CHAPTER XXIV.
A FATHERLY SUGGESTION
Sir Roland Lorraine, in his little book-room, after that long talk with his mother, had fallen back into the chair of reflection, now growing more and more dear to him. He hoped for at least a good hour of peace to think of things, and to compare them with affairs that he had read of. It was all a trifle, of course, and not to be seriously dwelt upon. No man could have less belief in star, or comet, or even sun, as glancing out of their proper sphere, or orbit, at the dust of earth. No man smiled more disdainfully at the hornbooks of seers and astrologers: and no man kept his own firm doubtings to himself more carefully.
And yet he was touched, as nobody now would be in a case of that sort, perhaps by the real grandeur of that old man in devoting himself (according to his lights) to the stars that might come after him. Of these the brightest now broke in; and the dreamer’s peace was done for.
What man has not his own queer little turns? Sir Roland knew quite well the step at the door – for Hilary’s walk was beyond mistake; yet what did he do but spread hands on his forehead, and to the utmost of all his ability – sleep?
Hilary looked at his male parent with affectionate sagacity. He had some little doubts about his being asleep, or, at any rate, quite so heartily as so good a man had a right to repose. Therefore, instead of withdrawing, he spoke.
“My dear father, I hope you are well. I am sorry to disturb you, but – how do you do, sir; how do you do?”
The schoolboy’s rude answer to this kind inquiry – “None the better for seeing you” – passed through Hilary’s mind, at least, if it did not enter his father’s. However, they saluted each other as warmly as can be expected reasonably of a British father and a British son; and then they gazed at one another, as if it was the first time either had enjoyed that privilege.
“Hilary, I think you are grown,” Sir Roland said, to break the silence, and save his lips from the curve of a yawn. “It is time for you to give up growing.”
“I gave it up, sir, two years ago; if the standard measures of the realm are correct. But perhaps you refer to something better than material increase. If so, sir, I am pleased that you think so.”
“Of course you are,” his father answered; “you would have grown out of yourself, to have grown out of pleasant self-complacency. How did you leave Mr. Malahide? Very well? Ah, I am glad to hear it. The law is the healthiest of professions; and that your countenance vouches. But such a colour requires food after fifty miles of travelling. We shall not dine for an hour and a half. Ring the bell, and I will order something while you go and see your grandmother.”
“No, thank you, sir. If you can spare the time, I should like to have a little talk with you. It is that which has brought me down from London, in this rather unceremonious way.”
“Spare me apologies, Hilary, because I am so used to this. It is a great pleasure to see you, of course, especially when you look so well. Quite as if there was no such thing as money – which happens to you continually, and is your panacea for moneyed cares. But would not the usual form have done – a large sheet of paper (with tenpence to pay), and, ‘My dear father, I have no ready cash – your dutiful son, H. L.’?”
“No, my dear father,” said Hilary, laughing in recognition of his favourite form; “it is a much more important affair this time. Money, of course, I have none; but still, I look upon that as nothing. You cannot say I ever show any doubt as to your liberality.”
“You are quite right. I have never complained of such diffidence on your part. But what is this matter far more important than money in your estimate?”
“Well, I scarcely seem to know,” said Hilary, gathering all his courage, “whether there is in all the world a thing so important as money.”
“That is quite a new view for you to take. You have thrown all your money right and left. May I hope that this view will be lasting?”
“Yes, I think, sir, that you may. I am about to do a thing which will make money very scarce with me.”
“I can think of nothing,” his father answered, with a little impatience at his prologues, “which can make money any scarcer than it always is with you. I know that you are honourable, and that you scorn low vices. When that has been said of you, Hilary, there is very little more to say.”
“There might have been something more to say, my dear father, but for you. You have treated me always as a gentleman treats a younger gentleman dependent upon him – and no more. You have exchanged (as you are doing now) little snap-shots with me, as if I were a sharpshooter, and upon a level with you. I am not upon a level with you. And if it is kind, it is not fair play.”
Sir Roland looked at him with great surprise. This was not like Hilary. Hilary, perhaps, had never been under fatherly control as he ought to be; but still, he had taken things easily as yet, and held himself shy of conflict.
“I scarcely understand you, Hilary,” Sir Roland answered, quietly. “If you have any grievance, surely there will be time to discuss it calmly, during the long vacation, which you are now beginning so early.”
“I fear, sir, that I shall not have the pleasure of spending my long vacation here. I have done a thing which I am not sure that you will at all approve of.”
