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

Lorraine, let me pour you a drop, not to be matched in Kent; nor yet in all England, I do believe. Home-grown barley, and home-grown hops, and the soft water out of the brook that has taken the air of the sky for seven mile or more, without a drain anigh it. Ah, those brewers can never do that! They must buy their malt, and their musty hops, and pump up their water, and boil it down, to get the flint-stones out of it. But our brook hath cast the flint-stones and the other pebbles all along. That makes a sight of difference, sir. Every water is full of stones, and if you pump it up from the spring, the stones be all alive in it. But let it run seven miles or eight, and then it is fit to brew with.”

      “Ah, to be sure. Now that explains a great many things I never understood.” Hilary would have swallowed a camel, rather than argue, at this moment.

      “Young sir, just let me prove it to you. Just see the colour it runs out, and the way the head goes creaming! Lord, ha’ mercy, if she has gived us a glass, or a stag’s horn from the mantelpiece! Why, Mabel, child – Mabel, art thou gone? Why nobody wants to poison thee.”

      “I think, sir, I saw your daughter go round the corner by the warming-pan, this side of where the broom hangs.”

      “Then all I can say is, she is daft. She worked very hard last week, poor thing. And yesterday she was a-moving always, when the Lord’s day bids us rest. I must beg your pardon, Master Lorraine. Our Kentish maids always look after our guests. When I was at school, I read in the grammar that the moon always managed the women; but now I do believe it is the comet. Let the comet come, say I. When the markets are so bad, I feel that I am ready to face almost anything. And now we must drink from the jug, I reckon!”

      Hilary saw that his host was vexed; but he felt quite certain in his own heart that Mabel could never be so rude, or show such resentment of any little excess of honey on his part, as to go away in that sour earnest, and make the two of them angry. A dozen things might have happened to upset her, or turn her a little askew; and her own father ought to know her better than he seemed to do. And lo, ere the Grower had quite finished grumbling, Mabel reached over his shoulder unseen, and set his own pet glass before him; and then round Hilary’s side she slid, without ever coming too nigh him, and the glass of honour of the house, cut in countless facets, twinkled, like the Pleiads, at him!

      “Adorn me!” said the Grower; “now I call that a true good girl! Girls were always made, Master Lorraine, for the good of those around them. If anybody treats them any way else, they come to nothing afterwards. Mabel, dear, give me a kiss. You deserve it; and there it is for you. Now be off, like a good maid, and see what they be at in Vale Orchard, while Master Lorraine and I think a bit over these here two glasses.”

      The rest of the day was much too busy, and too much crowded with sharp eyes, for any fair chance of love-making. For they all set to at the cherry-trees, with ladders, crooks, and hanging baskets, and light boys to scale the more difficult antlers, strip them, and drop upon feather-beds. And though the sun broke hot and bright through the dew-cloud of the morning, and quickly drank the beaded freshness off the face of herb and tree, yet they picked, and piled, and packed (according to their sort and size) the long-stalked dancers that fringe the bough, and glance in the sun so ruddily.

      “You must have had a deal too much of this,” young Lovejoy said to Hilary, when the noon-day meal had been spread forth, and dealt with, in a patch of fern near a breezy clump: “if I had worked as you have done, my fingers would scarcely have been fit for a quill, this side of next Hilary term.”

      “My dear fellow, be not, I pray you, so violently facetious. The brain, when outraged, takes longer to resume its functions than the fingers do. Moreover, I trust that my fingers will hold something nobler than a quill, ere the period of my namesake.”

      “Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt; I hope you will do nothing of the sort;” said Gregory, with unwitting and unprecedented poetry.

      “Lovejoy, my wits are unequal altogether to this encounter. The brilliancy of your native soil has burst out so upon you, that I must go back to the Southdown hills before I dare point a dart with you. Nevertheless, on your native soil, I beat you at picking cherries.”

      “That you do, and strawberries too. And still more so at eating them! But if you please, you must stop a little. My mother begs, as a great favour, to have a little private talk with you.”

      Hilary’s bright face lost its radiance, as his conscience pricked him. Was it about Mabel? Of course it must be. And what the dickens was he to say? He could not say a false thing. That was far below his nature. And he must own that he did love Mabel; and far worse than that – had done his utmost to drag that young and innocent Mabel into love with him. And if he were asked about his father – as of course he must be – on the word of a true man he must confess that his father would be sadly bitter if he married below his rank in life: also, that though he was the only son, there were very peculiar provisions in the settlement of the Lorraine estates, which might throw him entirely upon his own wits, if his father turned against him: also, that though his father was one of the very best men in the world, and the kindest and loftiest you could find; still there was about him something of a cold and determined substance. And worst of all (if the whole truth was to be shelled out, as he must unshell it), he knew in his heart that his father loved his sister’s little finger more than all the members put together of his own too lively frame.

      CHAPTER XVII.

      VERY SHY THINGS

      Mrs. Lovejoy sat far away from all the worry, and flurry, and fun of picking, and packing, and covering up. She had never entirely given herself to the glories of fruit-growing; and she never could be much convinced that any glory was in it. She belonged to a higher rank of life than any of such sons of Cain. Her father had been a navy-captain; and her cousin was Attorney-General. This office has always been confounded, in the provincial mind, with rank in a less pugnacious profession. Even Mrs. Lovejoy thought, when the land was so full of “militiamen,” that her cousin was the General of the “Devil’s Own” of the period. Therefore she believed herself to know more than usual about the law; as well as the army, and of course the navy. And this high position in the legal army of so near a relation helped, no doubt, to foster hopes of the elevation of Gregory.

      “I beg your pardon, Mr. Lorraine,” she began, as Hilary entered the bower, to which she had just retired, “for calling you away from a scene, which you enjoy perhaps from its novelty; and where you make yourself, I am sure, so exceedingly active and useful. But I feared, as you must unluckily so very soon return to London, that I might have no other chance of asking what your candid opinion is upon a matter I have very near at heart.”

      “Deuce and all!” thought Hilary within himself, being even more vexed than relieved by this turn of incidence; “she is much cleverer than I thought. Instead of hauling me over the coals, she is going to give me the sack at once; and I didn’t mean to go, for a week at least!” Mrs. Lovejoy enjoyed his surprise, as he stammered that any opinion he could form was entirely at her service.

      “I am sure that you know what it is about. You must have guessed at once, of course, when I was rude enough to send for you, what subject is nearest to a mother’s heart. I wish to ask you, what they think of my son Gregory, in London.”

      Lorraine, for the moment, was a little upset. His presence of mind had been worked so hard, that it was beginning to flutter and shift. And much as he liked his fellow-pupil, he had not begun to consider him yet as a subject of public excitement.

      “I think – I really think,” he said, while waiting for time to think more about it, “that he is going on as well as ever could be expected, ma’am.”

      If he had wanted to vex his hostess – which to his kind nature would have been one of the last things wanted – he scarcely could have hit on a phrase more fitted for his purpose.

      “Why, Mr. Lorraine, that is exactly what the monthly nurses say! I hope you can say something a little better than that of Gregory.”

      “I assure you, Mrs. Lovejoy, nothing can be finer than the way he is going on. His attention, punctuality, steadiness, and everything else, leave nothing to be desired, as all the wine-merchants always say. Mr. Malahide holds him up as a pattern to be avoided,