Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

by R. D. Blackmore

“Now don’t make fools of yourselves,” he shouted; “you won’t be there quite so soon as you think.” They laughed him to scorn; but even before they got to Tonbridge a snowstorm came behind them, and quite smothered all their shoulders up, and grizzled the roots of the whiskers of the only one who had any. This was Counsellor Gregory, and the other two laughed at him, and vowed that his wig must have slipped down there, and then flicked him with pocket-handkerchiefs.

Counsellor Gregory took no heed. He was wonderfully staid and sapient now; and the day when he had played at darts—if cross-examination could have fetched it up—would have been to his expanded mind a painful remembrance of All-fools’ day. He stuck to his circuit, and cultivated the art of circuitous language. And being a sound and diligent lawyer, of good face and temper, he was able already to pay a clerk, who carried his bag and cleaned his boots.

But any client who had seen him now driving two spirited horses actually in tandem process, and sitting as if he were on the King’s Bench, would have met him at the gate with a “quo warranto,” if not a “quousque tandem?” He was well aware of this; his conscience told him that a firm of attorneys abode in the chief street of Tonbridge, and in spite of the snow either partner or clerk would almost be sure to be out at the door. He would not have been the Grower’s son if he had tried to circumvent them; so he drove by their door, and the senior partner took off his hat to Mabel, and said that Gregory was a most rising young man.

Mabel sat in the middle, of course, with a brother on either side to break the cold wind, and keep off the snow. She laughed at the weather at first; but soon the weather had the laugh of her. According to their own ideas, they were to put up for the night at the fine old inn at Horsham, and make their way thence to Coombe Lorraine in time for dinner on the Saturday. For Mabel of course was to be a bridesmaid, the Rector’s three daughters, and the Colonel’s two, completing the necessary six. But it soon became clear that the Grower knew more about roads and weather than the counsellor and the sailor did. By the time these eager travellers passed Penshurst and the home of the Sidneys, the road was some eight or nine inches deep with soft new-fallen snow. They had wisely set forth with a two-wheeled carriage, strong and not easily knocked out of gear—no other, in fact, than the old yellow gig disdained by Mrs. Lovejoy. For the look of it they cared not one jot; anything was good enough for such weather; and a couple of handsome and powerful horses would carry off a great deal worse than that; even if they had thought of it. But they never gave one thought to the matter. Except that the counsellor was a little tamed by “the law and its ramifications,” they all took after their father about the esse v. the videri. Nevertheless, they all got snowed up for the Friday night at East Grinstead, instead of getting on to Horsham.

For the further they got away from home, the more they managed to lose their way. The hedges and the ditches were all as one; the guide-posts were buried long ago; instead of the proper finger and thumb, great fists and bellies of drift, now and then, stuck out to stop the traveller. “No thoroughfare here” in great letters of ivy—the ivy that hangs in such deep relief, as if itself relieved by snow—and “Trespassers beware” from an alder, perhaps overhanging a swamp, where, if the snow-crust were once cut through a poor man could only toss up his arms, and go down and be no more heard of.

And now that another heavy storm was at it (black behind them, and white in front), the horses asked for nothing better than to be left to find their way. They threw up their forelocks, and jerked their noses, and rattled their rings, and expressed their ribs, and fingered away at the snow with their feet; meaning that their own heads were the best, if they could only have them. So the counsellor let them have their heads, for the evening dusk was gathering; and the leader turned round to the wheeler, and they had many words about it. And then they struck off at a merry trot, having both been down that road before, and supped well at the end of it. Foreseeing the like delight, with this keen weather to enhance it, they put their feet out at a tidy stretch, scuffling one another’s snowballs; and by the time of candle-lighting, landed their three inferior bipeds at the “Green Man,” at East Grinstead.

On the following day they were still worse off, for although it did not snow again, they got into an unknown country without any landmarks; and the cold growing more and more severe, they resolved to follow the Brighton road, if ever they should find it. But the Brighton coaches were taken off, and the road so entirely stopped, that they must have crossed without perceiving it. And both the nags growing very tired, and their own eyes dazed with so much white, they had made up their minds to build themselves a snow-house like the Esquimaux, when the sailor spied something in the distance, tall and white against the setting sun, which proved to be Horsham spire. With difficulty they reached the town by starlight, and all pretty well frost-bitten; and there they were obliged to spend the Sunday, not only for their horses’ sakes, but equally for their own poor selves.

To finish a bitter and tedious journey, they started from Horsham on the Monday morning, as soon as the frozen-out sun appeared; and although the travelling was wonderfully bad, they fetched to West Grinstead by twelve o’clock, and found good provender for man and beast. After an hour’s halt, and a peck of beans to keep the cold out of the horses’ stomachs, and a glass of cherry-brandy to do the like for their own, and a visit to the blacksmith (to fetch up the cogs of the shoes, and repair the springs), all set off again in the best of spirits, and vowing never to be beaten. But, labour as they might, the sun had set ere they got to Steyning; and under the slide of the hills, of course, they found the drift grow deeper; so that by the time they were come to the long loose street of West Lorraine, almost every soul therein, having regard to the weather, was tucked up snugly under the counterpane. With the weary leader stooping chin to knee to rub off icicles, and the powerful wheeler tramping sedately with his withers down and his crupper up, these three bold travellers, Gregory, Mabel, and Charles Lovejoy, sitting abreast in the yellow gig, passed silently through the deep silence of snow; and not even a boy beheld them, until they came to a place where red light streamed from an opening upon the lane, and cast on the snow the shadow of a tall man leaning on a gate. Inside the gate was a square of bright embers, and a man in white stockings uncommonly busy.