Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

CHAPTER LVIII.
A HERO’S RETURN

Hilary was so weak and weary, and so seriously ill, when at last he reached the rectory, that his uncle and aunt would not hear of his coming downstairs for a couple of days at least. They saw that his best chance of escaping some long and perhaps fatal malady was to be found in rest and quietude, nursing, and kindly feeding. And the worst of it was that, whatever they did, they could not bring him to feed a quarter so kindly as he ought to do. The Rector said, “Confound the fellow!” and Mrs. Hales shook her head, and cried “Poor dear!” as dish after dish, and dainty little plate, came out of his room untasted.

And now, on the morning of that same day on which Alice thus had pledged herself (being the third from her brother’s arrival, of which she was wholly ignorant), the Rector of West Lorraine arose, and girded himself, and ate his breakfast with no small excitement. He had received a new clerical vestment of the loftiest symbolism, and he hoped to exhibit it at the head of a very long procession.

“About poor Hilary? What am I to do?” asked Mrs. Hales, coming into the lobby, to see her good husband array himself. “All sorts of things may happen while you are away.”

“Now, Caroline, how can you ask such a question? Feed, feed, feed; that’s the line of treatment. And above all things, lock up your medicine-chest. He wants no squills, or scammony, or even your patent electuary – of all things the most abominable; though I am most ungrateful to call it so – for I owe to it half my burial-fees. He wants no murderous doctor’s stuff: he wants a good breakfast – that’s what he wants.”

“But, my dear, you forget,” answered good Mrs. Hales, who kept a small wardrobe of bottles, and pills, gallipots, powders, and little square scales; “you are quite overlooking the state of his tongue. He has not eaten the size of my little finger. Why? Why, because of the fur on his tongue!”

“Bless the boy’s tongue, and yours too!” cried the Rector. “I should not care twopence about his tongue, if he only used his teeth properly.”

“Ah, Struan, Struan! those who have never known what ache or pain is, cannot hope to understand the system. I know exactly how to treat him – a course of gentle drastics first, and then three days of my electuary, and then cardamomum, exhibited with liquor potassy. Doctoring has always been in my dear mother’s family; and when your time comes to be ill and weak, how often you will thank Providence!”

“I thank the Lord for all things,” said the parson, who was often of a religious turn: “but I must be brought very low indeed, ere I thank Him for your electuary.”

“Put on your new hunting-coat, my dear. There it hangs, and I know that you are dying to exhibit it. The vanity of men surpasses even the love of women. There, there! You never will learn how to put a coat on. Just come to the hall-chair, for me to pull it up. You are so unreasonably tall, that you never can get your coat up at the neck. Now, will you have it done, or will you go as you are, and look a regular figure in the saddle? You call it a ‘bottle-green’! I call it a green, without the bottle.”

“Caroline, sometimes you are most provoking. It is not your nature; but you try to do it. The cloth is of quite an invisible green, as the man in London told me – manufactured on purpose for ecclesiastics; though hundreds of parsons, God knows, go after the hounds in the good old scarlet. If you say any more, I will order a scarlet, and keep West Grinstead in countenance. They always do it in the West of England. In invisible green, I am a hypocrite.”

“Now, don’t excite yourself, Struan, or you won’t enjoy your opening day at all. And I am sure that the green is as bright as can be; and you look very well – very well indeed. Though I don’t quite see how you can button it. Perhaps it is meant for a button-hook, or a leather thong over your stomach, dear.”

“It is meant to fit me, Mrs. Hales; and it fits me to a nicety. It could not fit better; and it will be too easy, when we have had a few hard runs. Where are my daughters? They know a good fit; and they know how to put a thing on my shoulders. Carry, Madge, and Cecil, come to the rescue of your father. Your father is baited, worse than any badger. Come all of you; don’t stop a minute, or get perverted by your mother. Now, in simple truth, what do you say to this, my dears? Each speak her own opinion.”

“It suits you most beautifully, papa.”

“Papa, I think that I never saw you look a quarter so well before.”

“My dear father, if there are any ladies, mamma will have reason to be jealous. But I fear that I see the back-seam starting.”

“You clever little Cecil, I am afraid that it is. I feel a relief in my – ahem! – I mean an uncomfortable looseness in the chest. I told the fellow forty-eight inches at least. He has scamped the cloth, the London rascal! However, we can spare it from round the waist, as soon as our poor Cobble can see to it. But for to-day – ah yes, well thought of! My darling, go and get some of your green purse-silk. You can herring-bone it so as to last for the day at least. Your mother will show you how to do it. Madge, tell Bonny to run and tell Robert not to bring the mare yet for a quarter of an hour. Now, ladies, I am at your mercy.”

