Why did she shoot such glances at him as Spanish eyes alone can shoot; why bend her graceful neck so sweetly, slope her delicate head so gently, showing the ripe firm curve of cheek, and with careless dancings let her raven hair fall into his? Hilary could not imagine why; but poor Camilla knew too well. If ever Camilla felt for a moment the desirability of any one, Claudia (with her bolder manners, and more suddenly striking beauty, and less dignified love of conquest) might be relied upon to rush in and attract the whole attention.

Hilary found these lovely sisters in their little cove of rock, where the hot wind seldom entered through the fringe of hanging frond. They had a clever device of their own for welcoming the Atlantic breeze, by means of a silken rope which lifted all the screen of fern, and creeper, and of grey rock-ivy.

Now the screen was up, and the breeze flowed in, meeting a bright rill bubbling out (whose fountain was in the living rock), and the clear obscurity was lit with forms as bright as poetry. Camilla’s comely head had been laid on the bosom of her sister, as if she had made some soft appeal for mercy or indulgence there. And Claudia had been moved a little, as the glistening of her eyelids showed, and a tender gleam in her expression – the one and the only thing required to enrich her brilliant beauty. And thus, without stopping to think, she came up to Hilary, with a long kind glance, and gave a little sigh, worth more than even that sweet glance to him.

“Alas! dear Captain,” she said in Spanish, which Hilary was quite pat with now; “we have been lamenting your brief departure. How shall we live when you are lost?”

“What cruelty of yourselves to think! The matter of your inquiry should be the chance of my survival.”

“Well said!” she exclaimed. “You English are not so very stupid after all. Why do you not clap your hands, Camilla?”

Camilla, being commanded thus, made a weak attempt with her little palms; but her heart was down too low for any brisk concussion of flesh or air.

“I believe, Master Captain,” said Claudia, throwing herself gracefully on a white bull’s hide – shaped as a chair on the slopes of moss – “that you are most happy to make your escape from this long and dull imprisonment. Behold, how little we have done for you, after all the brave things you have done for us!”

“Ah, no,” said Camilla, gazing sadly at the “captain,” who would not gaze at her; “it is true that we have done but little. Yet, Senhor, we meant our best.”

“Your kindness to me has been wonderful, magnificent,” answered Hilary. “The days I have passed under your benevolence have been the happiest of my life.”

Hereupon Camilla turned away, to hide her tenderness of tears. But Claudia had no exhibition, except a little smile to hide.

“And will you come again?” she asked. “Will you ever think of us any more, in the scenes of your grand combats, and the fierce delight of glory?”

“Is it possible for me to forget” – began Hilary, in his noblest Spanish – “your constant care of a poor stranger, your never-fatigued attention to him, and thy – thy saving of his life? To thee I owe my life, and will at any moment render it.”

This was a little too much for Camilla, who really had saved him; and being too young to know how rarely the proper person gets the praise, she gathered up her things to go.

“Darling Claudia,” she exclaimed, “I can do nothing at all without my little silver spinetta. This steel thing is so rusty that it fills my work with canker. You know the danger of rusty iron, Claudia; is it not so?”

“She is cross,” said Claudia, as her sister with gentle dignity left the cove. “What can have made her so cross to-day?”

“The saints are good to me,” Hilary answered, little suspecting the truth of the case: “they grant me the chance of saying what I have long desired to say to you.”

“To me, Senhor!” cried the maiden, displaying a tremulous glow in her long black eyes, and managing to blush divinely, and then in the frankness of her nature caring not to conceal a sigh. “It cannot be to me, Senhor!”

“To you – to you, of all the worlds, of all the heavens, and all the angels!” The fervent youth fell upon his knees before his lovely idol, and seized the hand she began to press to her evidently bounding heart, and drew her towards him, and thought for the moment that she was glad to come to him. Then, in his rapture, he stroked aside her loose and deliciously fragrant hair, and waited, with all his heart intent, for the priceless glance – to tell him all. But, strongly moved as she was, no doubt, by his impassioned words and touch, and the sympathy of youthful love, she kept her oval eyelids down, as if she feared to let him see the completion of his conquest. Then, as he fain would have had her nearer, and folded in his eager arms, she gently withdrew, and turned away; but allowed him to hear one little sob, and to see tears irrepressible.

