CHAPTER XXX.
OUR LAD STEENIE.

Because he knew that Sir Remnant was a gentleman of a type already even then departing, although to be found, at the present day, in certain parts of England. A man of fixed opinions, and even what might be accounted principles (at any rate by himself) concerning honour, and birth, and betting, and patriotism, and some other matters, included in a very small et-cetera. It is hard to despise a man who has so many points settled in his system; but it is harder to respect him, when he sees all things with one little eye, and that eye a vicious one. Sir Remnant Chapman had no belief in the goodness of woman, or the truth of man—in the beautiful balance of nature, or even the fatherly kindness that comforts us. Therefore nobody could love him; and very few people paid much attention to his dull hatred of mankind. “Contempt,” he always called it; but he had not power to make it that; neither had he any depth of root, to throw up eminence. A “bitter weed” many people called him; and yet he was not altogether that. For he liked to act against his nature, perhaps from its own perversity; and often did kind things, to spite his own spitefulness, by doing them. As for sense of right and wrong, he had none outside of his own wishes; and he always expected the rest of the world to move on the same low system. How could such a man get on, even for an hour, with one so different—and more than that, so opposite to him—as the good Sir Roland? Mr. Hales, who was not (as we know) at all a tight-laced man himself, and may perhaps have been a little jealous of Sir Remnant, put that question to himself, as well as to his wife and family; and echo only answered “how?” However, soever, there was the fact; and how many facts can we call to mind ever so much stranger?

Sir Remnant’s only son, Stephen Chapman, was now over thirty years of age, and everybody said that it was time for him to change his mode of life. Even his father admitted that he had made an unreasonably long job of “sowing his wild oats,” and now must take to some better culture. And nothing seemed more likely to lead to this desirable result than a speedy engagement to an accomplished, sensible, and attractive girl. Therefore, after a long review and discussion of all the young ladies round, it had been settled that the heir of all the Chapmans should lay close siege to young Alice Lorraine.

“Captain Chapman”—as Stephen was called by courtesy in that neighbourhood, having held a commission in a fashionable regiment, until it was ordered to the war—this man was better than his father in some ways, and much worse in others. He was better, from weakness; not having the strength to work out works of iniquity; and also from having some touches of kindness, whereof his father was intact. He was worse, because he had no sense of honour, no rudiment of a principle; not even a dubious preference for the truth, at first sight, against a lie. Captain Chapman, however, could do one manly thing, and only one. He could drive, having cultivated the art, in the time when it meant something. Horses were broken then, not trained—as nowadays they must be—and skill and nerve were needed for the management of a four-in-hand. Captain Chapman was the first in those parts to drive like Ericthonius, and it took him a very long time to get his father to sit behind him. For the roads were still very bad and perilous, and better suited for postilions, than for Stephen Chapman’s team.

He durst not drive up Coombe Lorraine, or at any rate he feared the descent as yet, though he meant some day to venture it. And now that he was come upon his wooing, he left his gaudy equipage at the foot of the hill, to be sent back to Steyning and come for him at an appointed time. Then he and his father, with mutual grumblings, took to the steep ascent on foot.

Sir Roland had asked them, a few days ago, to drive over and dine with him, either on Thursday, or any other day that might suit them. They came on the Thursday, with their minds made up to be satisfied with anything. But they certainly were not very well pleased to find that the fair Mistress Alice had managed to give them the slip entirely. She was always ready to meet Sir Remnant, and discharge the duties of a hostess to him; but, from some deep instinctive aversion, she could not even bear to sit at table with the Captain. She knew not at all what his character was; neither did Sir Roland know a tenth part of his ill repute; otherwise he had never allowed him to approach the maiden. He simply looked upon Captain Chapman as a fashionable man of the day, who might have been a little wild perhaps, but now meant to settle down in the country, and attend to his father’s large estates.

However, neither of the guests suspected that their visit had fixed the date of another little visit pending long at Horsham; and one girl being as good as another to men of the world of that stamp, they were well content, when the haunch went out, to clink a glass with the Rector’s daughters, instead of receiving a distant bow from a diffident and very shy young lady.

“Now, Lorraine,” began Sir Remnant, after the ladies had left the room, and the Captain was gone out to look at something, according to arrangement, and had taken the Rector with him, “we have known one another a good many years; and I want a little sensible talk with you.”

“Sir Remnant, I hope that our talk is always sensible; so far at least as can be expected on my part.”

“There you are again, Lorraine, using some back meaning, such as no one else can enter into. But let that pass. It is your way. Now I want to say something to you.”

“I also am smitten with a strong desire to know what it is, Sir Remnant.”

“Well, it is neither more nor less than this. You know what dangerous times we live in, with every evil power let loose, and Satan, like a roaring lion, rampant and triumphant. Thank you, yes, I will take a pinch; your snuff is always so delicious. With the arch-enemy prowling about, with democracy, nonconformity, infidelity, and rick-burnings——”

“Exactly so. How well you express it! I was greatly struck with it in the George and Dragon’s report of your speech at the farmers’ dinner at Billinghurst.”

“Well, well, I may have said it before; but that only makes it the more the truth. Can you deny it, Sir Roland Lorraine?”

“Far be it from me to deny the truth. I am listening with the greatest interest.”

“No, you are not; you never do. You are always thinking of something to yourself. But what I was going to say was this, that it is high time to cement the union, and draw close the bonds of amity between all good men, all men of any principle—by which I mean—come now, you know.”

“To be sure: you mean all stanch Tories.”

“Yes, yes; all who hold by Church and State, land and the constitution. I have educated my son carefully in the only right and true principles. Train up a child—you know what I mean. And you, of course, have brought up your daughter upon the same right system.”

“Nay, rather, I have left her to form her own political opinions. And, to the best of my belief, she has formed none.”

