Books: Love Me Little, Love Me Long

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Love Me Little, Love Me Long

by Charles Reade

PREFACE

SHOULD these characters, imbedded in carpet incidents, interest the
public at all, they will probably reappear in more potent scenes. This
design, which I may never live to execute, is, I fear, the only excuse
I can at present offer for some pages, forming the twelfth chapter of
this volume.

CHAPTER I.

NEARLY a quarter of a century ago, Lucy Fountain, a young lady of
beauty and distinction, was, by the death of her mother, her sole
surviving parent, left in the hands of her two trustees, Edward
Fountain, Esq., of Font Abbey, and Mr. Bazalgette, a merchant whose
wife was Mrs. Fountain's half-sister.

They agreed to lighten the burden by dividing it. She should spend
half the year with each trustee in turn, until marriage should take
her off their hands.

Our mild tale begins in Mr. Bazalgette's own house, two years after
the date of that arrangement.

The chit-chat must be your main clue to the characters. In life it is
the same. Men and women won't come to you ticketed, or explanation in
hand.

"Lucy, you are a great comfort in a house; it is so nice to have some
one to pour out one's heart to; my husband is no use at all."

"Aunt Bazalgette!"

"In that way. You listen to my faded illusions, to the aspirations of
a nature too finely organized, ah! to find its happiness in this
rough, selfish world. When I open my bosom to him, what does he do?
Guess now--whistles."

"Then I call that rude."

"So do I; and then he whistles more and more."

"Yes; but, aunt, if any serious trouble or grief fell upon you, you
would find Mr. Bazalgette a much greater comfort and a better stay
than poor spiritless me."

"Oh, if the house took fire and fell about our ears, he would come out
of his shell, no doubt; or if the children all died one after another,
poor dear little souls; but those great troubles only come in stories.
Give me a friend that can sympathize with the real hourly
mortifications of a too susceptible nature; sit on this ottoman, and
let me go on. Where was I when Jones came and interrupted us? They
always do just at the interesting point."

Miss Fountain's face promptly wreathed itself into an expectant smile.
She abandoned her hand and her ear, and leaned her graceful person
toward her aunt, while that lady murmured to her in low and thrilling
tones--his eyes, his long hair, his imaginative expressions, his
romantic projects of frugal love; how her harsh papa had warned Adonis
off the premises; how Adonis went without a word (as pale as death,
love), and soon after, in his despair, flung himself--to an ugly
heiress; and how this disappointment had darkened her whole life, and
so on.

Perhaps, if Adonis had stood before her now, rolling his eyes, and his
phrases hot from the annuals, the flourishing matron might have sent
him to the servants' hall with a wave of her white and jeweled hand.
But the melody disarms this sort of brutal criticism--a woman's voice
relating love's young dream; and then the picture--a matron still
handsome pouring into a lovely virgin's ear the last thing she ought;
the young beauty's eyes mimicking sympathy; the ripe beauty's soft,
delicious accents--purr! purr! purr!

Crash overhead! a window smashed aie! aie! clatter! clatter! screams
of infantine rage and feminine remonstrance, feet pattering, and a
general hullabaloo, cut the soft recital in two. The ladies clasped
hands, like guilty things surprised.

Lucy sprang to her feet; the oppressed one sank slowly and gracefully
back, inch by inch, on the ottoman, with a sigh of ostentatious
resignation, and gazed, martyr-like, on the chandelier.

"Will you not go up to the nursery?" cried Lucy, in a flutter.

"No, dear," replied the other, faintly, but as cool as a marble slab;
"you go; cast some of your oil upon those ever-troubled waters and
then come back and let us try once more."

Miss Fountain heard but half this sentence; she was already gliding up
the stairs. She opened the nursery door, and there stood in the middle
of the room "Original Sin." Its name after the flesh was Master
Reginald. It was half-past six, had been baptized in church, after
which every child becomes, according to polemic divines of the day, "a
little soul of Christian fire" until it goes to a public school. And
there it straddled, two scarlet cheeks puffed out with rage, soft
flaxen hair streaming, cerulean eyes glowing, the poker grasped in two
chubby fists. It had poked a window in vague ire, and now threatened
two females with extinction if they riled it any more.

