The British army now set forth on its grand career of victory, with an entirely new set of breeches. Interception of convoys, and other adverse circumstances, had kept our heroes from having any money, although they had new pockets. And the British Government, with keen insight into nature, had insisted upon it, in the last contract, that the pockets should be all four inches wide. With this the soldiers were delighted—for all the very bravest men are boys—and they put their knuckles into their pockets, and felt what a lot of money they would hold. And though the money did not come, there was the delightful readiness for it. It might come any day, for all they knew: and what fools they must have looked, if their pockets would not hold it! In short, these men laid on their legs, to march with empty pockets; and march they did, as history shows, all the better for not having sixpence.
Though Hilary was so heartily liked, both in his own regiment and by the Staff, time (which had failed for his trial) also failed for pity of the issue. The General had desired that as little as possible should be said; and even if any one had wished to argue, the hurry and bustle would have stopped his mouth. Lorraine’s old comrades were far in advance; and the Staff, like a shuttle, was darting about; and the hills and the valleys were clapping their hands to the happy accompaniment of the drum.
Casting by every outward sign that he ever had been a soldier, Hilary Lorraine set forth on his sad retreat from this fine advance; afoot, and bearing on his shoulder a canvas bag on a truncheon of olive. He would not accept any knapsack, pouch, or soldier’s usage of any kind. He had lost all right to that, being now but a shattered young gentleman on his way home.
However, in one way he showed good sense. By losing such a heap of the public money, he had learned to look a little better after his own; so he drew every farthing that he could get of his father’s cash and his grandmother’s, but scorned to accept the arrears of his pay; because he could not get them.
To a man of old, or of middle age, it has become (or it ought to become), a matter of very small account that he has thrown away his life. He has seen so many who have done the like (through indolence, pride, bad temper, reserve, timidity, or fools’ confidence—into which the most timid men generally rush), that he knows himself now to be a fine example, instead of standing forth as a very unpleasant exception to the rule. And now, if he takes it altogether, he finds many fellows who have done much worse, and seem all the better for it. Has he missed an appointment! They cut down the salary. Did he bang his back-door on a rising man? Well, the man, since he rose, has forgotten his hosts. Has he married a shrew? She looks after his kitchen. Remembering and reflecting thus, almost any good man must refuse to be called, without something to show for it, a bigger fool than his neighbours.
But a young man is not yet late enough to know what human life is. He is sure that he sees by foresight all the things which, as they pass us, leave so little time for insight; and of which the only true view is calm and pleasant retrospect. And then, like some high-stepping colt brought suddenly on his knees, to a sense of long-worn granite, he flounders about in amazement, so, that if the fatal damage is not done to him, he does it.
Lorraine was not one of those who cry, as the poets of all present ages do—“Let the world stand still, until I get on.” Nevertheless, he was greatly downcast to find his own little world so early brought to a sudden stand-still. And it seems to be sadly true that the more of versatile quickness a man has in him, the less there remains to expect of him in the way of pith and substance. But Hilary now was in no condition to go into any philosophies. He made up his mind to walk down to the sea, and take ship at some good seaport; and having been pleased at Malaga by the kind quiet ways of the people, and knowing the port to be unobserved by French and American cruisers, he thought that he might as well try his luck once more in that direction.
Swift of foot as he was, and lightsome when his heart was toward, he did not get along very fast on his penitential journey. So that it was the ninth day, or the tenth, from his being turned out of the army, when he came once more to the “Bridge of Echoes,” henceforth his “Bridge of Sighs” for ever. Here he stopped and ate his supper, for his appetite was good again; and then he looked up and down the Zujar, and said to himself what a fool he was. For lo! where Claudia had clung to him trembling over a fearful abyss of torrent (as it seemed by moonlight), there now was no more than nine inches of water gliding along very pleasantly. These Spanish waters were out of his knowledge, as much as the Spanish ladies were; but though the springs might have been much higher a fortnight ago than they were now, Hilary could not help thinking that Claudia, instead of fainting on the verge, might have jumped over, at any moment, without spraining her very neat ankles. And then he remembered that it was this same beautiful and romantic girl who had proved to the satisfaction of the Spanish Colonel that this was the only Zujar ford, for that river merged its name where it joined the longer and larger Guadalmez. Upon this question there long had arisen a hopeful dilemma in Hilary’s mind, which stated itself in this form. If this were the true Zujar ford, then surely the Spaniards, the natives of the country, were bound to apprise General Hill thereof. If this were not the Zujar ford, then the Spaniards were liable for the treasure beyond this place, and as far as the true one. The latter was of course the stronger horn of the dilemma; but unluckily there arose against it a mighty monster of fact, quite strong enough to take even the Minotaur by the horns. Suppose the brave Spaniards to owe the money, it was impossible to suppose that they could pay it.
