CHAPTER LXIX.
BOTTLER BEATS THE ELEMENTS
It seems to be almost a settled point in the affairs of everybody (except, perhaps, Prince Bismarck) that nothing shall come to pass exactly according to arrangement. The best and noblest of mankind can do no more than plan discreetly, firmly act, and humbly wait the pleasure of a just, beneficent, and all-seeing Power.
For instance, Mr. Bottler had designed for at least three weeks to slay a large styful of fat pigs. But from day to day he had been forced to defer the operation. The frost was so intense that this good Azrael of the grunters had no faith in the efficacy of his ministrations. Not indeed as regarded his power to dismiss them to a happier world. In any kind of weather he could stick a pig; the knife they could not very well decline, when skilfully suggested; but they might, and very often did, break all the laws of hospitality, by sternly refusing to accept his salt. And the object of a pig’s creation is triple – (setting aside his head, and heels, and other small appurtenances) – fresh pork, pickled pork, and bacon; and the greatest of these three is bacon.
Now what was West Lorraine to do, and even the town of Steyning? Cart-loads of mutton came into the market, from the death in the snow of so many sheep; which (as the general public reasoned) must have made the meat beautifully white; and a great many labourers got a good feed, who had almost forgotten the taste of meat; and it did them good, and kept them warm. But the “best families” would not have this: they liked their mutton to have “interviewed” the butcher, in a constitutional manner; and not being sure how to prove this point, they would not look at any mutton at all, till lamb came out of snow-drift. This being so, what was now to be done? Many people said, “live on bread, and so on, red herrings, and ship-chandler’s stores, and whatever else the Lord may send.” Fifty good women came up through the snow to learn the Rector’s opinion; and all he could say was, “Boil down your bones.”
This produced such a desperate run upon the bank of poor Bonny, which really was a bank – of marrow bones, put by in the summer to season – that Jack was at work almost all the day long, and got thoroughly up to the tricks of the snow, and entirely learned how to travel it. Bonny’s poor hands were so chapped by the cold, that he slurred all the polish of the Rector’s boots; and Mr. Hales said that he had better grease them; which cut the boy deeper than any chap.
Superior people, however, could not think of relying upon Bonny’s bones; their money was ready, and they would pay for good meat what it was worth – and no more. Now a thoroughly honest man grows uneasy at the thought of getting more than he ought to get. It is pleasant to cheat the public; but the pleasure soaks down through the conscience, leaving tuberculous affection there, or bacteria; or at any rate some microscopic affliction. Bottler felt all these visitations; and in spite of all demand, he could not bring himself to do any more than treble the price of pig-meat.
“It does weigh so light this weather! Only take it in your hand,” he was bound to tell everybody, for their own sakes; “now you might scarcely think it – but what with one thing and another, that pig have cost me two and threepence a pound, and I sell him at one and ninepence!”
“Oh, Mr. Bottler, what a shame of you!”
“True, as you stand there, my dear! You might not believe it, from any one but me; till you marry, and go into business. Ah, and a very bad business it is. Starvation to everybody, unless they was bred and born to it; and even then only a crust of bread!” Mr. Churchwarden Bottler, however, did not look at all as if he sustained existence on a crust of bread. His stockings, whiter than the snow-drifts round him, showed very substantial bulge of leg, and his blue baize apron did like duty for that part of the human being which is so fatal to the race of pigs. And the soft smile, without which he never spoke, arose and subsided in no gaunt cheeks, and flickered in the channels of no paltry chin. In a word, Mr. Bottler was quite fat enough to kill.
“Polly,” he said to his favourite child, as soon as he had finished his Monday dinner; “you have been a good child through this very bad weather; and dad means to give you a rare treat to-night. Not consarning the easing of the pigs,” he continued, in answer to her usual nod, and employing his regular euphemism; – “there will be a many pigs to be eased, to satisfy the neighbourhood, and shut off the rogue to Bramber. But you shall see, Polly; you shall see something as will astonish you.”
Bottler put on his brown leathern apron, and gently performed his spiriting.