“That is to say, you are quite sure that I shall disapprove of it.”
“No, my dear father; I hope not quite so bad at that, at any rate. I shall be quite resigned to leave you to think of it at your leisure. It is simply this – I have made up my mind, if I can obtain your consent, to get married.”
“Indeed,” exclaimed the father, with a smile of some contempt. “I will not say that I am surprised; for nothing you do surprises me. But who has inspired this new whim, and how long will it endure?”
“All my life!” the youth replied, with fervour and some irritation; for his father alone of living beings knew how to irritate him. “All my life, sir, as sure as I live! Can you never believe that I am in earnest?”
“She must be a true enchantress so to have improved your character! May I venture to ask who she is?”
“To be sure, sir. She lives in Kent, and her name is Mabel Lovejoy, the daughter of Mr. Martin Lovejoy.”
“Lovejoy! A Danish name, I believe; and an old one, in its proper form. What is Mr. Martin Lovejoy by profession, or otherwise?”
“By profession he is a very worthy and long-established grower.”
“A grower! I fail to remember that branch of the liberal professions.”
“A grower, sir, is a gentleman who grows the fruits of the earth, for the good of others.”
“What we should call a ‘spade husbandman,’ perhaps. A healthful and classic industry – under the towers of Œbalia. I beg to be excused all further discussion; as I never use strong language. Perhaps you will go and enlist your grandmother’s sympathy with this loyal attachment to the daughter of the grower.”
“But, sir, if you will only allow me – ”
“Of course; if I would only allow you to describe her virtues – but that is just what I have not the smallest intention of allowing. Spread the wings of imagination to a more favourable breeze. This interview must close on my part with a suggestive (but perhaps self-evident) proposition. Hilary, the door is open.”
CHAPTER XXV.
THE WELL OF THE SIBYL
In the village of West Lorraine, which lies at the foot of the South Down ridge, there lived at this moment, and had lived for three generations of common people, an extraordinary old woman of the name of Nanny Stilgoe. She may have been mentioned before, because it was next to impossible to keep out of her, whenever anybody whosoever wanted to speak of the neighbourhood. For miles and miles around she was acknowledged to know everything; and the only complaint about her was concerning her humility. She would not pretend to be a witch; while everybody felt that she ought to be, and most people were sure that she was one.
Alice Lorraine was well-accustomed to have many talks with Nanny; listening to her queer old sayings, and with young eyes gazing at the wisdom or folly of the bygone days. Nanny, of course, was pleased with this; still she was too old to make a favourite now of any one. People going slowly upward towards a better region have a vested interest still in earth, but in mankind a mere shifting remainder.
Therefore all the grace of Alice and her clever ways and sweetness, and even half a pound of tea and an ounce and a half of tobacco, could not tempt old Nanny Stilgoe to say what was not inside of her. Everybody made her much more positive in everything (according as the months went on, and she knew less and less what became of them) by calling upon her, at every new moon, to declare to them something or other. It was not in her nature to pretend to deceive anybody, and she found it harder, from day to day, to be right in all their trifles.
But her best exertions were always forthcoming on behalf of Coombe Lorraine, both as containing the most conspicuous people of the neighbourhood, and also because in her early days she had been a trusty servant under Lady Valeria. Old Nanny’s age had become by this time almost an unknown quantity, several years being placed to her credit (as is almost always done), to which she was not entitled. But, at any rate, she looked back upon her former mistress, Lady Valeria, as comparatively a chicken, and felt some contempt for her judgment, because it could not have grown ripe as yet. Therefore the venerable Mrs. Stilgoe (proclaimed by the public voice as having long since completed her century) cannot have been much under ninety in the year of grace 1811.
Being of a rather stiff and decided – not to say crabbed – turn of mind, this old woman kept a small cottage to herself at the bend of the road beyond the blacksmith’s, close to the well of St. Hagydor. This cottage was not only free of rent, but her own for the term of her natural life, by deed of gift from Sir Roger Lorraine, in gratitude for a brave thing she had done when Roland was a baby. Having received this desirable cottage, and finding it followed by no others, she naturally felt that she had not been treated altogether well by the family. And her pension of three half-crowns a-week, and her Sunday dinner in a basin, made an old woman of her before her time, and only set people talking.
