Books: Love Me Little, Love Me Long

C >> Charles Reade >> Love Me Little, Love Me Long

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"No, dear Mrs. Wilson, we must not go yet. I will hold the horse, and
you must go back for me for something."

"I'm agreeable. What is it? Why, what is up? How you do pant!"

"I have made a discovery. There is a gentleman lying asleep there on
the wet grass."

"Lackadaisy! why, you don't say so."

"It is a friend; and he will catch his death."

"Why, of course he will. He will have had a drop too much, Miss Lucy.
I'll wake him, and we will take him along home with us."

"Oh, not for the world, nurse. I would not have him see what I am
doing, oh, not for all the world!"

"Where is he?"

"In there, under the great tree."

"Well, you get into the cart, miss, and hold the reins"; and Mrs.
Wilson went into the grounds and soon found David.

She put her hand on his shoulder, and he awoke directly, and looked
surprised at Mrs. Wilson.

"Are you better, sir?" said the good woman. "Why, if it isn't the
handsome gentleman that was so kind to me! Now do ee go in, sir--do ee
go in. You will catch your death o' cold." She made sure he was
staying at the house.

David looked up at Lucy's windows. "Yes, I will go home, Mrs. Wilson;
there is nothing to stay for now"; and he accompanied her to the cart.
But Mrs. Wilson remembered Lucy's desire not to be seen; so she said
very loud, "I'm sure it's very lucky me and _my niece_ happened
to be coming home so late, and see you lying there. Well, one good
turn deserves another. Come and see me at my farm; you go through the
village of Harrowden, and anybody there will tell you where Dame
Wilson do live. I _would_ ask you to-night, but--" she hesitated,
and Lucy let down her veil.

"No, thank you, not now; my sister will be fretting as it is.
Good-morning"; and his steps were heard retreating as Mrs. Wilson
mounted the cart.

"Well, I should have liked to have taken him home and warmed him a
bit," said the good woman to Lucy; "it is enough to give him the
rheumatics for life. However, he is not the first honest man as has
had a drop too much, and taken 's rest without a feather-bed. Alack,
miss, why, you are all of a tremble! What ails _you?_ I'm a fool
to ask. Ah! well, you'll soon be at home, and naught to vex you. That
is right; have a good cry, do. Ay, ay, _'tis_ hard to be forced
to leave our nest. But all places are bright where love abides; and
there's honest hearts both here and there, and the same sky above us
wherever we wander, and the God of the fatherless above that; and
better a peaceful cottage than a palace full of strife." And with many
such homely sayings the rustic consoled her nursling on their little
journey, not quite in vain.

CHAPTER XXVI.

NEXT morning the house was in an uproar. Servants ran to and fro, and
the fish-pond was dragged at Mr. Fountain's request. But on these
occasions everybody claims a right to speak, and Jane came into the
breakfast-room and said: "If you please, mum, Miss Lucy isn't in the
pond, for she have taken a good part of her clothes, and all her
jewels."

This piece of common sense convinced everybody on the spot except Mrs.
Bazalgette. That lady, if she had decided on "making a hole in the
water," would have sat on the bank first, and clapped on all her
jewels, and all her richest dresses, one on the top of another.
Finally, Mr. Bazalgette, who wore a somber air, and had not said a
word, requested everybody to mind their own business. "I have a
communication from Lucy," said he, "and I do not at present disapprove
the step she has taken."

All eyes turned with astonishment toward him, and the next moment all
voices opened on him like a pack of hounds. But he declined to give
them any further information. Between ourselves he had none to give.
The little note Lucy left on his table merely begged him to be under
no anxiety, and prayed him to suspend his judgment of her conduct till
he should know the whole case. It was his strong good sense which led
him to pretend he was in the whole secret. By this means he
substituted mystery for scandal, and contrived that the girl's folly
might not be irreparable.

At the same time he was deeply indignant with her, and, above all,
with her hypocrisy in clinging round him and kissing him the very
night she meditated flight from his house.

"I must find the girl out and get her back;" said he, and directly
after breakfast he collected his myrmidons and set them to discover
her retreat.

The outward frame-work of the holy alliance remained standing, but
within it was dissolving fast. Each of the allies was even now
thinking how to find Lucy and make a separate peace. During the
flutter which now subsided, one person had done nothing but eat
pigeon-pie. It was Kenealy, captain of horse.

Now eating pigeon-pie is not in itself a suspicious act, but ladies
are so sharp. Mrs. Bazalgette said to herself, "This creature alone is
not a bit surprised (for Bazalgette is fibbing); why is this creature
not surprised? humph! Captain Kenealy," said she, in honeyed tones,
"what would you advise us to do?"

