Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

“Such things have an inspiration. Out with it at last, fair Gregory.”

“Well, then, if you must have it, how I should like for you to come with me to have a little turn among my father’s cherry-trees!”

“What a noble thought!” said Hilary; “a poetic imagination only could have hit on such a thought. The thermometer at 96° – and the cherries – can they be sour now?”

“Such a thing is quite impossible,” Gregory answered gravely; “in a very cold, wet summer they are sometimes a little middling. But in such a splendid year as this, there can be no two opinions. Would you like to see them?”

“Now, Lovejoy, I can put up with much; but not with maddening questions.”

“You mean, I suppose, that you could enjoy half-a-dozen cool red cherries, if you had the chance to pick them in among the long green leaves?”

“Half-a-dozen! Half-a-peck; and half-a-bushel afterwards. Where have I put my hat? I am off, if it costs my surviving sixpence.”

“Lorraine, all the coaches are gone for the day. But you are always in such a hurry. You ought to think a little, perhaps, before you make up your mind to come. Remember that my father’s house is a good house, and as comfortable as any you could wish to see; still it may be different from what you are accustomed to.”

“Such things are not worth thinking about. Custom, and all that, are quite below contempt; and we are beginning to treat it so. The greatest mistake of our lives is custom; and the greatest delight is to kick it away. Will your father be glad to see me?”

“He has heard me talk of you, many a time; and he would have been glad to come to London (though he hates it so abominably), to see you and to ask you down, if he thought that you would require it. It is a very old-fashioned place; you must please to bear that in mind. Also, my father, and my mother, and all of us, are old-fashioned people, living in a quiet way. You would carry on more in an hour, than we do in a twelvemonth. We like to go all over things, ever so many times, perhaps (like pushing rings up and down a stick), before we begin to settle them. But when we have settled them, we never start again; as you seem to do.”

“Now, Gregory, Gregory, this is bad. When did you know me to start again? Ready I am to start this once, and to dwell in the orchards for ever.”

In a few words more, these two young fellows agreed to take their luck of it. There was nothing in chambers for Lovejoy to lose, by going away for a day or two; and Hilary long had felt uneasy at leaving a holiday overdue. Therefore they made their minds up promptly for an early start next morning, ere the drowsy town should begin to kick up its chimney-pots, like a sluggard’s toes.

“Gregory,” said Lorraine, at last, “your mind is a garden of genius. We two will sit upon bushel-baskets, and watch the sun rise out of sacks. Before he sets, we will challenge him to face our early waggon. Covent Garden is our trysting spot, and the hour 4 a.m. Oh, day to be marked with white chalk for ever!”

“I am sure I can’t tell how that may be,” answered the less fervent Gregory. “There is no chalk in our grounds at all; and I never saw black chalk anywhere. But can I trust you to be there? If you don’t come, I shall not go without you; and the whole affair must be put off.”

“No fear, Gregory; no fear of me. The lark shall still be on her nest; – but wait, my friend, I will tell the Counsellor, lest I seem to dread his face.”

Lovejoy saw that this was the bounden duty of a gentleman, inasmuch as the learned lawyer had promised his young friend a little remonstrance upon the following morning. The chances were that he would forget it: and this, of course, enhanced the duty of making him remember it. Therefore Hilary gave three taps on the worm-eaten door of his good tutor, according to the scale of precedence. This rule was – inferior clerk, one tap; head-clerk, two taps; pupil (being no clerk at all, and paying, not drawing, salary), as many taps as he might think proper, in a reasonable way.

Hilary, of course, began, as he always managed to begin, with almost everybody.

“I am sorry to disturb you, sir; and I have nothing particular to say.”

“In that case, why did you come, Lorraine? It is your usual state of mind.”

“Well, sir,” said Hilary, laughing at the terse mood of the master, “I thought you had something to say to me – a very unusual state of mind,” he was going to say, “on your part;” but stopped, with a well-bred youth’s perception of the unbecoming.