And without any nonsense, Polly saw a lovely scene soon afterwards. For her father had made up his mind to do a thing which would greatly exalt his renown, and quench that little rogue at Bramber. In spite of the weather he would kill pigs; and in spite of the weather, he would pickle them. He had five nice porkers and four bacon pigs, as ready as pigs can be for killing. They seemed to him daily to reproach him for their unduly prolonged existence. They could not lay on any fat in this weather, but relapsed for want of carving.
For Bottler in the morning had done this – which could not have occurred to any but a very superior mind. In his new premises facing the lane, a short way below Nanny Stilgoe’s cottage, he had a little yard, well away from all thatch, and abutting on nothing but his scalding-house. This yard was square, and enclosed by a wall of the chalky flints, that break so black, and bind so well into mortar.
Of course the whole place was still snowed up; but Master Bottler soon cured that. He went to the parish school, which was to have opened after the Christmas holidays on this 10th of January; but the schoolmaster vowed that, in such weather, he would warm no boy’s educational part, unless the parish first warmed his own. And the parish replied that he might do that for himself; not a knob of coal should he have; it was quite beginning at the wrong end, to warm him first. His answer was to bolt the school door, and sit down with a pipe and a little kettle.
The circumspect churchwarden had anticipated this state of siege; for he knew that every boy in the parish (who would have run like the devil if the door was open), knowing the door to be bolted, would spend the whole day in kicking at it. And here he found them, Bonny at the head, as a boy of rising intellect, and Captain Dick of the Bible-corps, and the boy who had been shot in the hedge, and many other less distinguished boys, furiously raging together because robbed of their right to a flogging.
“Come along, my lads,” said Bottler, knowing how to manage boys; “you may kick all day, and wear out your shoes. I’ve got a job for fifty of you, and a penny apiece for all as works well.”
Not to be too long, these boys all followed Churchwarden Bottler; and he led them to his little yard, and there he fitted every one of them up with something or other to work with. Some had brooms, and some had shovels, some had spades, and some had mops, one or two worked with old frying-pans, and Bonny had a worn-out warming-pan. All the boys who had got into breeches were to have twopence apiece; and the rest, who were still stitched up at the middle, might earn a penny a head if they worked hard.
Not one of them shirked his work. They worked as boys alone ever do work, throwing all their activity into it. And taking the big with the little ones, it cost Mr. Bottler four shillings and fourpence to get some hundred cubic yards of snow cleared out so thoroughly, that if a boy wanted to pelt a boy, he must go outside for his snowball. Mr. Bottler smiled calmly as he paid them; well he knew what an area of hunger he was spreading for his good pork, by means of this army of workboys. Then he showed the boys the pigs still living, and patted their shoulders, and smacked his lips with a relish that found an echo at more than forty hearths that evening. “Ah, won’t they come up rare?” he said. “Ay and go down rarer still,” replied Bonny, already beginning to stand in high esteem for jocosity, which he did his very best to earn.
All boys other than Bonny departed with lips overflowing with love of pork into little icicles. Then Mr. Bottler went to his cart-shed, and came back with his largest tarpaulin. He spread and fixed this in a clever manner over the middle of his little yard, leaving about ten feet clear all round between the edge of it and the wall. This being done, he invited Bonny to dinner, and enjoyed his converse, and afterwards pledged himself to Polly, as heretofore recorded. Later in the day many squeaks were heard; while Bonny worked hard at the furze-rick.
All things are judged always by their results. Be it enough, then, to chronicle these. West Lorraine, Wiston, and Steyning itself pronounced with one voice on the following day that a thing had been done on the bank of the Woeburn that verily vanquished the Woeburn itself. As Hercules conquered the Acheloüs, and the great Pelides hacked up by the roots both Simois and Scamander, so Bottler (a greater hero than even Nestor himself could call to mind, to snub inferior pig-stickers), Bottler aroused his valour, and scotched, and slew that Python – the Woeburn.
It is not enough to speak of such doings in this casual sort of way. Bottler’s deeds are now passing into the era of romance, which always precedes the age of history. Out of romance they all emerge with a tail of attestation; and if anybody lays hold of this, and clearly sees what to do with it, his story becomes history, and himself a great historian. But lo, here are the data for any historian of duly combative enthusiasm, to work out what Bottler did.