"Advertaize," drawled the captain, as cool as a cucumber.

"Advertise? What! publish her name?"

"No, no names. I'll tell you;" and he proceeded to drawl out very
slowly, from memory, the following advertisement. N. B.--The captain
was a great reader of advertisements, and of little else.

"WANDERAA, RETARN.

"If L. F. will retarn--to her afflicted--relatives--she shall be
received with open aams. And shall be forgotten and forgiven--and
reunaited affection shall solace every wound."

"That is the style. It always brings 'em back--dayvilish good
paie--have some moa."

Mr. Fountain and Mrs. Bazalgette raised an outcry against the
captain's advice, and, when the table was calm again, Mrs. Bazalgette
surprised them all by fixing her eyes on Kenealy, and saying quietly,
"You know where she is." She added more excitedly: "Now don't deny it.
On your honor, sir, have you no idea where my niece is?"

"Upon my honah, I have an idea."

"Then tell me."

"I'd rayther not."

"Perhaps you would prefer to tell me in private?"

"No; prefer not to tell at all."

Then the whole table opened on him, and appealed to his manly feeling,
his sense of hospitality, his humanity--to gratify their curiosity.

Kenealy stretched himself out from the waist downward, and delivered
himself thus, with a double infusion of his drawl:--

"See yah all dem--d first."

At noon on the same day, by the interference of Mrs. Bazalgette, the
British army was swelled with Kenealy, captain of horse.

The whole day passed, and Lucy's retreat was not yet discovered. But
more than one hunter was hemming her in.

The next day, being the second after her elopement with her nurse, at
eleven in the forenoon, Lucy and Mrs. Wilson sat in the little parlor
working. Mrs. Wilson had seen the poultry fed, the butter churned, and
the pudding safe in the pot, and her mind was at ease for a good hour
to come, so she sat quiet and peaceful. Lucy, too, was at peace. Her
eye was clear; and her color coming back; she was not bursting with
happiness, for there was a sweet pensiveness mixed with her sweet
tranquillity; but she looked every now and then smiling from her work
up at Mrs. Wilson, and the dame kept looking at her with a motherly
joy caused by her bare presence on that hearth. Lucy basked in these
maternal glances. At last she said: "Nurse."

"My dear?"

"If you had never done anything for me, still I should know you loved
me."

"Should ye, now?"

"Oh yes; there is the look in your eye that I used to long to see in
my poor aunt's, but it never came."

"Well, Miss Lucy, I can't help it. To think it is really you setting
there by my fire! I do feel like a cat with one kitten. You should
check me glaring you out o' countenance like that."

"Check you? I could not bear to lose one glance of that honest tender
eye. I would not exchange one for all the flatteries of the world. I
am so happy here, so tranquil, under my nurse's wing."

With this declaration came a little sigh.

Mrs. Wilson caught it. "Is there nothing wanting, dear?"

"No."

"Well, I do keep wishing for one thing."

"What is that?"

"Oh, I can't help my thoughts."

"But you can help keeping them from me, nurse."

"Well, my dear, I am like a mother; I watch every word of yours and
every look; and it is my belief you deceive yourself a bit: many a
young maid has done that. I do judge there is a young man that is more
to you than you think for."

"Who on earth is that, nurse? " asked Lucy, coloring.

"The handsome young gentleman."

"Oh, they are all handsome--all my pests."

"The one I found under your window, Miss Lucy; he wasn't in liquor; so
what was he there for? and you know you were not at your ease till you
had made me go and wake him, and send him home; and you were all of a
tremble. I'm a widdy now, and can speak my mind to men-folk all one as
women-folk; but I've been a maid, and I can mind how I was in those
days. Liking did use to whisper me to do so and so; Shyness up and
said, 'La! not for all the world; what'll he think?'"

"Oh, nurse, do you believe me capable of loving one who does not love
me?"

"No. Who said he doesn't love you? What was he there for? I stick to
that."

"Now, nurse, dear, be reasonable; if Mr. Dodd loved me, would he go to
sleep in my presence?"

"Eh! Miss Lucy, the poor soul was maybe asleep before you left your
room."

"It is all the same. He slept while I stood close to him ever so long.
Slept while I-- If I loved anybody as these gentlemen pretend they
love us, should I sleep while the being I adored was close to me?"

"You are too hard upon him. 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is
weak.' Why, miss, we do read of Eutychus, how he snoozed off setting
under Paul himself--up in a windy--and down a-tumbled. But parson says
it wasn't that he didn't love religion, or why should Paul make it his
business to bring him to life again, 'stead of letting un lie for a
warning to the sleepy-headed ones. ''Twas a wearied body, not a heart
cold to God,' says our parson."

