Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

CHAPTER XII.

WITH THE COSTERMONGERS

Martin Lovejoy, Gregory’s father, owned and worked a pleasant farm in that part of Kent which the natives love to call the “Garden of Eden.” In the valley of the upper Medway, a few miles above Maidstone, pretty hamlets follow the soft winding of the river. Here an ancient race of settlers, quiet and intelligent, chose their home, and chose it well, and love it as dearly as ever.

To argue with such people is to fall below their mercy. They stand at their cottage-doors, serenely as thirty generations of them have stood. A riotous storm or two may have swept them; but it never lasted long. The bowers of hop and of honeysuckle, trimmed alleys, and rambling roses, the flowering trees by the side of the road, and the truest of true green meadows, the wealth of deep orchards retiring away – as all wealth does – to enjoy itself; and where the land condescends to wheat, the vast gratitude of the wheat-crop, – nobody wonders, after a while, that these men know their value.

The early sun was up and slurring light upon London housetops, as a task of duty only, having lost all interest in a thing even he can make no hand of. But the brisk air of the morning, after such a night of sweltering, and of strong smells under slates, rode in the perpetual balance of the clime, and spread itself. Fresh, cool draughts of new-born day, as vague as the smile of an infant, roved about; yet were to be caught according to the dew-lines. And of these the best and truest followed into Covent Garden, under the force of attraction towards the green stuff they had dwelt among.

Here was a wondrous reek of men before the night had spent itself. Such a Babel, of a market-morning in “the berry-season,” as makes one long to understand the mother-tongue of nobody. Many things are nice and handsome; fruit and flowers are fair and fresh; life is as swift as life can be; and the pulse of price throbs everywhere. Yet, upon the whole, it is wiser not to say much more of it.

Martin Lovejoy scarcely ever ventured into this stormy world. In summer and autumn he was obliged to send some of his fruit to London; but he always sent it under the care of a trusty old retainer, Master John Shorne, whose crusty temper and crisp wit were a puzzle to the Cockney costermonger. Throughout the market, this man was known familiarly as “Kentish Crust,” and the name helped him well in his business.

Now, in the summer morning early, Hilary Lorraine, with his most sprightly walk and manner, sought his way through the crowded alleys, and the swarms of those that buy and sell. Even the roughest of rough customers (when both demand and supply are rough), though they would not yield him way, at any rate did not shove him by. “A swell, to buy fruit for his sweetheart,” was their conclusion in half a glance at him. “Here, sir, here you are! berries for nothing, and cherries we pays you for eating of them!”

With the help of these generous fellows, Hilary found his way to John Shorne and the waggon. The horses, in unbuckled ease, were munching their well-earned corn close by; for at that time Covent Garden was not squeezed and driven as now it is. The tail-board of the waggon was now hanging upon its hinges, and “Kentish Crust,” on his springy rostrum, dealt with the fag-end of his goods. The market, in those days, was not flooded with poor foreign produce, fair to the eye, but a fraud on the belly, and full of most dangerous colic. Englishmen, at that time, did not spend their keenest wits upon the newest and speediest measures for robbing their brother Englishmen; and a native would really buy from his neighbour as gladly as from his born enemy.

Master John Shorne had a canvas bag on the right side of his breeches, hanging outside, full in sight, defying every cut-purse. That age was comparatively honest; nevertheless, John kept a club, cut in Mereworth wood, quite handy. And, at every sale he made, he rang his coin of the realm in his bag, as if he were calling bees all round the waggon. This generally led to another sale. For money has a rich and irresistible joy in jingling.

