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CHAPTER LXXVI.
SCIENTIFIC SOLUTION

Beauty having due perception and affection for itself, it is natural that young ladies should be much attached to jewels. It does not, however, follow that they know anything about them, any more than they always do about other objects of their attachment. Nevertheless, they always want to know the money-value.

“I should say that they are worth a thousand pounds, if they are worth a penny,” said Mabel, sagely shaking her head, and looking wonderfully learned.

“A thousand!” cried Alice. “Ten thousand, you mean. Now put it all back as we found it.”

“Oh, one more glance, one more good look, before other people see them! Oh, let the light fall sideways.”

Mabel, in her admiration of them, danced all round the Astrologer’s room, whisking the dust from the wheel of his lathe, and scattering quaint rare tools about; while Alice, calmly smiling at her, repacked the case, silk, wool, and parchment, and giving her friend the cover to carry, led the way towards her father’s room.

Sir Roland Lorraine was so amazed, that for the moment the mind resumed command of the body; the needful effort was made; and he “spake with his tongue” once more, though feebly and inarticulately.

“Father, darling, that is worth more to me,” cried Alice, throwing her arms around him, “than all the jewels that ever were made from the first year of the world to this. Oh, I could never, never live, without hearing your dear voice.”

It was long, however, before Sir Roland recovered mind and spirit, so as to attempt a rendering of the provident sage’s document The writing was so small, that a powerful lens was wanted for it; the language, moreover, was Latin, and the contractions crabbed to the last degree. And crammed as it was with terms of art, an interpreter might fairly doubt whether his harder task would be to make out the words or their meaning. But omitting some quite unintelligible parts, it seemed to be somewhat as follows: —

“Oh, descendant of mine in far-off ages, neither be thou carried away by desire of riches, neither suppose thine ancestor to have been so carried. I bid thee rather to hold thy money in the place of nothing, and to be taught that it is a work of royal amplitude and most worthy of the noblest princes, to conquer the obstinacy of nature by human skill and fortitude. Labouring much, I have accomplished little; seeking many things, I have found some; it is not just that I should be forgotten, or mingled with those of my time and rank, who live by violence, and do nothing for the benefit of humanity.

“Among many other things which I have by patience and learning conquested, the one the most likely of all to lead to wealth is of a simple kind. To wit, as Glaucus of Chios (following up the art of Celmis and Damnameneus) discovered the κολλησις of iron, so have I discovered that of jewels – the opal, and perhaps the ruby. As regards the opal, I am certain; as regards the ruby, I have still some difficulties to conquer. All who know the opal can, with very clear vision, perceive that its lustre and versatile radiance flow from innumerable lamins, united by fusion in the endless flux of years. Having discovered how to solve the opal with a caustic liquor” – here followed chemical marks which none but a learned chemist could understand – “and how to recompose it, I have spent twelve months in Hungary, collecting a full medimnus of small opals of the purest quality. After many trials and a great waste of material, I have accomplished things undreamed by Baccius, Evax, or Leonardus; I have produced the priceless opal, cast to mould, and of purest water, from the size of an avellan-nut to that of a small castane. Larger I would not make them, knowing the incredulity of mankind, who take for false all things more than twice the size of their own experience.

“Alas! it is allowed to no man, great works having been carried through, to see what will become of them. These gems of inestimable value, polished by their own liquescence, and coherent as the rainbow, demand, as far as I yet can judge, at least a hundred years of darkness and of cavernous seclusion, such as nature and the gods require for all perfect work. And when the air is first let in, it must be very slowly done, otherwise all might fall abroad, as though I had never touched them. For this, with the vigilance of a great philosopher, I have provided.

“Now, farewell, whether descended from me, or whether (if the fates will) alien. A philosopher who has penetrated, and under the yoke led nature, is the last of all men to speak proudly, or record his own great deeds. That he leaves for inferior and less tranquil minds, as are those of the poets. Only do not thou sell these gems for little, if thou sell them. The smallest of them is larger and finer than that of the Senator Nonius, or that which is called ‘Troy burning,’ from the propugnacled flash of its movement. Be not misled by jewellers. Rogues they are, and imitators, and perpetually striving to make gain disgracefully. Hearken thou not to one word of these; but keep these jewels, if thou canst. If narrow matters counsel sale, then go to the king of thy country, or great nobles, who will not wrong thee. And be sure that thou keep them well advised, that neither in skill of hand nor in learning should they attempt to vie with Agasicles the Carian.”

