CHAPTER XLVII.
TRY TO THINK THE BEST OF ME
Lorraine set spurs to his horse as soon as he got to the end of this letter. It was high time for him to gallop away from the one idea, – the bitter knowledge that out of this he could not come with the conscience of a gentleman. He was right in fleeing from himself, as hard as ever he could go; for no Lorraine had been known ever to behave so shabbily. In the former days of rather low morality and high feudalism, many Lorraines might have taken fancies to pretty girls, and jilted them – but never as he had done; never approaching a pure maid as an equal, and pledging honour to her, and then dishonourably deserting her.
“I am sure I know not what to do,” he cried, in a cold sweat, while his nag was in a very hot one. “Heaven knows who my true love is. I am almost sure that it must be Mabel; because when I think of her I get hot; and when I think of Claudia, I get cold.”
There may have been some sense in this; at any rate it is a question for a meteorologist. Though people who explain – as they always manage to do – everything, might without difficulty declare that they understood the whole of it. That a young man in magnetic attitude towards two maidens widely distinct, one positive and one negative, should hop up and down, like elder-pith, would of course be accounted for by the “strange phenomena of electricity.” But little was known of such things then; and every man had to confront his own acts, without any fine phraseology. And Hilary’s acts had left him now in such a position – or “fix” as it is forcibly termed nowadays – that even that most inventive Arab, the Sheikh of the Subterfuges, could scarcely have delivered him.
But, after all, the griefs of the body (where there is perpetual work) knock at the door of the constitution louder than those of the mind do. And not only Hilary now, but all the British army found it hard to get anything to eat. As for money – there was none, or next to none, among them; but this was a trifling matter to men who knew so well how to help themselves. But shoes, and clothing, and meat for dinner, and yellow soap for horny soles, and a dram of something strong at night before lying down in the hole of their hips, – they felt the want of these comforts now, after spending a fortnight in Madrid. And now they were bound to march every day fifteen to twenty English miles, over very hard ground, and in scorching weather, after an enemy offering more than affording chance of fighting.
These things made every British bosom ready to explode with anger; and the Staff was blamed, as usual, for negligence, ignorance, clumsiness, inability, and all the rest of it. These reproaches entered deeply into the bruised heart of Lorraine, and made him so zealous that his chief very often laughed while praising him. And thus in the valley of the Arlanzan, on the march towards Burgos, he became a gallant captain, with the goodwill of all who knew him.
Lorraine was royally proud of this; for his nature was not self-contained. He contemplated many letters beginning “Captain Lorraine presents his compliments to so-and-so;” and he even thought at one time of thus defying his Uncle Struan. However, a little reflection showed him that the wisest plan was to let the Rector abide a while in silence. It was out of all reason – though not, perhaps, entirely beyond precedent – that he, the least injured of all the parties, should be the loudest in complaint; and it would serve him right to learn, from the hostile source of Coombe Lorraine, the withering fact that his recreant nephew was now a British captain bold.
To Alice, therefore, the Captain wrote at the very first opportunity, to set forth his promotion, and to thank his father and grandmother for cash. But he made no allusion to home-affairs, except to wish everybody well. This letter he despatched on the 17th of September; and then, being thoroughly stiff and weary from a week spent in the saddle, he shunned the camp-fires and the cooking, and slept in a tuffet of plantain-grass, to the melody of the Arlanzan.
On the following day our army, being entirely robbed of fighting by a dancing Frenchman (who kept snapping his fingers at Lord Wellington), entered in no pleasant humour into a burning city. The sun was hot enough in all conscience, roasting all wholesome Britons into a dirty Moorish colour, without a poor halt and maimed soldier having to march between burning houses. A house on fire is full of interest, and has become proverbial now as an illustration of bright success. But the metaphor – whether derived or not from military privileges – proceeds on the supposition that the proper people have applied the torch. In the present case this was otherwise. The Frenchmen had fired the houses, and taken excellent care to rob them first.