“Lorraine, I am heartily glad to hear it. That is how all the girls should be. When I was in London, they turned me sick with asking my opinion. The less they know, the better for them. Knowledge of anything makes a woman scarcely fit to speak to. My poor dear wife could read and write, and that was quite enough for her. She did it on the jam-pots always, and she could spell most of it. Ah, she was a most wonderful woman!”

“She was. I often found much pleasure in her conversation. She knew so many things that never come by way of reading.”

“And so does Stephen. You should hear him. He never reads any sort of book. Ah, that is the true learning. Books always make stupid people. Now it struck me that—ah, you know, I see. A wink’s as good as a nod, of course. No catching a weasel asleep.” Here Sir Remnant screwed up one eye, and gave Sir Roland a poke in the ribs, with the most waggish air imaginable.

“Again and again I assure you,” said his host, “that I have not the smallest idea what you mean. Your theory about books has in me the most thorough confirmation.”

“Aha! it is all very well—all very well to pretend, Lorraine. Another pinch of snuff, and that settles it. Let them set up their horses together as soon as ever they please—eh?”

“Who? What horses? Why will you thus visit me with impenetrable enigmas?”

“Visit you! Why, you invited me yourself! Who indeed? Why, of course, our lad Steenie, and your girl Lallie!”

“Captain Chapman and my Alice! Such a thought never entered my mind. Do you know that poor Alice is little more than seventeen years old? And Captain Chapman must be—let me see——”

“Never mind what he is. He is my son and heir, and there’ll be fifty thousand to settle on his wife, in hard cash—not so bad nowadays.”

“Sir Remnant Chapman, I beg you not to say another word on the subject. Your son must be twice my daughter’s age, and he looks even more than that——”

“Dash my wig! Then I am seventy, I suppose. What the dickens have his looks got to do with the matter? I don’t call him at all a bad-looking fellow. A chip of the old block, that’s what he is. Ah, many a fine woman, I can tell you——”

“Now, if you please,” Sir Roland said, with a very clear and determined voice—“if you please, we will drop this subject. Your son may be a very good match, and no doubt he is in external matters; and if Alice, when old enough, should become attached to him, perhaps I might not oppose it. There is nothing more to be said at present; and, above all things, she must not hear of it.”

“I see, I see,” answered the other baronet, who was rather short of temper. “Missy must be kept to her bread-and-milk, and good books, and all that, a little longer. By the by, Lorraine, what was it I heard about your son the other day—that he had been making a fool of himself with some grocer’s daughter?”

“I have not heard of any grocer’s daughter. And as he will shortly leave England, people perhaps will have less to say about him. His commission is promised, as perhaps you know; and he is not likely to quit the army because there is fighting going on.”

Sir Remnant felt all the sting of that hit; his face (which showed many signs of good living) flushed to the tint of the claret in his hand, and he was just about to make a very coarse reply, when luckily the Rector came back suddenly, followed by the valiant Captain. Sir Roland knew that he had allowed himself to be goaded into bad manners for once, and he strove to make up for it by unwonted attention to the warrior.

CHAPTER XXXI.
IN A MARCHING REGIMENT.

“Roland, now you go too far. It is not the Grower that I indite of, but his charming daughter. If you could but once be persuaded to see her——”

“Of course. Exactly what Hilary said. In him I could laugh at it; but in you—— Well, a great philosopher tells us that every jot of opinion (even that of a babe, I suppose) is to be regarded as an equal item of the ‘universal consensus.’ And the universal consensus becomes, or forms, or fructifies, or solidifies, into the great homogeneous truth. I may not quote him aright, and I beg his pardon for so lamely rendering him. However, that is a rude sketch of his view, a brick from his house—to mix metaphors—and perhaps you remember it better, Struan.”

“God forbid! The only thing that I remember out of all my education is the stories—what do you call them?—mythologies. Capital some of them are, capital! Ah, they do so much good to boys—teach them manliness and self-respect.”

“Do they? However, to return to this lovely daughter of the Kentish Alcinous—by the way, if his ancestors were Danes who took to gardening, it suggests a rather startling analogy. The old Corycian is believed (though without a particle of evidence) to have been a pirate in early life, and therefore have taken to pot-herbs. Let that pass. I could never have believed it, except for this instance of Lovejoy.”

“And how, if you please,” broke in the Rector, who was always jealous of “Norman blood,” because he had never heard that he had any; “how were the Normans less piratical, if you please, than the Danes, their own grandfathers? Except that they were sick at sea—big rogues all of them, in my opinion. The Saxons were the only honest fellows. Ay, and they would have thrashed those Normans, but for the slightest accident. When I hear of those Normans, without any shoulders—don’t tell me; they never would have built such a house as this is, otherwise—what do you think I feel ready to do, sir? Why, to get up, and to lift my coat, and——”

“Come, come, Struan; we quite understand all your emotions without that. This makes you a very bigoted ambassador in our case. You meant to bring back all the truth, of course. But when you found the fishing good, and the people roughly hospitable, and above all, a Danish smack in their manners, and figures, and even their eyes, which have turned on the Kentish soil, I am told, to a deep and very brilliant brown——”

“Yes, Roland, you are right for once. At any rate, it is so with her.”

“Very well. Then you being, as you always are, a sudden man—what did you do but fall in love (in an elderly fatherly manner, of course) with this—what is her name, now again? I never can recollect it.”

“You do. You never forget anything. Her name is Mabel. And you may be glad to pronounce it pretty often, in your old age, Sir Roland.”

“Well, it is a pretty name, and deserves a pretty bearer. But, Struan, you are a man of the world. You know what Hilary is; and you know (though we do not give ourselves airs, and drive four horses in a hideous yellow coach, and wear diamond rings worth a thousand pounds), you know what the Lorraines have always been—a little particular in their ways, and a little inclined to, to, perhaps——”

“To look down on the rest of the world, without ever letting them know it, or even knowing it yourselves, perhaps. Have I hit it aright, Sir Roland?”