CHAPTER LXXVII.
HER HEART IS HIS

Long ere the writing of the diffident sage had been thus interpreted, the casket, or rather its contents (being intrusted to the wary hands of the Counsellor, on his return to London) had passed the severest test and been pronounced of enormous value. The great philosopher had not deigned to say a word about the pearls, whether produced or amalgamated by his skill, or whether they were heirlooms in his ancient family. The jewellers said that they were Cingalese, and of the rarest quality; and for these alone one large house (holding a commission from a coalowner), offered fifteen, and then twenty, and finally twenty-five thousand pounds. But Sir Roland had resolved not to part with these, but divide them between his daughter and future daughter-in-law, if he could raise the required sum without them. In this no difficulty was found. Though opals were not in fashion just then (and indeed they are even now undervalued, through a stupid superstition), six of the smaller gems were sold for £65,000, and now their owners would not accept double that price for them.

Lady Valeria right quickly discarded her terror of the casket, and very quietly appropriated the magnificent central gem. It was the cover, with its spiral coils of metal, which had frightened her ladyship. The strongest-minded ladies are, as a general rule, the most obstinate in their dread of what has injured them. The Earl of Thanet, this lady’s father, had been a great lover of the honey-bee, and among his other experiments, he had a small metal hive, which his daughter upset, with results which need not trouble us so much as they troubled the lady. And although so much smaller, the Astrologer’s case strangely resembled that deadly hive.

When Hilary’s sin had been purged, and himself (at certainly a somewhat heavy figure) allowed to draw his sword again, he soon regained all his former strength, and health, and perhaps a little more than his former share of wisdom. But he did not march into Paris as Colonel Clumps had once predicted; or at least not in that memorable year 1814. But in July of the following year, he certainly put in an appearance there, under the immortal Wellington, who had been truly pleased to have him under his command, but never on his Staff, again. And Hilary Lorraine, at Waterloo, had shown most clearly (through the thick of the smoke) that if the Duke had erred about his discretion, he had made no mistake about his valour.

And it was, of course, tenfold more valorous of him to carry on as he did there, when he called to mind that he had at home a lovely wife, of the name of Mabel, and a baby of the name of Roger. Because he had taken advantage of the piping time of peace, – when all the “crowned heads” were in England, – to put on his own head that “crown of glory” (richer than mural or civic) whereof the wise man speaks the more warmly, because he had so many of them. In June 1814, Hilary and Mabel were made one, under junction of the good Rector; and nature, objecting to this depopulating fusion of her integrals, had sternly recouped her arithmetic, by appeal to the multiplication table.

At Waterloo, Hilary worked his right arm much harder than he worked it through the rest of his life; because there he lost it. When the French Cuirassiers made their third grand charge upon the British artillery, to change the fortune, or meet their fate, Lorraine, with his troop of the Dasher-Hussars, now commanded by Colonel Aylmer, was in front of the rest of the regiment. The spirit of these men was up; they had been a long while held back, that day, and they could not see any reason why they should not have their turn at it. Man and horse were of one accord, needing no spur, neither heeding bridle. As straight as hounds in full view, they flew; and Hilary flew in front of them. In the crush and crash, he got rolled over, dismounted, and left slashing wildly in a storm of horses. An enormous cuirassier made at him, with a sword of monstrous length. Their eyes met, and they knew each other – the robber and the robbed; the crafty plotter and the simple one; the victor and the victim.

Alcides cried in Spanish – “Thou art at thy latest gasp; I have no orders now from my precious wife – receive this, and no more of thee!” With rowels deep in the flank of his horse, he made a horrible swoop at Hilary, spent of strength and able only to present a feeble guard. Hilary’s blade spun round and round, and his right arm flew off at the elbow; and the crash was descending upon his poor head, when a stern reply met Alcides. Through the joints of his harness Joyce Aylmer’s sword went in, and drank his life-blood. His horse dashed on the plain, like the felled trunk of a poison-tree, – that plain where lay so many nobler, and so few meaner than himself. Having run through the whole of the stolen money, he had donned the French cuirass, and left his wife and infant child to starve.