The two grown-up women were discovered, erect, but flat, in distant
corners, avoiding the bayonet and trusting to their artillery.

"Wicked boy!"
"Naughty boy!" (grape.)
"Little ruffian!" etc.

And hints as to the ultimate destination of so. sanguinary a soul
(round shot).

"Ah! here's miss. Oh, miss, we are so glad you are come up; don't go
anigh him, miss; he is a tiger."

Miss Fountain smiled, and went gracefully on one knee beside him. This
brought her angelic face level with the fallen cherub's. "What is the
matter, dear?" asked she, in a tone of soft pity.

The tiger was not prepared for this: he dropped his poker and flung
his little arm round his cousin's neck.

"I love YOU. Oh! oh! oh!"

"Yes, dear; then tell me, now--what is the matter? What have you been
doing?"

"Noth--noth--nothing--it's th--them been na--a--agging me!"

"Nagging you?" and she smiled at the word and a tiger's horror of it.

"Who has been nagging you, love?"

"Th--those--bit--bit--it." The word was unfortunately lost in a sob.
It was followed by red faces and two simultaneous yells of
remonstrance and objurgation.

"I must ask you to be silent a minute," said Miss Fountain, quietly.
"Reginald, what do you mean by--by--nagging?"

Reginald explained. "By nagging he meant--why--nagging."

"Well, then, what had they been doing to him?"

No; poor Reginald was not analytical, dialectical and critical, like
certain pedanticules who figure in story as children. He was a
terrible infant, not a horrible one.

"They won't fight and they won't make it up, and they keep nagging,"
was all could be got out of him.

"Come with me, dear," said Lucy, gravely.

"Yes," assented the tiger, softly, and went out awestruck, holding her
hand, and paddling three steps to each of her serpentine glides.

Seated in her own room, tiger at knee, she tried topics of admonition.
During these his eyes wandered about the room in search of matter more
amusing, so she was obliged to bring up her reserve.

"And no young lady will ever marry you."

"I don't want them to, cousin; I wouldn't let them; you will marry me,
because you promised."

"Did I?"

"Why, you know you did--upon your honor; and no lady or gentleman ever
breaks their word when they say that; you told me so yourself," added
he of the inconvenient memory.

"Ah! but there is another rule that I forgot to tell you."

"What is that?"

"That no lady ever marries a gentleman who has a violent temper."

"Oh, don't they?"

"No; they would be afraid. If you had a wife, and took up the poker,
she would faint away, and die--perhaps!"

"Oh, dear!"

"I should."

"But, cousin, you would not _want_ the poker taken to you; you
never nag."

"Perhaps that is because we are not married yet."

"What, then, when we are, shall you turn like the others?"

"Impossible to say."

"Well, then" (after a moment's hesitation), "I'll marry you all the
same."

"No! you forget; I shall be afraid until your temper mends."

"I'll mend it. It is mended now. See how good I am now," added he,
with self-admiration and a shade of surprise.

"I don't call this mending it, for I am not the one that offended you;
mending it is promising me never, never to call naughty names again.
How would you like to be called a dog?"

"I'd kill 'em."

"There, you see--then how can you expect poor nurse to like it?"

"You don't understand, cousin--Tom said to George the groom that Mrs.
Jones was an--old--stingy--b--"

"I don't want to hear anything about Tom."

"He is such a clever fellow, cousin. So I think, if Jones is an old
one, those two that keep nagging me must be young ones. What do you
think yourself?" asked Reginald, appealing suddenly to her candor.

"And no doubt it was Tom that taught you this other vulgar word
'nagging,'" was the evasive reply.

"No, that was mamma."

