Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

by R. D. Blackmore

For, on this very day, there had been the great Midsummer haul at Shoreham. It was the old custom of the place; but even custom must follow the tides, and the top of the summer spring-tides (when the fish are always liveliest) happened, for the year 1811, to come on the 18th day of June. Bonny for weeks had been looking forward and now before him lay his reward!

After many sweet and bitter uses of adversity, this boy, at an early age, had caught the tail of prudence. It had been to his heart at first, a friendly and a native thing, to feast to the full (when he got the chance) and go empty away till it came again. But now, being grown to riper years, and, after much consideration, declared to be at least twelve years old by the only pork-butcher in Steyning, Bonny began to know what was what, and to salt a good deal of his offal.

For this wise process he now could find a greater call than usual; because, through the heat of the day, he had stuck to his first and firmly-grounded principle—never to refuse refuse. So that many other fine things were mingled, jumbled, and almost churned, among the sundry importations of the flowing tide and net. All these, now, he well delivered (so far as sappy limbs could do it) upon a cleanish piece of ground, well accustomed to such favours. Then Bonny stood back, with his hands on his knees, and Jack spread his nose at some of it.

Loaves of genuine wheaten bread were getting scarce already. Three or four bad harvests, following long arrears of discontent, and hanging on the heavy arm of desperate taxation, kept the country, and the farmers, and the people that must be fed, in such a condition that we (who cannot be now content with anything) deserve no blame when we smack our lips in our dainty contempt of our grandfathers.

Bonny was always good to Jack, according to the way they had of looking at one another; and so, of the choicest spoils, he gave him a half-peck loaf, of a fibre such as they seldom softened their teeth with. Jack preferred this to any clover, even when that luxury could be won by clever stealing; and now he trotted away with his loaf to the nearest stump where backing-power against his strong jaws could be got. Here he laid his loaf against the stump, and went a little way back to think about it, and to be sure that every atom was for him. Then, without scruple or time to spare, he tucked up his lips, and began in a hurry to make a bold dash for the heart of it.

“More haste, less speed,” is a proverb that seems, at first sight, one of the last that need be impressed upon a donkey. Yet, in the present instance, Jack should have spared himself time to study it; for in less than a moment he ran up to Bonny, with his wide mouth at its widest, snorting with pain, and much yearning to bellow, but by the position disabled. There was something stuck fast in the roof of his mouth, in a groove of the veiny black arches; and work as he might with his wounded tongue, he was only driving it further in. His great black eyes, as he gasped with fright, and the piteous whine of his quivering nose, and his way altogether so scared poor Bonny, that the chances were he would run away. And so, no doubt, he must have done (being but a little boy as yet), if it had not chanced that a flash of something caught his quick eye suddenly, something richly shining in the cavern of the donkey’s mouth.

This was enough, of course, for Bonny. His instinct of scratching, and digging, and hiding was up and at work in a moment. He thrust his brown hand between Jack’s great jaws, and drew it back quickly enough to escape the snap of their glad reunion. And in his hand was something which he had drawn from the pouch of the net that day, but scarcely stopped to look at twice, in the huddle of weeds and the sweeping. It had lain among many fine gifts of the sea—skates, and dog-fish, sea-devils, sting-rays, thorn-backs, inky cuttles, and scollops, cockles, whelks, green crabs, jelly-fish, and everything else that makes fishermen swear, and then grin, and then spit on their palms again. Afterwards in Bonny’s sack it had lain with manifold boons of the life-giving earth, extracted from her motherly feeling by one or two good butchers.

Bonny made no bones of this. Fish, flesh, fowl, or stale red-herring—he welcomed all the works of charity with a charitable nose, and fingers not of the nicest. So that his judgment could scarcely have been “prejudicially affected by any preconceived opinion”—as our purest writers love to say—when he dropped this thing, and smelled his thumb, and cried, “Lord, how it makes my hands itch!”

After such a strong expression, what can we have to say to him? It is the privilege of our period to put under our feet whatever we would rather not face out. At the same time, to pretend to love it, and lift it by education. Nevertheless, one may try to doubt whether Bonny’s grandchildren (if he ever presumed to have any) thrive on the lesson, as well as he did on the loaf, of charity.