This reflection gave Hilary such a pain in his side that he straightway dropped it. And beholding the vivid summer sky beginning to darken into deeper blue, and the juts of the mountainous places preparing to throw light and shadow length-wise, and the simmering of the sun-heat sinking into white mists of the vales, he made up his mind to put best foot foremost, and sleep at Monte Argento. For he felt quite sure of the goodwill and sympathy of that pure hidalgo, the noble Count of Zamora; and from the young Donnas he might learn something about his misadventure. He could not bring himself to believe that Claudia had been privy to the dastardly outrage upon himself. His nature was too frank and open to foster such mean ideas. Young ladies were the best and sweetest, the kindest and the largest-hearted, of created beings. So they were, and so they are; but all rules have exceptions.
Hilary, as he walked up the hill (down which he had ridden so gallantly, scarcely more than a fortnight since), was touched with many thinkings. The fall of the sun (which falls and rises over us so magnanimously) had that power upon his body which it has on all things. The sun was going; he had done his work, and was tired of looking at people: mount as you might, the sun was sinking, and disdained all shadows and oblation of memorial.
Through the growth of darkness thus, and the urgency of froward trees (that could not fold their arms and go to sleep without some rustling), and all the many quiet sounds that nurse the repose of evening, Lorraine came to the heavy gates that had once secured the money. The porter knew him, and was glad to let in the young British officer, whose dollars leaping right and left had made him many household friends. But in the hall the old steward met him, and with many grave inclinations of his head and body, mourned that he could not receive the illustrious Senhor.
“There is in the castle no one now, but my noble mistress the Donna Camilla. His Excellence the Count is away, far from home at the wars.”
“And the young Lady Claudia, where is she? I beg your pardon, steward, if I ought not to ask the question.”
For the ancient steward had turned away at the sound of Donna Claudia’s name; and pretending to be very deaf, began to trim a lamp or two.
“Will the Donna Camilla permit me to see her for one minute, or two perhaps? Her father is from home; but you, Senhor steward, know what is correct, and thus will act.”
Hilary had not been so frightened at his own temerity in the deadly breach of Badajos, as now when he felt himself softly slipping a brace of humble English guineas into this lofty Spaniard’s palm. The steward, without knowing what he was about, except that he was trimming a very stubborn lamp, felt with his thumb that there must be a brace, and with contemptuous indignation let them slide into his pocket.
“Senhor, I will do only what is right. I am of fifty years almost in this noble family. I am trusted, as I deserve. What I do is what the Count himself would do. But a very sad thing has happened. We are obliged now to be most careful. The Senhor knows what the ladies are?”
“Senhor steward, that is the very thing that I never do know. You know them well. But alas! I do not.”
“Alas! I do,” said the steward, panting, and longing to pour forth experience; but he saw some women peeping down stairs, and took the upper hand of them. “Senhor, it is not worth the knowing. Our affairs are loftier. Go back, all you women, and prepare for bed. Have you not had your supper? Now, Senhor, in here for a minute, if you please; patience passeth all things.”
But Hilary’s patience itself was passed, as he waited in this little ante-room, ere the steward returned with the Donna Camilla, and, with a low bow, showed her in, and posted himself in a corner. She was dressed in pure white, which Hilary knew to be the mourning costume of the family.
The hand which the young Andalusian lady offered was cold and trembling, and her aspect and manner were timid and abashed.
“Begone!” she cried to the worthy steward, with a sudden indignation, which perhaps relieved her. “What now shall I do?” said the steward to himself, with one hand spread upon his silver beard; “is this one also to run away?”
“Begone!” said Camilla to him once more, looking so grand that he could only go; and then quietly bolting the old gentleman out. After which she returned to Hilary.
“Senhor Captain, I am very sorry to offer you any scenes of force. You have had too many from our family.”
“I do not understand you, Senhorita. From your family I have received nothing but kindness, hospitality, and love.”
“Alas, Senhor! and heavy blows. Our proverb is, ‘Love leads to blows;’ and this was our return to you. But she is of our family no more.”
“I am at a loss. It is my stupidity. I do not know at all what is meant.
“In sincerity, the cavalier has no suspicion who smote down and robbed him?”
“In sincerity, the cavalier knows not: although he would be very glad to know.”
“Is it possible? Oh the dark treachery! It was my cousin who struck you down; my sister who betrayed you.”
“Ah, well!” said Lorraine, in a moment, seeing how she trembled for his words, and how terribly she felt the shame; “if it be so, I am still in her debt. She saved my life once, and she spared it again. Now, as you see, I am none the worse. The only loser is the British Government, which can well afford to pay.”
“It is not so. The loss is ours, of honour, faith, and gratitude.”
“I pray you not to take it so. Everybody knows that the fault was mine. And whatever has happened only served me right.”
“It served you right for trusting us! It is too true. It is a bitter saying. My father mourns, and I mourn. She never more will be his daughter, and never more my sister.”
“I pray you,” said Hilary, taking her hand, as she turned away to control herself—“I pray you, Donna Camilla, to look at this little matter sensibly. I now understand the whole of it. Your sister is of very warm and strong patriotic sentiments. She felt that this money would do more good, as the property of the partidas, than as the pay of the British troops. And so she exerted herself to get it. All good Spaniards would have thought the same.”