Lucy colored, wheeled quickly, and demanded severely of the terrible
infant: "Who is this Tom?"

"What! don't you know Tom?" Reginald began to lose a grain of his
respect for her. "Why, he helps in the stables; oh, cousin, he is such
a nice fellow!"

"Reginald, I shall never marry you if you keep company with grooms,
and speak their language."

"Well!" sighed the victim, "I'll give up Tom sooner than you."

"Thank you, dear; now I _am_ flattered. One struggle more; we
must go together and ask the nurses' pardon."

"Must we? ugh!"

"Yes--and kiss them--and make it up."

Reginald made a wry face; but, after a pause of solemn reflection, he
consented, on condition that Lucy would keep near him, and kiss him
directly afterward.

"I shall be sure to do that, because you will be a good boy then."

Outside the door Reginald paused: "I have a favor to ask you,
cousin--a great favor. You see I am so very little, and you are so
big; now the husband ought to be the biggest."

"Quite my own opinion, Reggy."

"Well, dear, now if you would be so kind as not to grow any older till
I catch you up, I shall be so very, very, very much obliged to you,
dear."

"I will try, Reggy. Nineteen is a very good age. I will stay there as
long as my friends will let me."

"Thank you, cousin."

"But that is not what we have in hand."

The nurses were just agreeing what a shame it was of miss to take that
little vagabond's part against them, when she opened the door. "Nurse,
here is a penitent--a young gentleman who is never going to use rude
words, or be violent and naughty again."

"La! miss, why, it is witchcraft--the dear child--soon up and soon
down, as a boy should."

"Beg par'n, nurse--beg par'n, Kitty," recited the dear child, late
tiger, and kissed them both hastily; and, this double formula gone
through, ran to Miss Fountain and kissed her with warmth, while the
nurses were reciting "little angel," "all heart," etc.

"To take the taste out of my mouth," explained the penitent, and was
left with his propitiated females; and didn't they nag him at short
intervals until sunset! But, strong in the contemplation of his future
union with Cousin Lucy, this great heart in a little body despised the
pins and needles that had goaded him to fury before.

Lucy went down to the drawing-room. She found Mrs. Bazalgette leaning
with one elbow on the table, her hand shading her high, polished
forehead; her grave face reflecting great mental power taxed to the
uttermost. So Newton looked, solving Nature.

Miss Fountain came in full of the nursery business, but, catching
sight of so much mind in labor, approached it with silent curiosity.

The oracle looked up with an absorbed air, and delivered itself very
slowly, with eye turned inward.

"I am afraid--I don't think--I quite like my new dress."

"That _is_ unfortunate."

"That would not matter; I never like anything till I have altered it;
but here is Baldwin has just sent me word that her mother is dying,
and she can't undertake any work for a week. Provoking! could not the
woman die just as well after the ball?"

"Oh, aunt!"

"And my maid has no more taste than an owl. What on earth am I to do?"

"Wear another dress."

"What other can I?"

"Nothing can be prettier than your white mousseline de soie with the
tartan trimming."

"No, I have worn that at four balls already; I won't be known by my
colors, like a bird. I have made up my mind to wear the jaune, and I
will, in spite of them all; that is, if I can find anybody who cares
enough for me to try it on, and tell me what it wants." Lucy offered
at once to go with her to her room and try it on.

"No--no--it is so cold there; we will do it here by the fire. You will
find it in the large wardrobe, dear. Mind how you carry it. Lucy! lots
of pins."

Mrs. Bazalgette then rang the bell, and told the servant to say she
was out if anyone called, no matter who.

Meantime Lucy, impressed with the gravity of her office, took the
dress carefully down from the pegs; and as it would have been death to
crease it, and destruction to let its hem sweep against any of the
inferior forms of matter, she came down the stairs and into the room
holding this female weapon of destruction as high above her head as
Judith waves the sword of Holofernes in Etty's immortal picture.