Finding the heat of the town of Burgos almost past endurance, although the fire had now been quenched, Hilary strolled forth towards sunset for a little change of air. His duties, which had been so incessant, were cut short for a day or two; but to move his legs, with no horse between them, seemed at first unnatural. He passed through narrow reeking streets, where filthy people sprawled about under overlapping eaves and coignes, and then he came to the scorched rough land, and looked back at the citadel. The garrison, now that the smoke was clearing from the houses below the steep (which they had fired for safety’s sake), might be seen in the western light, training their guns upon the city, which swarmed with Spanish guerillas.
These sons of the soil were plundering with as good a grace as if themselves had taken a hostile city; and in the enthusiasm of the moment, or from force of habit perhaps, some of them gladly lent a hand in robbing their own houses. But the British soldiers grounded arms, and looked on very grimly; for they had not carried the town by storm, and their sense of honesty prevailed. All this amused Lorraine, who watched it through his field-glass, as he sat on a rocky mound outside the city, resting himself, for his legs were stiff, and feeling quite out of his element at being his own master. But presently he saw that the French, who were very busy in the castle, were about to treat both Spaniards and Britons to a warm salute of shells; and he rose at once to give them warning, but found his legs too stiff for speed. So he threw a half-dollar to a Portuguese soldier, who was sauntering on the road below, and bade him run at his very best pace, and give notice of their danger.
But before his messenger had passed the gate, Hilary saw a Spanish chief, as in the distance he seemed to be, come swiftly out of a side street, and by rapid signals recall and place quite out of the line of fire all the plundering Spaniards. This man, as Hilary’s spy-glass showed him, was of very great breadth and stature, and wore a slouch-hat with a short black feather, a green leather jerkin, and a broad white sash; his mighty legs were encased above mid-thigh in boots of undressed hide; and he was armed with a long straight sword and dagger. Having some experience of plunderers, Hilary was surprised at the prompt obedience yielded to this guerilla chief, until he was gratified by observing a sample of his discipline. For two of his men demurring a little to the abandonment of their prey, he knocked them down as scientifically as an English pugilist, handed their booty to others, and had them dragged by the heels round the corner. Then having his men all under cover, he stood in a calm and reflective attitude, with an immense cigar in his mouth, to see a fine group of thirsty Britons (who were drinking in the middle of the square), shot or shelled as the case might be. And when Hilary’s messenger ran up in breathless haste to give the alarm, and earn his half-dollar honestly, what did that ruthless fellow do, but thrust forth a long leg, trip him up, and hand him over with a grin to some brigands, who rifled his pockets and stopped his mouth. Then came what Hilary had expected, a roar, a plunge, a wreath of smoke, and nine or ten brave Englishmen lay shattered round the fountain.
“That Spaniard is a very queer ally,” said Hilary, with a shudder. “He knew what was coming, and he took good care that it should not be prevented. Let me try to see his face, if my good glass will show it. I call him a bandit, and nothing else. Partidas indeed! I call them cut-throats.”
At that very moment, the great guerilla turned round to indulge in a hearty laugh, and having a panel of pitched wall behind him, presented his face (like a portrait in an ebony frame) towards Hilary. The collar of the jerkin was rolled back, and the great bull throat and neck left bare, except where a short black beard stood forth, like a spur of jet to the heavy jaws. The mouth was covered with a thick moustache; but haughty nostrils and a Roman nose, as well as deep lines of face, and fierce eyes hung with sullen eyebrows, made Hilary cry, “What an ugly fellow!” as he turned his glass upon something else.
Yet this was a face such as many women dote upon and almost adore. Power is the first thing they look for in the face of a man; or at least it is the very first thing that strikes them. And “power” of that sort is headstrong will, with no regard for others. From mental power it so diverges that very few men have embodied both; as nature has kindly provided, for the happiness of the rest of us. But Captain Lorraine, while he watched that Spaniard, knew that he must be a man of mark, though he little dreamed that his wild love Claudia utterly scorned his own comely self in comparison with that “ugly fellow.”
But for the moment the sight of that brigand, and slaughter of good English soldiers, set Hilary (who, with all his faults, was vigorously patriotic) against the whole race of Spaniards, male or female, or whatever they might be.
