Alice Lorraine

“ Such, and worse by a thousandfold than words may render or mind conceive, was the struggle of that awful night at the central breach of Badajos; and here was Hilary Lorraine, wounded, spent with fruitless efforts, dashed backward on spikes and on bayonet-points, trampled under foot, and singed by the beard of a smouldering comrade, yet glad even to lie still for a minute in the breathless depths of exhaustion. “All up with me now” he was faintly thinking—“perhaps my father will be satisfied. Good-bye, dear Alice, and darling Mabel—and good night to this poor Hilary!” ”

“ Though I dreamed that I heard of a certain maltster, who had the paternal sanction. ‘Veni, vidi, vici,’ appears to be her motto. Even grandmamma is vanquished by her, or by her legacy. She says that she curtseys much better than I do. She is welcome to that distinction. I am not at all sure that the prime end and object of woman’s life is to curtsey. But I see exactly how I am placed. I will never trouble you any more, papa.”
With these words, Alice Lorraine arose, and kissed her father’s forehead gently, and turned away, not to worry him with the long sigh of expiring hope. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII BEFORE the man on the old couch realized the actuality of the situation and sprang to his feet, his bewildered, incredulous eyes took in perforce the vision of a tall, graceful young girl with dark bands of hair wound about her small head and dark brows and eyes conspicuous in the dusk because of the pallor of her face. But pale as she was, and weak and faint and confused, Alice Lorraine’s fear took flight almost immediately. The first movement of the unknown man startled only to reassure her. ”

“ I beg your pardon, Captain Chapman. I will not do so any more.”
[Pg 207]
“I did not mean that; I assure you, I didn’t. I would climb the Andes or the Himalayas, only to win one smile from you.”
“I fear that I should smile many times,” said Alice, now smiling, wickedly; “if I could only have a telescope—still, I should be so sorry for you. They are much worse than the Southdown hills.”
“There, you are laughing at me again! You are so clever, Miss Lorraine; you give me no chance to say anything.”
“I am not clever; I am very stupid. And you always say more than I do.” ”

“ Being unable to fight any more, he had come to look so ferocious, and his battered and shattered body so fiercely backed up the charge of his aspect, that none without vast reserve of courage could help being scattered before him. Even Sir Roland Lorraine (so calm, and of an infinitely higher mind) , by reason perhaps of that, gave way, and let the maimed veteran storm his home. But Alice rebelled against all this. ”

“ Sir Roland Lorraine sighed gently here; and even his brother-in-law had not the least idea why he did so. It was that Sir Roland, like all the more able Lorraines for several centuries, was at heart a fatalist. And this family taint had perhaps been deepened by the infusion of Eastern blood. This was the bar so often fixed between them and the rest of the world—a barrier which must hold good, while every man cares for his neighbour’s soul, so much more than his own for ever. ”

“ Sir Roland Lorraine, being struck by her quite unwonted voice and manner, rose from his chair of meditation, left his thoughts about things which can never be thought out by mankind, and came to meet what a man should think of foremost—his child, his woman child. ”

“ We lives, and we learns to hold our tongues in the end, no doubt.” The old lady’s judgment of the world was a little too harsh in this case, however; for Alice Lorraine, on her homeward way, left the usual shilling’s-worth of tobacco on old Nanny’s window-sill.
CHAPTER XXVI.
AN OPPORTUNE ENVOY.
“It is worse than useless to talk any more,” Sir Roland said to Mr. Hales, who by entreaty of Alice had come to dine there that day, and to soften things: “Struan, you know that I have not one atom of obstinacy about me. I often doubt what is right, and wonder at people who are so positive. ”

“ In spite of all this, Nanny was full of goodwill to the family, forgiving them all their kindness to her, and even her own dependence upon them; foretelling their troubles plentifully, and never failing to enhance them. And now on the very day after young Hilary’s conflict with his father, she had the good luck to meet Alice Lorraine, on her way to the rectory, to consult Uncle Struan, or beg him to intercede. For the young man had taken his father at his word, concluding that the door, not only of the room, but also of the house, was open for him, in the inhospitable sense ”

“ They had made up their minds that he must die within a few months; and then Alice, of course, would be the heiress of Coombe Lorraine. But the marriage must be accomplished first before the mourning stopped it. Then Hilary would drop out of the way; and after Sir Roland’s time was passed, and the properties had been united, there ought not to be any very great trouble, with plenty of money to back the claim, in awakening the dormant earldom of Lorraine, and enhancing its glory with a Chapman. ”

“ You are always withdrawing to your book-room; and even I must not come in; and what good ever comes of it? You must, if you please, make up your mind to meet things very differently. And only think how long it is since we have heard of poor Hilary! There are troubles coming, overwhelming troubles, on all with the name or love of Lorraine, as sure as I stand, my dear father, before you.”
“Then I pray you to stand behind me, Alice. What an impulsive child it is! And the moonlight, my darling, has had some effect, as it always has, wonderfully on such girls. You have worked yourself up, Lallie ”

“ And now, as this cold resistless flood calmly reclaimed its ancient channel, swallowed up Nanny Stilgoe’s well, and cut off the Rector from his own church; as if to encounter its legendary bane, a poor young fellow, depressed, and shattered, feeble, and wan, and heavy-hearted, was dragging his reluctant steps up the valley of the Adur. Left on the naked rocks of Spain, conquered, plundered, and half-starved, Hilary Lorraine had fallen, with the usual reaction of a sanguine temperament, into low spirits and disordered health. ”