“You loveliest of all lovely beings,” began Lorraine, in very decent Spanish, such as herself had taught him; “and at the same time, you best and dearest – ”

“Stop, Senhor,” she whispered, gazing sadly, and then playfully, at this prize of her eyes and slave of her lips; “I must not allow you to say so much. You will leave us to-morrow, and forget it all. What is the use of this fugitive dream?”

Hereupon the young soldier went through the usual protestations of truth, fidelity, devotion, and eternal memory; so thoroughly hurried and carried away, that he used in another tongue the words poured forth scarcely a year ago to a purer, truer, and nobler love.

“Alas!” the young Donna now mimicked, in voice and attitude, some deserted one; “to how many beautiful English maidens have these very noble words been used! You cavaliers are all alike. I will say no more to you now, brave captain; the proof of truth is not in words, but in true and devoted actions. You know our proverb – ‘The cork is noisiest when it leaves the bottle.’ If you would have me bear you in mind, you must show that you remember me.”

“At the cost of my life, of my good repute, of all that I have in the world, or shall have, of everything but my hope of you.”

“I shall remember these words, my captain; and perhaps I shall put them to the test some day.” She gave him her soft and trembling hand, and he pressed it to his lips, and sought to impress a still more loving seal; but she said “Not yet, not yet, oh beloved one!” Or whether she said “oh enamoured one!” he could not be quite certain. And before he could do or say anything more, she had passed from his reach, and was gliding swiftly under the leafy curtain of that ever-sacred bower. “She is mine, she is mine!” cried young Lorraine, as he caught up the velvet band of her hair, and covered it with kisses, and then bestowed the same attentions on the white bull-skin, where her form had lain. “The loveliest creature ever seen is mine! What can I have done to deserve her?”

While he lay in the ecstasy of his triumph, the loveliest creature ever seen stole swiftly up a rocky path, beset with myrtle and cornel-wood, and canopied with climbers. After some intricate turns, and often watching that no one followed her, she came to the door of a little hut embosomed in towering chestnut-trees. The door was open, and a man of great stature was lounging on a couch too short for his legs, and smoking a cigar of proportions more judiciously adapted to his own. Near one of his elbows stood a very heavy carbine, and a sword three-quarters of a fathom long; and by his other hand lay a great pitcher empty and rolled over.

As the young Donna’s footfall struck his ears, he leaped from his couch, and cocked his gun; then, recognizing the sound, replaced it, and stood indolently at his door.

“At last, you are come then!” he said, with an accent decidedly of the northern provinces (not inborn, however, but caught from comrades); “I thought that you meant to let me die of thirst. You forget that I have lost the habit of this execrable heat.”

Claudia looked up at her cousin Don Alcides d’Alcar – or, as he loved to be called, “the great Brigadier” – with a very different gaze from any poor Hilary could win of her. To this man alone the entire treasures of her heart were open; for him alone her glorious eyes no longer sparkled, flashed, or played with insincere allurements; but beamed and shone with depths of light, and profusion of profoundest love.

“Darling,” she said, as she stood on tiptoe, and sweetly pacified him; “I have laboured in vain to come sooner to you. Your commands took a long time to execute. You men can scarcely understand such things. And that tiresome Camilla hung about me; I thought my occasion would never arrive. But all has gone well: he is my slave for ever.”

“You did not allow him to embrace you, I trust?” Before he could finish his scowl, she stopped his mouth, and reassured him.

“Is it to be imagined? A miserable shaveling Briton!” But, though she looked so indignant, she knew how near she had been to that ignominy.

“You are as clever as you are lovely,” answered the Brigadier, well pleased. “But I die of thirst, my beloved one. Fly swiftly to Teresina’s store; for I dare not venture till the night has fallen. Would that you could manage your father, as you wind those striplings round your spindle!”

