Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs. R. D. Blackmore

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      Even the butler of Coombe Lorraine—but that will come better hereafter. Only as yet may be fairly said, that Bonny looked up at the house on the hill with a delicate curiosity; and felt that his overtures might have been somewhat ungraceful, or at least ill-timed, when the new young footman (just taken on) took it entirely upon himself to kick him all the way down the hill. This little discourtesy, doubling of course Master Bonny’s esteem and regard for the place, at the same time introduced some constraint into his after intercourse. For the moment, indeed, he took no measures to vindicate his honour; although, at a word (as he knew quite well), Bottler, the pigman, would have brought up his whip and seen to it. And even if any of the maids of the house had been told to tell Miss Alice about it, Bonny was sure of obtaining justice, and pity, and even half-a-crown.

      Quick as he was to forget and forgive the many things done amiss to him, the boy, when he came to the mouth of the coombe, looked pretty sharply about him for traces of that dreadful fellow, who had proved himself such a footman. With Jack to help him, with jaw and heel, Bonny would not have been so very much afraid of even him; such a “strong-siding champion” had the donkey lately shown himself. Still, on the whole, and after such a long day’s work by sea and shore, the rover was much relieved to find his little castle unleaguered.

      The portal thereof was a yard in height, and perhaps fifteen inches wide; not all alike, but in and out, according to the way the things, or the boy himself, went rubbing it. A holy hermit once had lived there, if tradition spoke aright. But if so, he must have been as narrow of body to get in, as wide of mind to stop there. At any rate, Bonny was now the hermit, and less of a saint than a sinner.

      The last glance of sunset was being reflected under the eaves of twilight, when these two came to their home and comfort in the bay of the quiet land. From the foot of the steep white cliff, the green sward spread itself with a gentle slope, and breaks of roughness here and there, until it met the depth of cornland, where the feathering bloom appeared—for the summer was a hot one—reared upon its jointed stalk, and softened into a silver-grey by the level touch of evening. The little powdered stars of wheat bloom could not now be seen, of course; neither the quivering of the awns, nor that hovering radiance, which in the hot day moves among them. Still the scent was on the air, the delicate fragrance of the wheat, only caught by waiting for it, when the hour is genial.

      Bonny and Jack were not in the humour now to wait for anything. The scent of the wheat was nothing to them; but the smell of a loaf was something. And Jack knew, quite as well as Bonny, that let the time be as hard as it would—and it was a very hard time already, though nothing to what came afterward—nevertheless, there were two white loaves, charmed by their united powers, out of maids who were under notice to quit their situations. Also on their homeward road, they had not failed entirely of a few fine gristly hocks of pork, and the bottom of a skin of lard, and something unknown, but highly interesting, from a place where a pig had been killed that week—a shameful outrage to any pig, in the time of hearted cabbages.

      “Now, Jack, tend thee’zell,” said Bonny, with the air of a full-grown man almost, while he was working his own little shoulders in betwixt the worn hair on the ribs, and the balanced bag overhanging them. Jack knew what he was meant to do; for he brought his white nose cleverly round, just where it was wanted, and pushed it under one end of the bag, and tossed it carefully over his back, so that it slid down beautifully.

      When this great bag lay on the ground (or rather, stood up, in a clumsy way, by virtue of what was inside of it), the first thing everybody did was to come, and poke, and sniff at it. And though the everybody was no more than Bonny and his donkey, the duty was not badly done, because they were both so hungry.

      When the strings were cut, and the bag in relief of tension panted, ever so many things began to ooze, and to ease themselves, out of it. First of all two great dollops of oar-weed, which had well performed their task of keeping everything tight and sweet with the hungry fragrance of the sea. Then came a mixture of almost anything, which a boy of no daintiness was likely to regard as eatable, or a child of no kind of “culture” to look upon as a rarity. Bonny was a collector of the grandest order; the one who collects everything. Here was food of the land, and food of the sea, and food of the tidal river, mingled with food for the mind of a boy, who had no mind—to his knowledge. In the humblest way he groped about, and admired almost everything.

      Now he had things to admire which (in the heat of the day and the work) had been caught and stowed away anyhow. The boy and the donkey had earned their load with such true labour that now they could not remember even half of it. Jack, by hard collar-work at the nets; Bonny, by cheering him up the sand, and tugging himself with his puny shoulders, and then by dancing, and treading away, and kicking with naked feet among the wastrel fish, full of thorns and tails, shed from the vent of the drag-net by the spent farewell of the shoaling wave.

      For, on this very day, there had been the great Midsummer haul at Shoreham. It was the old custom of the place; but even custom must follow the tides, and the top of the summer spring-tides (when the fish are always liveliest) happened, for the year 1811, to come on the 18th day of June. Bonny for weeks had been looking forward and now before him lay his reward!

      After many sweet and bitter uses of adversity, this boy, at an early age, had caught the tail of prudence. It had been to his heart at first, a friendly and a native thing, to feast to the full (when he got the chance) and go empty away till it came again. But now, being grown to riper years, and, after much consideration, declared to be at least twelve years old by the only pork-butcher in Steyning, Bonny began to know what was what, and to salt a good deal of his offal.

      For this wise process he now could find a greater call than usual; because, through the heat of the day, he had stuck to his first and firmly-grounded principle—never to refuse refuse. So that many other fine things were mingled, jumbled, and almost churned, among the sundry importations of the flowing tide and net. All these, now, he well delivered (so far as sappy limbs could do it) upon a cleanish piece of ground, well accustomed to such favours. Then Bonny stood back, with his hands on his knees, and Jack spread his nose at some of it.

      Loaves of genuine wheaten bread were getting scarce already. Three or four bad harvests, following long arrears of discontent, and hanging on the heavy arm of desperate taxation, kept the country, and the farmers, and the people that must be fed, in such a condition that we (who cannot be now content with anything) deserve no blame when we smack our lips in our dainty contempt of our grandfathers.

      Bonny was always good to Jack, according to the way they had of looking at one another; and so, of the choicest spoils, he gave him a half-peck loaf, of a fibre such as they seldom softened their teeth with. Jack preferred this to any clover, even when that luxury could be won by clever stealing; and now he trotted away with his loaf to the nearest stump where backing-power against his strong jaws could be got. Here he laid his loaf against the stump, and went a little way back to think about it, and to be sure that every atom was for him. Then, without scruple or time to spare, he tucked up his lips, and began in a hurry to make a bold dash for the heart of it.

      “More haste, less speed,” is a proverb that seems, at first sight, one of the last that need be impressed upon a donkey. Yet, in the present instance, Jack should have spared himself time to study it; for in less than a moment he ran up to Bonny, with his wide mouth at its widest, snorting with pain, and much yearning to bellow, but by the position disabled. There was something stuck fast in the roof of his mouth, in a groove of the veiny black arches; and work as he might with his wounded tongue, he was only driving it further in. His great black eyes, as he gasped with fright, and the piteous whine of his quivering nose, and his way altogether so scared poor Bonny, that the chances were he would run away. And so, no doubt, he must have done (being but a little boy as yet), if it had not chanced that a flash of something caught his quick eye suddenly, something richly shining in the cavern of the donkey’s mouth.

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