“Yes, I have something to say to you. I remember it now, quite clearly. You were playing some childish game with Lovejoy, in the pupil’s room. Now, this is all well enough for you, who are fit for nothing else, perhaps. Your father expects no work from you; and if he did, he would never get it. You may do very well, in your careless way, being born to the gift of indifference. But those who can and must work hard – is it honest of you to entice them? You think that I speak severely. Perhaps I do, because I feel that I am speaking to a gentleman.”

“It is uncommonly hard,” said Hilary, with his bright blue eyes half conscious of a shameful spring of moisture, “that a fellow always gets it worse for trying to be a gentleman.”

“You have touched a great truth,” Mr. Malahide answered, labouring heavily not to smile; “but so it always must be. My boy, I am sorry to vex you; but to be vexed is better than to grieve. You like young Lovejoy – don’t make him idle.”

“Sir, I will dart at him henceforth, whenever I see him lazy; instead of the late Lord Chancellor, now sitting upon asphodel.”

“Lorraine,” the great lawyer suddenly asked, in a flush of unusual interest, “you have been at Oxford quite recently. They do all sorts of things there now. Have they settled what asphodel is?”

“No, sir, I fear that they never will. There are several other moot questions still. But with your kind leave, I mean to try to settle that point to-morrow.”

CHAPTER XII.

WITH THE COSTERMONGERS

Martin Lovejoy, Gregory’s father, owned and worked a pleasant farm in that part of Kent which the natives love to call the “Garden of Eden.” In the valley of the upper Medway, a few miles above Maidstone, pretty hamlets follow the soft winding of the river. Here an ancient race of settlers, quiet and intelligent, chose their home, and chose it well, and love it as dearly as ever.

To argue with such people is to fall below their mercy. They stand at their cottage-doors, serenely as thirty generations of them have stood. A riotous storm or two may have swept them; but it never lasted long. The bowers of hop and of honeysuckle, trimmed alleys, and rambling roses, the flowering trees by the side of the road, and the truest of true green meadows, the wealth of deep orchards retiring away – as all wealth does – to enjoy itself; and where the land condescends to wheat, the vast gratitude of the wheat-crop, – nobody wonders, after a while, that these men know their value.

The early sun was up and slurring light upon London housetops, as a task of duty only, having lost all interest in a thing even he can make no hand of. But the brisk air of the morning, after such a night of sweltering, and of strong smells under slates, rode in the perpetual balance of the clime, and spread itself. Fresh, cool draughts of new-born day, as vague as the smile of an infant, roved about; yet were to be caught according to the dew-lines. And of these the best and truest followed into Covent Garden, under the force of attraction towards the green stuff they had dwelt among.

Here was a wondrous reek of men before the night had spent itself. Such a Babel, of a market-morning in “the berry-season,” as makes one long to understand the mother-tongue of nobody. Many things are nice and handsome; fruit and flowers are fair and fresh; life is as swift as life can be; and the pulse of price throbs everywhere. Yet, upon the whole, it is wiser not to say much more of it.

Martin Lovejoy scarcely ever ventured into this stormy world. In summer and autumn he was obliged to send some of his fruit to London; but he always sent it under the care of a trusty old retainer, Master John Shorne, whose crusty temper and crisp wit were a puzzle to the Cockney costermonger. Throughout the market, this man was known familiarly as “Kentish Crust,” and the name helped him well in his business.

Now, in the summer morning early, Hilary Lorraine, with his most sprightly walk and manner, sought his way through the crowded alleys, and the swarms of those that buy and sell. Even the roughest of rough customers (when both demand and supply are rough), though they would not yield him way, at any rate did not shove him by. “A swell, to buy fruit for his sweetheart,” was their conclusion in half a glance at him. “Here, sir, here you are! berries for nothing, and cherries we pays you for eating of them!”

With the help of these generous fellows, Hilary found his way to John Shorne and the waggon. The horses, in unbuckled ease, were munching their well-earned corn close by; for at that time Covent Garden was not squeezed and driven as now it is. The tail-board of the waggon was now hanging upon its hinges, and “Kentish Crust,” on his springy rostrum, dealt with the fag-end of his goods. The market, in those days, was not flooded with poor foreign produce, fair to the eye, but a fraud on the belly, and full of most dangerous colic. Englishmen, at that time, did not spend their keenest wits upon the newest and speediest measures for robbing their brother Englishmen; and a native would really buy from his neighbour as gladly as from his born enemy.

