Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

“And the truth is this. I fell in love: not as I did with you, my darling, just because I loved you; but because – well, I cannot tell why, although I am trying for the very truth; I cannot tell why I did it. She saved my life, and nursed me long. She was not bad-looking; but young and brave.

“I hope that it is all over now. I trust in the Lord that it is so. I see that these Spaniards are cruel people, and I work night and day to forget them all. When I get any sleep, it is you that come and look upon me beautifully; and when I kick up with those plaguesome insects, the face that I see is a Spanish one. This alone shows where my heart is fixed. But you have none of those things at Old Applewood.

“And now I can say no more. I write in the midst of roaring cannon, and perhaps you will say, when you see my words, that I had better have died of my wounds, than live to disgrace, as I have done, your

“Hilary.

“P.S. – Try to think the best of me, darling. If anybody needs it, I do. Gregory wrote me such a letter that I am afraid to send you any – anythings!”

CHAPTER XLVIII.

SOMETHING WORTH KISSING

Pessimists who love to dwell on the darker side of human nature, and find (or at any rate colour) that perpetually changing object to the tone of their own dull thoughts, making our whole world no better than the chameleon of themselves; who trace every act and word and thought, either to very mean selfishness, or exceedingly grand destiny – according to their own pet theory, – let those gloomy spirits migrate in as cheerful a manner as they can manage to the back side of the moon, the side that neither shines on earth, nor gathers any earthshine. But even if they will not thus oblige inferior mortals, let them not come near a scene where true love dwells, and simple faith, and pleasant hours are spent in helping nature to be kind to us.

Where the rich recesses of the bosomed earth brim over with variety; where every step of man discloses some new goodness over him; and every hour of the day shows different veins of happiness; the light in sloping glances looking richer as the sun goes down, and showing with a deeper love its own good works and parentage; the children of the light presenting all their varied joy to it; some revolving, many bending, all with one accord inclining softly, sweetly, and thankfully, – can any man, even of a churlish nature, wander about at a time like this, with the power of the sunset over him, and walk down the alleys of trees, and spend a leisure hour among them, without admitting into his heart a calm unconscious kindliness?

If any man could be so ungrateful to the Giver of all good things, he was not to be found in the land of Kent, but must be sought in some northern county where they grow sour gooseberries. Master Martin Lovejoy had, in the month of October, 1812, as fine a crop of pears as ever made a fountain of a tree.

For the growers did not understand the pruning of trees as we do now. They were a benighted lot altogether, proceeding only by rule of thumb and the practice of their grandfathers, never lopping the roots of a tree, nor summer pinching, nor wiring it, nor dislocating its joints; and yet they grew as good fruit as we do! They had no right to do so; but the thing is beyond denial. Therefore one might see a pear-tree rising in its natural form, tall and straight and goodly, hanging its taper branches like a chandelier with lustrous weight, tier upon tier, the rich fruit glistening with the ruddy sun-streaks, or with russet veinage mellowing. Hard thereby the Golden Noble, globular and stainless, or the conical King Pippin, pencilled on its orange fulness with a crimson glow, or the great bulk of Dutch Codlin, oblong, ribbed, and over-bearing. Here was the place and time for a man to sit in the midst of his garden, and feel that the year was not gone in vain, nor his date of life lessened fruitlessly, and looking round with right good will, thank the Lord, and remember his father.

In such goodly mood and tenor Master Martin Lovejoy sat, early of an October afternoon, to smoke his pipe and enjoy himself. He had finished his dinner – a plain but good one; his teeth were sound, and digestion stanch; he paid his tithes and went to church; he had not an enemy in the world, to the utmost of his knowledge; and his name was good for a thousand pounds from Canterbury to Reigate. His wheat had been fine, and his hops pretty good, his barley by no means below the mark, the cherry and strawberry season fair, and his apples and pears as you see them. Such a man would be guilty of a great mistake if he kept on the tramp perpetually. Fortune encouraged him to sit down, and set an arm-chair and a cushion for him, and mixed him a glass of Schiedam and water, with a slice of lemon, and gave him a wife to ask how his feet were, as well as a daughter to see to his slippers.