“Now, papa dear,” asked Cecil, as she stitched away at the seam of her father’s burly back; “if poor Cousin Hilary should get up and want to go out, what are we to do?”

“How can you even put such a question? Even on our opening day, I would not dream of leaving the house, if I thought that you could be so stupid as to let that poor boy out. I would not have him seen in the parish, and I would not have his own people see him, even for the brush of the Fox-coombe fox, who is older than the hills, they say, and no hound dare go near him. One of you must be always handy; and if he gets restless, turn the key on him. Nothing can be simpler.”

With his bottle-green coat, now warranted to last (unless he over-buttoned it), the Rector kissed his dear wife and daughters; and then universal good wishes, applauses, and kissings of hand, set him forth on his way, with a bright smile spread upon his healthy face.

“Now mind, we are left in charge,” said Madge. “You are his doctor, of course, mamma; but we are to be his constables. I hope to goodness that he will eat by-and-by. It makes me so miserable to see him. And the trouble we have had to keep the servants from knowing who he is, mamma!”

“My dear, your father has ordered it so. For my part, I cannot see why there should be so much mystery about it. But he always knows better than we do, of course.”

“Surely, mamma,” suggested Cecil, “it would be a dreadful shock to the family to receive poor Hilary in such a condition, just after the appearance of that horrid water. They would put the two things together, and believe it the beginning of great calamities.”

“Now, my dear child,” answered Mrs. Hales, who loved to speak a word in season; “let not us, who are Christians, hearken to such superstitious vanities. Trust in the Lord, and all will be well. He holdeth in the hollow of his hands the earth and all that therein is; yea, and the waters that be under the earth. Now run up, and see whether your poor cousin has eaten that morsel of anchovy toast. And tell him that I am going to prepare his draught; but he must not take the pills until half-past eleven.”

“Oh, mamma dear, you’ll drive him out of the house. Poor fellow, how I do pity him!”

Now Hilary certainly deserved this pity – not for his bodily ailments only, and the cruel fate which had placed him at the mercy of the medicine-chest, but more especially for the low and feverish condition of his heart and mind. Brooding perpetually on his disgrace, and attributing to himself more blame than his folly and failure demanded, he lost the refreshment of dreamless sleep, which his jaded body called out for. No rest could he find in the comforting words of his uncle and aunt and cousins: he knew that they were meant for comfort, and such knowledge vexes; or at least it irritates a man, until the broader time of life, when things are taken as they are meant, and any good word is welcome.

He was not, however, so very far gone as to swallow his dear aunt’s boluses. He allowed his pillow to take his pills; and his good-natured cousins let him swallow them, as much as a juggler swallows swords. “I can’t take them while you are looking,” he said; “when you come in again you will find them gone.”

Now one of the girls – it was never known which, because all three denied it – stupidly let the sick cousin know that the master of the house was absent. Hilary paid no special heed at the moment when he heard it; but after a while he began to perceive (as behoved a blockaded soldier) that here was his chance for a sally. And he told them so, after his gravy-beef and a raw egg beaten up with sherry.

“How cunning you are now!” said Cecil, who liked and admired him very deeply. “But you are not quite equal, Master Captain, to female ingenuity. The Spanish ladies must have taught you that, if half that I hear is true of them. Now you need not look so wretched, because I know nothing about them. Only this I know, that out of this house you are not allowed to go, without – oh, what do you call it? – a pass, or a watchword, or a countersign, or something or other from papa himself. So you may just as well lie down – or mamma will come up with a powder for you.”

“The will of the Lord be done,” said Hilary; “but, Cecil, you are getting very pretty, and you need not take away my breeches.”

“I am sorry to do it, Cousin Hilary; but I know quite well what I am about. And none of your military ways of going on can mislead me as to your character. You want to be off. We are quite aware of it. You can scarcely put two feet to the ground.”

“Oh dear, how many ought I to be able to put?”

“You know best – at least four, I should hope. But you are not equal to argument. And we are all particularly ordered to keep you from what is too much for you. Now I shall take away these things – whatever they are called, I have no idea; but I do what I am told to do. And after this you will take that glass of red wine declared to be wonderful; and then you will shut both your eyes, if you please, till my father comes home from his hunting.”

The lively girl departed with a bow of light defiance, carrying away her father’s small clothes (which had been left for Hilary), and locking the door of his bedroom with a decisive turn of a heavy key. “Mother, you may go to sleep,” she said, as she ran down into the drawing-room: “I defy him to go, if he were Jack Sheppard: he has got no breeches to go in.”

“Cecil, you are almost too clever! How your father will laugh, to be sure!” And the excellent lady began her nap.