When the times of slaughter passed, and Nature began to be aware again that she has other manure than bloodshed; when even the cows could low without fear of telling where their calves were, and mares could lick their foals unwept on; and hills and valleys began again to listen to the voice of quiet waters (drowned no more in the din of the drum); and everything in our dear country was most wonderfully dear, – something happened at this period not to be passed over. Parenthetically it may be said – and deserves no more than parenthesis – that neither of the Chapmans had been killed (as mendacious fame reported), only knocked on the head, and legs, and stomach, and other convenient places. Steenie wedded their housemaid Sally; and it was the best thing he could have done, to clean up the steps of the family.

But now there is just time to say that it must have been broad August, when the fields were growing white for harvest, after the swath of Waterloo, ere Colonel Aylmer durst bring forth what he nursed in his heart for Alice. His words were short and simple, though he did not mean to make them so. But he found her in old Chancton Ring, where first he had beholden her; and so much came across him, that he never took his hat off, but just whispered underneath it. The whisper went under a prettier hat, where it long had been expected; and if a feather waved at all, it only was a white one.

“Are you not afraid of me?” asked Alice Lorraine, with a tremulous glance, enough to terrify any one.

“That I am, to the last degree. I never shall get over it.”

“That augurs well,” she replied with a smile – such a smile as none else could give; “but I mean more than that; I mean your fear of what the world will say of me.”

“Of that I am infinitely more afraid. It will vex me so to hear for ever – ‘What has he done to deserve such a wife?’”

“Then what he has done is simply this,” cried Alice, looking nobly; “he has saved her life, and her brother’s: he has taught her now to fear herself; and her heart is his, if he cares for it.”

CHAPTER LXXVIII.
THE LAST WORD COMES FROM BONNY

It takes but little time to tell what happened to the rest of them. Sir Roland Lorraine had the pleasure of seeing two tribes of grandchildren round him, who routed him out of his book-room, and scattered his unwholesome tendencies wholesale. If he shocked society in his middle age, society had revenge in the end, and pursued him, like the Eumenides. The difference was this, however, that here were truly well-meaning ones, not called so by timorous truckling. And another point of distinction might be found in the style of their legs and bodies. Also, they had no “stony glare,” but the brightest of all young eyes, that shine like a flower filled with morning dew.

These little men and women played at hide-and-seek, and made rich echo in the Woeburn channel. Forsooth, that fearful stream (like other fateful rivers), beaten by Vulcanian fires of Bottler – or, as some people said (who knew not Bottler), by the power of the long dry frost – retired into the bowels of the earth, and never means to come forth again. But before leaving off it did one good thing – it drowned old Nanny Stilgoe. “Prophet of ill, never yet to me spakest thou thing lucksome” – this was the sentiment of that river when disappointed of Alice. Old Nanny ran out of her door next day, with a stick, at a boy who cast snowballs, and she slipped on some ice, and in she went; and some people tried to rake her out, but she was too perverse for them. Her prophecies of evil fell, like lead on her head, and sank her; and the parish was fiercely divided whether she ought to have Christian burial. But Rector Hales let them talk as they liked, and refused to hear reason about it. He had made up his own mind what to do (which of all things is the foremost); so he buried old Nanny and paid for it all and set up her tombstone, whereon the sculptor, with visions of his own date prolonged, set down her figure at 110.

The passing of time is one of those things that most astonish every one. For instance, no one would ever believe, except with a hand upon either temple, that Applewood farm is now carried on, and all the growing business done, by a sturdy and highly enlightened young fellow, whose name is Struan Lovejoy. He owes his origin to a heavy cold, caught by his father (the present highly respected Admiral Sir Charles Lovejoy), through the freezing of his naval trousers, and the coddling which of course ensued. Charlie’s heart lay open through all the stages of catarrh, and he felt, even in the worst fits of sneezing, whose initials were done in hair on three handkerchiefs under his pillow. In short, no sooner did his nose begin to resume its duty in the system, and his eyes to cease from running, then he took Cecil Hales by the hand, and said that he had something to say to her. And he said it well; as sailors do. And she could not deny that it might mean something, if ever they could maintain themselves.

This is what all young people say; some with a little, and some with less, discretion upon the subject. The helm of all the question hangs upon the man’s own sternpost. There is no time to talk of that. Charlie married Cecil; and they had a son called “Struan.”

Struan Lovejoy took the turn for gardening and for growing, which had failed the Lovejoy race in the middle generation. Gout descends, and so does growing, with a skip of one step of mankind; and you cannot make the wrong generation lay heel on spade or toe in slipper.