“Not quite that. Indeed, nothing could be further from what I was thinking of.” Sir Roland Lorraine sighed gently here; and even his brother-in-law had not the least idea why he did so. It was that Sir Roland, like all the more able Lorraines for several centuries, was at heart a fatalist. And this family taint had perhaps been deepened by the infusion of Eastern blood. This was the bar so often fixed between them and the rest of the world—a barrier which must hold good, while every man cares for his neighbour’s soul, so much more than his own for ever.

“Is it anything in religion, Roland?” the Rector whispered kindly. “I know that you are not orthodox, and a good deal puffed up with carnal knowledge. Still, if it is in my line at all; I am not a very high authority—but perhaps I might lift you over it. They are saying all sorts of things now in the world; and I have taken two hours a-day, several days—now you need not laugh—in a library we have got up at Horsham, filled with the best divinity; so as to know how to answer them.”

“My dear Struan,” Sir Roland replied, without so much as the gleam of a smile, “that was really good of you. And you now have so many other things to attend to with young dogs, and that; and the 1st of September next week, I believe! What a relief that must be to you!”

“Ay, that it is. You cannot imagine, of course, with all your many ways of frittering time away indoors, what a wearing thing it is to have nothing better than rabbit-shooting, or teaching a dog to drop to shot. But now about Hilary: you must relent—indeed you must, dear Roland. He is living on sixpence a-day, I believe—virtuous fellow, most rare young man! Why, if that dirty Steve Chapman now had been treated as you have served Hilary—note of hand, bill-drawing, post-obits,—and you might even think yourself lucky if there were no big forgery to hush up. Ah, his father may think what he likes; but I look on Hilary as a perfect wonder, a Bayard, a Crichton, a pelican!”

“Surely you mean a paragon, Struan? What young can he have to feed from his own breast?”

“I meant what I said, as I always do. And how can you know what young he has, when you never even let him come near you? Ah, if I only had such a son!” Here the Rector, who really did complain that he had no son to teach how to shoot, managed to get his eyes a little touched with genial moisture.

“This is grievous,” Sir Roland answered; “and a little more than I ever expected, or can have enabled myself to deserve. Now, Struan, will you cease from wailing, if I promise one thing?”

“That must depend upon what it is. It will take a good many things, I am afraid, to make me think well of you again.”

“To hear such a thing from the head of the parish! Now, Struan, be not vindictive. I ought to have let you get a good day’s shooting, and then your terms would have been easier.”

“Well, Roland, you know that we can do nothing. The estates are tied up in such a wonderful way, by some lawyer’s trick or other, through a whim of that blessed old lady—she can’t hear me, can she?—that Hilary has his own sister’s life between him and the inheritance; so far as any of us can make out.”

“So that you need not have boasted,” answered Sir Roland, with a quiet smile, “about his being a Bayard, in refraining from post-obits.”

“Well, well; you know what I meant quite well. The Jews are not yet banished from England. And there is reason to fear they never will be. There are plenty of them to discount his chance, if he did what many other boys would do.”

Sir Roland felt the truth of this. And he feared in his heart that he might be pushing his only son a little too hard, in reliance upon his honour.

“Will you come to the point for once?” he asked, with a look of despair and a voice of the same. “This is my offer—to get Hilary a commission in a foot-regiment, pack him off to the war in Spain; and if in three years after that he sticks to that Danish Nausicaa, and I am alive—why, then, he shall have her.”

Mr. Hales threw back his head—for he had a large, deep head, and when it wanted to think it would go back—and then he answered warily:

“It is a very poor offer, Sir Roland. At first sight it seems fair enough. But you, with your knowledge of youth, and especially such a youth as Hilary, rely upon the effects of absence, change, adventures, dangers, Spanish beauties, and, worst of all, wider knowledge of the world, and the company of coarse young men, to make him jilt his love, or perhaps take even a worse course than that.”

“You are wrong,” said Sir Roland, with much contempt. “Sir Remnant Chapman might so have meant it. Struan, you ought to know me better. But I think that I have a right, at least, to try the substance of such a whim, before I yield to it, and install, as the future mistress, a—well, what do you want me to call her, Struan?”

“Let it be, Roland; let it be. I am a fair man, if you are not; and I can make every allowance for you. But I think that your heir should at least be entitled to swing his legs over a horse, Sir Roland.”

“I, on the other hand, think that it would be his final ruin to do so. He would get among reckless fellows, to whom he is already too much akin. It has happened so with several of my truly respected ancestors. They have gone into cavalry regiments, and ridden full gallop through their estates. I am not a penurious man, as you know; and few think less of money. Can you deny that, even in your vitiated state of mind?”

“I cannot deny it,” the Rector answered; “you never think twice about money, Roland—except, of course, when you are bound to do so.”

“Very well; then you can believe that I wish poor Hilary to start afoot, solely for his own benefit. There is very hard fighting just now in Spain, or on the confines of Portugal. I hate all fighting, as you are aware. Still it is a thing that must be done.”

“Good Lord!” cried the Rector, “how you do talk! As if it was so many partridges!”

“No, it is better than that—come, Struan—because the partridges carry no guns you know.”

“I should be confoundedly sorry if they did,” the Rector answered, with a shudder. “Fancy letting fly at a bird who might have a long barrel under his tail!”

“It is an appalling imagination. Struan, I give you credit for it. But here we are, as usual, wandering from the matter which we have in hand. Are you content, or are you not, with what I propose about Hilary?”

In this expressly alternative form, there lurks a great deal of vigour. If a man says, “Are you satisfied?” you begin to cast about and wonder, whether you might not win better terms. Many side-issues come in and disturb you; and your way to say “yes” looks too positive. But if he only clench his inquiry with the option of the strong negative, the weakest of all things, human nature that hates to say “no,” is tampered with. This being so, Uncle Struan thought for a moment or so; and then said, “Yes, I am.”

