Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

by R. D. Blackmore

“If I mention that absurd report about young Lorraine,” thought Colonel Clumps, when writing to Lady de Lampnor, “I may do harm, and I can do no good, but only get myself laughed at as the victim of a stupid hoax. So I will say no more about him, except that I have not seen him lately, being so far from head-quarters, and knowing how Old Beaky is driving the staff about.” And before the brave Colonel found opportunity of taking the pen in hand again, he was heavily wounded in a skirmish with the French rear-guard, and ordered home, as hereafter will appear.

It also happened that Mr. Capper’s friends, those two officers who had earned so little of Mabel’s gratitude by news of Hilary, were harassed and knocked about too much to find any time for writing letters. And as the Gazette in those days neglected the smaller concerns of the army, and became so hurried by the march of events, and the rapid sequence of battles, that the doings of junior officers slipped through its fingers until long afterwards, the result was that neither Coombe Lorraine nor Old Applewood farm received for months any news of the young staff officer. Neither did he yet present himself at either of those homesteads. For, as the ancient saying runs, misfortunes never come alone. The ship in which Hilary sailed for England from the port of Cadiz—for he found no transport at Malaga—The Flower of Kent, as she was called, which appeared to him an excellent omen, was nipped in the bud of her homeward voyage. She met with a nasty French privateer to the southward of Cape Finisterre. In vain she crowded sail, and tried every known resource of seamanship; the Frenchman had the heels of her, and laid her on board at sundown. Lorraine, and two or three old soldiers, battered and going to hospital, had no idea of striking, except in the British way of doing it. But the master and mate knew better, and stopped the hopeless conflict. So the Frenchman sacked and scuttled the ship in the most scientific manner, and, wanting no prisoners, landed the crew on a desolate strand of Gallicia, without any money to save them.

This being their condition, it is the proper thing to leave them so; for nothing is more unwise than to ask, or rather to “institute inquiries,” as to the doings of people who are much too likely to require a loan; therefore return we to the South Down hills.

The wet, ungenial, and stormy summer of 1813 was passing into a wetter, more cheerless, and most tempestuous autumn. On the northern slopes of the light-earthed hills the moss had come over the herbage, and the sweet nibble of the sheep was souring. The huddled trees (which here and there rise just to the level of the ridge, and then seem polled by the sweep of the wind-rush), the bushes also, and the gorse itself, stood, or rather stooped, beneath the burden of perpetual wet. The leaves hung down in a heavy drizzle, unable to detach themselves from the welting of the unripe stalks; the husk of the beech and the key of the ash were shrivelled for want of kernels, and the clusters of the hazel-nut had no sun-varnish on them. The weakness of the summer sun (whether his face was spotted overmuch, or too immaculate), and the humour of clouds, and the tenor of winds, and even the tendency of the earth itself to devolve into eccentricity,—these and a hundred other causes for the present state of the weather were found, according to where they were looked for. On one point only there was no contradiction,—things were not as they ought to be.

Even the Rector of West Lorraine, a man of most cheerful mind and not to be put down by any one, laying to the will of the Lord his failures, and to his own merits all good success,—even the Rev. Struan Hales was scarcely a match for the weather. Sportsmen in those days did not walk in sevenfold armour, for fear of a thorn, or a shower, or a cow-dab; nor skulked they two or three hours in a rick, awaiting the joy of one butchering minute. Fair play for man, and dog, and gun, and fur and feather, was then the rule; and a day of sport meant a day of work, and healthful change, and fine exercise. Therefore, Mr. Hales went forth with his long and heavily-loaded gun, to comfort himself and refresh his mind, whatever the weather might be about, upon six days out of every seven. The hounds had not begun to meet; the rivers were all in flood, of course; the air was so full of rheumatism that no man could crook his arm to write a sermon, or work a concordance. Two sick old women had taken a fancy for pheasant boiled with artichoke;—willy-nilly, the parson found it a momentous duty now to shoot.

And who went with him? There is no such thing as consistency of the human mind; yet well as this glorious truth was known, and bemoaned by every one for his neighbour’s sake—not they, not all the parish, nor even we of the enlarged philosophy, could or can ever be brought to believe our own eyes that it was Bonny! But, in spite of all impossibility, it was; and the explanation requires relapse.

Is it within recollection that the Rector once shot a boy in a hedge? The boy had clomb up into an ivied stump, for purposes of his own, combining espial with criticism. All critics deserve to be shot, if they dare to cross the grand aims of true enterprise. They pepper, and are peppered; but they generally get the best of it. And so did this boy that was shot in the hedge. Being of a crafty order, he dropped, and howled and rolled so piteously, that poor Mr. Hales, although he had fired at a distance of more than fourscore yards from the latent vagabond, cast down his gun in the horror of having slain a fellow-creature. But when he ran up, and turned him over to search for the fatal injury, the boy so vigorously kicked and roared, that the parson had great hopes of him. After some more rolling, a balance was struck; the boy had some blue spots under his skin, and a broad gold guinea to plaster them.

Now this boy was not our Bonny, nor fit in any way to compare with him. But uncivilized minds are very jealous; and next to our Bonny, this boy that was shot was the furthest from civilization of all the boys of the neighbourhood. Therefore, of course, bitter jealousy raged betwixt him and the real outsider. Now the boy that was shot got a new pair of boots from the balance of his guinea, and a new pair of legs to his nether garments, under his mother’s guidance. And to show what he was, and remove all doubts of the genuine expenditure, his father and mother combined and pricked him, with a pin in a stick, to the Sunday-school. Here Madge Hales (the second and strongest daughter of the church) laid hold of him, and converted him into right views of theology, hanging upon sound pot-hooks.

But a far greater mind than Bill Harkles could own was watching this noble experiment. Bonny had always hankered kindly after a knowledge of “pictur-books.” The gifts of nature were hatching inside him, and chipped at the shell of his chickenhood. He had thrashed Bill Harkles in two fair fights, without any aid from his donkey, and he felt that Bill’s mind had no right whatever to be brought up to look down on him.

This boy, therefore, being sneered at by erudite Bill Harkles, knew that his fists would be no fair answer, and retired to his cave. Here he looked over his many pickings, and proudly confessing inferior learning, refreshed himself with superior wealth. And this meditation, having sound foundation, satisfied him till the next market-day—the market-day at Steyning. Bonny had not much business here, but he always liked to look at things; and sometimes he got a good pannier of victuals, and sometimes he got nothing. For the farmers of the better sort put off their dinner till two o’clock, when the prime of the market was over, and then sat down to boiled beef and carrots in the yard of the White Horse Inn, and often did their best in that way.