"Now, nurse, I take you at your word. If Eutychus had been Eutycha,
and in love with St. Paul, Eutycha would never have gone to sleep,
though St. Paul preached all day and all night; and if Dorcas had
preached instead of St. Paul, and Eutychus been in love with her, he
would never have gone to sleep, and you know it."

At this home-thrust Mrs. Wilson was staggered, but the next moment her
sense of discomfiture gave way to a broad expression of triumph at her
nursling's wit.

"Eh! Miss Lucy," cried she, showing a broadside of great white teeth
in a rustic chuckle, "but ye've got a tongue in your head. Ye've sewed
up my stocking, and 'tisn't many of them can do that." Lucy followed
up her advantage.

"And, nurse, even when he was wide awake and stood by the cart, no
inward sentiment warned him of my presence; a sure sign he did not
love me. Though I have never experienced love, I have read of it, and
know all about it." [_Jus-tice des Femmes!_]

"Well, Miss Lucy, have it your own way; after all, if he loves you he
will find you out."

"Of course he would, and you will see he will do nothing of the kind."

"Then I wish I knew where he was; I would pull him in at my door by
the scruf of the neck."

"And then I should jump out at the window. Come, try on your new cap,
nurse, that I have made for you, and let us talk about anything you
like except gentlemen. Gentlemen are a sore subject with me. Gentlemen
have been my ruin."

"La, Miss Lucy!"

"I assure you they have; why, have they not set my uncle's heart
against me, and my aunt's, and robbed me of the affection I once had
for both? I believe gentlemen to be the pests of society; and oh! the
delight of being here in this calm retreat, where love dwells, and no
gentleman can find me. Ah! ah! Oh! What is that?"

For a heavy blow descended on the door. "That is Jenny's
_knock,"_ said Mrs. Wilson; dryly. "Come in, Jenny." The servant,
thus invited, burst the door open as savagely as she had struck it,
and announced with a knowing grin, "A GENTLEMAN--_for Miss
Fountain!!"_

CHAPTER XXVII.

DAVID and Eve sat together at their little breakfast, and pressed each
other to eat; but neither could eat. David's night excursion had
filled Eve with new misgivings. It was the act of a madman; and we
know the fears that beset her on that head, and their ground. He had
come home shivering, and she had forced him to keep his bed all that
day. He was not well now, and bodily weakness, added to his other
afflictions, bore his spirit down, though nothing could cow it.

"When are you to sail?" inquired Eve, sick-like.

"In three days. Cargo won't be on board before."

"A coasting vessel?"

"A man can do his duty in a coaster as well as a merchantman or a
frigate." But he sighed.

"Would to God you had never seen her!"

"Don't blame her--blame me. I had good advice from my little sister,
but I was willful. Never mind, Eve, I needn't to blush for loving her;
she is worthy of it all."

"Well, think so, David, if you can." And Eve, thoroughly depressed,
relapsed into silence. The postman's rap was heard, and soon after a
long inclosure was placed in Eve's hand.

Poor little Eve did not receive many letters; and, sad as she was, she
opened this with some interest; but how shall I paint its effect? She
kept uttering shrieks of joy, one after another, at each sentence. And
when she had shrieked with joy many times, she ran with the large
paper round to David. "You are captain of the _Rajah!_ ah! the
new ship! ah! eleven hundred tons! Oh, David! Oh, my heart! Oh! oh!
oh!" and the poor little thing clasped her arms round her brother's
neck, and kissed him again and again, and cried and sobbed for joy.

All men, and most women, go through life without once knowing what it
is to cry for joy, and it is a comfort to think that Eve's pure and
deep affection brought her such a moment as this in return for much
trouble and sorrow. David, stout-hearted as he was, was shaken as the
sea and the wind had never yet shaken him. He turned red and white
alternately, and trembled. "Captain of the _Rajah!_ It is too
good--it is too good! I have done nothing _for it";_ and he was
incredulous.

Eve was devouring the inclosure. "It is her doing," she cried; "it is
all her doing."

"Whose?"

"Who do you think? I am in the air! I am in heaven! Bless her--oh,
God, bless her for this. Never speak against cold-blooded folk before
me; they have twice the principle of us hot ones: I always said so.
She is a good creature; she is a true friend; and you accused her of
ingratitude!"

"That I never did."

"You did--_Rajah_--he! he! oh!--and I defended her. Here, take
and read that: is that a commission or not? Now you be quiet, and let
us see what she says. No, I can't; I cannot keep the tears out of my
eyes. Do take and read it, David; I'm blind."