The other had just found time to loosen her dress and lock one of the
doors. She now locked the other, and the rites began. Well!!??

"It fits you like a glove."

"Really? tell the truth now; it is a sin to tell a story--about a new
gown. What a nuisance one can't see behind one!"

"I could fetch another glass, but you may trust my word, aunt. This
point behind is very becoming; it gives distinction to the waist."

"Yes, Baldwin cuts these bodies better than Olivier; but the worst of
her is, when it comes to the trimming you have to think for yourself.
The woman has no mind; she is a pair of hands, and there is an end of
her."

"I must confess it is a little plain, for one thing," said Lucy.

"Why, you little goose, you don't think I am going to wear it like
this. No. I thought of having down a wreath and bouquet from Foster's
of violets and heart's-ease--the bosom and sleeves covered with blond,
you know, and caught up here and there with a small bunch of the
flowers. Then, in the center heart's-ease of the bosom, I meant to
have had two of my largest diamonds set--hush!"

The door-handle worked viciously; then came rap! rap! rap! rap!

"Tic--tic--tic; this is always the way. Who is there? Go away; you
can't come here."

"But I want to speak to you. What the deuce are you doing?" said
through the keyhole the wretch that owned the room in a mere legal
sense.

"We are trying a dress. Come again in an hour."

"Confound your dresses! Who is we?"

"Lucy has got a new dress."

"Aunt!" whispered Lucy, in a tone of piteous expostulation.

"Oh, if it is Lucy. Well, good-by, ladies. I am obliged to go to
London at a moment's notice for a couple of days. You will have done
by when I come back, perhaps," and off went Bazalgette whistling, but
not best pleased. He had told his wife more than once that the
drawing-rooms and dining-rooms of a house are the public rooms, and
the bedrooms the private ones.

Lucy colored with mortification. It was death to her to annoy anyone;
so her aunt had thrust her into a cruel position.

"Poor Mr. Bazalgette!" sighed she.

"Fiddle de dee. Let him go, and come back in a better temper--set
transparent; so then, backed by the violet, you know, they will
imitate dewdrops to the life."

"Charming! Why not let Olivier do it for you, as poor Baldwin cannot?"

"Because Olivier works for the Claytons, and we should have that Emily
Clayton out as my double; and as we visit the same houses--"

"And as she is extremely pretty--aunt, what a generalissima you are!"

"Pretty! Snub-nosed little toad. No, she is not pretty. But she is
eighteen; so I can't afford to dress her. No. I see I shall have to
moderate my views for this gown, and buy another dress for the flowers
and diamonds. There, take it off, and let us think it calmly over. I
never act in a hurry but I am sorry for it afterward--I mean in things
of real importance." The gown was taken off in silence, broken only by
occasional sighs from the sufferer, in whose heart a dozen projects
battled fiercely for the mastery, and worried and sore perplexed her,
and rent her inmost soul fiercely divers ways.

"Black lace, dear," suggested Lucy, soothingly.

Mrs. B. curled her arm lovingly round Lucy's waist. "Just what I was
beginning to think," said she, warmly. "And we can't both be mistaken,
can we? But where can I get enough?" and her countenance, that the
cheering coincidence had rendered seraphic, was once more clouded with
doubt.

"Why, you have yards of it."

"Yes, but mine is all made up in some form or other, and it musses
one's things so to pick them to pieces."

"So it does, dear," replied Lucy, with gentle but genuine feeling.

"It would only be for one night, Lucy--I should not hurt it, love--you
would not like to fetch down your Brussels point scarf, and see how it
would look, would you? We need not cut the lace, dear; we could tack
it on again the next morning; you are not so particular as I am--you
look well in anything."

Lucy was soon seated denuding herself and embellishing her aunt. The
latter reclined with grace, and furthered the work by smile and
gesture.

"You don't ask me about the skirmish in the nursery."

"Their squabbles bore me, dear; but you can tell me who was the most
in fault, if you think it worth while."