CHAPTER XXXII.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE OPINION.

But Alice went far beyond all that. Her nature was cast in a different mould. She had not only the depth—which is the common property of women—but she also had the height of loving. Such as a mother has for her children; rather than a wife towards her husband. And yet by no means an imperious or exacting affection, but tender, submissive, and delicate. Inasmuch as her brother stood next to her father, or in some points quite on a level with him, in her true regard and love, it was not possible that her kind heart could escape many pangs of late. In the first place, no loving sister is likely to be altogether elated by the discovery that her only brother has found some one who shall be henceforth more to him than herself is. Alice, moreover, had a very strong sense of the rank and dignity of the Lorraines; and disliked, even more than her father did, the importation of this “vegetable product,” as she rather facetiously called poor Mabel, into their castle of lineage. But now, when Hilary was going away, to be drowned on the voyage perhaps, or at least to be shot, or sabred, or ridden over by those who had horses—while he had none—or even if he escaped all that, to be starved, or frozen, or sunstruck, for the sake of his country—as our best men are, while their children survive to starve afterwards—it came upon Alice as a heavy blow that she never might happen to see him again. Although her father had tried to keep her from the excitement of the times, and the gasp of the public for dreadful news (a gasp which is deeper and wider always, the longer the time of waiting is), still there were too many mouths of rumour for truth to stop one in ten of them. Although the old butler turned his cuffs up—to show what an arm he still possessed—and grumbled that all this was nothing, and a bladder of wind in comparison with what he had known forty years agone; and though Mrs. Pipkins, the housekeeper, quite agreed with him and went further; neither was the cook at all disposed to overdo the thing; it was of no service—they could not stay the torrent of public opinion.

Trotman had been taken on, rashly (as may have been said before), as upper footman in lieu of the old-established and trusty gentleman, who had been compelled by fierce injustice to retire, and take to a public-house—with a hundred pounds to begin upon—being reft of the office of footman for no other reason that he could hear of, except that he was apt to be, towards nightfall, not quite able to “keep his feet.”

To him succeeded the headlong Trotman: and one of the very first things he did was—as declared a long time ago, with deep sympathy, in this unvarnished tale—to kick poor Bonny, like a hopping spider, from the brow of the hill to the base thereof.

Trotman may have had good motives for this rather forcible movement: and it is not our place to condemn him. Still, in more than one quarter it was believed that he had acted thus, through no zeal whatever for virtue or justice; but only because he so loved his perquisites, and suspected that Bonny got smell of them. And the butler quite confirmed this view, and was much surprised at Trotman’s conduct; for Bonny was accustomed to laugh at his jokes, and had even sold some of his bottles for him.

In such a crisis, scarcely any one would regard such a trivial matter. And yet none of us ought to kick anybody, without knowing what it may lead to. Violence is to be deprecated: for it has to be paid for beyond its value, in twelve cases out of every dozen. And so it was now; for, if Coombe Lorraine had been before this, as Mrs. Pipkins declared (having learned French from her cookery-book), “the most Triestest place in the world,” it became even duller now that Bonny was induced, by personal considerations, to terminate rather abruptly his overtures to the kitchenmaid. For who brought the tidings of all great events and royal proceedings? Our Bonny. Who knew the young man of every housemaid in the vales of both Adur and Arun? Our Bonny. Who could be trusted to carry a scroll (or in purer truth perhaps, a scrawl) that should be treasured through the love-lorn hours of waiting—at table—in a zebra waistcoat? Solely and emphatically Bonny!

Therefore every tender domestic bosom rejoiced when the heartless Trotman was compelled to tread the track of his violence, lamely and painfully, twice every week, to fetch from Steyning his George and the Dragon, which used to be delivered by Bonny. Mr. Trotman, however, was a generous man, and always ready to share, as well as enjoy, the delights of literature. Nothing pleased him better than to sit on the end of a table among the household ladies and gentlemen, with Mrs. Pipkins in the chair of honour, and interpret from his beloved journal, the chronicles of the county, the country, and the Continent.

“Why, ho!” he shouted out one day, “what’s this? Can I believe my heyes? Our Halary going to the wars next week!”

“No, now!” “Never can be!” “Most shameful!” some of his audience exclaimed. But Mrs. Pipkins and the old butler shook their heads at one another, as much as to say, “I knowed it.”

“Mr. Trotman,” said the senior housemaid, who entertained connubial views; “you are sure to be right in all you reads. You are such a bootiful scholard! Will you obleege us by reading it out?”

“Hem! hem! Ladies all, it is yours to command, it is mine to obey. ‘The insatiable despot who sways the Continent seems resolved to sacrifice to his baleful lust of empire all the best and purest and noblest of the blood of Britain. It was only last week that we had to mourn the loss sustained by all Sussex in the most promising scion of a noble house. And now we have it on the best authority that Mr. H. L., the only son of the well-known and widely-respected baronet residing not fifty miles from Steyning, has received orders to join his regiment at the seat of war, under Lord Wellington. The gallant young gentleman sails next week from Portsmouth in the troopship Sandylegs’—or some such blessed Indian name!”

“The old scrimp!” exclaimed the cook, a warm ally to poor Hilary. “To send him out in a nasty sandy ship, when his birth were to go on horseback, the same as all the gentlefolks do to the wars!”

“But Mrs. Merryjack, you forget,” explained the accomplished Trotman, “that Great Britain is a hisland, ma’am. And no one can’t ride from a hisland on horseback; at least it was so when I was a boy.”

“Then it must be so now, John Trotman; for what but a boy are you now, I should like to know! And a bad-mannered boy, in my humble opinion, to want to teach his helders their duty. I know that I lives in a hisland, of course, the same as all the Scotchmen does, and goes round the sun like a joint on a spit: and so does nearly all of us. But perhaps John Trotman doesn’t.”

