Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

								

if not the scenery, has its aftermath of influence. In later times,
when sickness, absence, or the loss of sight debars them, men will
feel a deep impression of a thing to long for. To be longed for with
a yearning stronger than mere admiration, or the painter’s taste can
form. For he, whatever pleasure rises at the beauty of the scene,
loses it by thinking of it; even as the joy of all things dies in the
enjoying.
But to those who there were born (and never thought about it),
in the days of age or ailment, or of better fortune even in a
brighter climate, how at the sound of an ancient name, or glimpse
of faint resemblance, or even on some turn of thought untraced and
unaccountable--again the hills and valleys spread, to aged vision truer
than they were to youthful eyesight; again the trees are rustling in
the wind as they used to rustle; again the sheep climb up the brown
turf in their snowy zigzag. A thousand winks of childhood widen into
one clear dream of age.

CHAPTER II.
COOMBE LORRAINE.

“How came that old house up there?” is generally the first question put
by a Londoner to his Southdown friend leading him through the lowland
path. “It must have a noble view; but what a position, and what an
aspect!”
“The house has been there long enough to get used to it,” is his
host’s reply; “and it is not built, as they are where you live, of the
substance of a hat.”
That large old-fashioned house, which looks as if it had been much
larger, stands just beneath the crest of a long-backed hill in a
deep embrasure. Although it stands so high, and sees much less of
the sun than the polestar, it is not quite so weather-beaten as a
stranger would suppose. It has some little protection, and a definite
outline for its grounds, because it was built on an old and extensive
settlement of the chalk; a thing unheeded in early times, but now very
popular and attractive, under the name of “landslip.” Of these there
are a good many still to be traced on the sides of the Sussex hills,
caused (as the learned say) by the shifting of the green-sand, or silt,
which generally underlies the more stable chalk. Few, however, of them
are so strongly marked and bold as this one, which is known as “Coombe
Lorraine.” It is no mere depression or irregular subsidence, but a
sheer vertical drop, which shows as if a broad slice had been cut out
from the chine to the base of the highland.
Here, in the time of William Rufus, Roland de Lorraine, having a
grant from him, or from the Conqueror, and trusting the soil to
slide no more, or ignorant that it had ever slidden, built himself
a dwelling-place to keep a look-out on his property. This abode, no
doubt, was fitted for warlike domesticity, being founded in the fine
old times when every gentleman was bound to build himself a castle.
It may have been that a little jealousy of his friend, De Braose (who