He let Bonny work – as all heroes permit – a great deal harder than he worked himself. He calmly looked on and smoked his pipe; and knowing quite well how the pigs would act (according to bulk and constitution) in the question of cooling down, he kept his father’s watch in hand, and at proper periods eased them. Meanwhile Bonny laboured for his life, and by the time all the pigs were ready for posthumous toilet, their dressing-room was warm and waiting for them. A porker may come home to his positive degree – pork – in less than no time. But the value of his dedication of himself – in the manner of a young curate – to the service of humanity, depends very much upon how he is treated.
The pork-trade at this time of writing is so active, that everybody – however small his operations are – should strive to give it a wholesome check rather than further impetus. And for that reason the doings of Bottler – fully as they deserve description – shall not have a bit of it.
CHAPTER LXX.
OH, HARO! HARO! HARO!
Again, another thing will show how heavily and wearily all people that on earth do dwell plod and plead their little way, and are but where they came from. Three young people, all well wrapped up, and ready to face anything, set out from Old Applewood farm on the very day next after Twelfth-day. They meant with one accord to be at Coombe Lorraine by the Saturday night, all being summoned upon church-service. There was not one of them that could be dispensed with – according to the last advices – and they felt their extreme responsibility, when the Grower locked them out of the great white gate.
“Now don’t make fools of yourselves,” he shouted; “you won’t be there quite so soon as you think.” They laughed him to scorn; but even before they got to Tonbridge a snowstorm came behind them, and quite smothered all their shoulders up, and grizzled the roots of the whiskers of the only one who had any. This was Counsellor Gregory, and the other two laughed at him, and vowed that his wig must have slipped down there, and then flicked him with pocket-handkerchiefs.
Counsellor Gregory took no heed. He was wonderfully staid and sapient now; and the day when he had played at darts – if cross-examination could have fetched it up – would have been to his expanded mind a painful remembrance of All-fools’ day. He stuck to his circuit, and cultivated the art of circuitous language. And being a sound and diligent lawyer, of good face and temper, he was able already to pay a clerk, who carried his bag and cleaned his boots.
But any client who had seen him now driving two spirited horses actually in tandem process, and sitting as if he were on the King’s Bench, would have met him at the gate with a “quo warranto,” if not a “quousque tandem?” He was well aware of this; his conscience told him that a firm of attorneys abode in the chief street of Tonbridge, and in spite of the snow either partner or clerk would almost be sure to be out at the door. He would not have been the Grower’s son if he had tried to circumvent them; so he drove by their door, and the senior partner took off his hat to Mabel, and said that Gregory was a most rising young man.
Mabel sat in the middle, of course, with a brother on either side to break the cold wind, and keep off the snow. She laughed at the weather at first; but soon the weather had the laugh of her. According to their own ideas, they were to put up for the night at the fine old inn at Horsham, and make their way thence to Coombe Lorraine in time for dinner on the Saturday. For Mabel of course was to be a bridesmaid, the Rector’s three daughters, and the Colonel’s two, completing the necessary six. But it soon became clear that the Grower knew more about roads and weather than the counsellor and the sailor did. By the time these eager travellers passed Penshurst and the home of the Sidneys, the road was some eight or nine inches deep with soft new-fallen snow. They had wisely set forth with a two-wheeled carriage, strong and not easily knocked out of gear – no other, in fact, than the old yellow gig disdained by Mrs. Lovejoy. For the look of it they cared not one jot; anything was good enough for such weather; and a couple of handsome and powerful horses would carry off a great deal worse than that; even if they had thought of it. But they never gave one thought to the matter. Except that the counsellor was a little tamed by “the law and its ramifications,” they all took after their father about the esse v. the videri. Nevertheless, they all got snowed up for the Friday night at East Grinstead, instead of getting on to Horsham.
For the further they got away from home, the more they managed to lose their way. The hedges and the ditches were all as one; the guide-posts were buried long ago; instead of the proper finger and thumb, great fists and bellies of drift, now and then, stuck out to stop the traveller. “No thoroughfare here” in great letters of ivy – the ivy that hangs in such deep relief, as if itself relieved by snow – and “Trespassers beware” from an alder, perhaps overhanging a swamp, where, if the snow-crust were once cut through a poor man could only toss up his arms, and go down and be no more heard of.
