Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs. R. D. Blackmore
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be stiff, the sepals of the calyx moist and crisp, the neck will show a narrow band of varnish, where the dew could find no hold, the belly of the fruit will be sleek and gentle, firm however to accept its fate; but the back that has dealt with the dew, and the sides where the colour of the back slopes downward, upon them such a gloss of cold and diamond chastity will lie, that the human lips get out of patience with the eyes in no time.
Everybody was so busy with the way the work went on, all for their very life pretending scarcely to have time to breathe, whenever the master looked at them, that the “berries” were picked, and packed, and started, long before the sun grew hot—started on the road to London, the cormorant of the universe.
Hilary helped with all his heart; enjoying it, with that triumphant entrance into any novelty, which always truly distinguished him. He carried his punnets, and kept his row (as soon as they had shown him how), as well as the very best of them, dividing his fruit into firsts, and seconds, and keeping the “toppers” separate. Of course he broke off many trusses entire—ripe fruit, green fruit, and barren blossom—until he learned how to “meet his nails,” and how much drag to put on the stalks. A clever fellow learns all that from an hour or two of practice.
But one thing there is which the cleverest fellows can learn by no experience—how to carry the head for hours upside down without hurting it. How to make the brain so hard that it cannot shift; or else so soft that the top is as good as the bottom. The question is one for a great physician; who, to understand it, must keep his row, and pick by the job. Then let him say if he has learned how to explain the well-established fact that a woman can pick twice as fast as a man; for who could assent to the reason assigned by one of themselves magnanimously—that “women was generally always used to keep their heads turned upside down”?
Leaving such speculative inquiries to go on for ever, Hilary (who knew better than to say a word about them) came in for his breakfast at six o’clock, and ate it as thoroughly as he had earned it. The master, a man of true Kentish fibre, obstinate, placable, hearty, and dry, made known to his wife and to everybody else his present opinion of Hilary. Martin Lovejoy never swore. He never went beyond “God knows,” or “The Lord in heaven look down on us,” or some other good exclamation, sanctioned by the parish vicar. As a general rule—proved by many exceptions—the Kentish men seldom swear very hard.
“Heart alive, young sir!” he exclaimed, piling Hilary’s plate, as he spoke, with the jellied delights of cold pigeon pie; “you have been the best man of the morning. Ah! don’t you be in a hurry, good wife. No tea or coffee our way, thank ye. No, nor any cask-wash. We’ve worked a little too hard for that. Mabel, whatever has come to you, that you keep always out of the way so? And I never saw you anigh the baskets. Now don’t pipe your eye, child. I’m not going to scold thee, if thou didst have a little lie-a-bed. Here, take this here key, child. A wink’s as good as a nod—ah, she knows pretty well what to do with it.”
For Mabel was glad to turn away as quickly as possible, after a little well-managed curtsey to Hilary, whom she had not seen for the morning—certainly through no fault of his—and without a word she went to the dresser (for in these busy times they took their breakfast wisely in the kitchen), and from the wooden crook unhung a quaint little jug, with a narrow neck and a silver lip and handle. With this she set off down a quiet passage and some steps to a snug stone cellar, where the choicest of the home-brewed ale was kept. Although it lay well beneath the level of the ground, and no ray of sun pierced the wired lattice, the careful mistress of the house had the barrels swathed closely with wetted sacks. The girl, with her neat frock gathered up—for she always was cleanliness itself—went carefully to the corner cask, and lifted the wet sack back from the head, lest any dirty water should have the chance of dripping upon her sleeve. Then she turned the tap, and a thin bright thread ran out of it sideways, being checked by some hops in the tube perhaps, or want of air at the vent-peg. But Mabel held the jug with all patience, although her hand shook just a little.
“Now,” said the Grower, to Hilary, when she came back and placed the jug at her father’s side without a word, “Master Lorraine, let me pour you a drop, not to be matched in Kent; nor yet in all England, I do believe. Home-grown barley, and home-grown hops, and the soft water out of the brook that has taken the air of the sky for seven mile or more, without a drain anigh it. Ah, those brewers can never do that! They must buy their malt, and their musty hops, and pump up their water, and boil it down, to get the flint-stones out of it. But our brook hath cast the flint-stones and the other pebbles all along. That makes a sight of difference, sir. Every water is full of stones, and if you pump it up from the spring, the stones be all alive in it. But let it run seven miles or eight, and then it is fit to brew with.”
“Ah, to be sure. Now that explains a great many things I never understood.” Hilary would have swallowed a camel, rather than argue, at this moment.
“Young sir, just let me prove it to you. Just see the colour it runs out, and the way the head goes creaming! Lord, ha’ mercy, if she has gived us a glass, or a stag’s horn from the mantelpiece! Why, Mabel, child—Mabel, art thou gone? Why nobody wants to poison thee.”
“I think, sir, I saw your daughter go round the corner by the warming-pan, this side of where the broom hangs.”
“Then all I can say is, she is daft. She worked very hard last week, poor thing. And yesterday she was a-moving always, when the Lord’s day bids us rest. I must beg your pardon, Master Lorraine. Our Kentish maids always look after our guests. When I was at school, I read in the grammar that the moon always managed the women; but now I do believe it is the comet. Let the comet come, say I. When the markets are so bad, I feel that I am ready to face almost anything. And now we must drink from the jug, I reckon!”
Hilary saw that his host was vexed; but he felt quite certain in his own heart that Mabel could never be so rude, or show such resentment of any little excess of honey on his part, as to go away in that sour earnest, and make the two of them angry. A dozen things might have happened to upset her, or turn her a little askew; and her own father ought to know her better than he seemed to do. And lo, ere the Grower had quite finished grumbling, Mabel reached over his shoulder unseen, and set his own pet glass before him; and then round Hilary’s side she slid, without ever coming too nigh him, and the glass of honour of the house, cut in countless facets, twinkled, like the Pleiads, at him!
“Adorn me!” said the Grower; “now I call that a true good girl! Girls were always made, Master Lorraine, for the good of those around them. If anybody treats them any way else, they come to nothing afterwards. Mabel, dear, give me a kiss. You deserve it; and there it is for you. Now be off, like a good maid, and see what they be at in Vale Orchard, while Master Lorraine and I think a bit over these here two glasses.”
The rest of the day was much too busy, and too much crowded with sharp eyes, for any fair chance of love-making. For they all set to at the cherry-trees, with ladders, crooks, and hanging baskets, and light boys to scale the more difficult antlers, strip them, and drop upon feather-beds. And though the sun broke hot and bright through the dew-cloud of the morning, and quickly drank the beaded freshness off the face of herb and tree, yet they picked, and piled, and packed (according to their sort and size) the long-stalked dancers that fringe the bough, and glance in the sun so ruddily.
“You must have had a deal too much of this,” young Lovejoy said to Hilary, when the noon-day meal had been spread forth, and dealt with, in a patch of fern near a breezy clump: “if I had worked as you have done, my fingers would scarcely have been fit for a quill, this side of next Hilary term.”
“My dear fellow, be not, I pray you, so violently facetious. The brain, when outraged, takes longer to resume its functions than the fingers do. Moreover, I trust that my fingers will hold something nobler than a quill, ere the period of my namesake.”
“Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt; I hope you will do nothing of the sort;” said Gregory, with unwitting and unprecedented poetry.
“Lovejoy, my wits are unequal altogether to this encounter. The brilliancy of your native soil has burst out so upon you, that I must go back to the Southdown hills before I dare point a dart with you. Nevertheless, on your native soil,