"Reginald, then, I am afraid; but it is not the poor boy; it is the
influence of the stable-yard; and I do advise and entreat you to keep
him out of it."

"Impossible, my dear; you don't know boys. The stable is their
paradise. When he grows older his father must interfere; meantime, let
us talk of something more agreeable."

"Yes; you shall go on with your story. You had got to his look of
despair when your papa came in that morning."

"Oh, I have no time for anybody's despair just now; I can think of
nothing but this detestable gown. Lucy, I suspect I almost wish I had
made them put another breadth into the skirt."

"Luncheon, ma'am."

Lucy begged her aunt to go down alone; she would stay and work.

"No, you must come to luncheon; there is a dish on purpose for
you--stewed eels."

"Eels; why, I abhor them; I think they are water-serpents."

"Who is it that is so fond of them, then?"

"It is you, aunt."

"So it is. I thought it had been you. Come, you must come down,
whether you eat anything or not. I like somebody to talk to me while I
am eating, and I had an idea just now--it is gone--but perhaps it will
come back to me: it was about this abominable gown. O! how I wish
there was not such a thing as dress in the world!!!"

While Mrs. Bazalgette was munching water-snakes with delicate zeal,
and Lucy nibbling cake, came a letter. Mrs. Bazalgette read it with
heightening color, laid it down, cast a pitying glance on Lucy, and
said, with a sigh, "Poor girl!"

Lucy turned a little pale. "Has anything happened?" she faltered.

"Something is going to happen; you are to be torn away from here,
where you are so happy--where we all love you, dear. It is from that
selfish old bachelor. Listen: 'Dear madam, my niece Lucy has been due
here three days. I have waited to see whether you would part with her
without being dunned. My curiosity on that point is satisfied, and I
have now only my affection to consult, which I do by requesting you to
put her and her maid into a carriage that will be waiting for her at
your door twenty-four hours after you receive this note. I have the
honor to be, madam,' an old brute!!"

"And you can smile; but that is you all over; you don't care a straw
whether you are happy or miserable."

"Don't I?"

"Not you; you will leave this, where you are a little queen, and go
and bury yourself three months with that old bachelor, and nobody will
ever gather from your face that you are bored to death; and here we
are asked to the Cavendishes' next Wednesday, and the Hunts' ball on
Friday--you are such a lucky girl--our best invitations always drop in
while you are with us--we go out three times as often during your
months as at other times; it is your good fortune, or the weather, or
something."

"Dear aunt, this was your own arrangement with Uncle Fountain. I used
to be six months with each in turn till you insisted on its being
three. You make me almost laugh, both you and Uncle Fountain; what
_do_ you see in me worth quarreling for?"

"I will tell you what _he_ sees--a good little spiritless
thing--"

"I am larger than you, dear."

"Yes, in body--that he can make a slave of--always ready to nurse him
and his foe, or to put down your work and to take up his--to play at
his vile backgammon."

"Piquet, please."

"Where is the difference?--to share his desolation, and take half his
blue devils on your own shoulders, till he will hyp you so that to get
away you will consent to marry into his set--the county set--some
beggarly old family that came down from the Conquest, and has been
going down ever since; so then he will let you fly--with a string: you
must vegetate two miles from him; so then he can have you in to
Backquette and write his letters: he will settle four hundred a year
on you, and you will be miserable for life."

"Poor Uncle Fountain, what a schemer he turns out!"

"Men all turn out schemers when you know them, Miss Impertinence.
Well, dear, I have no selfish views for you. I love my few friends too
single-heartedly for that; but I _am_ sad when I see you leaving
us to go where you are not prized."

"Indeed, aunt, I am prized at Font Abbey. I am overrated there as I am
here. They all receive me with open arms."

"So is a hare when it comes into a trap," said Mrs. Bazalgette,
sharply, drawing upon a limited knowledge of grammar and field-sports.

"No--Uncle Fountain really loves me."