Moreover, his long absence now from Claudia, and her neglect to write (as she had promised to do) to him, as well as an anecdote which he had heard on good authority about her, had combined to weaken the spell of her dazzling and impassioned beauty – a power which above all others, must have its victim within reach. And even as regarded mere personal charms, the more he had to deal with the Spanish race, the more he acknowledged the truth of the words of his good Uncle Struan. Mabel, at thirty, would be in full beauty; Claudia would be rapidly falling into the sere and yellow leaf. The more he thought of the matter, the more his heart glowed back towards the one who loved him, and cooled towards the selfish foreigner.
While he was in this state of mind, a mounted orderly dashed up, and placed a small parcel in his hand. “From home, sir,” he said, and saluted, and dashed off. Hilary opened it, and found a most lovely miniature of Mabel. There was the good, bright, clever face; the calm clear forehead, and the rich brown eyes; the rosy lips ready for a charming smile; the soft glossy hair, in natural curls to fit caressing fingers. Above all there was, what there never could be in the face of Claudia, the happy expression of loving-kindness, faith, and truth, and constancy.
Who sent that portrait was for years unknown to any one but the sender. It proved in the end to be Uncle Struan.
Hilary gazed at it most intently, and for some moments sadly. But the more he gazed the better and brighter became his own expression. The goodness of his true-love seemed to breathe from her face into his, and fill him with a likeness to her, and chasten, enlarge, and ennoble him.
Hesitation was thenceforth banished; and being driven by nature, as usual, rather with a spur than bridle, he made a strong dash at a desperate fence which for months had been puzzling him. Horses unluckily do not write, although they talk, and laugh, and think, and tell with their eyes a great deal more than most of us who ride them. Therefore this metaphor must be dropped, for Lorraine pulled out his roll of paper, pen, and ink (which he was bound to carry), and put up his knees, all stiff and creaking, and on that desk did what he ought to have done at least three months ago. He wrote to his loving Mabel; surely better late than never.
“My darling Mabel,
“I know that I have not behaved to you kindly, or even as a gentleman. Although I was not allowed to write to you, I ought to have written to your brother Gregory long ago, and I am ashamed of myself. But I am much more ashamed of the reason, and I will make no sham excuses. It is difficult to say what I want to say; but my only amends is to tell the whole truth, and I hope that you will try to allow for me.
“And the truth is this. I fell in love: not as I did with you, my darling, just because I loved you; but because – well, I cannot tell why, although I am trying for the very truth; I cannot tell why I did it. She saved my life, and nursed me long. She was not bad-looking; but young and brave.
“I hope that it is all over now. I trust in the Lord that it is so. I see that these Spaniards are cruel people, and I work night and day to forget them all. When I get any sleep, it is you that come and look upon me beautifully; and when I kick up with those plaguesome insects, the face that I see is a Spanish one. This alone shows where my heart is fixed. But you have none of those things at Old Applewood.
“And now I can say no more. I write in the midst of roaring cannon, and perhaps you will say, when you see my words, that I had better have died of my wounds, than live to disgrace, as I have done, your
“Hilary.
“P.S. – Try to think the best of me, darling. If anybody needs it, I do. Gregory wrote me such a letter that I am afraid to send you any – anythings!”
CHAPTER XLVIII.
SOMETHING WORTH KISSING
Pessimists who love to dwell on the darker side of human nature, and find (or at any rate colour) that perpetually changing object to the tone of their own dull thoughts, making our whole world no better than the chameleon of themselves; who trace every act and word and thought, either to very mean selfishness, or exceedingly grand destiny – according to their own pet theory, – let those gloomy spirits migrate in as cheerful a manner as they can manage to the back side of the moon, the side that neither shines on earth, nor gathers any earthshine. But even if they will not thus oblige inferior mortals, let them not come near a scene where true love dwells, and simple faith, and pleasant hours are spent in helping nature to be kind to us.