“She exerted herself to disgrace herself, and to disgrace her family. The money is not among the partidas, but all in the bags of her Cousin Alcides, whom she has married without dispensation, and with her father’s sanction forged. Can you make the best of that, Senhor?”
Hilary certainly could not make anything very good out of this. And cheerful though his nature was, and tolerably magnanimous, he could not be expected to enjoy the treatment he had met with. To be knocked down and robbed was bad enough; to be disgraced was a great deal worse; but to be cut out by a rival, betrayed into his power, and made to pay for his wedding with trust-money belonging to poor soldiers,—all this was enough to embitter even the sweet and kind nature of young Lorraine. Therefore his face was unlike itself, as he turned it away from the young Spanish lady, being much taken up with his own troubles, and not yet ready to make light of them.
“Will you not speak to me, Senhor? I am not in any way guilty of this. I would have surrendered the whole of my life——”
“I pray you to pardon me,” Hilary answered. “I am not accustomed to this sort of thing. Where are they now? Can I follow them?”
“Even a Spaniard could not find them. My brothers would not attempt it. Alcides knows every in and out. He has hidden his prize in the mountains of the north.”
“If that is so, I can only hasten to say farewell to the Spanish land.”
“To go away, and to never come back! Is it possible that you could do that?”
“It may be a bitter thing; but I must try. I am now on my way to Malaga. Being discharged from the British army, I have only to find my own way home.”
“It cannot be; it never can be! Our officers lose a mule’s-load of money, or spend it at cards; and we keep them still. Senhor Captain, you must have made some mistake. They never could discharge you!”
“If there has been any mistake,” said Hilary, regaining his sweet smile, with his sense of humour, “it is on their part, not on mine. Discharged I am; and the British army, as well as the Spanish cause, must do their best to get on without me.”
“Saints of heaven! And you will go, and never come back any more?”
“With the help of the saints, that is my hope. What other hope is left to me?”
Camilla de Montalvan did not answer this question with her lips, but more than answered it with her eyes. She fell back suddenly, as if with terror, into a great blue velvet chair, and her black tresses lay on her snowy arms, although her shapely neck reclined. Then with a gentle sigh, as if recovering from a troubled dream, she raised her eyes to Hilary’s, and let them dwell there long enough to make him wonder where he was. And he saw that he had but to speak the word to become the owner of grace and beauty, wealth, and rank in the Spanish army, and (at least for a time) true love.
But, alas! a burned child dreads the fire. There still was a bump on Lorraine’s head from the staff of Don Alcides; and Camilla’s eyes were too like Claudia’s to be trusted all at once. Moreover, Hilary thought of Mabel, of all her goodness, and proven trust; and Spanish ladies, though they might be queens, had no temptation for him now. And perhaps he thought—as quick men think of little things unpleasantly—“I do not want a wife whose eyes will always be deeper than my own.” And so he resolved to be off as soon as it could be done politely.
Camilla, having been disappointed more than once of love’s reply, clearly saw what was going on, and called her pride to the rescue. The cavalier should not say farewell to her; she would say it to the cavalier. Also, she would let him know one thing.
“If you must leave us, Captain Lorraine, and return to your native land, you will at least permit me to do what my father would have done if he were at home—to send you with escort to Malaga. The roads are dangerous. You must not go alone.”
“I thank you. I am scarcely worth robbing now. I can sing in the presence of the bandit.”
“You will grant me this last favour, I am sure, if I tell you one thing. It was not that wicked Claudia, who drew the iron from your wound.”
“It was not the Donna Claudia! To whom then do I owe my life?”
“Can you not, by any means, endeavour to conjecture?”
“How glad I am?” he answered, as he kissed her cold and trembling hand—“the lady to whom I owe my life is gentle, good, and truthful.”
“There is no debt of life, Senhor. But would it have grieved you, now, if Claudia had done it? Then be assured she did not do it. Her manner never was to do anything good to anyone. And yet—how wonderful are things!—everybody loved her. It is no good to be good, I fear. Pedro, you are at the door, then, are you? You have taken care to hear everything. Go order a repast for the cavalier of the best we have, and men and horses to conduct him to Malaga. Be quick, I say, and show no hesitation.” At her urgent words the steward went, yet grumbling and reluctant, and glancing over his shoulder all the way along the passage. “How that old man amuses me!” she continued to the wondering Hilary, who had never dreamed that she could speak sharply; “ever since my sister’s disgrace, he thinks that his duty is to watch me! Ah! what am I to be watched for?”
“Because,” said Hilary, “there is no Spaniard who would not long to steal the beautiful young Donna.”
“No Spaniard shall ever do that. But haste; you are in such hurry for the sunny land of Anglia.”
“I do not understand the Senhorita. Why should I hurry to my great disgrace? I shall never hear the last of the money I have lost.”
“’Tis all money, money, money, in the noble England. But the friends of the Captain need not mourn; for the money was not his, nor theirs.”