And now that another heavy storm was at it (black behind them, and white in front), the horses asked for nothing better than to be left to find their way. They threw up their forelocks, and jerked their noses, and rattled their rings, and expressed their ribs, and fingered away at the snow with their feet; meaning that their own heads were the best, if they could only have them. So the counsellor let them have their heads, for the evening dusk was gathering; and the leader turned round to the wheeler, and they had many words about it. And then they struck off at a merry trot, having both been down that road before, and supped well at the end of it. Foreseeing the like delight, with this keen weather to enhance it, they put their feet out at a tidy stretch, scuffling one another’s snowballs; and by the time of candle-lighting, landed their three inferior bipeds at the “Green Man,” at East Grinstead.
On the following day they were still worse off, for although it did not snow again, they got into an unknown country without any landmarks; and the cold growing more and more severe, they resolved to follow the Brighton road, if ever they should find it. But the Brighton coaches were taken off, and the road so entirely stopped, that they must have crossed without perceiving it. And both the nags growing very tired, and their own eyes dazed with so much white, they had made up their minds to build themselves a snow-house like the Esquimaux, when the sailor spied something in the distance, tall and white against the setting sun, which proved to be Horsham spire. With difficulty they reached the town by starlight, and all pretty well frost-bitten; and there they were obliged to spend the Sunday, not only for their horses’ sakes, but equally for their own poor selves.
To finish a bitter and tedious journey, they started from Horsham on the Monday morning, as soon as the frozen-out sun appeared; and although the travelling was wonderfully bad, they fetched to West Grinstead by twelve o’clock, and found good provender for man and beast. After an hour’s halt, and a peck of beans to keep the cold out of the horses’ stomachs, and a glass of cherry-brandy to do the like for their own, and a visit to the blacksmith (to fetch up the cogs of the shoes, and repair the springs), all set off again in the best of spirits, and vowing never to be beaten. But, labour as they might, the sun had set ere they got to Steyning; and under the slide of the hills, of course, they found the drift grow deeper; so that by the time they were come to the long loose street of West Lorraine, almost every soul therein, having regard to the weather, was tucked up snugly under the counterpane. With the weary leader stooping chin to knee to rub off icicles, and the powerful wheeler tramping sedately with his withers down and his crupper up, these three bold travellers, Gregory, Mabel, and Charles Lovejoy, sitting abreast in the yellow gig, passed silently through the deep silence of snow; and not even a boy beheld them, until they came to a place where red light streamed from an opening upon the lane, and cast on the snow the shadow of a tall man leaning on a gate. Inside the gate was a square of bright embers, and a man in white stockings uncommonly busy.
“Oh, Gregory, stop for a moment,” cried Mabel, “how warm it looks! Oh, how I wish I was a pig!”
They drew up in the ruddy light, and turned their frosted faces, frozen cloaks, and numbed hands towards it. And the leader turned round on his traces, and cheered up his poor nose with gazing; for warmth, as well as light, came forth in clouds upon the shivering air.
“What a wonderful man!” exclaimed Mabel again. “We have nobody like him in all our parish. He looks very good-natured. Oh, do let us go in, and warm ourselves.”
“And get our noses frozen off directly we come out. No, thank you,” said Gregory, “we will drive on. Get up, Spangler, will you, then?”
He flipped the leader with his frozen lash, and the tall man leaning upon the gate (as if he were short of employment) turned round and looked at them, and bade the busy man a very good evening, and came out into the snow, as if he were glad of any wheel track. At the turn of the lane they lost sight of him, slowly as they ploughed their way, and in another minute a very extraordinary thing befel them.
“Hark!” cried Mabel, as they came to a bank, where once the road might have gone straight on, but now turned sharply to the right, being broken by a broad black water. “I am quite sure I heard something.”
“The frost is singing in your ears,” said Charlie, “that is what it always does at sea. Or a blessed cold owl is hooting. Greg, what do you say?”