Where the rich recesses of the bosomed earth brim over with variety; where every step of man discloses some new goodness over him; and every hour of the day shows different veins of happiness; the light in sloping glances looking richer as the sun goes down, and showing with a deeper love its own good works and parentage; the children of the light presenting all their varied joy to it; some revolving, many bending, all with one accord inclining softly, sweetly, and thankfully, – can any man, even of a churlish nature, wander about at a time like this, with the power of the sunset over him, and walk down the alleys of trees, and spend a leisure hour among them, without admitting into his heart a calm unconscious kindliness?
If any man could be so ungrateful to the Giver of all good things, he was not to be found in the land of Kent, but must be sought in some northern county where they grow sour gooseberries. Master Martin Lovejoy had, in the month of October, 1812, as fine a crop of pears as ever made a fountain of a tree.
For the growers did not understand the pruning of trees as we do now. They were a benighted lot altogether, proceeding only by rule of thumb and the practice of their grandfathers, never lopping the roots of a tree, nor summer pinching, nor wiring it, nor dislocating its joints; and yet they grew as good fruit as we do! They had no right to do so; but the thing is beyond denial. Therefore one might see a pear-tree rising in its natural form, tall and straight and goodly, hanging its taper branches like a chandelier with lustrous weight, tier upon tier, the rich fruit glistening with the ruddy sun-streaks, or with russet veinage mellowing. Hard thereby the Golden Noble, globular and stainless, or the conical King Pippin, pencilled on its orange fulness with a crimson glow, or the great bulk of Dutch Codlin, oblong, ribbed, and over-bearing. Here was the place and time for a man to sit in the midst of his garden, and feel that the year was not gone in vain, nor his date of life lessened fruitlessly, and looking round with right good will, thank the Lord, and remember his father.
In such goodly mood and tenor Master Martin Lovejoy sat, early of an October afternoon, to smoke his pipe and enjoy himself. He had finished his dinner – a plain but good one; his teeth were sound, and digestion stanch; he paid his tithes and went to church; he had not an enemy in the world, to the utmost of his knowledge; and his name was good for a thousand pounds from Canterbury to Reigate. His wheat had been fine, and his hops pretty good, his barley by no means below the mark, the cherry and strawberry season fair, and his apples and pears as you see them. Such a man would be guilty of a great mistake if he kept on the tramp perpetually. Fortune encouraged him to sit down, and set an arm-chair and a cushion for him, and mixed him a glass of Schiedam and water, with a slice of lemon, and gave him a wife to ask how his feet were, as well as a daughter to see to his slippers.
“Now you don’t get on at all,” he said, as he mixed Mrs Lovejoy the least little drop, because of the wind going round to the north; “you are so abstemious, my dear soul; by-and-by you will pay out for it.”
“I must be a disciplinarian, Martin,” Mrs. Lovejoy replied, with a sad sweet smile. “How ever the ladies can manage to take beer, wine, gin, bitters, and brandy, in the way they do, all of an afternoon, is beyond my comprehension.”
“They get used to it,” answered the Grower, calmly; “and their constitution requires it. At the same time I am not saying, mind you, that some of them may not overdo it. Moderation is the golden rule; but you carry it too far, my dear.”
“Better too little than too much,” said Mrs. Lovejoy sententiously. “Whatever I take, I like just to know that there is something in it, and no more. No, Martin, no – if you please, not more than the thickness of my thumb-nail. Well, now for what we were talking about. We can never go on like this, you know.”
“Wife, I will tell you what it is” – here Martin Lovejoy tried to look both melancholy and stern, but failed; “we do not use our duties right; we do not work up in the position to which it has pleased God to call us. We don’t make our children see that they are – bless my heart, what is the word?”
“‘Obligated’ is the word you mean. ‘Obligated’ they all of them are.”
“No, no; ‘bounden’ is the word I mean; ‘bounden’ says the Catechism. They are bounden to obey, whether they like it or no, and that is the word’s expression. Now is there one of them as does it?”
“I can’t say there is,” his wife replied, after thinking of all three of them. “Martin, no; they do their best, but you can’t have them quite tied hand and foot. And I doubt whether we should love them better, if we had them always to order.”