With this “withering sarcasm,” the ladycook turned away from poor Trotman, and then delivered these memorable words—

“Sir Rowland will repent too late. Sir Rowland will shed the briny tear, the same as might any one of us, even on £3 a-year, for sending his only son out in a ship, when he ought to a’ sent ’un on horseback.”

Mrs. Pipkins nodded assent, and so did the ancient butler: and Trotman felt that public opinion was wholly against him, until such time as it should be further educated.

But such a discussion had been aroused, that there was no chance of its stopping here; and Alice, who loved to collect opinions, had many laid before her. She listened to all judiciously, and pretended to do it judicially; and after that she wondered whether she had done what she ought to do. For she knew that she was only very young, with nobody to advise her; and the crushing weight of the world upon her, if she tripped or forgot herself. Most girls of her age would have been at school, and taken childish peeps at the world, and burnished up their selfishness by conflict with one another; but Sir Roland had kept to the family custom, and taught and trained his daughter at home, believing as he did that young women lose some of their best and most charming qualities by what he called “gregarious education.” Alice therefore had been under care of a good and a well-taught governess—for “masters” at that time were proper to boys—until her mind was quite up to the mark, and capable of taking care of itself. For, in those days, it was not needful for any girl to know a great deal more than was good for her.

Early one September evening, when the day and year hung calmly in the balance of the sun; when sensitive plants and clever beasts were beginning to look around them, and much of the growth of the ground was ready to regret lost opportunities; when the comet was gone for good at last, and the earth was beginning to laugh at her terror (having found him now clearly afraid of her), and when a sense of great deliverance from the power of drought and heat throbbed in the breast of dewy nurture, so that all took breath again, and even man (the last of all things to be pleased or thankful) was ready to acknowledge that there might have been worse moments,—at such a time fair Alice sat in her garden thinking of Hilary. The work of the summer was over now, and the fate of the flowers pronounced and settled, for better or worse, till another year; no frost, however, had touched them yet, while the heavy dews of autumnal night, and the brisk air flowing from the open downs, had gladdened, refreshed, and sweetened them. Among them, and between the shrubs, there spread and sloped a pleasant lawn for all who love soft sward and silence, and the soothing sound of leaves. From the form of the ground and bend of the hills, as well as the northerly aspect, a peculiar cast and tingle of the air might be found, at different moments, fluctuating differently. Most of all, in a fine sunset of autumn (though now the sun was behind the ridge), from the fulness of the upper sky such gleam and glance fell here and there, that nothing could be sure of looking as it looked only a minute ago. At such times all the glen seemed thrilling like one vast lute of trees and air, drawing fingered light along the chords of trembling shadow. At such a time, no southern slope could be compared with this, for depth of beauty and impressive power, for the charm of clear obscurity and suggestive murmuring mystery. A time and scene that might recall the large romance of grander ages; where wandering lovers might shrink and think of lovers whose love was over; and even the sere man of the world might take a fresh breath of the boyish days when fear was a pleasant element.

Suddenly Alice became aware of something moving near her; and almost before she had time to be frightened, Hilary leaped from behind a laurel. He caught her in his arms, and kissed her, and then stepped back to leave plenty of room for contemplative admiration.

“I was resolved to have one more look. We sail to-morrow, they are in such a hurry. I have walked all the way from Portsmouth. At least I got a little lift on the road, on the top of a waggon-load of wheat.”

“How wonderfully good of you, Hilary dear!” she exclaimed, with tears in her eyes, and yet a strong inclination to smile, as she watched him. “How tired you must be! Why, when did you leave the dépôt? I thought they kept you at perpetual drill.”

“So they did. But I soon got up to all that. I can do it as well as the best of them now. What a provoking child you are! Well, don’t you notice anything?”

For Alice, with true sisterly feeling, was trying his endurance to the utmost, dissembling all her admiration of his fine fresh “uniform.” Of course, this was not quite so grand as if he had been (as he had right to be) enrolled as an “eques auratus;” still it looked very handsome on his fine straight figure, and set off the brightness of his clear complexion. Moreover, his two months of drilling at the dépôt had given to his active and well-poised form that vigorous firmness which alone was needed to make it perfect. With the quickness of a girl, his sister saw all this in a moment; and yet, for fear of crying, she laughed at him.

“Why, how did you come so ‘spick and span’? Have you got a sheaf of wheat inside your waistcoat? It was too cruel to put such clothes on the top of a harvest-waggon. I wonder you did not set it all on fire.”

“Much you know about it!” exclaimed the young soldier, with vast chagrin. “You don’t deserve to see anything. I brought my togs in a haversack, and put them on in your bower here, simply to oblige you; and you don’t think they are worth looking at!”

“I am looking with all my might; and yet I cannot see anything of a sword. I suppose they won’t allow you one yet. But surely you must have a sword in the end.”

“Alice, you are enough to wear one out. Could I carry my sword in a haversack? However, if you don’t think I look well, somebody else does—that is one comfort.”

“You do not mean, I hope,” replied Alice, missing his allusion carefully, “to go back to your ship without coming to see papa, dear Hilary?”

“That is exactly what I do mean; and that is why I have watched for you so. I have no intention of knocking under. And so he will find out in the end; and somebody else, I hope, as well. Everybody thinks I am such a fool, because I am easy-tempered. Let them wait a bit. They may be proud of that never-do-well, silly Hilary yet. In the last few months, I can assure you, I have been through things—however, I won’t talk about them. They never did understand me at home; and I suppose they never will. But it does not matter. Wait a bit.”

“Darling Hilary! don’t talk so. It makes me ready to cry to hear you. You will go into some battle, and throw your life away, to spite all of us.”