But most of us can make some men feel – however small our circle is – that there is room for them inside it. That we scorn hypocritical love of mean humanity; but love the noble specimens – when we get them. That we know how short our time is, and attempt to do a little forward for the slowly rolling age. In a word, that, taking things altogether, they are pretty nearly as good as could have been hoped for, even sixty years ago.

But it is quite a few years back, to wit in 1861, when the great leading case upon rights of way – “Lovejoy v. Shatterlocks” – was tried for the ninth and final time. Chief Justice Sir Gregory Lovejoy, through feelings of delicacy, left the Bench, and would not even allow his wife – our Phyllis Catherow – to be called. But Major-general Sir Hilary Lorraine marched into the witness-box; and so vividly did he call to mind what had passed (and what had been stopped at the white gate, and where the key was kept) half a century ago, that the defendant had no leg to stand upon. Mabel (who heard all his evidence, with an Alice Mabel’s hand in hers) vowed that he made a confusion of keys, and was thinking of the gate where she came to meet him. And when he had time for more reflection, he could not contradict her.

Now what says Bonny? He sits on his hill. He sees his life before him. Though he does not know that for finding the key, he is to have £1000, invested already, and to accumulate, until he entirely settles down. In fulness of time he will cast away the unsaleable portion of his rags, and wed square Polly Bottler. Their hearts are as one; they only wait for parental assent, and the band or bann – whichever may be the proper word – shouted thrice by the Rector, defiant of the world to forbid those two. They are not ready yet to be joined together; but they are polishing their fire-irons.

Meanwhile Bonny may be seen to sit on one of those wonderful nicks of the hill, which seem to be scolloped by nature and padded, to tempt her restless mankind to rest. For here the curve of the slope is so snug, that only pleasant airs find entry, with the flowery tales they bring, and the grass is of the greenest, and the peep into the lowland distance of the most refreshing blue. Lulled on a bank here Bonny sits, not quite so fair as the fairy-queen (who perhaps is watching him unseen), but picturesque enough for the age, and provided with a donkey worthy of Titania’s purest love. Jack is gazing with deep interest at an image of himself, cleverly shaped by his master on the green with snowy outline of chalky flints. Here are set forth his long tail, white nose, and ears as long and rich as the emblem of fair Ceres. He sniffs at his nose, and he treads on his toes, and not being able to explain away all things, he falls to and grazes from his own stomach.

But what is Bonny doing here, instead of attending to his rags and bones? Well, he ought to be, but he certainly is not, attending to the Rector’s sheep. To wit, Mr. Hales, growing stiff in the saddle, betakes himself freely to saddles of mutton; and has paid, and is paying, his three daughters’ portions, after the manner of the patriarchs. But leaving the flock to their own devices (for which, an he were satirical, he might quote his master as precedent), Bonny opens his capacious mouth, and the fresh air of the Downs rings richly, with a simple

SOUTHDOWN SONG

1

 
“When the sheep are on the hill,
In the early summer day,
They may wander at their will,
While I go myself astray.
 

Chorus (sustained by sheep and Jack)

 
We may wander at our will,
While you go to sleep, or play!
 

2

 
“If the May wind hath an edge
Rather winterly and cold,
I shall sit beneath a hedge,
While they wander o’er the wold.
 

Chorus (by the same performers)

 
There you sit beneath the hedge,
Singing like a minstrel bold!
 

3

 
“Should ill-natured people say
That I loiter, or do ill,
Pick a hole in me they may —
When they see me through the hill.
 

Chorus

 
If they catch you at your play,
Whip you merrily they will.
 

4

 
“Playful creatures grow not old;
Play is healthy nature’s pledge.
’Tis the dull heart gives the hold
For the point of trouble’s wedge.
 

Chorus

 
These reflections are as old
As the saws of rush and sedge.
 

5

 
“Frisky lambkins in the grass,
Mint and pepper, if they spy,
Do they weep, and cry ‘alas!’?
Nay, but whisk their tails on high.
 

Chorus

 
Weep, indeed, and cry ‘alas!’
Sooner you, than we or I.
 

6

 
“Look, how soon the shadows pass,
How the sun hath chased the gloom!
If our life is only grass —
Grass is where the flowers bloom.
 

Chorus

 
If we mainly live on grass,
Many a flower we consume.”
 

And so may we leave them singing.