“Likely not. I cannot tell. They have given me no chance of trying. They do what seems best in their own eyes, and the fault of it lies with you, mother.”
“Do they ever do anything wrong, Martin Lovejoy? Do they ever disgrace you anywhere? Do they ever go about and borrow money, or trade on their name, or anything? Surely you want to provoke me, Martin, when you begin to revile my children.”
“Well,” said the Grower, blowing smoke, in the manner of a matrimonial man, “let us go to something else. Here is this affair of Mabel’s now. How do you mean to settle it?”
“I think you should rather tell me, Martin, how you mean to settle it. She might have been settled long ago, in a good position and comfortable, if my advice had been heeded. But you are the most obstinate man in the world.”
“Well, well, my dear, I don’t think that you should be hard upon any one in that respect. You have set your heart upon one thing, and I upon another; and we have to deal with some one perhaps more obstinate than both of us. She takes after her good mother there.”
“After her father, more likely, Martin. But she has given her promise, and she will keep it, and the time is very nearly up, you know.”
“The battle of Trafalgar, yes. The 21st of October, seven years ago, as I am a man! Lord bless me, it seems but yesterday! How all the country up and wept, and how it sent our boy to sea! There never can be such a thing again; and no one would look at a drumhead savoy!”
“Plague upon the market, Martin! I do believe you think much more of your growings than your gainings. But she fixed the day herself, because it was a battle; didn’t she?”
“Yes, wife, yes. But after all, I see not so much to come of it. Supposing she gets no letter by to-morrow-night, what comes of it?”
“Why, a very great deal. You men never know. She puts all her foolish ideas aside, and she does her best to be sensible.”
“By the spread of my measure, oh deary me! I thought she was bound to much more than that. She gives up him, at any rate.”
“Yes, poor dear, she gives him up, and a precious cry she will make of it. Why, Martin, when you and I were young we carried on so differently.”
“What use to talk about that?” said the Grower: “they all must have their romances now. Like tapping a cask of beer, it is. You must let them spit out at the top a little.”
“All that, of course, needs no discussion. I do not remember that, in our love-time, you expected to see me ‘spit out at the top!’ You grow so coarse in your ideas, Martin; the more you go growing, the coarser you get.”
“Now, is there nothing to be said but that? She gives him up, and she tries to be sensible. The malting season is on, and how can Elias come and do anything?”
“Martin, may I say one word? You keep so perpetually talking, that I scarcely have a chance to breathe. We do not want that low Jenkins here. How many quarters he soaks in a week is nothing, and cannot be anything to me. A tanner is more to my taste a great deal, if one must come down to the dressers. And there one might get some good ox-tails. I believe that you want to sell your daughter to get your malt for nothing.”
The Grower’s indignation at this despicable charge was such, that he rolled in his chair, like a man in a boat, and spread his sturdy legs, and said nothing, for fear of further mischief. Then he turned out his elbows, in a manner of his own, and Mrs. Lovejoy saw that she had gone too far.
“Well, well,” she resumed, “perhaps not quite that. Mr. Jenkins, no doubt, is very well in his way: and he shall have fair play, so far as I am concerned. But mind, Dr. Calvert must have the same; that was our bargain, Martin. All the days of the week to be open to both, and no difference in the dinner.”
“Very well, very well!” the franklin murmured, being still a little wounded about the malt. “I am sure I put up with anything. Calvert may have her, if he can cure her. I can’t bear to see the poor maid so pining. It makes my heart ache many a time; but I have more faith in barley-corn than jalap; though I don’t want neither of them for nothing.”
“We shall see, my dear, how she will come round. The doctor prescribes carriage exercise for her. Well, how is she to get it, except in his carriage? And she cannot well have his carriage, I suppose, before she marries him.”
“Carriage exercise? Riding on wheels, I suppose, is what they mean by it. If riding on wheels will do her any good, she can have our yellow gig five times a-week. And I want to go round the neighbourhood too. There’s some little bits of money owing me. I’ll take her for a drive to-morrow.”
“Your yellow gig! To call that a carriage! A rough sort of exercise, I doubt. Why, it jerks up, like a Jack-in-a-box, at every stone you come to. If that is your idea of a carriage, Martin, pray take us all out in the dung-cart.”