“No, no, I won’t. Though it would serve you right for considering me such a nincompoop. As if the best, and sweetest, and truest-hearted girl in the universe was below contempt, because her father happens to grow cabbages! What do we grow? Corn, and hay, and sting-nettles, and couch-grass. Or at least our tenants grow them for us, and so we get the money. Well, how are they finer than cabbages?”

“Come in and see father,” said Alice, straining her self-control to shun argument. “Do come, and see him before you go.”

“I will not,” he answered, amazing his sister by his new-born persistency. “He never has asked me; and I will not do it.”

No tears, no sobs, no coaxings moved him; his troubles had given him strength of will; and he went to the war without seeing his father.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
RAGS AND BONES.

A writer of the first eminence, who used to be called “Tully,” but now is euphoniously cited as “Kikero,” has taught us that to neglect the world’s opinion of one’s self is a proof not only of an arrogant, but even of a dissolute mind. Bottler could prove himself not of an arrogant, and still less of a dissolute mind; he respected the opinion of the world; and he showed his respect in the most convincing and flattering manner, by his style of dress. He never wore slops, or an apron even, unless it were at the decease or during the obsequies of a porker. He made it a point of honour to maintain an unbroken succession of legitimate white stockings—a problem of deep and insatiable anxiety to every woman in Steyning town. In the first place, why did he wear them? It took several years to determine this point; but at last it was known, amid universal applause, that he wore them in memory of his first love. But then there arose a far more difficult and excruciating question—how did he do it? Had he fifty pairs? Did he wash them himself, or did he make his wife? How could he kill pigs and keep his stockings perpetually unsullied? Emphatically and despairingly,—why had they never got a hole in them?

He, however, with an even mind, trode the checkered path of life, with fustian breeches and white stockings. His coat was of West of England broadcloth, and of a rich imperial blue, except where the colour had yielded to time; and all his buttons were of burnished brass. His honest countenance was embellished with a fine candid smile, whenever he spoke of the price of pigs or pork; and no one had ever known him to tell a lie—or at any rate he said so.

This good and remarkable man was open to public inspection every morning in his shop, from eight to twelve o’clock. He then retired to his dinner, and customers might thump and thump with a key or knife, or even his own steel, on the counter, but neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bottler would condescend to turn round for them. Nothing less than the chink of a guinea would stir them at this sacred time. But if any one had a guinea to rattle on the board, and did it cleverly, the blind across the glass door was drawn back on its tape, and out peeped Bottler.

When dinner and subsequent facts had been dealt with, this eminent pigman horsed his cart, hoisted his favourite child in over the footboard, and set forth in quest of pigs, or as he put it more elegantly, “hanimals german to his profession.” That favourite child, his daughter Polly, being of breadth and length almost equal, and gifted with “bow-legs” (as the public had ample means of ascertaining), was now about four years old, and possessed of remarkable gravity even for that age. She would stand by the hour between her father’s knees, while he guided the shambling horse, and gaze most intently at nothing at all; as if it were the first time she ever had enjoyed the privilege of inspecting it.

Rags and bones (being typical of the beginning and end of humanity) have an inner meaning of their own, and stimulate all who deal in them. At least it often seems to be so, though one must not be too sure of it. Years of observation lead us to begin to ask how to observe a little.

Bonny had not waited for this perversity of certainty. He had long been taking observations of Polly Bottler—as he could get them—and the more he saw her, the more his finest feelings were drawn forth by her, and the way she stood between her father’s legs. Some boys have been known to keep one virtue so enlarged and fattened up, like the liver of a Strasburg goose, that the flavour of it has been enough to abide—if they died before dissolution—in the rue of pious memory.

Exactly so it was with that Bonny. He never feigned to be an honest boy, because it would have been dishonest of him: besides that, he did not know how to do it, and had his own reasons for waiting a bit; yet nothing short of downright starvation could have driven him at any time to steal so much as one pig’s trotter from his patron’s cart, or shop, or yard. Now this deserves mention, because it proves that there does, or at any rate did, exist a discoverable specimen of a virtue so rare, that its existence escaped all suspicion till after the classic period of the Latin tongue.

A grateful soul, or a grateful spirit—we have no word to express “animus,” though we often express it towards one another—such was the Roman form for this virtue, as a concrete rarity. And a couple of thousand years have made it two thousand times more obsolete.

In one little breast it still abode, purely original and native, and growing underneath the soil, shy of light and hard to find, like the truffle of the South Downs. Bonny was called, in one breath every day, a shameful and a shameless boy; and he may have deserved but a middling estimate from a lofty point of view. It must be admitted that he slipped sometimes over the border of right and wrong, when a duck or a rabbit, or a green goose haply, hopped or waddled on the other side of it, in the tempting twilight. But even that he avoided doing, until halfpence were scarce and the weather hungry.

Now being, as has been said before, of distinguished countenance and costume, he already had made a tender impression upon the heart of Polly Bottler; and when she had been very good and conquered the alphabet up to P the pig—at which point professional feeling always overcame the whole family—the reward of merit selected by herself would sometimes be a little visit to Bonny, as the cart came back from Findon. There is room for suspicion, however, that true love may not have been the only motive power, or at least that poor Bonny had a very formidable rival in Jack the donkey: inasmuch as the young lady always demanded, as the first-fruit of hospitality, a prolonged caracole on that quadruped, which she always performed in cavalier fashion, whereto the formation of her lower members afforded especial facility.

Now one afternoon towards Allhallows day, when the air was brisk and the crisp leaves rustled, some under foot and some overhead, Mr. Bottler, upon his return from Storrington, with four pretty porkers in under his net, received from his taciturn daughter that push on his right knee, whose import he well understood. It meant—“We are going to see Bonny to-day. You must turn on this side, and go over the fields.”

“All right, little un,” the pigman answered, with never-failing smile. “Daddy knows as well as you do a’most; though you can’t expect him to come up to you.”

