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 sh.e.l.l, 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 a.n.a.lytical, 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," a.s.sented 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."