CHAPTER XXXII.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE OPINION
Is it just or even honest – fair, of course, it cannot be – to deal so much with the heavy people, the eldermost ones and the bittermost, and leave altogether with nothing said of her – or not even let her have her own say – as sweet a young maiden as ever lived, and as true, and brave, and kind an one? Alice was of a different class altogether from Mabel Lovejoy. Mabel was a dear-hearted girl, loving, pure, unselfish, warm, and good enough to marry any man, and be his own wife for ever.
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
One man there is, or was, who ought to have been brought forward long ago. Everybody said the same thing of him – he wanted nothing more than the power of insisting upon his reputation, and of checking his own bashfulness, to make him one of the foremost men anywhere in or near Steyning. His name was Bottler, as everybody knew; and through some hereditary veins of thought, they always added “the pigman” – as if he were a porcine hybrid!
He was nothing of the sort. He was only a man who stuck pigs, when they wanted sticking; and if at such times he showed humanity, how could that identify him with the animal between his knees? He was sensitive upon this point at times, and had been known to say, “I am no pigman; what I am is a master pork-butcher.”
However, he could not get over his name, any more than anybody else can. And if such a trifle hurt his feelings, he scarcely insisted upon them, until he was getting quite into his fifth quart of ale, and discovering his true value.
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 pat