Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

								

management.
Hilary, Sir Roland’s only son, was now at the Temple, eating his way
to the bar, or feeding for some other mischief; and Alice, the only
daughter living, was the baronet’s favourite companion, and his darling.
Now, whether from purity of descent, or special mode of selection,
or from living so long on a hill with northern consequences, or
from some other cause, to be extracted by philosophers from bestial
analogies--anyhow, one thing is certain, these Lorraines were not,
and had not for a long time been, at all like the rest of the world
around them. It was not pride of race that made them unambitious, and
well content, and difficult to get at. Neither was it any other ill
affection to mankind. They liked a good man, when they saw him; and
naturally so much the more, as it became harder to find him. Also they
were very kind to all the poor people around them, and kept well in
with the Church, and did whatever else is comely. But long before Sir
Roland’s time all Sussex knew, and was content to know, that, as a
general rule, “those Lorraines went nowhere.”
Neighbours who were conscious of what we must now begin to call
“co-operative origin” felt that though themselves could claim justices
of the peace, high sheriffs, and knights of the shire among their
kin, yet they could not quite leap over that romantic bar of ages
which is so deterrent, perhaps because it is so shadowy. Neither did
they greatly care to press their company upon people so different
from themselves, and so unlikely to admire them. But if any one asked
where lay the root of the difference, which so long had marked the old
family on the hill, perhaps no one (least of all any of the Lorraines
themselves) could have given the proper answer. Plenty of other folk
there were who held aloof from public life. Simplicity, kindness, and
chivalry might be found, by a man with an active horse, in other places
also: even a feeling, as nearly akin as our nature admits to contempt
of money, at that time went on somewhere. How, then, differed these
Lorraines from other people of equal rank and like habits with them?
Men who differ from their fellows seem, by some law of nature, to
resent and disclaim the difference. Those who are proud, and glory in
their variance from the common type, seldom vary much from it. So that
in the year of grace 1811, the mighty comet that scared the world,
spreading its tail over good and bad, overhung no house less conscious
of anything under its roof peculiar, than the house of Coombe Lorraine.
With these Lorraines there had been a tradition (ripened, as traditions
ripen, into a small religion), that a certain sequence of Christian
names must be observed, whenever allowed by Providence, in the
heritage. These names in right order were Roland, Hilary, and Roger;
and the family had long believed, and so had all their tenants, that
a certain sequence of character, and the events which depend upon