David took the letter, kissed it, and read it out to Eve, and she kept
crowing and shedding tears all the time.

"DEAR MISS DODD--I admire too much your true affection for your
brother to be indifferent to your good opinion. Think of me as
leniently as you can. Perhaps it gives me as much pleasure to be able
to forward you the inclosed as the receipt of it, I hope, may give
you.

"It would, I think, be more wise, and certainly more generous, not to
let Mr. Dodd think he owes in any degree to me that which, if the
world were just, would surely have been his long ago. Only, some few
months hence, when it can do him no harm, I could wish him not to
think his friend Lucy was ungrateful, or even cold in his service, who
saved her life, and once honored her with so warm an esteem. But all
this I confide to your discretion and your justice. Dear Miss Dodd,
those who give pain to others do not escape it themselves, nor is it
just they should. My insensibility to the merit of persons of the
other sex has provoked my relatives; they have punished me for
declining Mr. Dodd's inferiors with a bitterness Mr. Dodd, with far
more cause, never showed me; so you see at each turn I am reminded of
his superiority.

"The result is, I am separated from my friends, and am living all
alone with my dear old nurse, at her farmhouse.

"Since, then, I am unhappy, and you are generous, you will, I think,
forgive me all the pain I have caused you, and will let me, in bidding
you adieu, subscribe myself,

"Yours affectionately,

"LUCY FOUNTAIN"

"It is the letter of a sweet girl, David, with a noble heart; and she
has taken a noble revenge of me for what I said to her the other day,
and made her cry, like a little brute as I am. Why, how glum you
look!"

"Eve," said David, "do you think I will accept this from her without
herself?"

"Of course you will. Don't be too greedy, David. Leave the girl in
peace; she has shown you what she will do and what she won't. One such
friend as this is worth a hundred lovers. Give me her dear little
note."

While Eve was persuing it, David went out, but soon returned, with his
best coat on, and his hat in his hand. Eve asked in some surprise
where he was going in such a hurry.

"To her."

"Well, David, now I come to read her letter quietly, it is a woman's
letter all over; you may read it which way you like. What need had she
to tell me she has just refused offers? And then she tells me she is
all alone. That sounds like a hint. The company of a friend might he
agreeable. Brush your coat first, at any rate; there's something white
on it; it is a paper; it is pinned on. Come here. Why, what is this?
It is written on. 'Adieu.'" And Eve opened her eyes and mouth as well.

She asked him when he wore the coat last.

"The day before yesterday."

"Were you in company of any girls?"

"Not I."

"But this is written by a girl, and it is pinned on by a girl; see how
it is quilted in!! that's proof positive. Oh! oh! oh! look here. Look
at these two 'Adieus'--the one in the letter and this; they are the
same--precisely the same. What, in Heaven's name, is the meaning of
this? Were you in her company that night?"

"No."

"Will you swear that?"

"No, I can't swear it, because I was asleep a part of the time; but
waking in her company I was not."

"It is her writing, and she pinned it on you."

"How can that be, Eve?"

"I don't know; I am sure she did, though. Look at this 'Adieu' and
that; you'll never get it out of my head but what one hand wrote them
both. You are so green, a girl would come behind you and pin it on
you, and you never feel her."

While saying these words, Eve slyly repinned it on him without his
feeling or knowing anything about it.

David was impatient to be gone, but she held him a minute to advise
him.

"Tell her she must and shall. Don't take a denial. If you are
cowardly, she will be bold; but if you are bold and resolute, she will
knuckle down. Mind that; and don't go about it with such a face as
that, as long as my arm. If she says 'No,' you have got the ship to
comfort you. Oh! I am so happy!"

"No, Eve," said David, "if she won't give me herself, I'll never take
her ship. I'd die a foretopman sooner;" and, with these parting words,
he renewed all his sister's anxiety. She sat down sorrowfully, and the
horrible idea gained on her that there was mania in David's love for
Lucy.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

DAVID had one advantage over others that were now hunting Lucy. Mrs.
Wilson had unwittingly given him pretty plain directions how to find
her farmhouse; and as Eve, in the exercise of her discretion, or
indiscretion, had shown David Lucy's letter, he had only to ride to
Harrowden and inquire. But, on the other hand, his competitors were a
few miles nearer the game, and had a day's start.

