Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs. R. D. Blackmore
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told me that he even had a sister. Now, won’t I thoroughly give it to him?”
“You must not be angry, Mr. Lorraine, with poor Gregory, because—because Phyllis is such a beautiful girl.”
“Don’t let me hear about beautiful girls! As if—as if there could be any——”
“Good enough for Gregory,” she answered, coming cleverly to his rescue, for he knew that he had gone too far; “but wait till you have seen Cousin Phyllis.”
“There is one thing I shall not defer for the glory of seeing a thousand Miss Catherows, and that is the right that I have to shake hands with my dear friend Gregory’s sister.”
He had leaped from the van some time ago, and now held out his hand (a good strong one, pleasingly veined with cherry-juice), and she, with hospitable readiness, laid her pretty palm therein. He felt that it was a pretty hand, and a soft one, and a hearty one; and he found excuse to hold it longer while he asked a question.
“Now, how did you know my name, if you please, while I made such a stupid mistake about yours?”
“By your bright blue eyes,” she was going to answer, with her native truthfulness; but the gaze of those eyes suggested that the downright truth might be dangerous. Therefore, for once, she met a question with a question warily.
“Was it likely that I should not know you, after all I have heard of you?” This pleased him well in a general way. For Hilary, though too free (if possible) from conceit and arrogance, had his own little share of vanity. Therefore, upon the whole, it was lucky, and showed due attention to his business, that Grower Lovejoy now came up, to know what was doing about the van.
Martin Lovejoy was not a squatter, by seven years stamped into “tenant right,” which means very often landlord’s wrong. Nor was he one of those great tenant farmers who, even then, were beginning to rise, and hold their own with “landed gentry.” His farm was small, when compared with some; but it was outright his own, having descended to him through long-buried generations. So that he was one of the ever-dwindling class of “franklins,” a class that has done good work for England, neither obtaining nor craving thanks.
Old Applewood farm contained altogether about six hundred acres, whereof at least two-thirds lay sweetly in the Vale of Medway, and could show root, stem, or bine against any other land in Kent, and, therefore, any in England. Here was no fear of the heat of the sun or the furious winter’s rages, such a depth of nature underlay the roots of everything. Nothing ever suffered from that poverty of blood which makes trees canker on a shallow soil; and no tree rushed into watery strength (which very soon turns to weakness), through having laid hold upon something that suited only a particular part of it.
And not the trees alone, but all things, grew within that proper usage of a regulated power (yet with more of strength to come up, if it should be called for), which has made our land and country fertile over all the world; receiving submissively the manners and the manure of all nations. This is a thing to be proud of; but the opportunity for such pride was not open to the British mind at the poor old time now dealt with.
Martin Lovejoy knew no more than that the rest of Europe was amassed against our island; and if England meant to be England, every son of that old country must either fight himself or pay. Martin would rather have fought than paid, if he had only happened to be a score and a half years younger.
Hilary Lorraine knew well (when Martin Lovejoy took his hand, and welcomed him to Old Applewood) that here was a man to be relied on, to make good his words and mind. A man of moderate stature, but of sturdy frame, and some dignity; ready to meet everybody pretty much as he was met.
“Glad to see you, sir,” he said; “I have often heard of you, Master Lorraine; it is right kind of you to come down. I hope that you are really hungry, sir.”
“To the last degree,” answered Hilary; “I have been eating off and on, but nothing at all to speak of, in the noble air I have travelled through.”
“Our air has suited you, I see by the colour of your cheeks and eyes. Aha! the difference begins, as I have seen some scores of times, at ten miles out of London. And we are nearly thirty here, sir, from that miserable place. Excuse me, Master Lorraine, I hope I say nothing to offend you.”
“My dear sir, how can you offend me? I hate London heartily. There must be a million people there a great deal too good to live in it. We are counting everybody this year; and I hear that when it is made up there will be a million and a quarter!”
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. There never was such a deal before. And how can there want to be so many now? This numbering of the people is an unholy thing, that leads to plagues. All the parsons around here say that this has brought the comet. And they may show something for it; and they preach of Jerusalem when it was going to be destroyed. They have frightened all our young maids terribly. What is said in London, sir?”
“Scarcely anything, Mr. Lovejoy: scarcely anything at all. We only see him every now and then, because of the smoke between us. And when we see him, we have always got our own work to attend to.”
“Wonderful, wonderful!” answered the Grower; “who can make out them Londoners? About their business they would go, if Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were all swallowed up in front of them. For that I like them. I like a man—but come in to our little supper, sir.”
CHAPTER XIV.
BEAUTIES OF THE COUNTRY.
The next day was Sunday; and Hilary (having brought a small bag of clothes with him) spent a good deal of the early time in attending to his adornment. For this he had many good reasons to give, if only he had thought about them; but the only self-examination that occurred to him was at the looking-glass. Here he beheld himself looking clean and bright, as he always did look; and yet he was not quite satisfied (as he ought to have been) with his countenance. “There is room for a lot of improvement,” he exclaimed at himself, quite bitterly: “how coarse, and how low, I begin to look! But there is not a line in her face that could be changed without spoiling it. There again! Hairs, hairs, coming almost everywhere! Beautiful girls have none of that stuff. How they must despise us! All their hair is ornamental, and ours comes so disgracefully!”
When he had no one else to talk to, Hilary always talked to himself. He always believed that he knew himself better than anybody else could know him. And so he had a right to do; and so he must have done just now, if doubtful watch of himself and great shaking of his head could help him.
At last he began to be fit to go down, according to his own ideas, though not at all sure that he might not have managed to touch himself up just a little bit more—which might make all the difference. He thought that he looked pretty well; but still he would have liked to ask Gregory before it was too late to make any change, and the beautiful eyes fell upon him. But Gregory, and all the rest, were waiting for him in the breakfast-room; and no one allowed him to suspect how much he had tried their patience.
Young Lovejoy showed a great deal of skill in keeping Lorraine to the other side of the table from Phyllis Catherow; and Hilary was well content to sit at the side of Mabel. Phyllis, in his opinion, was a beautiful girl enough, and clever in her way, and lively; but “lovely” was the only word to be used at all about Mabel. And she asked him to have just a spoonful of honey, and to share a pat of butter with her, in such a voice, and with such a look, that if she had said, “Here are two ounces of cold-drawn castor oil—if you take one, I’ll take the other,” he must have opened his mouth for it.
So they went on; and neither knew the deadly sin they were dropping to—that deadly sin of loving when the level and entire landscape of two lives are different.
Through the