“The old gig was good enough for my mother; and why should my daughter be above it? They doctors and women are turning her head, worse than poor young Lorraine did. Oh, if I had Elias to prune my trees – after all I have taught him – and Lorraine to get up in the van again; I might keep out of the bankrupt court after all; I do believe I might.” Here the Grower fetched a long sigh through his pipe. He was going to be bankrupt every season; but never achieved that glory.
“I’m tired of that,” Mrs. Lovejoy said. “You used to frighten me with it at first, whenever there came any sort of weather – a storm, or a frost, or too much sun, or too much rain, or too little of it; the Lord knows that if you have had any fruit, you have got it out of Him by grumbling. And now you are longing, in a heathenish manner, to marry your daughter to two men at once! One for the night-work, and one for the day. Now, will you, for once, speak your mind out truly.”
“Well, wife, there is no one that tries a man so badly as his own wife does. I am pretty well known for speaking my mind too plainly, more than too doubtfully. I can’t say the same to you, as I should have to say to anybody else; because you are my wife, you see, and have a good right to be down upon me. And so I am forced to get away from things that ought to be argued. But about my daughter, I have a right to think my own opinion; while I leave your own to you, as a father has a right with a mother. And all I say is common-sense. Our Mabel belongs to a time of life when the girls are always dreaming. And then you may say what you like to them mainly; and it makes no difference. Now she looks very pale, and she feels very queer, all through that young sort of mischief. But let her get a letter from Master Hilary – and you would see what would come over her.”
“I have got it! I have got it!” cried a young voice, as if in answer, although too sudden of approach for that. “Father, here it is! Mother, here it is! Long expected, come at last! There, what do you think of that now?”
Her face was lit with a smile of delight, and her eyes with tears of gladness, as she stood between her astonished parents, and waved in the air an open letter, fluttering less (though a breeze was blowing) than her true heart fluttered. Then she pressed the paper to her lips, and kissed it, with a good smack every time; and then she laid it against her bosom, and bowed to her father and mother, as much as to say – “You may think what you like of me – I am not ashamed of it!”
The Grower pushed two grey curls aside, and looked up with a grand amazement. Here was a girl, who at dinner-time even would scarcely say more than “yes,” or “no;” who started when suddenly spoken to, and was obliged to clear her mind to think; who smiled now and then, when a smile was expected, and not because she had a smile, – in a word, who had become a dull, careless, unnatural, cloudy, depressed, and abominably inconsistent Mabel – a cause of anxiety to her father, and of recklessness to herself – when lo, at a touch of the magic wand, here she was, as brave as ever!
The father, and the mother also, knew the old expression settled on the darling face again; the many family modes of thinking, and of looking, and of loving, and of feeling out for love, which only a father and a mother dearly know in a dear child’s face. And then they looked at one another; and in spite of all small variance, the husband and the wife were one in the matter of rejoicing.
It was not according to their schemes, and they both might still be obstinate. But by a stroke their hearts were opened – wise or foolish, right or wrong, – what they might say outside reason, they really could not stop to think. They only saw that their sweet good child, for many long months a stranger to them, was come home to their hearts again. And they could have no clearer proof than this.
She took up her father’s pipe, and sniffed with a lofty contempt at the sealing-wax (which was of the very lowest order), and then she snapped it off and scraped him (with a tortoiseshell handled knife of her own) a proper place to suck at. And while she was doing that, and most busy with one of her fingers to make a draught, she turned to her mother with her other side, as only a very quick girl could do, and tucked up some hair (which was slipping from the string, with a palpable breach of the unities) and gave her two tugs, in the very right place to make her of the latest fashion; and then let her know, with lips alone, what store she set on her opinion. And the whole of this business was done in less time than two lovers would take for their kissing!
“You have beaten me, Popsy,” said Mrs. Lovejoy, fetching up an old name of the days when she was nursing this one.
“Dash me!” cried the Grower; “you shall marry Old Harry, if you choose to set your heart on him.”