“I will offer my opinion,” replied the counsellor, “when I have sufficient data.”
“And when you get your fee endorsed. There it is again! Now did you hear it?”
She stood up between her two brothers, and stayed herself in the mighty jerks of road, with a hand on the shoulder of each of them. They listened, and doubted her keener ears, and gave her a pull to come back again. “What a child it is!” said the counsellor; “she always loses her wits when she gets within miles of that blessed Hilary.”
“Is that all you know about it – now, after all the mischief you have made! You have done your worst to part us.”
Though still quite a junior counsel, Gregory had been long enough called to the Bar to understand that women must not be cited to the bar of reason. Their opinions deserve the most perfect respect, because they are inspired; and no good woman ever changes them.
At any rate, Mabel was right this time. Before they could say a word, or look round, they not only heard but saw a boy riding and raving furiously, on the other side of the water. He was coming down the course of the stream towards them as fast as his donkey could flounder, and slide, and tear along over the snow-drifts. And at the top of his voice he was shouting, —
“A swan, a swan, a girt white swan! The bootiful leddy have turned into a girt swan! Oh, I never!”
“Are you mad, you young fool? Just get back from the water,” cried Gregory Lovejoy, sternly; for as Bonny pulled up, the horses, weary as they were, jumped round in affright, at Jack’s white nose and great ears jerking in a shady place. “Get back from the water, or we shall all be in it!” For the wheeler, having caught the leader’s scare, was backing right into the Woeburn, and Mabel could not help a little scream; till the sailor sprang cleverly over the wheel, and seized the shaft-horse by the head.
“There she cometh! there she cometh!” shouted Bonny all the while; “oh, whatever shall I do?”
“I see it! I see it!” cried Mabel, leaning over the rail of the gig, and gazing up the dark stream steadfastly; “oh, what can it be? It is all white. And hangs upon the water so. It must be some one floating drowned!”
Charlie, the sailor, without a word, ran to a bulge of the bank, as he saw the white thing coming nearer, looked at it for an instant with all his eyes, then flung off his coat, and plunged into the water, as if for a little pleasant swim. He had no idea of the power of the current; but if he had known all about it, he would have gone head-foremost all the same. For he saw in mid-channel the form of a woman, helpless, senseless, at the mercy of the water; and that was quite enough for him.
From his childhood up he had been a swimmer, and was quite at his ease in rough water; and therefore despised this sliding smoothness. But before he had taken three strokes, he felt that he had mistaken his enemy. Instead of swimming up the stream (which looked very easy to do from the bank), he could not even hold his own with arms and legs against it, but was quietly washed down by the force bearing into the cups of his shoulders. But in spite of the volume of torrent, he felt as comfortable as could be; for the water was by some twenty degrees warmer than in the frosty air.
“Cut the traces,” he managed to shout, as his brother and sister hung over the bank.
“What does he mean?” asked Gregory.
“Take my little knife,” said Mabel; “it cuts like a razor; but my hands shake.”
“I see, I see,” nodded the counsellor; and he cut the long traces of the leader, and knotted them together. Meanwhile Charlie let both feet sink, and stood edgewise in the rapid current, treading water quietly. Of course he was carried down stream as he did it; but slowly (compared with a floating body). And he found that the movement was much less rapid, at three or four feet from the surface. Before he had time to think of this, or fairly fetch his balance, the white thing he was waiting for came gliding in the blackness towards him. He flung out his arms at once, and cast his feet back, and made towards it. In the gliding hurry, and the flit of light, it passed him so far that he said “Good-bye,” and then (perhaps from the attraction of bodies) it seemed for a second to stop; and the hand he cast forth laid hold of something. His own head went under water, and he swallowed a good mouthful; but he stuck to what he had got hold of, as behoves an Englishman. Then he heard great shouting upon dry land, and it made him hold the tighter. “Bravo, my noble fellow!” He heard; he was getting a little tired; but encouragement is everything. “Catch it! catch it! lay hold! lay hold!” he heard in several voices, and he saw the splash of the traces thrown, but had no chance to lay hold of them. The power of the black stream swept him on, and he vainly strove for either bank; unless he would let loose his grasp, and he would rather drown with it than do that.