“Now you don’t get on at all,” he said, as he mixed Mrs Lovejoy the least little drop, because of the wind going round to the north; “you are so abstemious, my dear soul; by-and-by you will pay out for it.”

“I must be a disciplinarian, Martin,” Mrs. Lovejoy replied, with a sad sweet smile. “How ever the ladies can manage to take beer, wine, gin, bitters, and brandy, in the way they do, all of an afternoon, is beyond my comprehension.”

“They get used to it,” answered the Grower, calmly; “and their constitution requires it. At the same time I am not saying, mind you, that some of them may not overdo it. Moderation is the golden rule; but you carry it too far, my dear.”

“Better too little than too much,” said Mrs. Lovejoy sententiously. “Whatever I take, I like just to know that there is something in it, and no more. No, Martin, no – if you please, not more than the thickness of my thumb-nail. Well, now for what we were talking about. We can never go on like this, you know.”

“Wife, I will tell you what it is” – here Martin Lovejoy tried to look both melancholy and stern, but failed; “we do not use our duties right; we do not work up in the position to which it has pleased God to call us. We don’t make our children see that they are – bless my heart, what is the word?”

“‘Obligated’ is the word you mean. ‘Obligated’ they all of them are.”

“No, no; ‘bounden’ is the word I mean; ‘bounden’ says the Catechism. They are bounden to obey, whether they like it or no, and that is the word’s expression. Now is there one of them as does it?”

“I can’t say there is,” his wife replied, after thinking of all three of them. “Martin, no; they do their best, but you can’t have them quite tied hand and foot. And I doubt whether we should love them better, if we had them always to order.”

“Likely not. I cannot tell. They have given me no chance of trying. They do what seems best in their own eyes, and the fault of it lies with you, mother.”

“Do they ever do anything wrong, Martin Lovejoy? Do they ever disgrace you anywhere? Do they ever go about and borrow money, or trade on their name, or anything? Surely you want to provoke me, Martin, when you begin to revile my children.”

“Well,” said the Grower, blowing smoke, in the manner of a matrimonial man, “let us go to something else. Here is this affair of Mabel’s now. How do you mean to settle it?”

“I think you should rather tell me, Martin, how you mean to settle it. She might have been settled long ago, in a good position and comfortable, if my advice had been heeded. But you are the most obstinate man in the world.”

“Well, well, my dear, I don’t think that you should be hard upon any one in that respect. You have set your heart upon one thing, and I upon another; and we have to deal with some one perhaps more obstinate than both of us. She takes after her good mother there.”

“After her father, more likely, Martin. But she has given her promise, and she will keep it, and the time is very nearly up, you know.”

“The battle of Trafalgar, yes. The 21st of October, seven years ago, as I am a man! Lord bless me, it seems but yesterday! How all the country up and wept, and how it sent our boy to sea! There never can be such a thing again; and no one would look at a drumhead savoy!”

“Plague upon the market, Martin! I do believe you think much more of your growings than your gainings. But she fixed the day herself, because it was a battle; didn’t she?”

“Yes, wife, yes. But after all, I see not so much to come of it. Supposing she gets no letter by to-morrow-night, what comes of it?”

“Why, a very great deal. You men never know. She puts all her foolish ideas aside, and she does her best to be sensible.”

“By the spread of my measure, oh deary me! I thought she was bound to much more than that. She gives up him, at any rate.”

“Yes, poor dear, she gives him up, and a precious cry she will make of it. Why, Martin, when you and I were young we carried on so differently.”

“What use to talk about that?” said the Grower: “they all must have their romances now. Like tapping a cask of beer, it is. You must let them spit out at the top a little.”

“All that, of course, needs no discussion. I do not remember that, in our love-time, you expected to see me ‘spit out at the top!’ You grow so coarse in your ideas, Martin; the more you go growing, the coarser you get.”

“Now, is there nothing to be said but that? She gives him up, and she tries to be sensible. The malting season is on, and how can Elias come and do anything?”

“Martin, may I say one word? You keep so perpetually talking, that I scarcely have a chance to breathe. We do not want that low Jenkins here. How many quarters he soaks in a week is nothing, and cannot be anything to me. A tanner is more to my taste a great deal, if one must come down to the dressers. And there one might get some good ox-tails. I believe that you want to sell your daughter to get your malt for nothing.”