Polly gave a nod, which was as much as any one ever expected of her all the time she was out of doors. At home she could talk any number to the dozen, when the mood was on her; but directly she got into the open air, the size of the world was too much for her. All she could do was to stand, and wonder, and have the whole of it going through her, without her feeling anything.

After much jolting, and rattling, and squeaking of pigs at the roughness of sod or fallow, they won the entrance of Coombe Lorraine, and the hermitage of Bonny. That exemplary boy had been all day pursuing his calling with his usual diligence, and was very busy now, blowing up his fire to have some hot savoury stew to warm him. All his beggings and his buyings, &c., were cast in together; and none but the cook and consumer could tell how marvellously they always managed to agree among themselves, and with him. A sharp little turn of air had set in, and made every rover of the land sharp set; and the lid of the pot was beginning to lift charily and preciously, when the stubble and bramble crackled much. Bonny ensconced in his kitchen corner, on the right hand outside his main entrance, kept stirring the fire, and warming his hands, and indulging in a preliminary smell. Bearing ever in mind the stern duty of promoting liberal sentiments, he had felt, while passing an old woman’s garden, how thoroughly welcome he ought to be to a few sprigs of basil, a handful of onions, and a pinch of lemon-thyme; and how much more polite it was to dispense with the frigid ceremony of asking.

As the cart rattled up in the teeth of the wind, Polly Bottler began to expand her frank ingenuous nostrils; inhaled the breeze, and thus spake with her mouth—

“Dad, I’se yerry hungy.”

“No wonder,” replied the paternal voice; “what a boy, to be sure, that is to cook! At his time of life, just to taste his stoos! He’ve got a born knowledge what to put in—ay, and what to keep out; and how long to do it. He deserveth that pot as I gived him out of the bilin’ house; now dothn’t he? If moother worn’t looking for us to home, with chittlings and fried taties, I’d as lief sit down and sup with him. He maketh me in the humour, that he doth.”

As soon as he beheld his visitors, Bonny advanced in a graceful manner, as if his supper was of no account. He had long been aware, from the comments of boys at Steyning (who were hostile to him), that his chimney-pot hat was not altogether in strict accord with his character. This had mortified him as deeply as his lightsome heart could feel; because he had trusted to that hat to achieve his restoration into the bosom of society. The words of the incumbent of his parish (ere ever the latter began to thrash him) had sunk into his inner and deeper consciousness and conscience; and therein had stirred up a nascent longing to have something to say to somebody whose fore-legs were not employed for locomotion any longer.

Alas, that ghost of a definition has no leg to stand upon! No two great authorities (perfect as they are, and complete in their own system) can agree with one another concerning the order of a horse’s feet, in walking, ambling, or trotting, or even standing on all fours in stable. The walk of a true-born Briton is surely almost as important a question. Which arm does he swing to keep time with which leg; and bends he his elbows in time with his knees; and do all four occupy the air, or the ground, or himself, in a regulated sequence; and if so, what aberration must ensue from the use of a walking-stick? Œdipus, who knew all about feet (from the tenderness of his own soles), could scarcely be sure of all this, before the time of the close of the market.

This is far too important a question to be treated hastily. Only, while one is about it, let Bonny’s hat be settled for. Wherever he thought to have made an impression with this really guinea-hat, ridicule and execration followed on his naked heels; till he sold it at last for tenpence-halfpenny, and came back to his naked head. Society is not to be carried by storm even with a picked-up hat.

Jack, the donkey, was always delighted to have Polly Bottler upon his back. Not perhaps from any vaticination of his future mistress, but because she was sure to reward him with a cake, or an apple, or something good; so that when he felt her sturdy little legs, both hands in his mane, and the heels begin to drum, he would prick his long ears, and toss his fine white nose, and would even have arched his neck, if nature had not strictly forbidden him. On the present occasion, however, Polly did not very long witch the world with noble donkeymanship; although Mr. Bottler sat patiently in his cart, smiling as if he could never kill a pig, and with paternal pride stamped on every wrinkle of his nose; while the brief-lived porkers poked their snouts through the net, and watched with little sharp hairy eyes the very last drama perhaps in which they would be spectators only. The lively creatures did not suspect that Bonny’s fire, the night after next, would be cooking some of their vital parts, with a truly fine smell of sausages.

Sausages were too dear for Bonny; as even the pigs at a glance were aware; but he earned three quarters of a pound for nothing, by noble hospitality. To wit, his angel of a Polly had not made more than three or four parades, while he (with his head scarcely reaching up to the mark at the back of the donkey’s ears, where the perspiration powdered) shouted, and holloaed, and made-believe to be very big—as boys must do, for practice towards their manhood—when by some concurrent goodwill of air and fire, and finer elements, the pot-lid arose, to let out a bubble of goodness returning to its native heaven; and the volatile virtue gently hovered to leave a fair memory behind.

The merest corner of this fragrance flipped into Polly Bottler’s nose, as a weaker emanation had done, even before she began her ride. And this time her mouth and her voice expressed cessation of hesitation.

“’Et me down, ’et me down,” she cried, stretching her fat short arms to Bonny; “I ’ants some; I’se so hungy.”

“Stop a bit, miss,” said Bonny, as being the pink of politeness to all the fair: “there, your purty little toes is on the blessed ground again. Stop a bit, miss, while I runs into my house, for to get the spoon.”

For up to this time he had stirred his soup with a forked stick made of dogwood, which helps to flavour everything; but now as a host, he was bound to show his more refined resources. Polly, however, was so rapt out of her usual immobility, that she actually toddled into Bonny’s house to make him be quick about the spoon. He, in amazement, turned round and stared, to be sure of his eyes that such a thing could ever have happened to him. The jealousy of the collector strove with the hospitality of the householder and the chivalry of the rover. But the finer feelings conquered, and he showed her round the corner. Mr. Bottler, who could not get in, cracked his whip and whistled at them.