This grandly philosophical, and most truly Spanish, view of the case destroyed poor Hilary’s last fond hope of any sense of a debt of honour, on the part of the Montalvans. If the money lost had been Hilary’s own, the Count of Zamora (all compact of chivalry and rectitude) might have discovered that he was bound to redeem his daughter’s robbery. But as it stood, there was no such chance. Private honour is a mountain rill that does not always lead to any lake of public honesty. All Spaniards would bow to the will of the Lord, that British guineas should slip into Spanish hands so providentially.
“We do not take things just so,” said young Lorraine quite sadly. “I must go home and restore the money. Donna Camilla, I must say farewell.”
“You will come again when you are restored? When you have proved that you did not take the money for yourself, Senhor, you will remember your Spanish friends?”
“I never shall forget my Spanish friends. To you I owe my life, and hold it (as long as I hold it) at your command.”
“It is generously said, Senhor. Generosity always makes me weep. And so, farewell.”
In all the British army—then a walking wood of British oak, without a yard of sapling—there was no bit of better stuff than the five feet and a quarter (allowing for his good game leg) of Major, by this time Colonel Clumps. This officer knew what he had to do, and he made a point of doing it. Being short of imagination, he despised that foolish gift, and marvelled over and over again at others for laughing so at nothing. That whimsical tickling of the veins of thought, which some people give so and some receive (with equal delight on either side), humour, or wit, or whatever it is, to Colonel Clumps was a vicious thing. Everything must be either true or false. If it were true, who could laugh at the truth? If it were false, who should laugh at a falsehood?
Many a good man has reasoned thus, reducing laughter under law, and himself thenceforth abandoned by that lawless element. Colonel Clumps had always taken solid views of everything, and the longer he lived in the world the less he felt inclined to laugh at it. But, that laughter might not be robbed of all its dues and royalties, just nature had provided that, as the Colonel would not laugh at the world, the world should laugh at the Colonel. He had been the subject of more bad jokes, one-sided pleasantries, and heartless hoaxes, than any other man in the army; with the usual result that now he scarcely ever believed the truth, while he still retained, for the pleasure of his friends, a tempting stock of his native confidence in error. So it came to pass that when Colonel Clumps (after the battle of Vittoria, in which he had shown conspicuous valour) was told of poor Hilary’s sad disgrace, he was a great deal too clever and astute to believe a single word of it.
“It is ludicrous, perfectly ludicrous!” he said, that being the strongest adjective he knew to express pure impossibility. “A gallant young fellow to be cashiered without even a court-martial! How dare you tell me such a thing, sir? I am not a man to be rough-ridden. Nobody ever has imposed on me. And the boy is almost a sort of cousin of my own. The first family in the kingdom, sir.”
The colonel flew into so great a rage, twisting his white hair, and stamping his lame heel, that the officer who had brought the news, being one of his own subalterns, wisely retired into doubts about it, and hinted that nobody knew the reason, and therefore that it could not be true.
“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.
Of this great “ordinary”—great at any rate as regards consumption—Farmer Gates, the churchwarden, was by ancestral right the chairman; but for several market-days the vice-presidency had been vacant. A hot competition had raged, and all Steyning had thrilled with high commotion about the succession to the knife and fork at the bottom of the table; until it was announced amid general applause that Bottler was elected. It was a proud day for this good pigman, and perhaps a still prouder one for Bonny, when the new vice-president was inducted into the Windsor chair at the foot of the long and ancient table; and it marked the turning-point in the life of more than one then present.
The vice-president’s cart was in the shed close by, and on the front lade sat Bonny, sniffing the beauty of the “silver-side,” and the luscious suggestions of the marrow-bone. Polly longed fiercely to be up there with him; but her mother’s stern sense of decorum forbade; the pretty Miss Bottlers would be toasted after dinner,—and was one to be spied in a pig-cart? No sooner was the cloth removed, than the chairman proposed, in most feeling and eloquent language, the health of his new colleague. And now it was Bottler’s reply which created a grand revolution in Steyning. With graceful modesty he ascribed his present proud position, the realization of his fondest hopes, neither to his well-known integrity, industry, strict attention to business, nor even the quality of his bacon. All these things, of course, contributed; but “what was the grand element of his unparalleled success in life?” A cry of “white stockings!” from the Bramber pig-sticker was sternly suppressed, and the man kicked out. “The grand element of his success in life was his classical education!”
Nobody knowing what was meant by this, thunders of applause ensued; until it was whispered from cup to cup that Bottler, when he was six years old, had been three months at the Grammar School. He might have forgotten every word he had learned, but any one might see that it was dung dug in. So a dozen of the farmers resolved at once to have their children Latined; and Bonny in his inmost heart aspired to some education. What was the first step to golden knowledge? He put this question to himself obscurely, as he rode home on his faithful Jack, with all the marrow-bones of the great feast rattling in a bag behind him. From the case of Bill Harkles he reasoned soundly, that the first thing to do was to go and get shot.