For the Count of Zamora had given orders that his precious nephew should be shot, if ever found upon land of his. So Claudia took the empty pitcher to fetch another half-skin of wine, as well as some food, for the great Brigadier; and, having performed this duty, met the infatuated Hilary, for the last time, at her father’s board. She wished him good night, and good-bye, with a glance of deep meaning and kind encouragement; while the fair Camilla bent over his hand, and then departed to her chamber, with full eyes and an empty heart.

CHAPTER XLVI.

HARD RIDING AND HARD READING

In those old times of heavy pounding, scanty food, and great hardihood, when war was not accounted yet as one of the exact sciences, and soldiers slept, in all sorts of weather, without so much as a blanket round them, much less a snug tent overhead, the duties of the different branches of the service were not quite so distinct as they are now. Lieutenant Lorraine – for the ladies had given over-rapid promotion when they called him their “brave captain” – had not rejoined his regiment long before he obtained acknowledgment of his good and gallant actions. Having proved that he could sit a horse, see distinctly at long distance, and speak the Spanish language fairly – thanks to the two young Donnas – and possessed some other accomplishments (which would now be tested by paper work), he received an appointment upon the Staff, not of the Light Division, but at Head-quarters, under the very keen eyes of “the hero of a hundred fights.”

If the brief estimate of his compeers is of any importance to a man of powerful genius – as no doubt it must be, by its effect on his opportunities – then the Iron Duke, though crowned with good luck (as everybody called each triumph of his skill and care), certainly seems to have been unlucky as to the date of his birth and work. “Providence in its infinite wisdom” – to use a phrase of the Wesleyans, who claim the great general as of kin to their own courageous founder – produced him at a time, no doubt, when he was uncommonly needful; but when (let him push his fame as he would, by victory after victory) there always was a more gigantic, because a more voracious, glory marching far in front of him. Our great hero never had the chance of terrifying the world by lopping it limb by limb and devouring it; and as noble glory is the child of terror (begotten upon it by violence), the fame of Wellington could never vie with Napoleon’s glory.

To him, however, this mattered little, except that it often impaired his means of discharging his duty thoroughly. His present duty was to clear the Peninsula of Frenchmen; and this he would perhaps have done in a quarter of the time it cost, if his own country had only shown due faith in his abilities. But the grandeur of his name grew slowly (as the fame of Marcellus grew), like a tree in the hidden lapse of time; and perhaps no other general ever won so many victories, before his country began to dream that he could be victorious.

Now this great man was little, if at all, inferior to his mighty rival in that prime necessity of a commander – insight into his material. He made a point of learning exactly what each of his officers was fit for; and he seldom failed, in all his warfare, to put the “right man in the right place.” He saw at a glance that Lieutenant Lorraine was a gallant and chivalrous young fellow, active and clever in his way, and likely to be very useful on the Staff after a little training. And so many young aids had fallen lately, or were upon the sick-list, that the quartermaster-general was delighted with a recruit so quick and zealous as Hilary soon proved himself. And after a few lessons in his duties, he set him to work with might and main to improve his knowledge of “colloquial French.”

With this Lorraine, having gift of tongues, began to grow duly familiar; and the more so perhaps because his knowledge of “epistolary English” afforded him very little pleasure just now. For all his good principles and kind feelings must have felt rude shock and shame, when he read three letters from England which reached him on the very same day at Valladolid. The first was from his Uncle Struan; and after making every allowance for the Rector’s want of exercise in the month of August, Hilary (having perhaps a little too much exercise himself) could not help feeling that the tone was scarcely so hearty as usual. The letter was mainly as follows: —

“West Lorraine, 20th August, 1812.

“My dear Nephew,

“Your father and myself have not been favoured with any letters from you for a period of several months. It appears to me that this is neither dutiful nor affectionate; although we know that you have been wounded, which increased our anxiety. You may have been too bad to write, and I wish to make all allowance for you. But where there is a will there is a way. When I was at Oxford, few men perhaps in all the University felt more distaste than I did for original Latin composition. Yet every Saturday when we went to the hall to get our battelbills – there was my essay, neatly written, and of sound Latinity.” – “Come, come,” cried Lorraine; this is a little too cool, my dear uncle. How many times have I heard you boast what you used to pay your scout’s son per line!”

