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

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