On the following day—the month being August, or something very near it, in the year 1812 (a year behind the time we got on to)—Mr. Hales, to keep his hand in, took his favourite flint-gun down, and patted it, and reprimed it. He had finished his dinner, it had been a good one; and his partner in life had been lamenting the terrible price of butcher’s meat. She did not see how it could end in anything short of a wicked rebellion, when the price of bread was put with it. And the Rector had answered, with a wink to Cecil, “Order no meat for to-morrow, my dear, nor even for the next day. We shall see what we shall see.” With this power of promise, he got on his legs, and stopped all who were fain to come after him. He knew every coney and coney’s hole on the glebe, and on the clerk’s land; and they all would now be out at grass, and must be treated gingerly. He was going to shoot for the pot, as sportsmen generally did in those days.
With visions of milky onions, about to be poured on a broad and well-boiled back, the Rector (after sneaking through a furzy gate) peeped down a brown trench of the steep hill-side; here he spied three little sandy juts of Recent excavation, and on each of them sat a hunch-backed coney, proud of the labours of the day, and happily curling his whiskers. The Rector, peering downward, saw the bulging over their large black eyes, and the prick of their delicate ears, and their gentle chewing of the grass-blade. There was no chance of a running shot, for they would pop into earth in a moment; so he tried to get two of them into a line, and then he pulled his trigger. The nearest rabbit fell dead as a stone; but the Rector could scarcely believe his eyes, when through the curls of the smoke he beheld, instead of the other rabbit, a ragged boy rolling, and kicking, and holloaing!
“Am I never to shoot without shooting a boy?” cried the parson, rushing forward. “Another guinea! A likely thing! I vow I will only pay a shilling this time. The sport would ruin a bishop!”
But Mr. Hales found to his great delight that the boy was not touched by a shot, nor even made pretence to be so. He had craftily crept through the bushes from below, and quietly lurked near the rabbit’s hole, and after the shot, had darted forth, and thrown himself cleverly on the wounded rabbit, who otherwise must have got away to die a lingering death in his burrow. The quickness and skill of the boy, and the luck of thus bagging both rabbits, so pleased the Rector that he gave him sixpence, and bade him follow, to carry the game and to see more sport. Bonny had a natural turn for sport, which never could be beaten out of him, and to get it encouraged by the rector of the parish was indeed a godsend. And in his excitement at every shot, he poured forth his heart about rabbits, and hares, and wood-queests, and partridges, and even pheasants.
“Why, you know more than I do!” said the Rector, kindly laying his hand on the shoulder of the boy, after loading for his tenth successful shot. “How ever have you picked up all these things? The very worst poacher of the coming age; or else the best gamekeeper.”
“I looks about, or we does, me and Jack together,” answered Bonny, with one of his broadest and most genuine grins; and the gleam of his teeth, and the twinkle of his eyes, enforced the explanation.
“Come to my house in the morning, Bonny,” said the Rector. And that was the making of him. For the boy that cleaned the knives and boots had never conscientiously filled that sphere, though he was captain of the Bible-class. And now he had taken the measles so long, that they had put him to earth the celery. Here was an opening, and Bonny seized it; and though he made very queer work at first, his native ability carried him on, till he put a fine polish on everything. From eighteenpence a week he rose to two and threepence, within nine months; and to this he soon added the empty bottles, and a commission upon the grease-pot!
Even now, all has not been told; for by bringing the cook good news of her sweetheart, and the parlourmaid dry sticks to light her fire, and by showing a tender interest in the chilblains of even the scullerymaid, he became such a favourite in the kitchen, that the captain of the Bible-class defied him to a battle in the wash-house. The battle was fought, and victory, though long doubtful, perched at last upon the banner of brave Bonny; and with mutual esteem, and four black eyes, the heroes parted.
After this all ran smooth. The Rector (who had enjoyed the conflict from his study-window, without looking off, more than he could help, from a sermon upon “Seek peace, and ensue it”), as soon as he had satisfied himself which of the two boys hit the straighter, went to an ancient wardrobe, and examined his bygone hunting clothes. Here he found an old scarlet coat, made for him thirty years ago at Oxford, but now a world too small; and he sighed that he had no son to inherit it. Also a pair of old buckskin breeches, fitter for his arms than his legs just now. The moths were in both; they were growing scurfy; sentiment must give way to sense. So Bonny got coat and breeches; and the maids with merry pinches, and screams of laughter, and consolatory kisses, adapted them. He showed all his grandeur to his donkey Jack, and Jack was in two minds about snapping at it.
This matter being cleared, and the time brought up, here we are at West Lorraine in earnest, in the month of October, 1813; long after Hilary’s shocking disgrace, but before any of his own people knew it.
“What a lazy loon that Steenie Chapman is!” said the Rector, for about the twentieth time, one fine October morning. “He knows what dreadful weather we get now, and yet he can’t be here by nine o’clock! Too bad, I call it; too bad a great deal. Send away the teapot, Caroline.”