“I cannot expect any young man, of course,” continued the worthy parson, “to make such efforts for conscience’ sake as in my young days were made cheerfully. But this indolence and dislike of the pen furcâ expellendum est– must be expelled with a knife and fork. Perhaps you will scarcely care to hear that your aunt and cousins are doing well. After your exploits your memory seems to have grown very short of poor folk in old England. Your birthday falling on a Sunday this year, I took occasion to allude in the course of my sermon to a mural crown, of which I remember to have heard at school. Nobody knew what I meant; but many were more affected than if they did. But, after all, it requires, to my mind, quite as much courage, and more skill, to take a dry wall properly, when nobody has been over it, than to scramble into Badajos. Alice will write to you by this post, and tell you all the gossip of the sad old house, if there is any. There seems to be nobody now with life enough to make much gossip. And all that we hear is about Captain Chapman (who means to have Alice), and about yourself.

“About you it is said, though I cannot believe it, and must be ashamed of you when I do so, that you are making a fool of yourself with a Spanish lady of birth and position, but a rank, idolatrous, bigoted Papist! The Lorraines have been always sadly heterodox in religious matters, from age to age receiving every whim they came across of. They have taken to astrology, Mahomet, destiny, and the gods of Greece, and they never seem to know when to stop. The only true Church, the Church of England, never has any hold of them; and if you should marry a Papist, Hilary, it would be a judgment.

“Your father, perhaps, would be very glad of any looseness of mind and sense, that might have the power to lead you astray from my ideas of honour. I have had a little explanation with him; in the course of which, as he used stronger language than I at all approve of, I ventured to remind him that from the very outset I had charged him with what I call this low intention, this design of working upon your fickle and capricious temper, to make you act dishonourably. Your poor father was much annoyed at this home-truth, and became so violent, and used such unbecoming language, that I thought it the most clerical course to leave him to reflect upon it. On the following Sunday I discoursed upon the third chapter of the Epistle of St. James; but there was only Alice in the Coombe pew. I saw, however, that she more than once turned away her face with shame, although I certainly did not discover any tears. It is to be hoped that she gave Sir Roland an accurate summary of my discourse; none of which (as I explained to your dear aunt after the service) was intended for my own domestic hearth. Since that time I have not had the pleasure of meeting Sir Roland Lorraine in private life.

“And now a few words as to your own conduct. Your memory is now so bad that you may have forgotten what I did for you. At a time when my parish and family were in much need of my attention, and two large coveys of quite young birds were lying every night in the corner of the Hays, I left my home in extremely hot weather, simply to be of use to you. My services may have been trifling; but at that time you did not think so. It was not my place to interfere in a matter which was for your father’s decision. But I so far committed myself, that if you are fool enough and knave enough – for I never mince language, as your father does – to repudiate your engagement with a charming and sensible girl, for the sake of high-flying but low-minded Papists, much of the disgrace will fall on me.

“And what are those Spanish families (descended perhaps from Don Quixote, or even Sancho Panza) to compare with Kentish landowners, who derive their title from the good old Danes? And what are their women when they get yellow – as they always do before twenty-five – compared with an Englishwoman, who generally looks her best at forty? And not only that (for after all, that is a secondary question, as a man grows wise), but is a southern foreigner likely to make an Englishman happy? Even if she becomes converted from her image-worship (about which they are very obstinate), can she keep his house for him? Can she manage an English servant? Can she order a dinner? does she even know when a bed is aired? can a gentleman dine and sleep at her house after a day’s hunting, without having rheumatism, gout, and a bilious attack in the morning? All this, you will think, can be managed by deputy; and in very large places it must be so. But I have been a guest in very large places – very much finer than Coombe Lorraine, however your father may have scoffed at me; and I can only say that I would rather be the guest of an English country-squire, or even a parson, with a clever and active wife at the head of his table, than of a duke with a grand French cook, and a duchess who never saw a dust-pan.