The Grower’s indignation at this despicable charge was such, that he rolled in his chair, like a man in a boat, and spread his sturdy legs, and said nothing, for fear of further mischief. Then he turned out his elbows, in a manner of his own, and Mrs. Lovejoy saw that she had gone too far.

“Well, well,” she resumed, “perhaps not quite that. Mr. Jenkins, no doubt, is very well in his way: and he shall have fair play, so far as I am concerned. But mind, Dr. Calvert must have the same; that was our bargain, Martin. All the days of the week to be open to both, and no difference in the dinner.”

“Very well, very well!” the franklin murmured, being still a little wounded about the malt. “I am sure I put up with anything. Calvert may have her, if he can cure her. I can’t bear to see the poor maid so pining. It makes my heart ache many a time; but I have more faith in barley-corn than jalap; though I don’t want neither of them for nothing.”

“We shall see, my dear, how she will come round. The doctor prescribes carriage exercise for her. Well, how is she to get it, except in his carriage? And she cannot well have his carriage, I suppose, before she marries him.”

“Carriage exercise? Riding on wheels, I suppose, is what they mean by it. If riding on wheels will do her any good, she can have our yellow gig five times a-week. And I want to go round the neighbourhood too. There’s some little bits of money owing me. I’ll take her for a drive to-morrow.”

“Your yellow gig! To call that a carriage! A rough sort of exercise, I doubt. Why, it jerks up, like a Jack-in-a-box, at every stone you come to. If that is your idea of a carriage, Martin, pray take us all out in the dung-cart.”

“The old gig was good enough for my mother; and why should my daughter be above it? They doctors and women are turning her head, worse than poor young Lorraine did. Oh, if I had Elias to prune my trees – after all I have taught him – and Lorraine to get up in the van again; I might keep out of the bankrupt court after all; I do believe I might.” Here the Grower fetched a long sigh through his pipe. He was going to be bankrupt every season; but never achieved that glory.

“I’m tired of that,” Mrs. Lovejoy said. “You used to frighten me with it at first, whenever there came any sort of weather – a storm, or a frost, or too much sun, or too much rain, or too little of it; the Lord knows that if you have had any fruit, you have got it out of Him by grumbling. And now you are longing, in a heathenish manner, to marry your daughter to two men at once! One for the night-work, and one for the day. Now, will you, for once, speak your mind out truly.”

“Well, wife, there is no one that tries a man so badly as his own wife does. I am pretty well known for speaking my mind too plainly, more than too doubtfully. I can’t say the same to you, as I should have to say to anybody else; because you are my wife, you see, and have a good right to be down upon me. And so I am forced to get away from things that ought to be argued. But about my daughter, I have a right to think my own opinion; while I leave your own to you, as a father has a right with a mother. And all I say is common-sense. Our Mabel belongs to a time of life when the girls are always dreaming. And then you may say what you like to them mainly; and it makes no difference. Now she looks very pale, and she feels very queer, all through that young sort of mischief. But let her get a letter from Master Hilary – and you would see what would come over her.”

“I have got it! I have got it!” cried a young voice, as if in answer, although too sudden of approach for that. “Father, here it is! Mother, here it is! Long expected, come at last! There, what do you think of that now?”

Her face was lit with a smile of delight, and her eyes with tears of gladness, as she stood between her astonished parents, and waved in the air an open letter, fluttering less (though a breeze was blowing) than her true heart fluttered. Then she pressed the paper to her lips, and kissed it, with a good smack every time; and then she laid it against her bosom, and bowed to her father and mother, as much as to say – “You may think what you like of me – I am not ashamed of it!”

The Grower pushed two grey curls aside, and looked up with a grand amazement. Here was a girl, who at dinner-time even would scarcely say more than “yes,” or “no;” who started when suddenly spoken to, and was obliged to clear her mind to think; who smiled now and then, when a smile was expected, and not because she had a smile, – in a word, who had become a dull, careless, unnatural, cloudy, depressed, and abominably inconsistent Mabel – a cause of anxiety to her father, and of recklessness to herself – when lo, at a touch of the magic wand, here she was, as brave as ever!