“But, my dear,” answered Mrs. Hales, who always made the best of every one, “you forget how very bad the roads must be, after all the rain we have had. And I am sure he will want a cup of tea after riding through such flooded roads.”
“Tea, indeed!” the parson muttered, as he strode in and out of the room, with his shot-belt dancing on his velveteen shooting-coat, and snapped his powder-flask impatiently; “Steenie’s tea comes from the case, not the caddy. And the first gleam of sunshine I’ve seen for a week, after that heavy gale last night. It will rain before twelve o’clock, for a guinea. Cecil, run and see if you can find that boy Bonny. I shall start by myself, and send Bonny down the road with a message for Captain Chapman.”
“The huntsman came out of the back-kitchen, Cecil, about two minutes ago,” said Madge, who never missed a chance of a cut at Bonny, because he had thrashed her pet Bible-scholar; “he was routing about, with his red coat on, for scraps of yellow soap and candle-ends.”
“What a story!” cried Cecil, who was Bonny’s champion, being his schoolmistress; “I wish your Dick was half as good a boy. He gets honester every day almost. I’ll send him to you, papa, in two seconds. I suppose you’ll speak to him at the side-door.”
At a nod from her father, away she ran, while Madge followed slowly to help in the search; and finding that the boy had left the house, they took different paths in the garden to seek him, or overtake him on his homeward way. In a few moments Cecil, as she passed some laurels, held up her hand to recall her sister, and crossed the grass towards her very softly, with finger on lip and a mysterious look.
“Hush! and come here very quietly,” she whispered; “I’ll show you something as good as a play.” Then the two girls peeped through the laurel-bush, and watched with great interest what was going on.
In an alley of the kitchen-garden sat Bonny upon an old sea-kale pot, clad in his red coat and white breeches, and deeply meditating. Before him, upon an espalier tree, hung a tempting and beautiful apple, a scarlet pearmain, with its sleek sides glistening in the slant of the sunbeams.
“I’ll lay you a shilling he steals it,” Madge whispered into the ear of her sister. “Done,” replied Cecil, with her hand before her mouth. Meanwhile Bonny was giving them the benefit of his train of reasoning. His mouth was wide open, and his eyes very bright, and his forehead a field of perplexity.
“They’s all agrubbing in the house,” he reflected; “and they ain’t been and offered me a bit to-day. There’s ever so many more on the tree; and they locked up the scullery cupboard; and one on ’em called me a little warmint; and they tuck the key out of the beertap.”
With all these wrongs upward, he stretched forth his hand, and pretty Cecil trembled for her shilling, shillings being very scarce with her. But the boy, without quite having touched the apple, drew back his hand; and that withdrawal perhaps was the turning-point of his life.
“He gived me all this,” he said, looking at his sleeve; “and all on ’em stitched it up for me; and they lets me go in and out without watching; and twice I’se been out with him, shutting! I ’ont, I ’ont. And them coorse red apples seldom be worth ating of.”
Sturdily he arose, and gave a kick at one of the posts of the apple-tree, and set off for the gate as hard as he could go, while the virtuous vein should be uppermost.
“What a darling of honour!” cried Cecil Hales, jumping after him. “A Bayard, a Cato, an Aristides! He shall have his apple, and he shall have sixpence; and unlimited faith for ever. Bonny! come back. Here’s your apple for you, and sixpence; and what would you like to have best in all the world now?”
“To go out shutting with the master, miss.”
“You shall do it; I will speak to papa myself. If you please, Miss Madge, pay up your shilling. Now come back, Bonny; your master wants you.”
“You are a little too late for your errand, I fear,” answered Margaret, pulling her purse out; “while you were pursuing this boy, I heard the sound of a grand arrival.”
“So much the better!” cried Cecil, who (like her mother) always made the best of things. “Papa has been teasing his gun for an hour. Bonny, run back, and keep old Shot quiet. He will break his chain, by the noise he makes. You are as bad as he is; and you both shall go.”
The Rector—of all men the most hospitable, though himself so sober in the morning—revived Captain Chapman, or at least refreshed him, with brandy and bitters, after that long ride. And keenly heeding all hindrance, in his own hurry to be starting, he thought it a very bad sign for poor Alice, that Stephen received no comfort from one, nor two, nor even three, large glasses.
At length they set forth, with a sickly sun shrinking back from the promise of the morning, and a vaporous glisten in the white south-east, looking as watery as the sea. “I told you so, Steenie,” said the parson, who knew every sign of the weather among these hills; “we ought to have started two hours sooner. If ever we had wet jackets in our life, we shall have them to-day, bold captain.”
“It will bring in the snipes,” said the captain, bravely. “We are not the sort of men, I take it, to heed a little sprinkle. Tom, have you got my bladder-coat?”
“All right, your honour,” his keeper replied: and “See-ho!” cried Bonny, while the dogs were ranging.
“Where, where, where?” asked the captain, dancing in a breathless flurry round a tuft of heath. “I can’t see him; where is he, boy?”