Master John Shorne had a canvas bag on the right side of his breeches, hanging outside, full in sight, defying every cut-purse. That age was comparatively honest; nevertheless, John kept a club, cut in Mereworth wood, quite handy. And, at every sale he made, he rang his coin of the realm in his bag, as if he were calling bees all round the waggon. This generally led to another sale. For money has a rich and irresistible joy in jingling.

Hilary was delighted to watch these things, so entirely new to him. He had that fatal gift of sliding into other people’s minds, and wondering what to do there. Not as a great poet has it (still reserving his own strength, and playing on the smaller nature kindly as he loves it), but simply as a child rejoices to play with other children. So that he entered eagerly into the sudden changes of John’s temper, according to the tone, the bidding, and, most of all, the importance of the customers that came to him. By this time the cherries were all sold out, having left no trace except some red splashes, where an over-ripe sieve had been bleeding. But the Kentish man still had some bushels of peas, and new potatoes, and bunches of coleworts, and early carrots, besides five or six dozens of creamy cauliflowers, and several scores of fine-hearted lettuce. Therefore he was dancing with great excitement up and down his van, for he could not bear to go home uncleared; and some of his shrewder customers saw that by waiting a little longer they would be likely to get things at half-price. Of course he was fully alive to this, and had done his best to hide surplus stock, by means of sacks, and mats, and empty bushels piled upon full ones.

“Crusty, thou must come down, old fellow,” cried a one-eyed costermonger, winking first at John and then through the rails, and even at the springs of the van; “half the load will go back to Kent, or else to the cowkeeper, if so be you holds on so almighty dear.”

“Ha, then, Joe, are you waiting for that? Go to the cow-yard and take your turn. They always feeds the one-eyed first. Gentlemen, now – while there’s anything left! We’ve kept all the very best back to the last, ’cos they chanced to be packed by an Irishman. ‘First goes in, must first come out.’ Paddy, are you there to stick to it?”

“Be jabers, and how could I slip out, when the hape of you was atop of me? And right I was, be the holy poker; there it all is the very first in the bottom of the vhan!”

“Now, are you nearly ready, John?” asked Gregory, suddenly appearing through the laughter of the crowd; “here is the gentleman going with us, and I can’t have him kept waiting.”

“Come up, Master Greg, and help sell out, if you know the time better than I do.” John Shorne was vexed, or he would not so have spoken to his master’s son.

To his great surprise, with a bound up came not Gregory Lovejoy, who was always a little bit shy of the marketing, but Hilary Lorraine, declared by dress and manner (clearly marked, as now they never can be) of an order wholly different from the people round him.

“Let me help you, sir,” he said; “I have long been looking on; I am sure that I understand it.”

“Forty years have I been at ’un, and I scarcely knows ’un now. They takes a deal of mannerin’, sir, and the prices will go in and out.”

“No doubt; and yet for the sport of it, let me help you, Master Shorne. I will not sell a leaf below the price you whisper to me.”

In such height of life and hurry, half a minute is enough to fetch a great crowd anywhere. It was round the market in ten seconds that a grand lord was going to sell out of Grower Lovejoy’s waggon. For a great wager, of course it must be; and all who could rush, rushed to see. Hilary let them get ready, and waited till he saw that their money was burning. Meanwhile Crusty John was grinning one of his most experienced grins.

“Don’t let him; oh, don’t let him,” Gregory shouted to the salesman, as Hilary came to the rostrum with a bunch of carrots in one hand and a cauliflower in the other – “What would his friends say if they heard it?”

“Nay, I’ll not let ’un,” John Shorne answered, mischievously taking the verb in its (now) provincial sense; “why should I let ’un? It can’t hurt he, and it may do good to we.”

In less than ten minutes the van was cleared, and at such prices as Grower Lovejoy’s goods had not fetched all through the summer. Such competition arose for the honour of purchasing from a “nobleman,” and so enchanted were the dealers’ ladies, many of whom came thronging round, with Hilary’s bright complexion, gay address, and complaisancy.