As the afternoon wore away, Hilary grew more and more impatient of his long confinement. Not only that he pined for the open air – as, of course, he must do, after living so long with the free sky for his canopy – but also that he felt most miserable at being so near the old house on the hill, yet doubtful of his reception there. More than once he rang the bell; but the old nurse, who alone of the servants was allowed to enter, would do no more than scold or coax him, and quietly lock him in again. So at last he got out of bed, and feebly made his way to the window, and thence beheld, betwixt him and the grassy mounds of the churchyard, that swift black stream which had so surprised him on the night of his arrival.

Since then he had been persuaded himself, or allowed others to persuade him, that the water had been a vision only of his weak and exited brain. But now he saw it clearly, calmly, and in a very few moments knew what it was, and of what dark import.

“How can I have let them keep me here?” he exclaimed, with indignation. “My father and sister must believe me dead, while I play at this miserable hide-and-seek. Perhaps they will think that I had better have been dead; but, at any rate, they shall know the truth.”

With these words he took up his sailor-clothes, which the clever Cecil had overlooked, and which had been left in his room for fear of setting the servants talking; and he dressed himself as well as he could, and tried to look clean and tidy. But do what he might, he could only cut a poor and sorry figure; and looking in the glass, he was frightened at his wan and worn appearance. Then, knowing the habits of the house, and wishing to avoid excitement, he waited until the two elder daughters were gone down the village for their gossip, and Cecil was seeing the potatoes dug, and Mrs. Hales sleeping over Fisher or Patrick, while the cook was just putting the dinner down; and then, without trying the door at all, he quietly descended from the window, with the help of a stack-pipe and a spurry pear-tree.

So feeble was he now, that this slight exertion made him turn faint, and sick, and giddy; and he was obliged to sit down and rest under a shrub, into which he had staggered. But after a while, he found himself getting a little better; and, pulling up one of the dahlia-stakes, to help himself along with, he made his way to the gate; and there being cut off from the proper road, followed the leave of the land and the water, along the valley upward.

Alice Lorraine had permitted herself not quite to lose her temper, but still to get a little worried by her grandmother’s exhortations. Of all living beings, she felt herself to be one of the very most reasonable; and whenever she began to doubt about it, she knew there was something wrong with her. Her favourite cure for this state of mind was a free and independent ride, over the hills and far away. She hated to have a groom behind her, watching her, and perhaps criticising the movements of her figure. But as it was scarcely the proper thing for Miss Lorraine to be scouring the country, like a yeoman’s daughter, she always had to start with a trusty groom; but she generally managed to get rid of him.

And now, having vainly coaxed her father to come for a breezy canter, Alice set forth about four o’clock, for an hour of rapid air to clear, invigorate, and enliven her. Whatever she did, or failed of doing (when her grandmother was too much for her), she always looked graceful, and bright, and kind. But she never looked better than when she was sitting, beautifully straight, on her favourite mare, skimming the sward of the hills; or bowing her head in some tangled covert. This day, she allowed the groom to chase her (like the black care that sits behind) until she had taken free burst of the hills, and longed to see things quietly. And then she sent him, in the kindest manner, to a very old woman at Lower Chancton, to ask whether she had been frightened; and, when he had turned the corner of a difficult plantation, Alice took her course for that which she had made up her mind to do.

According to the ancient stories, no fair-blooded creatures (such as man, or horse, cow, dog, or pigeon) would ever put lip to the accursed stream; whereas all foul things, pole-cats, foxes, fitches, badgers, ravens, and the like, were drawn by it, as by a loadstone, and made a feasting-place of it. So Alice resolved that her darling “Elfrida ” should be compelled to pant with thirst, and then should have the fairest offer of the water of the Woeburn. And of this intent she was so full, that she paid no heed to the “dressing bell,” clanging over the lonely hill, nor even to her pet mare’s sense of dinner; but took a short cut of her own knowledge, down a lonely borstall, to the channel of new waters.

The stream had risen greatly even since the day before yesterday, and now in full volume swept on grandly towards the river Adur. Any one who might chance to see it for the first time, and without any impression, or even idea concerning it, could scarcely fail to observe how it differed from ordinary waters. Not only through its pellucid blackness, and the swaying of long grass under it (whose every stalk, and sheath, and awn, and even empty glume, was clear, as they quivered, wavered, severed, and spread, or sheafed themselves together again, and hustled in their common immersion), – not only in this, and the absence of any water-plants along its margin, was the stream peculiar, but also in its force and flow. It did not lip, or lap, or ripple, or gurgle, or wimple, or even murmur, as all well-meaning rivers do; but swept on in one even sweep, with a face as smooth as the best plate-glass, and the silent slide of nightfall.