“Poke her up, boy,” said the Rector; “surely you would not shoot the poor thing on her form!”
“Let him sit till I see him,” cried the captain, cocking both his barrels; “now I am ready. Where the devil is he?”
“She can’t run away,” answered Bonny, “because your honour’s heel be on her whiskers. Ah, there her gooth! Quick, your honour!”
And go she did in spite of his honour, and both the loads he sent after her; while the Rector laughed so at the captain’s plight, that it was quite impossible for him to shoot. The keeper also put on an experienced grin, while Bonny flung open all the cavern of his mouth.
“Run after him, boy! Look alive!” cried the captain. “I defy him to go more than fifty yards. You must all have seen how I peppered him.”
“Ay, and salted her too, I believe,” said the parson: “look along the barrel of my gun, and you will see the salt still on her tail, Steenie?”
As he pointed they all saw the gallant hare at a leisurely canter crossing the valley, some quarter of a mile below them.
“What!” cried the Rector; “did you see that jump? What can there be to jump over there?” For puss had made a long bound from bank to bank, at a place where they could not see the bottom.
“Water, if ’e plaize, sir,” answered Bonny; “a girt strame of water comed down that hollow, all of a sudden this mornint; and it hath been growing stronger ever since.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Hales, dropping his gun. “What is the water like, boy?”
“I never seed no water like it afore. As black as what I does your boots with, sir; but as clear—you can see every stone in it.”
“Then the Lord have mercy on this poor parish; and especially to the old house of Lorraine! For the Woeburn has broken out again.”
“Why, Rector, you seem in a very great fright,” said Captain Chapman, recovering slowly from his sad discomfiture. “What is the matter about this water? Some absurd old superstition—is not it?”
“Superstition or not,” Mr. Hales answered shortly, “I must leave you to shoot by yourself, Captain Chapman. I could not fire another shot to-day. It is more than three hundred and fifty years since this water of death was seen. In my church you may read what happened then. And not only that, but according to tradition its course runs directly through our village, and even through my garden. My people know nothing about it yet. It may burst upon them quite suddenly. There are many obstructions, no doubt, in its course, and many hollow places to fill up. But before many hours it will reach us. As a question of prudence, I must hasten home. Shot, come to heel this moment!”
“You are right,” said the captain; “I shall do the same. Your hospitable board will excuse me to-night. I would much rather not leap the Woeburn in the dark.”
With the instinct of a man of the world, he perceived that the Rector, under this depression, would prefer to have no guest. Moreover, the clouds were gathering with dark menace over the hill-tops; and he was not the man—if such man there be—to find pleasure in a wet day’s shooting.
“No horse has ever yet crossed the Woeburn,” Mr. Hales replied, as they all turned homeward across the shoulder of the hill; “at least, if the legends about that are true. Though a hare may have leaped it to-day, to-morrow no horse will either swim or leap it.”
“Bless my heart! does it rise like that? The sooner we get out of its way the better. What a pest it will be to you, Rector! Why, you never will be able to come to the meet, and our opening day is next Tuesday.”
“Steenie,” cried the Rector, imbibing hope, “it has not struck me in that light before. But it scarcely could ever be the will of the Lord to cut off a parson from his own pack!”
“Oh, don’t walk so fast!” shouted Captain Chapman; “one’s neck might be broken down a hill like this. Tom, let me lean on your shoulder. Boy, I’ll give you sixpence to carry my gun. Tom take the flints out, that he mayn’t shoot me. Here, Uncle Struan, just sit down a minute; a minute can’t make any difference, you know.”
“That is true,” said the Rector, who was also out of breath. “Bonny, how far was the black water come? You seem to know all about it.”
“Plaize, sir, it seem to be coming down a hill; and the longer I looked, the more water was a-coming.”
“You little nincompoop! had it passed your own door yet—your hole, or your cave, or whatever you call it?”
“Plaize, sir, it worn’t a runnin’ towards I at all. It wor makin’ a hole in the ground and kickin’ a splash up in a fuzzy corner.”
“My poor boy, its course is not far from your door; it may be in among your goods, and have drowned your jackass and all, by this time.”
Like an arrow from a bow, away went Bonny down the headlong hill, having cast down the captain’s gun, and pulled off his red coat to run the faster. The three men left behind clapped their hands to their sides and roared with laughter; at such a pace went the white buckskin breeches, through bramble, gorse, heather, over rock, sod, and chalk. “What a grand flying shot!” cried the keeper.
“Where the treasure is, there will the heart be,” said the Rector as soon as he could speak. “I would give a month’s tithes for a good day’s rout among that boy’s accumulations. He has got the most wonderful things, they say; and he keeps them on shelves, like a temple of idols. What will he do when he gets too big to go in at his own doorway? I am feeding him up with a view to that; and so are my three daughters.”
“He must be a thorough young thief,” said the captain. “In any other parish he would be in prison. I scarcely know which is the softer ‘beak’—as we are called—you, or Sir Roland.”