"As much as I do?" asked the lady, with a treacherous smile.

"Very nearly," was the young courtier's reply. She went on to console
her aunt's unselfish solicitude, by assuring her that Font Abbey was
not a solitude; that dinners and balls abounded, and her uncle was
invited to them all.

"You little goose, don't you see? all those invitations are for your
sake, not his. If we could look in on him now we should find him
literally in single cursedness. Those county folks are not without
cunning. They say beauty has come to stay with the beast; we must ask
the beast to dinner, so then beauty will come along with him.

"What other pleasure awaits you at Font Abbey?"

"The pleasure of giving pleasure," replied Lucy, apologetically.

"Ah! that is your weakness, Lucy. It is all very well with those who
won't take advantage; but it is the wrong game to play with all the
world. You will be made a tool of, and a slave of, and use of. I speak
from experience. You know how I sacrifice myself to those I love;
luckily, they are not many."

"Not so many as love you, dear."

"Heaven forbid! but you are at the head of them all, and I am going to
prove it--by deeds, not words."

Lucy looked up at this additional feature in her aunt's affection.

"You must go to the great bear's den for three months, but it shall be
the last time!" Lucy said nothing.

"You will return never to quit us, or, at all events, not the
neighborhood."

"That--would be nice," said the courtier warmly, but hesitatingly;
"but how will you gain uncle's consent?"

"By dispensing with it."

"Yes; but the means, aunt?"

"A husband!"

Lucy started and colored all over, and looked askant at her aunt with
opening eyes, like a thoroughbred filly just going to start all across
the road. Mrs. Bazalgette laid a loving hand on her shoulder, and
whispered knowingly in her ear: "Trust to me; I'll have one ready for
you against you come back this time."

"No, please don't! pray don't!" cried Lucy, clasping her hands in
feeble-minded distress.

"In this neighborhood--one of the right sort."

"I am so happy as I am."

"You will be happier when you are quite a slave, and so I shall save
you from being snapped up by some country wiseacre, and marry you into
our own set."

"Merchant princes," suggested Lucy, demurely, having just recovered
her breath and what little sauce there was in her.

"Yes, merchant princes--the men of the age--the men who could buy all
the acres in the country without feeling it--the men who make this
little island great, and a woman happy, by letting her have everything
her heart can desire."

"You mean everything that money can buy."

"Of course. I said so, didn't I?"

"So, then, you are tired of me in the house?" remonstrated Lucy,
sadly.

"No, ingrate; but you will be sure to marry soon or late."

"No, I will not, if I can possibly help it."

"But you can't help it; you are not the character to help it. The
first man that comes to you and says: 'I know you rather dislike me'
(you could not hate anybody, Lucy,) 'but if you don't take me I shall
die of a broken fiddlestick,' you will whine out, 'Oh, dear! shall
you? Well, then, sooner than disoblige you, here--take me!'"

"Am I so weak as this?" asked Lucy, coloring, and the water coming
into her eyes.

"Don't be offended," said the other, coolly; "we won't call it
weakness, but excess of complaisance; you can't say no to anybody."

"Yet I have said it," replied Lucy, thoughtfully.

"Have you? When? Oh, to me. Yes; where I am concerned you have
sometimes a will of your own, and a pretty stout one; but never with
anybody else."

The aunt then inquired of the niece, "frankly, now, between
ourselves," whether she had no wish to be married. The niece informed
her in confidence that she had not, and was puzzled to conceive how
the bare idea of marriage came to be so tempting to her sex. Of
course, she could understand a lady wishing to marry, if she loved a
gentleman who was determined to be unhappy without her; but that women
should look about for some hunter to catch instead of waiting quietly
till the hunter caught them, this puzzled her; and as for the
superstitious love of females for the marriage rite in cases when it
took away their liberty and gave them nothing amiable in return, it
amazed her. "So, aunt," she concluded, "if you really love me, driving
me to the altar will be an unfortunate way of showing it."

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