In spite of all this, Nanny was full of goodwill to the family, forgiving them all their kindness to her, and even her own dependence upon them; foretelling their troubles plentifully, and never failing to enhance them. And now on the very day after young Hilary’s conflict with his father, she had the good luck to meet Alice Lorraine, on her way to the rectory, to consult Uncle Struan, or beg him to intercede. For the young man had taken his father at his word, concluding that the door, not only of the room, but also of the house, was open for him, in the inhospitable sense; and, casting off his native dust from his gaiters, he had taken the evening stage to London, after a talk with his favourite Alice.
Old Nanny Stilgoe had just been out to gather a few sticks to boil her kettle, and was hobbling home with the fagot in one hand, and in the other a stout staff chosen from it, which she had taken to help her along. She wore no bonnet or cap on her head, but an old red kerchief tied round it, from which a scanty iron-grey lock escaped, and fluttered now and then across the rugged features and haggard cheeks. Her eyes, though sunken, were bright and keen, and few girls in the parish could thread a fine needle as quickly as she could. But extreme old age was shown in the countless seams and puckers of her face, in the knobby protuberance where bones met, and, above all, in the dull wan surface of skin whence the life was retiring.
“Now, Nanny, I hope you are well to-day,” Alice said, kindly, though by no means eager to hold discourse with her just now; “you are working hard, I see, as usual.”
“Ay, ay, working hard, the same as us all be born to, and goes out of the world with the sweat of our brow. Not the likes of you, Miss Alice. All the world be made to fit you, the same as a pudding do to a basin.”
“Now, Nanny, you ought to know better than that. There is nobody born to such luck, and to keep it. Shall I carry your fagot for you? How cleverly you do tie them!”
“’Ee may carr the fagot as far as ’ee wool. ’Ee wunt goo very far, I count. The skin of thee isn’t thick enow. There, set ’un down now beside of the well. What be all this news about Haylery?”
“News about Hilary, Nanny Stilgoe! Why, who has told you anything?”
“There’s many a thing as comes to my knowledge without no need of telling. He have broken with his father, haven’t he? Ho, ho, ho!”
“Nanny, you never should talk like that. As if you thought it a very fine thing, after all you have had to do with us!”
“And all I owes you! Oh yes, yes; no need to be bringing it to my mind, when I gets it in a basin every Sunday.”
“Now, Mrs. Stilgoe, you must remember that it was your own wish to have it so. You complained that the gravy was gone into grease, and did we expect you to have a great fire, and you came up and chose a brown basin yourself, and the cloth it was to be tied in; and you said that then you would be satisfied.”
“Well, well, you know it all by heart. I never pays heed to them little things. I leaves all of that for the great folk. Howsever, I have a good right to be told what doth not consarn no strangers.”
“You said that you knew it all without telling! The story, however, is too true this time. But I hope it may be for a short time only.”
“All along of a chield of a girl – warn’t it all along of that? Boys thinks they be sugar-plums always, till they knows ’en better.”
“Why, Nanny, now, how rude you are! What am I but a child of a girl? Much better, I hope, than a sugar-plum.”
“Don’t tell me! Now, you see the water in that well. Clear and bright, and not so deep as this here stick of mine is.”
“Beautifully cool and sparkling even after the long hot weather. How I wish we had such a well on the hill! What a comfort it must be to you!”
“Holy water, they calls it, don’t ’em? Holy water, tino! But it do well enough to boil the kittle, when there be no frogs in it. My father told me that his grandfather, or one of his forebears afore him, seed this well in the middle of a great roaring torrent, ten feet over top of this here top step. It came all the way from your hill, he said. It fetched more water than Adur river; and the track of it can be followed now.”
“I have heard of it,” answered Alice, with a little shiver of superstition; “I have always longed to know more about it.”
“The less you knows of it the better for ’ee. Pray to the Lord every night, young woman, that you may never see it.”
“Oh, that is all superstition, Nanny. I should like to see it particularly. I never could understand how it came; though it seems to be clear that it does come. It has only come twice in five hundred years, according to what they say of it. I have heard the old rhyme about it ever – oh, ever since I can remember.”
“So have I heered. But they never gets things right now; they be so careless. How have you heered of it, Miss Alice?”
“Like this – as near as I can remember: —
“‘When the Woeburn brake the plain,
Ill it boded for Lorraine.
When the Woeburn came again,
Death and dearth it brought Lorraine.
If it ever floweth more,
Reign of the Lorraines is o’er.’
Did I say it right now, Nanny?”