Now who saved him and his precious salvage? A poor, despised, and yet clever boy, whose only name was Bonny. When Gregory Lovejoy had lashed the Woeburn with his traces vainly, and Mabel had fixed her shawl to the end of them, and the tall man who followed the gig had dropped into the water quietly, and Bottler (disturbed by the shouting) had left his pigs and shone conspicuous – not one of them could have done a bit of good, if it had not been for Bonny. From no great valour on the part of the boy; but from a quick-witted suggestion.
His suggestion had to cross the water, as many good suggestions have to do; and but for Bottler’s knowledge of his voice, nobody would have noticed it.
“Ye’ll nab ’em down to bridge,” he cried; “hurn down to bridge, and ee’ll nab ’em. Tell ’un not to faight so.”
“Let your’sen go with the strame,” shouted Bottler to the gallant Charlie; “no use faighting for the bank. There’s a tree as crosseth down below; and us’ll pull’ee both out, when ’a gets there.”
Charlie had his head well up, and saw the wisdom of this counsel. He knew by long battle that he could do nothing against the tenor of the Woeburn, and the man who had leaped in to help him, brave and strong as he was, could only follow as the water listed. The water went at one set pace, and swimmers only floated. And now it was a breathless race for the people on the dry land to gain the long tree that spanned the Woeburn, ere its victims were carried under. And but for sailor Lovejoy’s skill, and presence of mind, in seeking downward, and paddling more than swimming, the swift stream would have been first at the bridge; and then no other chance for them.
As it was, the runners were just in time, with scarcely a second to spare for it. Three men knelt on the trunk of the tree, while Mabel knelt in the snow, and prayed. The merciless stream was a fathom below them; but they hung the staunch traces in two broad loops, made good at each end in a fork of bough, and they showed him where they were by flipping the surface of the water.
Clinging to his helpless burden still, and doing his best to support it, the young sailor managed to grasp the leather; but his strength was spent, and he could not rise, and all things swam around him; the snowy banks, the eager faces, the white form he held, and the swift black current – all like a vision swept through his brain, and might sweep on for ever. His wits were gone, and he must have followed, and been swept away to another world, if a powerful swimmer had not dashed up in full command of all faculties. The tall man, whom nobody had heeded in the rush and hurry, came down the black gorge with his head well up, and the speed and strength of an osprey. He seized the broad traces with such a grasp that the timber above them trembled, and he bore himself up with his chest to the stream, and tearing off his neckcloth, fastened first the drowned white figure, and then poor Charlie, to the loop of the strap, and saw them drawn up together; then gathering all his remaining powers, he struck for the bank, and gained it.
“Hurrah!” shouted Bottler! and every one present, Mabel included, joined the shout.
“Be quick, be quick! It is no time for words,” cried the tall man, shaking his dress on the snow; “let me have the lady; you bring the fine fellow as quickly as possible to Bottler’s yard. Bottler, just show us the shortest way.”
“To be sure, sir,” Mr. Bottler answered; “but, Major, you cannot carry her, and the drops are freezing on you.”
“Do as I told you. Run in front of me; and just show the shortest road.”
“Dash my stockings!” cried Master Bottler; “they won’t be worth looking at to-morrow. And all through the snow, I’ve kept un white. And I ain’t got any more clean ones.”
However he took a short cut to his yard; while Aylmer, with the lady in his arms, and her head hanging over his shoulder, followed so fast, that the good pig-sticker could scarcely keep in front of him.
“Never mind me,” cried brave Charlie, reviving; “I am as right as ever. Mabel, go on and help; though I fear it is too late to do any good.”
“Whoever it is, it is dead as a stone,” said the counsellor, wiping the wet from his sleeves; “it fell away from me like an empty bag; you might have spared your ducking, Charlie. But it must have been a lovely young woman.”
“Dead or alive, I have done my duty. But don’t you know who it is? Oh, Mabel!”
“How could I see her face?” said Mabel; “the men would not let me touch her. And about here I know no one.”
“Yes, you do. You know Alice Lorraine. It is poor Sir Roland’s daughter.”