Hilary was delighted to watch these things, so entirely new to him. He had that fatal gift of sliding into other people’s minds, and wondering what to do there. Not as a great poet has it (still reserving his own strength, and playing on the smaller nature kindly as he loves it), but simply as a child rejoices to play with other children. So that he entered eagerly into the sudden changes of John’s temper, according to the tone, the bidding, and, most of all, the importance of the customers that came to him. By this time the cherries were all sold out, having left no trace except some red splashes, where an over-ripe sieve had been bleeding. But the Kentish man still had some bushels of peas, and new potatoes, and bunches of coleworts, and early carrots, besides five or six dozens of creamy cauliflowers, and several scores of fine-hearted lettuce. Therefore he was dancing with great excitement up and down his van, for he could not bear to go home uncleared; and some of his shrewder customers saw that by waiting a little longer they would be likely to get things at half-price. Of course he was fully alive to this, and had done his best to hide surplus stock, by means of sacks, and mats, and empty bushels piled upon full ones.

“Crusty, thou must come down, old fellow,” cried a one-eyed costermonger, winking first at John and then through the rails, and even at the springs of the van; “half the load will go back to Kent, or else to the cowkeeper, if so be you holds on so almighty dear.”

“Ha, then, Joe, are you waiting for that? Go to the cow-yard and take your turn. They always feeds the one-eyed first. Gentlemen, now – while there’s anything left! We’ve kept all the very best back to the last, ’cos they chanced to be packed by an Irishman. ‘First goes in, must first come out.’ Paddy, are you there to stick to it?”

“Be jabers, and how could I slip out, when the hape of you was atop of me? And right I was, be the holy poker; there it all is the very first in the bottom of the vhan!”

“Now, are you nearly ready, John?” asked Gregory, suddenly appearing through the laughter of the crowd; “here is the gentleman going with us, and I can’t have him kept waiting.”

“Come up, Master Greg, and help sell out, if you know the time better than I do.” John Shorne was vexed, or he would not so have spoken to his master’s son.

To his great surprise, with a bound up came not Gregory Lovejoy, who was always a little bit shy of the marketing, but Hilary Lorraine, declared by dress and manner (clearly marked, as now they never can be) of an order wholly different from the people round him.

“Let me help you, sir,” he said; “I have long been looking on; I am sure that I understand it.”

“Forty years have I been at ’un, and I scarcely knows ’un now. They takes a deal of mannerin’, sir, and the prices will go in and out.”

“No doubt; and yet for the sport of it, let me help you, Master Shorne. I will not sell a leaf below the price you whisper to me.”

In such height of life and hurry, half a minute is enough to fetch a great crowd anywhere. It was round the market in ten seconds that a grand lord was going to sell out of Grower Lovejoy’s waggon. For a great wager, of course it must be; and all who could rush, rushed to see. Hilary let them get ready, and waited till he saw that their money was burning. Meanwhile Crusty John was grinning one of his most experienced grins.

“Don’t let him; oh, don’t let him,” Gregory shouted to the salesman, as Hilary came to the rostrum with a bunch of carrots in one hand and a cauliflower in the other – “What would his friends say if they heard it?”

“Nay, I’ll not let ’un,” John Shorne answered, mischievously taking the verb in its (now) provincial sense; “why should I let ’un? It can’t hurt he, and it may do good to we.”

In less than ten minutes the van was cleared, and at such prices as Grower Lovejoy’s goods had not fetched all through the summer. Such competition arose for the honour of purchasing from a “nobleman,” and so enchanted were the dealers’ ladies, many of whom came thronging round, with Hilary’s bright complexion, gay address, and complaisancy.

“Well done, my lord! well done indeed!” Crusty John, to keep up the fiction, shouted when he had pouched the money – “Gentlemen and ladies, my lord will sell again next week; he has a heavy bet about it with the Prince Reg – tush, what a fool I am! they will send me to prison if I tell!”

As a general rule, the more suspicious people are in some ways, the more credulous are they in all the rest. Kentish Crust was aware of this, and expected and found for the next two months extraordinary inquiry for his goods.

“Friend Gregory, wherefore art thou glum?” said Hilary to young Lovejoy, while the horses with their bunched-up tails were being buckled to again. Lorraine was radiant with joy, both at his recent triumph in a matter quite unknown to him, and even more because of many little pictures spread before him by his brisk imagination far away from London. Every stamp of a horse’s hoof was as good as a beat of the heart to him.