The father, and the mother also, knew the old expression settled on the darling face again; the many family modes of thinking, and of looking, and of loving, and of feeling out for love, which only a father and a mother dearly know in a dear child’s face. And then they looked at one another; and in spite of all small variance, the husband and the wife were one in the matter of rejoicing.

It was not according to their schemes, and they both might still be obstinate. But by a stroke their hearts were opened – wise or foolish, right or wrong, – what they might say outside reason, they really could not stop to think. They only saw that their sweet good child, for many long months a stranger to them, was come home to their hearts again. And they could have no clearer proof than this.

She took up her father’s pipe, and sniffed with a lofty contempt at the sealing-wax (which was of the very lowest order), and then she snapped it off and scraped him (with a tortoiseshell handled knife of her own) a proper place to suck at. And while she was doing that, and most busy with one of her fingers to make a draught, she turned to her mother with her other side, as only a very quick girl could do, and tucked up some hair (which was slipping from the string, with a palpable breach of the unities) and gave her two tugs, in the very right place to make her of the latest fashion; and then let her know, with lips alone, what store she set on her opinion. And the whole of this business was done in less time than two lovers would take for their kissing!

“You have beaten me, Popsy,” said Mrs. Lovejoy, fetching up an old name of the days when she was nursing this one.

“Dash me!” cried the Grower; “you shall marry Old Harry, if you choose to set your heart on him.”

CHAPTER XLIX.

A DANGEROUS COMMISSION

Peradventure the eyes and the heart, as well as the boundless charity of true love, were needed to descry what Mabel at a glance discovered, the “grand nobility” of Hilary’s conduct, and the “pathetic beauty” of his self-reproach. Perhaps at first sight the justice of the latter would be a more apparent thing; but love (when it deserves the name) is a generous as well as a jealous power; especially in the tender gush of renewal and reunion. And Lorraine meant every word as he wrote it, and indeed for a good while afterwards; so that heart took pen to heart, which is sometimes better than the wings of speech. Giving comfort thus, he also received the same from his own conscience and pure resolutions; and he felt that his good angel was, for the present at least, come back to him. How long she would stop was another question.

And he needed her now in matters even more stirring than the hottest love-affairs. For though he had no chance of coming to the front in any of the desperate assaults on the castle of Burgos, being far away then with despatches, he was back with his chief when the retreat began; a retreat which must have become a rout under any but the finest management. For the British army was at its worst towards the month of November, 1812. Partly from intercourse with partidas, partly perhaps from the joys of Madrid, but mainly no doubt from want of cash, the Britons were not as they had been. Even the officers dared to be most thoroughly disobedient, and to follow the route which they thought best, instead of that laid down for them. But Wellington put up with insolent ignorance, as a weaker man could not have deigned to do: he had to endure it from those above him; and he knew how to bear it with all around him; and yet to be the master. His manifold dealings with everybody and everything at this time (with nobody caring to understand him, and his own people set against him; with the whole world making little of him, because he hated flash-work; and perhaps his own mind in some doubt of its powers, because they were not recognised) – these, and the wearisome uphill struggle to be honest without any money, were beginning to streak with grey the hair that had all the hard brain under it.

Here again was a chance for Hilary; and without thinking, he worked it well. In his quick, and perhaps too sudden, way of taking impression of every one, he had stamped on his mind the abiding image of his great commander. The General knew this (as all men feel the impression they are making, as sharply almost as a butter-stamp), and of course he felt goodwill towards the youth who so looked up to him. It was quite a new thing for this great Captain, after all his years of conquest, to be accounted of any value; because he was not a Frenchman.

Being, however, of rigid justice, although he was no Frenchman, Lord Wellington did not lift Captain Lorraine over the heads of his compeers. He only marked him (in his own clear and most tenacious mind) as one who might be trusted for a dashing job, and deserved to have the chance of it.

And so they went into winter quarters on the Douro and Aguada, after a great deal of fighting, far in the rear of their storms and sieges and their many victories; because the British Government paid whole millions right and left to rogues, and left its own army to live without money, and to be hanged if it stole an onion. And the only satisfaction our men had – and even in that they were generous – was to hear of the Frenchmen in Russia freezing, as fast as could well be expected.

