Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs. Blackmore Richard Doddridge

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