“Yes, child, near enough, leastways. But you haven’t said the last verse at all.
“‘Only this can save Lorraine,
One must plunge to rescue twain.’”
“Why, I never heard those two lines, Nanny?”
“Like enough. They never cares to finish anything nowadays. But that there verse belongeth to it, as sure as any of the Psalms of David. I’ve heerd my father say it scores of times, and he had it from his grandfather. Sit you down on the stone, child, a minute, while I go in and start the fire up. Scarcely a bit of wood fit to burn round any of the hedges now, they thieving children goes everywhere. Makes my poor back stiff, it doth, to get enow to boil a cow’s foot or a rind of bakkon.”
Old Nanny had her own good reasons for not wanting Alice in her cottage just then. Because she was going to have for dinner a rind of bacon truly, but also as companion thereto a nice young rabbit with onion sauce; a rabbit, fee-simple whereof was legally vested in Sir Roland Lorraine. But Bottler, the pigman, took seizin thereof, vi et armis, and conveyed it habendum, coquendum, et vorandum, to Mrs. Nanny Stilgoe, in payment for a pig-charm.
Meanwhile, Alice thought sadly over the many uncomfortable legends concerning her ancient and dwindled race. The first outbreak of the “Woeburn,” in the time of Edward the Third, A.D. 1349, was said to have brought forth deadly poison from the hill-side whence it sprang. It ran for seven months, according to the story to be found in one of their earliest records, confirmed by an inscription in the church; and the Earl of Lorraine and his seven children died of the “black death” within that time. Only a posthumous son was left, to carry on the lineage. The fatal water then subsided for a hundred and eleven years; when it broke forth suddenly in greater volume, and ran for three months only. But in that short time the fortune of the family fell from its loftiest to its lowest; and never thenceforth was it restored to the ancient eminence and wealth. On Towton field, in as bloody a battle as ever was fought in England, the Lorraines, though accustomed to driving snow, perished like a snow-drift. The bill of attainder, passed with hot speed by a slavish Parliament, took away family rank and lands, and left the last of them an outcast, with the block prepared for him.
Nanny having set that coney boiling, and carefully latched the door, hobbled at her best pace back to Alice, and resumed her subject.
“Holy water! Oh, ho, ho! Holy to old Nick, I reckon; and that be why her boileth over so. Three wells there be in a row, you know, Miss, all from that same spring I count; the well in Parson’s garden, and this, and the uppest one, under the foot of your hill, above where that gipsy boy harboureth. That be where the Woeburn breaketh ground.”
“You mean where the moss, and the cotton-grass is. But you can scarcely call it a well there now.”
“It dothn’t run much, very like; and I ha’n’t been up that way for a year or more. But only you try to walk over it, child; and you’d walk into your grave, I hold. The time is nigh up for it to come out, according to what they tells of it.”
“Very well, Nanny, let it come out. What a treat it would be this hot summer! The Adur is almost dry, and the shepherd-pits everywhere are empty.”
“Then you pay no heed, child, what is to come of it, if it ever comes out again. Worse than ever comed afore to such a lot as you be.”
“I cannot well see how it could be worse than death, and dearth, and slaughter, Nanny.”
“Now, that shows how young girls will talk, without any thought of anything. To us poor folk it be wise and right to put life afore anything, according to natur’; and arter that, the things as must go inside of us. There let me think, let me think a bit. I forgets things now; but I know there be some’at as you great folks count more than life, and victuals, and natur’, and everythin’. But I forgets the word you uses for it.”
“Honour, Nanny, I suppose you mean – the honour, of course, of the family.”
“May be, some’at of that sort, as you builds up your mind upon. Well, that be running into danger now, if the old words has any truth in ’em.”
“Nonsense, Nanny, I’ll not listen to you. Which of us is likely to disgrace our name, pray? I am tired of all these nursery stories. Good-bye, Mrs. Stilgoe.”
“It’ll not be you, at any rate,” the old woman muttered wrathfully, as Alice, with sparkling eyes, and a quick firm step, set off for the rectory: “if ever there was a proud piece of goods – even my ’bacco her’ll never think of in her tantrums now! Ah, well! ah, well! We lives, and we learns to hold our tongues in the end, no doubt.” The old lady’s judgment of the world was a little too harsh in this case, however; for Alice Lorraine, on her homeward way, left the usual shilling’s-worth of tobacco on old Nanny’s window-sill.