Now, while this return to the frontier, and ebb of success created disgust in England and depression among our soldiers, they also bore most disastrously on the fortunes of a certain gallant and very zealous Staff officer. For they brought him again into those soft meshes, whence he had wellnigh made good his escape without any serious damage; but now there was no such deliverance for him. And this was a very hard case, and he really did deserve some pity now; for he did not return of his own accord, and fall at the feet of the charmer; but in the strictest course of duty became an unwilling victim. And it happened altogether in this wise.

In the month of May, 1813, when the British commander had all things ready for that glorious campaign which drove the French over the Pyrenees; and when the British army, freshened, strengthened, and sternly redisciplined, was eager to bound forward – a sudden and sad check arose. By no means, however, a new form of hindrance, but one only too familiar at all times and in all countries – the sinews of war were not forthcoming. The military chest was empty. The pay of the British troops was far in arrear, and so was their bounty-money; but that they were pretty well used to by this time, and grumble as they might, they were ready to march. Not so, however, the Portuguese, who were now an important element; and even the Spanish regulars in Andalusia would do nothing, until they had handled dollars.

This need of money had been well foreseen by the ubiquitous mind of Wellington; but what he had not allowed for, and what no one else would have taken into thought, so soon after Nelson’s time, was the sluggishness of the British navy. Whether it were the fault of our Government, or of our Admiral on the station, certain it is that the mouth of the Tagus (which was the mouth of the whole British army) was stopped for days, and even weeks together, by a few American privateers. And ships containing supplies for our army (whether of food, or clothing, or the even more needful British gold), if they escaped at all, could do it only by running for the dangerous bar of the Douro, or for Cadiz.

In this state of matters, the “Generalissimo” sent for Captain Lorraine one day, and despatched him on special duty.

“You know Count Zamora,” said Lord Wellington, in his clear voice of precision; “and his castle in the Sierra Morena.”

Hilary bowed, without a word, knowing well what his Chief was pleased with.

“You also know the country well, and the passes of the Morena. Colonel Langham has orders to furnish you with the five best horses at hand, and the two most trusty men he knows of. You will go direct to Count Zamora’s house, and deliver to him this letter. He will tell you what next to do. I believe that the ship containing the specie, which will be under your charge, was unable to make either Lisbon or the port of Cadiz, and ran through the Straits for Malaga. But the Count will know better than I do. Remember that you are placed at his disposal, in all except one point – and that is the money. He will provide you with Spanish escort, and the Spaniards are liable for the money, through Andalusia, and the mountains, until you cross the Zujar, where a detachment from General Hill will meet you. They begged me not to send British convoy (beyond what might be needful to authorize the delivery to them), because their own troops are in occupation.

“Never mind that; be as wide awake as if every farthing was your own, or rather was part of your honour. I seldom place so young a man in a position of so much trust. But the case is peculiar; and I trust you. There will be £100,000, in English gold, to take care of. The Spaniards will furnish the transport, and Count Zamora will receive half of the specie, on behalf of the Junta of Seville, for the pay of the Spanish forces, and give you his receipt for it. The remainder you will place under the care of General Hill’s detachment, and rejoin us as soon as possible. I have no time more. Colonel Langham will give you your passes, and smaller directions. But remember that you are in a place of trust unusual for so young an officer. Good-bye, and keep a sharp look-out.”

Lord Wellington gave his hand, with a bow of the fine old type, to Hilary. And he from his proper salute recovered, and took it as one gentleman takes the courtesy of another. But as he felt that firm, and cool, and muscular hand for a moment, he knew that he was treated with extraordinary confidence; and that his future as an officer, and perhaps as a gentleman, hung on the manner in which he should acquit himself of so rare a trust. In the courtyard he found Colonel Langham, who gave him some written instructions, and his passes and credentials, as well as a good deal of sound advice, which the General had no time to give. And in another hour Hilary Lorraine was riding away in the highest spirits, thinking of Mabel, and of all his luck; and little dreaming that he was galloping into the ditch of his fortunes.