“Lorraine,” the sensible Gregory answered, after some hesitation, “I am vexed at the foolish thing you have done. Not that it really is at all a disgrace to you, or your family, but that the world would take it so; and we must think as the world does.”

“Must we?” asked Hilary, smiling kindly; “well, if we must, let us think it on springs.”

At the word he leaped into the fruit-van so lightly that the strong springs scarcely shook; and Gregory could do no better than climb in calmly after him. “Gee-wugg,” cried Master Shorne; and he had no need to say it twice; the bright brass harness flashed the sun, and the horses merrily rang their hoofs, on the road to their native land of Kent.

CHAPTER XIII.

TO THE CHERRY-ORCHARDS

Hilary Lorraine enjoyed his sudden delivery from London, and the fresh delight of the dewy country, with such loud approval, and such noisy lightsomeness of heart, that even Crusty John, perched high on the driving-box above him, could not help looking back now and then into the van, and affording the horses the benefit of his opinion. “A right down hearty one he be, as’ll make some of our maids look alive. And the worst time of year for such work too, when the May-Dukes is in, and the Hearts a colouring!”

Hilary was sitting on an empty “half sieve,” mounted on an empty bushel, and with his usual affability enjoying the converse of “Paddy from Cork,” as everybody called the old Irishman, who served alike for farm, road, or market, as the “lad of all work.” But Gregory Lovejoy, being of a somewhat grave and silent order, was already beginning to doubt his own prudence in bringing their impulsive friend so near to a certain fair cousin of his now staying at the hospitable farm, in whom he felt a tender interest. Poor Lovejoy feared that his chance would be small against this dashing stranger; and he balanced uncomfortably in his mind whether or not he should drop a hint, at the first opportunity, to Lorraine, concerning his views in that quarter. Often he almost resolved to do so; and then to his diffidence it seemed presumptuous to fancy that any young fellow of Hilary’s birth and expectations would entangle himself in their rustic world.

At Bromley they pulled up, to bait “man and beast,” three fine horses and four good men, eager to know the reason why they should not have their breakfast. Lorraine, although very short of cash (as he always found the means to be), demanded and stood out for leave to pay for everybody. This privilege was obtained at last – as it generally is by persistency – and after that it was felt that Hilary could no longer be denied his manifest right to drive the van. He had driven the Brighton four-horse coach, the whole way to London, times and again; and it was perfectly absurd to suppose that he could not manage three horses. Master John Shorne yielded his seat, apparently to this reasoning, but really to his own sure knowledge that the horses after so long a journey would be, on their way to stall, as quiet as lambs in the evening. Therefore he rolled himself up in the van, and slept the sleep of the man who has been up and wide-awake all night, for the sake of other people.

The horses well knew the true way home, and offered no cause for bit or whip; and they seemed to be taken sometimes with the pleasure which Hilary found in addressing them. They lifted their tails, and they pricked their ears, at the proper occasions genially; till the heat of the day settled down on their backs, and their creases grew dark and then lathery. And the horsefly (which generally forbears the pleasure of nuisance till July) in this unusually hot summer was earnest in his vocation already. Therefore, being of a leisurely mind, as behoves all genuine sons of the soil, Master Shorne called a halt, through the blazing time of noon, before battling with the “Backbone of Kent,” as the beautiful North Down range is called. Here in a secluded glen they shunned the heats of Canicula under the sign of the “Pig and Whistle.”

Thus the afternoon was wearing when they came to Sevenoaks, and passing through that pleasant town descended into the weald of Kent. No one but Hilary cared for the wonderful beauty and richness of the view, breadth upon breadth of fruit-land, woven in and out with hops and corn; and towards the windings of the Medway, pastures of the deepest green even now after the heat of the sun, and thirst of the comet that drank the dew. Turning on the left from the Tunbridge road, they threaded their way along narrow lanes, where the hedges no longer were scarred with chalk, but tapestried with all shades of green, and even in the broken places, rich with little cascades of loam. Careless dog-rose played above them with its loose abandonment; and honeysuckle was almost ready to release its clustered tongues. But “Travellers Joy” – the joy that makes all travellers long to rest in Kent – abode as yet in the hopeful bud, a pendent shower of emerald.