David got a horse and galloped to Harrowden, fed him at the inn, and
asked where Mrs. Wilson's farm was. The waiter, a female, did not
know, but would inquire. Meantime David asked for two sheets of paper,
and wrote a few lines on each; then folded them both (in those days
envelopes were not), but did not seal them. Mrs. Wilson's farm turned
out to be only two miles from Harrowden, and the road easy to find. He
was soon there; gave his horse to one of the farm-boys, and went into
the kitchen and asked if Miss Fountain lived there. This question
threw him into the hands of Jenny, who invited him to follow her, and,
unlike your powdered and noiseless lackey, pounded the door with her
fist, kicked it open with her foot, and announced him with that
thunderbolt of language which fell so inopportunely on Lucy's
self-congratulations.

The look Mrs. Wilson cast on Lucy was droll enough; but when David's
square shoulders and handsome face filled up the doorway, a second
look followed that spoke folios.

Lucy rose, and with heightened color, but admirable self-possession,
welcomed David like a valued friend.

Mrs. Wilson's greeting was broad and hearty; and, very soon after she
had made him sit down, she bounced up, crying: "You will stay dinner
now you be come, and I must see as they don't starve you." So saying,
out she went; but, looking back at the door, was transfixed by an
arrow of reproach from her nursling's eye.

Lucy's reception of David, kind as it was, was not encouraging to one
coming on David's errand, for there was the wrong shade of amity in
it.

In times past it would have cooled David with misgivings, but now he
did not give himself time to be discouraged; he came to make a last
desperate effort, and he made it at once.

"Miss Lucy, I have got the _Rajah,_ thanks to you."

"Thanks to me, Mr. Dodd? Thanks to your own high character and merit."

"No, Miss Lucy, you know better, and I know better, and there is your
own sweet handwriting to prove it."

"Miss Dodd has showed you my letter?"

"How could she help it?"

"What a pity! how injudicious!"

"The truth is like the light; why keep it out? Yes; what I have worked
for, and battled the weather so many years, and been sober and
prudent, and a hard student at every idle hour--that has come to me in
one moment from your dear hand."

"It is a shame."

"Bless you, Miss Lucy," cried David, not noting the remark.

Lucy blushed, and the water stood in her eyes. She murmured softly:
"You should not say Miss Lucy; it is not customary. You should say
Lucy, or Miss Fountain."

This _apropos_ remark by way of a female diversion.

"Then let me say Lucy to-day, for perhaps I shall never say that, or
anything that is sweet to say again. Lucy, you know what I came for?"

"Oh, yes, to receive my congratulations."

"More than that, a great deal--to ask you to go halves in the
_Rajah."_

Lucy's eyebrows demanded an explanation.

"She is worth two thousand a year to her commander; and that is too
much for a bachelor."

Lucy colored and smiled. "Why, it is only just enough for bachelors to
live upon."

"It is too much for me alone under the circumstances," said David,
gravely; and there was a little silence.

"Lucy, I love you. With you the _Rajah_ would be a godsend. She
will help me keep you in the company you have been used to, and were
made to brighten and adorn; but. without you I cannot take her from
your hand, and, to speak plain, I won't."

"Oh, Mr. Dodd!"

"No, Lucy; before I knew you, to command a ship was the height of my
ambition--her quarter-deck my Heaven on earth; and this is a clipper,
I own it; I saw her in the docks. But you have taught me to look
higher. Share my ship and my heart with me, and certainly the ship
will be my child, and all the dearer to me that she came to us from
her I love. But don't say to me, 'Me you shan't have; you are not good
enough for that; but there is a ship for you in my place.' I wouldn't
accept a star out of the firmament on those terms."

"How unreasonable! On the contrary you should say, 'I am doubly
fortunate: I escape a foolish, weak companion for life, and I have a
beautiful ship.' But friendship such as mine for you was never
appreciated; I do you injustice; you only talk like that to tease me
and make me unhappy."

"Oh, Lucy, Lucy, did you ever know me--"

"There, now, forgive me; and own you are not in earnest."

"This will show you," said David, sadly; and he took out two letters
from his bosom. "Here are two letters to the secretary. In one I
accept the ship with thanks, and offer to superintend her when her
rigging is being set up; and in this one I decline her altogether,
with my humble and sincere thanks."

"Oh yes, you are very humble, sir," said Lucy. "Now--dear
friend--listen to reason. You have others--"

"Excuse my interrupting you, but it is a rule with me never to reason
about right and wrong; I notice that whoever does that ends by
choosing wrong. I don't go to my head to find out my duty, I go to my
heart; and what little manhood there is in me all cries out against me
compounding with the woman I love, and taking a ship instead of her."

"How unkind you are! It is not as if I was under no obligations to
you. Is not my life worth a ship? an angel like me?"

"I can't see it so. It was a greater pleasure to me to save your life,
as you call it, than it could be to you. I can't let that into the
account. A woman is a woman, but a man is a man; and I will be under
no obligation to you but one."

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