Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 33

He cried with a choking voice to the postilion, "Go ahead."

The carriage went on and left him standing in the road, his head upon his breast.

At the steepest part of the hill a trace broke, and the driver drew the carriage across the hill and shouted to David. He came running up, and put a large stone behind each wheel.

Lucy was alarmed. "Mr. Dodd! let me out."

He handed her out. The postboy was at a _nonplus;_ but David whipped a piece of cord and a knife out of his pocket, and began, with great rapidity and dexterity, to splice the trace.

"Ah! now you are pleased, Mr. Dodd; our misfortune will elicit your skill in emergencies."

"Oh, no, it isn't that; it is--I never hoped to see you again so soon."

Lucy colored, and her eyes sought the ground; the splice was soon made.

"There!" said David; "I could have spent an hour over it; but you would have been vexed, and the bitter moment must have come at last."

"G.o.d bless you, Miss Fountain--oh! mayn't I say Miss Lucy to-day?" he cried, imploringly.

"Of course you may," said Lucy, the tears rising in her eyes at his sad face and beseeching look. "Oh, Mr. Dodd, parting with those we esteem is always sad enough; I got away from the door without crying--for once; don't _you_ make me cry."

"Make you cry?" cried David, as it he had been suspected of sacrilege; "G.o.d forbid!" He muttered in a choking voice, "You give the word of command, for I can't."

"You can go on," said her soft, clear voice; but first she gave David her hand with a gentle look--"Good-by."

But David could not speak to her. He held her hand tight in both his powerful hands. They seemed iron to her--shaking, trembling, grasping iron. The carriage went slowly on, and drew her hand away. She shrank into a corner of the carriage; he frightened her.

He followed the carriage to the brow of the hill, then sat down upon a heap of stones, and looked despairingly after it.

Meantime Lucy put her head in her hands and blushed, though she was all alone. "How dare he forget the distance between us? Poor fellow!

have not I at times forgotten it? I am worse than he. I lost my self-possession; I should have checked his folly; he knows nothing of _les convenances._ He has hurt my hand, he is so rough; I feel his clutch now; there, I thought so, it is all red--poor fellow!

Nonsense! he is a sailor; he knows nothing of the world and its customs. Parting with a pleasant acquaintance forever made him a little sad.

"He is all nature; he is like n.o.body else; he shows every feeling instead of concealing it, that is all. He has gone home, I hope." She glanced hastily back. He was sitting on the stones, his arms drooping, his head bowed, a picture of despondency. She put her face in her hands again and pondered, blus.h.i.+ng higher and higher. Then the pale face that had always been ruddy before, the simple grief and agitation, the manly eye that did not know how to weep, but was so clouded and troubled, and wildly sad; the shaking hands, that had clutched hers like a drowning man's (she felt them still), the quivering features, choked voice, and trembling lip, all these recoiled with double force upon her mind: they touched her far more than sobs and tears would have done, her s.e.x's ready signs of shallow grief.

Two tears stole down her cheeks.

"If he would but go home and forget me!" She glanced hastily back.

David was climbing up a tree, active as a cat. "He is like n.o.body else--he! he! Stay! is that to see the last of me--the very last? Poor soul! Madman, how will this end? What can come of it but misery to him, remorse to me?

"This is love." She half closed her eyes and smiled, repeating, "This is love.

"Oh how I despise all the others and their feeble flatteries!"

"Heaven forgive me my mad, my wicked wis.h.!.+

"I _am_ beloved.

"I am adored.

"I am miserable!"

As soon as the carriage was out of sight, David came down and hurried from the place. He found the pony at the inn. The ostler had not even removed his saddle.

"Methought that ostler did protest too much."

David kissed the saddle and the pommels, and the bridle her hand had held, and led the pony out. After walking a mile or two he mounted the pony, to sit in her seat, not for ease. Walking thirty miles was nothing to this athlete; sticking on and holding on with his chin on his knee was rather fatiguing.

Meantime, Eve walked on till she was four miles from home. No David.

She sat down and cried a little s.p.a.ce, then on again. She had just reached an angle in the road, when--clatter, clatter--David came cantering around with his knee in his mouth. Eve gave a joyful scream, and up went both her hands with sudden delight. At the double shock to his senses the pony thought his end was come, and perhaps the world's.

He s.h.i.+ed slap into the hedge and stuck there--alone; for, his rider swaying violently the reverse way, the girths burst, the saddle peeled off the pony's back, and David sat griping the pommel of the saddle in the middle of the road at Eve's feet, looking up in her face with an uneasy grin, while dust rose around him in a little column. Eve screeched, and screeched, and screeched; then fell to, with a face as red as a turkey-c.o.c.k's, and beat David furiously, and hurt--her little hands.

David laughed. This incident did him good--shook him up a bit. The pony groveled out of the ditch and cantered home, squeaking at intervals and throwing his heels.

David got up, hoisted the side saddle on to his square shoulders, and, keeping it there by holding the girths, walked with Eve toward Font Abbey. She was now a little ashamed of her apprehensions; and, besides, when she leathered David, she was, in her own mind, serving him out for both frights. At all events, she did not scold him, but kindly inquired his adventures, and he told her what he had done and said, and what Miss Fountain had said.

The account disappointed Eve. "All this is just a pack of nothing,"

said she. "It is two lovers parting, or it is two common friendly acquaintances; all depends on how it was done, and that you don't tell me." Then she put several subtle questions as to the looks, and tones and manner of the young lady. David could not answer them. On this she informed him he was a fool.

"So I begin to think," said he.

"There! be quiet," said she, "and let me think it over."

"Ay! ay!" said he.

While he was being quiet and letting her think a carriage came rapidly up behind them, with a horseman riding beside it; and, as the pedestrians drew aside, an ironical voice fell upon them, and the carriage and horseman stopped, and floured, them with dust.

Messrs. Talboys and Fountain took a stroll to look at the new jail that was building in Royston, and, as they returned, Talboys, whose wounded pride had now fermented, told Mr. Fountain plainly that he saw nothing for it but to withdraw his pretensions to Miss Fountain.

"My own feelings are not sufficiently engaged for me to play the up-hill game of overcoming her disinclination."

"Disinclination? The mere shyness of a modest girl. If she was to be 'won unsought,' she would not be worthy to be Mrs. Talboys."

"Her worth is indisputable," said Mr. Talboys, "but that is no reason why I should force upon her my humble claims."

The moment his friend's pride began to ape humility, Fountain saw the wound it had received was incurable. He sighed and was silent.

Opposition would only have set fire to opposition.

They went home together in silence. On the road Talboys caught sight of a tall gentleman carrying a side-saddle, and a little lady walking beside him. He recognized his _bete noir_ with a grim smile. Here at least was one he had defeated and banished from the fair. What on earth was the man doing? Oh, he had been giving his sister a ride on a donkey, and they had met with an accident. Mr. Talboys was in a humor for revenge, so he pulled up, and in a somewhat bantering voice inquired where was the steed.

"Oh, he is in port by now," said David.

"Do you usually ease the animal of that part of his burden, sir?"