These things were not heeded much, but pleasantly accepted, by the four men and three horses. All felt alike that the world was made for them, and for them to enjoy themselves; and little they cared to go into the reason, when they had the room for it. With this large sense of what ought to be, they came to the gate of Old Applewood farm, a great white gate with a padlock on it. This stopped the road, and was meant to do so; for Martin Lovejoy, Gregory’s father, claimed the soil of the road from this point, and denied all right of way, public or even private, to all claimants of whatsoever kind. On the other hand the parish claimed it as a public thoroughfare, and two farmers further on vowed that it was an “occupation road;” and what was more they would use it as such. “Grower Lovejoy,” as the neighbourhood called him – not that he was likely to grow much more, but because of his cherry-orchards – here was the proper man to hold the gate against all his enemies. When they sawed it down, he very promptly replaced it with cast iron; and when this was shattered with a fold-pitcher, he stopped their premature triumph by a massive barrier of wrought metal case-hardened against rasp or cold chisel. Moreover he painted it white, so that any nocturnal attack might be detected at a greater distance.

When Paddy had opened this gate with a key which he had carried to London, they passed through an orchard of May-Duke cherries, with the ripe fruit hanging quite over the road. “No wonder you lock the gate,” said Lorraine, as Crusty John, now on the box again, handed him a noble cluster with the dark juice mantling richly under the ruddy gloss of skin.

“Do you mean that we should get them stolen?” Gregory asked, with some indignation; for his Kentish pride was touched: “oh, no, we should never get them stolen. Nobody about here would do such a thing.”

“Then they don’t know what’s good,” answered Hilary, jumping at another cluster; “I was born to teach the Kentish public the proper way to steal cherries.”

“Well, they do take them sometimes,” the truthful Gregory confessed; “but we never call it stealing, any more than we do what the birds take.”

“Valued fellow-student, thy strong point will not be the criminal law. But you must have a criminal love of the law, to jump at it out of these cherry-trees.”

“It was my mother’s work, as you know. Ah, there she is, and my Cousin Phyllis!”

For the moment Lovejoy forgot his duty to his friend and particular guest, and slipping down from the tail of the van, made off at full speed through the cherry-trees. Hilary scarcely knew what to do. The last thing that ever occurred to him was that any one had been rude to him; still it was rather unpleasant to drive, or be driven, up to the door of his host, sitting upon a bushel basket, and with no one to say who he was. Yet to jump out and run after Gregory, and collar him while he saluted his mother, was even a worse alternative. In a very few moments that chance was gone; for the team, with the scent of their corn so nigh, broke into a merry canter, and rattled along with their ears pricked forward, and a pleasant jingling. Neither did they stop until they turned into a large farm-yard, with an oast-house at the further end of it. The dwelling-house was of the oldest fashion, thatched in the middle, at each end gabled, tiled in some places, and at some parts slabbed. Yet, on the whole, it looked snug, dry, and happy. Here, with one accord, halted the nags, and shook themselves in their harness, and answered the neighs of their friends in the stables.

Hilary, laughing at his own plight, but feeling uncommonly stiff in the knees, arose from his basket, and looked around; and almost the first thing that met his gaze destroyed all his usual presence of mind. This was a glance of deep surprise, mingled with timid inquiry and doubt, from what Master Hilary felt at once to be the loveliest, sweetest, and most expressive brown eyes in the universe. The young girl blushed as she turned away, through fear of having shown curiosity; but the rich tint of her cheeks was faint, compared with the colour of poor Lorraine’s. That gay youth was taken aback so utterly by the flash of a moment, that he could not find a word to say, but made pretence in a wholesale manner to see nothing at all particular. But the warm blood from his heart belied him, which he turned away to hide, and worked among the baskets briskly, hoping to be looked at, and preparing to have another look as soon as he felt that it could be done.

