Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

by R. D. Blackmore

“’Et me down, ’et me down,” she cried, stretching her fat short arms to Bonny; “I ’ants some; I’se so hungy.”

“Stop a bit, miss,” said Bonny, as being the pink of politeness to all the fair: “there, your purty little toes is on the blessed ground again. Stop a bit, miss, while I runs into my house, for to get the spoon.”

For up to this time he had stirred his soup with a forked stick made of dogwood, which helps to flavour everything; but now as a host, he was bound to show his more refined resources. Polly, however, was so rapt out of her usual immobility, that she actually toddled into Bonny’s house to make him be quick about the spoon. He, in amazement, turned round and stared, to be sure of his eyes that such a thing could ever have happened to him. The jealousy of the collector strove with the hospitality of the householder and the chivalry of the rover. But the finer feelings conquered, and he showed her round the corner. Mr. Bottler, who could not get in, cracked his whip and whistled at them.

Polly, with great eyes of wonder and fright at her own daring, longed with one breath to go on, and with the next to run back again. But the boy caught hold of her hand, and she stuck to him through the ins and outs of light, until there was something well worth seeing.

What is the sweetest thing in life? Hope, love, gold, fame, pride, revenge, danger—or anything else, according to the nature of the liver. But with those who own very little, and have “come across” all that little, with risk and much uncertainty, the sweetest thing in life is likely to be the sense of ownership. The mightiest hoarder of gold and silver, Crœsus, Rhampsinitus, or Solomon, never thought half so much of his stores, or at any rate, never enjoyed them as much as this rag-and-bone collector his. When he came to his room he held his breath, and watched with the greatest anxiety for corresponding emotion of Polly.

The room was perhaps about twelve feet long, and eight feet wide at its utmost, scooped from the chalk without any sharp corners, but with a grand contempt of shape. The floor went up and down, and so did the roof, according to circumstances; the floor appearing inclined to rise, and the roof to come down if called upon. Much excellent rubbish was here to be found; but the window was the first thing to seize and hold any stranger’s attention. It must have been built either by or for the old hermit who once had dwelt there; at any rate no one could have designed it without a quaint ingenuity. It was cut through a three-foot wall of chalk, the embrasure being about five feet in span, and three feet deep at the crown of the arch. In the middle, a narrow pier of chalk was left to keep the arch up, and the lights on either side were made of horn, stained glass, and pig’s bladder. The last were of Bonny’s handiwork, to keep out the wind when it blew too cold among the flaws of ages. And now as the evening light fetched round the foot of the hills, and gathered strongly into this western aspect, the richness of colours was such that even Polly’s steadfast eyes were dazed.

Without vouchsafing so much as a glance at Bonny’s hoarded glories, the child ran across the narrow chamber, and spread out her hands and opened her mouth wider even than her eyes, at the tints now streaming in on her. The glass had been brought perhaps from some ruined chapel of the hill-side, and glowed with a depth of colour infused by centuries of sunset; not one pane of regular shape was to be found among them; but all, like veins of marble, ran with sweetest harmony of hue, to meet the horn and the pig’s bladder. From the outside it looked like a dusty slate traversed with bits of a crusted bottle; it required to be seen from the inside, like an ancient master’s painting.

Polly, like the rest of those few children who do not overtalk themselves, spent much of her time in observation, storing the entries inwardly. And young as she was, there might be perhaps a doubt entertained by those who knew her whether she were not of a deeper and more solid cast of mind than Bonny. Her father at any rate declared, and her mother was of the same opinion, that by the time she was ten years old she would buy and sell all Steyning. However, they may have thought all this because all their other children were so stupid.

Now, be they right or be they wrong—as may be shown hereafter—Polly possessed at least the first and most essential of all the many endowments needful to approach success. Polly Bottler stuck to her point. And now, even with those fine old colours, like a century of rainbows, puzzling her, Polly remembered the stew in the pot, and pointed with her finger to the window-ledge where something shone in a rich blue light.