Now the truth of the old saying was made evident to Alice, that one can take a horse to water, but a score cannot make him drink, unless he is so minded. Though it was not an easy thing to get Elfrida to the water. She started away with flashing eyes, pricked ears, and snorting nostrils; and nothing but perfect faith in Alice would have made her even come anigh. But as for drinking, or even wetting her nose in that black liquid – might the horse-fiend seize her, if she dreamed of doing a thing so dark and unholy.

“You shall, you shall, you wicked little witch!” cried Alice, who was often obstinate. “I mean to drink it; and we won’t have any superstition.” She leaped off lightly, with her skirt tucked up, and taking the mare by the cheek-piece of the bridle, drew her forward. “Come along, come along! you shall drink! If you don’t, I’ll pour it up your nostrils, Frida; somehow or other, you shall swallow it. You know I won’t have any nonsense, don’t you?”

The beautiful filly, with great eyes partly defiant and partly suppliant, drew back her straight nose, and blowing nostrils, and the glistening curve of the foamy lip. Not even a hair of her muzzle should touch the face of the accursed water.

“Very well, then, you shall have it thus,” cried Alice, with her curved palm brimming with the unpopular liquid; when suddenly a shadow fell on the shadowy brilliance before her – a shadow distinct from her own and Elfrida’s, and cast further into the wavering.

“Who are you?” cried Alice, turning sharply round; “and what business have you on my father’s land?” She was in the greatest fright at the sudden appearance of a foreign sailor, and the place so lonely and beyond all help; but without thinking twice, she put a brave face on her terror.

“Who am I?” said Hilary, trying to get up a sprightly laugh. “Well, I think you must have seen me once or twice in the course of your long life, Miss Lorraine.”

“Oh, Hilary, Hilary, Hilary!”

She threw herself into his arms with a jump, relying upon his accustomed strength, and without any thought of the difference. He tottered backwards, and must have fallen, but for the trunk of a pollard ash. And seeing how it was, she again cried out, “Oh, Hilary, Hilary, Hilary!”

“That is my name,” he answered, after kissing her in a timid manner; “but not my nature; at the present moment I am not so very hilarious.”

“Why, you are not fit to walk, or talk, or even to look like a hero. You are the bravest fellow that ever was born. Oh, how proud we are of you! My darling, what is the matter? Why, you look as if you did not know me! Help, help, help! He is going to die. Oh, for God’s sake, help!”

Poor Hilary, after looking wildly around, and trying in vain to command his mouth, fell suddenly back, convulsed, distorted, writhing, foaming, and wallowing in the depths of epilepsy. Sky, hill, and tree swung to and fro, across his strained and starting eyes, and then whirled round like a spinning-wheel, with radiating sparks and spots. Then all fell into abyss of darkness, down a bottomless pit, into utter and awful loss of everything.

The vigour of youth had fought against this robbery of humanity so long and hard that Alice, the only spectator of the conflict, began to recover from shriek and wailing at the time that her brother fell into the black insensibility. The ground sloped so that if she had not been there, the unfortunate youth must have rolled into the Woeburn, and so ended. But being a prompt and active girl, she had saved him from this at any rate. She had had the wit also to save his tongue, by slipping a glove between his teeth; which scarcely a girl in a hundred, who saw such a thing for the first time, would have done. And now, though her face was bathed in tears, and her hands almost as tremulous as if themselves convulsed, she filled her low-crowned riding-hat with water from the river, and sprinkled his forehead gently, and released his neck from cumbrance. And then she gazed into his thin pale features, and listened for the beating of his heart.

This was so low that she could not hear or even feel it anywhere. “Oh, how can I get him home?” she cried. “Oh, my only brother, my only brother!” In fright and misery she leaped upon a crest of chalk, to seek around for any one to help her; and suddenly she espied her groom against the skyline, a long way off, galloping up the ridge from Chancton. In hope that one of the many echoes of the cliffs might aid her, she shrieked with all her power, and tore a white kerchief from under her riding-habit, and put it on her whip and waved it. And presently she had the joy of seeing the horse’s head turned towards her. The rider had not caught her voice, but had descried some white thing fluttering between him and the sombre stripe which he was watching earnestly.

This groom was a strong and hearty man, and the father of seven children. He made the best of the case, and ventured to comfort his young mistress. And then he laid Hilary upon Elfrida, the docile and soft-stepper; and making him fast with his own bridle, and other quick contrivances, he tethered his own horse to a tree, and leading the mare, set off, with Alice walking carefully and supporting the head of her senseless brother. So came this hero, after all his exploits, back to the home of his fathers.