“Tom,” cried the Rector, “run on before us; you are young and active. Inquire where old Nanny Stilgoe lives, at the head of the village, and tell her that the flood is coming upon her; and help her to move her things, poor old soul, if she will let you help her. Tell her I sent you, and perhaps she will, although she is very hard to deal with. She has long been foretelling this break of the bourne; but the prophets are always the last to set their own affairs in order.”
The keeper touched his hat, and set off. He always attended to the parson’s orders more than his own master’s. And Mr. Hales saw from the captain’s face that he had ordered things too freely.
“Steenie, I beg your pardon,” he said; “I forgot for the moment that I should have asked you before I despatched your man like that. But I did it for your own good, because we need no longer hurry.”
“Rector, I am infinitely obleeged to you. To order those men is so fatiguing. I always want some one to do it for me. And now we may go down the hill, I suppose, without snapping all our knee-caps. To go up a hill fast is a very bad thing; but to go down fast is a great deal worse, because you think you can do it.”
“My dear fellow, you may take your time. I will not walk you off your legs, as that wicked niece of mine did. How are you getting on there now?”
“Well, that is a delicate question, Rector. You know what ladies are, you know. But I do not see any reason to despair of calling you ‘uncle,’ in earnest.”
“Have you brought the old lady over to your side? You are sure to be right when that is done.”
“She has been on my side all along, for the sake of the land. Ah, how good it is!”
“And nobody else in the field, that we know of. Then Lallie can’t hold out so very much longer. Lord bless me! do you see that black line yonder?”
“To be sure! Why, it seems to be moving onward, like a great snake crawling. And it has a white head. What a wonderful thing!”
“It is our first view of the Woeburn. Would to heaven that it were our last one! The black is the water, and the white, I suppose, is the chalky scum swept before it. It is following the old track, as lava does. It will cross the Coombe road in about five minutes. If you want to get home, you must be quick to horse. Never mind the rain: let us run down the hill—or just stop one half-minute.”
They were sitting in the shelter of a chalky rock, with the sullen storm rising from the south behind them, and the drops already pattering. On the right hand and on the left, brown ridges, furzy rises, and heathery scollops overhanging slidden rubble, and the steep zigzags of the sheep, and the rounding away into nothing of the hill-tops,—all of these were fading into the slaty blue of the rain-cloud. Before them spread for leagues and leagues, clear and soft, and smiling still, the autumnal beauty of the wealdland. Tufting hamlets here and there, with darker foliage round them, elbows of some distant lane unconsciously prominent, swathes of colour laid on broadly where the crops were all alike; some bold tree of many ages standing on its right to stand; and grey church-towers, far asunder, landmarks of a longer view; in the fading distance many things we cannot yet make out; but hope them to be good and beauteous, calm, and large with human life.
This noble view expanded always the great heart of the Rector; and he never failed to point out clearly the boundary-line of his parish. He could scarcely make up his mind to miss that opportunity, even now; and was just beginning with a distant furze-rick, far to the westward under Chancton Ring, when Chapman, having heard it at least seven times, cut him short rather briskly.
“You are forgetting one thing, my dear sir. Your parish is being cut in two, while you are dwelling on the boundaries.
“Steenie, you are right. I had no idea that you had so much sense, my boy. You see how the ditches stand all full of water, so as to confuse me. A guinea for the first at the rectory gate! You ought to be handicapped. You call yourself twenty years younger, don’t you!”
“Here’s the guinea!” cried Chapman, as the parson set off; “two if you like; only let me come down this confounded hill considerately.”
Mr. Hales found nothing yet amiss with his own premises; some people had come to borrow shovels, and wheeling-planks, and such like; but the garden looked so fair and dry, with its pleasant slope to the east, that the master laughed at his own terrors; until he looked into the covered well, the never-failing black-diamond water, down below the tool-house. Here a great cone rose in the middle of the well, like a plume of black ostrich; and the place was alive with hollow noises.
“Dig the celery!” cried the Rector. “Every man and boy, come here. I won’t have my celery washed away, nor my drumhead savoys, nor my ragged Jack. Girls, come out, every one of you. There is not a moment to lose, I tell you. I never had finer stuff in all my life; and I won’t have it washed away, I tell you. Here, you heavy-breeched Dick! what the dickens are you gaping at? I shan’t get a thing done before dark, at this rate. Out of my way, every one of you. If ye can’t stir you stumps, I can.”
With less avail, like consternation seized every family in West Lorraine. A river, of miraculous birth and power, was sweeping down upon all of them. There would never be any dry land any more; all the wise old women had said so. Everybody expected to see black water bubbling up under his bed that night.
Meanwhile this beautiful and grand issue of the gathered hill-springs moved on its way majestically, obeying the laws it was born of. The gale of the previous night had unsealed the chamber of great waters, forcing the needful air into the duct, and opening vaults that stored the rainfall of a hundred hills and vales. Through such a “bower of stalactite, such limpid realms and lakes enlock’d in caves,” Cyrene led her weeping son—