“ Alice Lorraine.
“P.S.—Darling Brother,—The above has been chiefly from that grandmamma. I have leave to write to you now myself; and the rest of this piece of paper will hold not a hundredth part of what I want to say. I am most unhappy about dear papa, and about you, and Uncle Struan, and Captain Chapman, and everybody. Nothing goes well; and if you fight in Spain, we fight much worse in England. ”

“ Lorraine was certainly in luck to-day, for he caught a nice basket of fish down the meadow; and towards the last stickle near the corner, where silver threads of water crossed, and the slanting sunshine cast a plaid of softest gold upon them, light footsteps came by the side of the hedge, and a pretty shadow fell near him.
“Miss Lovejoy!” cried Hilary; “how you amaze me! Why, I thought it was Phyllis who was coming to fetch me. I may call her Phyllis,—oh yes, she allows me. She is not so very ceremonious. But some people are all dignity.” ”

“ Though Coombe Lorraine was so old a mansion, and so full of old customs, the Christmas of the “comet year” was as dull as a Sunday in a warehouse. Hilary (who had always been the life of the place) was far away, fed upon hardships and short rations. Alice, though full sometimes of spirits, at other times would run away and fret, and blame herself, as if the whole of the fault was on her side. This was of course an absurd idea; but sensitive girls, in moods of dejection, are not good judges of absurdity ”

“ Meanwhile their father was making himself a leading power at Coombe Lorraine. He naturally entered into strict alliance with his aunt’s [Pg 337] friend, Lady Valeria, and sternly impressed upon everybody the necessity of the impending marriage. “What earthly objection can there be?” he argued with Mrs. Pipkins, now Alice’s only partisan, except old Mr. Binns, the butler; “even if Captain Chapman is rather lazy, and a little too fond of his wine-glass; both points are in her favour, ma’am. She will manage him like a top, of course. ”

“ I wish to see Sir Roland this morning, if I may. And surely I may accompany you on your way home; now, may I not?”
“Oh yes,” she answered with a little sigh, as there seemed to be no help for it; but she determined to make the Captain walk at a speed which should be quite a novelty to him.
“Dear me, Miss Lorraine! I had no idea that you were such a walker. Why, this must be what we call in the army ‘double-quick march’ almost. Too fast almost to keep the ranks unbroken, when we charge the enemy.”
“How very dreadful!” cried Alice, with a little grimace, which greatly charmed the Captain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hilary Lorraine knew well (when Martin Lovejoy took his hand, and welcomed him to Old Applewood) that here was a man to be relied on, to make good his words and mind. A man of moderate stature, but of sturdy frame, and some dignity; ready to meet everybody pretty much as he was met.
“Glad to see you, sir,” he said; “I have often heard of you, Master Lorraine; it is right kind of you to come down. I hope that you are really hungry, sir.” ”

“ The proper thing for him to do became all at once quite manifest; for a young girl suddenly sprang into the hall, like a hunted butterfly darting.
“They cannot catch me,” she exclaimed in Spanish—“they are too slow, the intoxicated men. I may always laugh at them. Here I will let them have another chase.”
Flitting in and out the shadows, as softly as if she were one of them, she stopped by the side of Hilary Lorraine, in a dark place, without seeing him. ”

“ The lady paid very little heed to that. Perhaps she even enjoyed it a little. Holding that every man is bound to attend to his own affairs, she had little patience and no sympathy with such philosophic indifference. On the other hand, Sir Roland could not deny himself a little quiet smile, when he saw his mother’s great preparations to bring him both to book and deed.
Lady Valeria Lorraine was sitting as upright as she had sat throughout her life, and would sit, until she lay down for ever. ”

“ In the first place, no loving sister is likely to be altogether elated by the discovery that her only brother has found some one who shall be henceforth more to him than herself is. Alice, moreover, had a very strong sense of the rank and dignity of the Lorraines; and disliked, even more than her father did, the importation of this “vegetable product,” as she rather facetiously called poor Mabel, into their castle of lineage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A young girl to despise a man! I had better marry her myself, I trow, if that is all you are fit for. Now just go away; go down the hill; go and see old Hales; go anywhere for a couple of hours, while I see Lorraine. Only first give me your honour for this, that you will not touch one more drop of drink until you come back for the dinner-time.”
“You are always talking at me about that now. And I have had almost less than nothing. And even that drop I should not have had, if Alice had not upset me so.” ”

“ Because we are beneath you in the world, is your son to do a great wrong to my daughter, while you sit up here on the top of your hill, as if you had never heard of us? Is this all the honour that comes of high birth? Then I thank the Almighty that we are not high born.”
The Grower struck his ash-stick with disdain upon the rich Turkey carpet, and turned his broad back on Sir Roland Lorraine; not out of rudeness (as the latter thought) , but to hide the moisture that came and spoiled the righteous sparkle of his eyes. The baronet perhaps had never felt so small and self-condemned before. ”

“ For Alice, now in perfect health, with all the grace of young vigour and the charm of natural quickness, and a lovely face, and calm eyes beaming, not with the bright uncertain blue (that flashing charm of poor Hilary) , but the grand ash-coloured grey—the tint that deepens with the depth of life, and holds more love than any other—Alice, in a word, was something for a man to look at. The greatest man that ever was born of a woman, and knew what women are, as well as what a man is ”

“ It comes out of everybody’s pocket, and it goes into nobody’s. And, to my mind, it serves them all perfectly right. Who is that General—I forget his name, an Irishman, if I remember aright—who is he, or of what family, that he should put a Lorraine to look after dirty money? The heir of all the Lorraines to be [Pg 322] put to do a cashier’s business!”
“Heaven save me from such a proud woman as this!” thought poor Sir Remnant Chapman; “if Alice is like her, the Lord have pity on our unlucky Steenie! He won’t dare have his nip of brandy, even in a corner!” ”