Polly, with great eyes of wonder and fright at her own daring, longed with one breath to go on, and with the next to run back again. But the boy caught hold of her hand, and she stuck to him through the ins and outs of light, until there was something well worth seeing.

What is the sweetest thing in life? Hope, love, gold, fame, pride, revenge, danger—or anything else, according to the nature of the liver. But with those who own very little, and have “come across” all that little, with risk and much uncertainty, the sweetest thing in life is likely to be the sense of ownership. The mightiest hoarder of gold and silver, Crœsus, Rhampsinitus, or Solomon, never thought half so much of his stores, or at any rate, never enjoyed them as much as this rag-and-bone collector his. When he came to his room he held his breath, and watched with the greatest anxiety for corresponding emotion of Polly.

The room was perhaps about twelve feet long, and eight feet wide at its utmost, scooped from the chalk without any sharp corners, but with a grand contempt of shape. The floor went up and down, and so did the roof, according to circumstances; the floor appearing inclined to rise, and the roof to come down if called upon. Much excellent rubbish was here to be found; but the window was the first thing to seize and hold any stranger’s attention. It must have been built either by or for the old hermit who once had dwelt there; at any rate no one could have designed it without a quaint ingenuity. It was cut through a three-foot wall of chalk, the embrasure being about five feet in span, and three feet deep at the crown of the arch. In the middle, a narrow pier of chalk was left to keep the arch up, and the lights on either side were made of horn, stained glass, and pig’s bladder. The last were of Bonny’s handiwork, to keep out the wind when it blew too cold among the flaws of ages. And now as the evening light fetched round the foot of the hills, and gathered strongly into this western aspect, the richness of colours was such that even Polly’s steadfast eyes were dazed.

Without vouchsafing so much as a glance at Bonny’s hoarded glories, the child ran across the narrow chamber, and spread out her hands and opened her mouth wider even than her eyes, at the tints now streaming in on her. The glass had been brought perhaps from some ruined chapel of the hill-side, and glowed with a depth of colour infused by centuries of sunset; not one pane of regular shape was to be found among them; but all, like veins of marble, ran with sweetest harmony of hue, to meet the horn and the pig’s bladder. From the outside it looked like a dusty slate traversed with bits of a crusted bottle; it required to be seen from the inside, like an ancient master’s painting.

Polly, like the rest of those few children who do not overtalk themselves, spent much of her time in observation, storing the entries inwardly. And young as she was, there might be perhaps a doubt entertained by those who knew her whether she were not of a deeper and more solid cast of mind than Bonny. Her father at any rate declared, and her mother was of the same opinion, that by the time she was ten years old she would buy and sell all Steyning. However, they may have thought all this because all their other children were so stupid.

Now, be they right or be they wrong—as may be shown hereafter—Polly possessed at least the first and most essential of all the many endowments needful to approach success. Polly Bottler stuck to her point. And now, even with those fine old colours, like a century of rainbows, puzzling her, Polly remembered the stew in the pot, and pointed with her finger to the window-ledge where something shone in a rich blue light.

“Here’s a ’poon, Bonny!” she exclaimed; “here’s a ’poon! ’Et me have it, Bonny.”

“No, that’s not a spoon, miss; and I can’t make out for the life of me whatever it can be. I’ve a seed a many queer things, but I never seed the likes of that afore. Ah, take care, miss, or you’ll cut your fingers!”

For Polly, with a most resolute air, had scrambled to the top of an old brown jar (the salvage from some shipwreck) which stood beneath the window-sill, and thence with a gallant sprawl she reached and clutched the shining implement which she wanted to eat her stew with. The boy was surprised to see her lift it with her fat brown fingers, and hold it tightly without being cut or stung, as he expected. For he had a wholesome fear of this thing, and had set it up as a kind of fetish, his mind (like every other) requiring something to bow down to. For the manner of his finding it first, and then its presentment in the mouth of Jack, added to the interest which its unknown meaning won for it.

With a laugh of triumph, the bow-legged maiden descended from her dangerous height, and paying no heed to all Bonny’s treasures, waddled away with her new toy, either to show it to her father, or to plunge it into the stewpot perhaps. But her careful host, with an iron spoon and a saucer in his hands, ran after her, and gently guided her to the crock, whither also Mr. Bottler sped. This was as it should be; and they found it so. For when the boy Bonny, with a hospitable sweep, lifted the cover of his cookery, a sense of that void which all nature protests against rose in the forefront of all three, and forebade them to seek any further. Bottler himself, in the stress of the moment, let the distant vision fade—of fried potatoes and combed chittlings—and lapsed into that lowest treason to Lares and Penates—a supper abroad, when the supper at home is salted, and peppered, and browning.

But though Polly opened her mouth so wide, and smacked her lips, and made every other gratifying demonstration, not for one moment would she cede possession of the treasure she had found in Bonny’s window. Even while most absorbed in absorbing, she nursed it jealously on her lap; and even when her father had lit his pipe from Bonny’s bonfire, and was ready to hoist her again over the footboard, the child stuck fast to her new delight, and set up a sturdy yell when the owner came to reclaim it from her.

“Now don’t ’ee, don’t ’ee, that’s a dear,” began the gentle pork-butcher, as the pigs in the cart caught up the strain, and echo had enough to do; for Polly of course redoubled her wailings, as all little dears must, when coaxed to stop; “here, Bonny, here lad, I’ll gie thee sixpence for un, though her ain’t worth a penny, I doubt. And thou may’st call to-morrow, and the Misses ’ll gie thee a clot of sassages.”

Bonny looked longingly at his fetish; but gratitude and true love got the better of veneration. Polly, moreover, might well be trusted to preserve this idol, until in the day when he made his own, it should return into his bosom. And so it came to pass that this Palladium of the hermitage was set up at the head of Polly Bottler’s little crib, and installed in the post of her favourite doll.