Meanwhile, that formidable creature, whose glance had produced such a fine effect, recovered more promptly from surprise, and felt perhaps the natural pride of success, and desire to pursue the fugitive. At any rate, she was quite ready to hear whatever he might have to say for himself.

“I must ask you to forgive me,” Lorraine began in a nervous manner, lifting his hat, and still blushing freely, “for springing so suddenly out of the earth – or rather, out of this van, I mean; though that can’t be right, for I still am in it. I believe that I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss Phyllis Catherow. Your cousin, Mr. Lovejoy, is a very great friend of mine indeed; and he most kindly asked, or rather, what I mean to say is, invited me to come down for a day or two to this delightful part of the world; and I have enjoyed it so much already, that I am sure – that – that in fact – ”

“That I hope you may soon enjoy it more.” She did not in the least mean any sarcasm or allusion to Hilary’s present state; still he fancied that she did; until the kind look, coming so sweetly from the kind warm heart, convinced him that she never could be so cruel.

“I see the most delightful prospect I ever could imagine of enjoying myself,” Lorraine replied, with a glance, imparting to his harmless words the mischief of that which nowadays we call “a most unwarrantable personal allusion.” But she did not, or would not, take it so.

“How kind of you to be pleased so lightly! But we do our best, in our simple way, when any one kindly comes to see us.”

“Why, Miss Catherow, I thought from what your cousin said to me that you were only staying here for a little time yourself.”

“You are quite right as to Miss Catherow. But I am not my Cousin Phyllis. I am only Mabel Lovejoy, Gregory Lovejoy’s sister.”

“By Jove, how glad I am!” cried Hilary, in his impetuous way; “what a fool I must have been not to know it, after I saw him run to meet his cousin in the orchard! But that treacherous Gregory never told me that he even had a sister. Now, won’t I thoroughly give it to him?”

“You must not be angry, Mr. Lorraine, with poor Gregory, because – because Phyllis is such a beautiful girl.”

“Don’t let me hear about beautiful girls! As if – as if there could be any – ”

“Good enough for Gregory,” she answered, coming cleverly to his rescue, for he knew that he had gone too far; “but wait till you have seen Cousin Phyllis.”

“There is one thing I shall not defer for the glory of seeing a thousand Miss Catherows, and that is the right that I have to shake hands with my dear friend Gregory’s sister.”

He had leaped from the van some time ago, and now held out his hand (a good strong one, pleasingly veined with cherry-juice), and she, with hospitable readiness, laid her pretty palm therein. He felt that it was a pretty hand, and a soft one, and a hearty one; and he found excuse to hold it longer while he asked a question.

“Now, how did you know my name, if you please, while I made such a stupid mistake about yours?”

“By your bright blue eyes,” she was going to answer, with her native truthfulness; but the gaze of those eyes suggested that the downright truth might be dangerous. Therefore, for once, she met a question with a question warily.

“Was it likely that I should not know you, after all I have heard of you?” This pleased him well in a general way. For Hilary, though too free (if possible) from conceit and arrogance, had his own little share of vanity. Therefore, upon the whole, it was lucky, and showed due attention to his business, that Grower Lovejoy now came up, to know what was doing about the van.

Martin Lovejoy was not a squatter, by seven years stamped into “tenant right,” which means very often landlord’s wrong. Nor was he one of those great tenant farmers who, even then, were beginning to rise, and hold their own with “landed gentry.” His farm was small, when compared with some; but it was outright his own, having descended to him through long-buried generations. So that he was one of the ever-dwindling class of “franklins,” a class that has done good work for England, neither obtaining nor craving thanks.

Old Applewood farm contained altogether about six hundred acres, whereof at least two-thirds lay sweetly in the Vale of Medway, and could show root, stem, or bine against any other land in Kent, and, therefore, any in England. Here was no fear of the heat of the sun or the furious winter’s rages, such a depth of nature underlay the roots of everything. Nothing ever suffered from tha