Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 5

"Well, I am off; I don't stick to my friends and bore them with my affairs like that egotistical hussy, Jane Bazalgette. I amuse myself, and leave them to amuse themselves; that is my notion of politeness. I am going to see my pigs fed, then into the village. I am building a new blacksmith's shop there (you must come and look at it the first thing to-morrow); and at six, if you want to find me--"

"I shall peep behind the soup-tureen."

"And there I shall be, if I am alive." At dinner the old boy threw himself into the work with such zeal that soon after the cloth was removed, from fatigue and repletion, he dropped asleep, with his shoulder toward Lucy, but his face instinctively turned toward the fire. Lucy crept away on tiptoe, not to disturb him.

In about an hour he bustled into the drawing-room, ordered tea, blew up the footman because the cook had not water boiling that moment, drank three cups, then brightened up, rubbed his hands, and with a cheerful, benevolent manner, "Now, Lucy," cried he, "come and help me puzzle out this tiresome genealogy."

A smile of warm a.s.sent from Lucy, and the old bachelor and the blooming Hebe were soon seated with a mountain of parchments by their side, and a tree spreading before them.

It was not a finite tree like an elm or an oak; no, it was a banyan tree; covered an acre, and from its boughs little suckers dropped to earth, and turned to little trees, and had suckers in their turn, and "confounded the confusion."

Uncle Fountain's happiness depended, _pro tem,_ on proving that he was a sucker from the great bough of the Fontaines of Melton; and why? Because, this effected, he had only to go along that bough by an established pedigree to the great trunk of the Funteyns of Salle, and the first Funteyn of Salle was said to be (and this he hoped to prove true) great-grandson of Robert de Fontibus, son of John de Fonte.

Now Uncle Fountain could prove himself the shoot of George his father (a step at which so many pedigrees halt), who was the shoot of William, who was the shoot of Richard; but here came a gap of eighty years between him and that Fountain, younger son of Melton, to whom he wanted to hook on. Now the logic of women, children, and criticasters is a thing of gaps; they reason as marches a kangaroo; but to mathematicians, logicians, and genealogists, a link wanting is a chain broken. This blank then made Uncle Fountain miserable, and he cried out for help. Lucy came with her young eyes, her woman's patience, and her own complaisance. A great ditch yawned between a crocheteer and a rotten branch he coveted. Our Quinta Curtia flung herself, her eyesight, and her time into that ditch.

Twelve o'clock came, and found them still wallowing in modern antiquity.

"Bless me!" cried Mr. Fountain when John brought up the bed-candles, "how time flies when one is really employed."

"Yes, indeed, uncle;" and by a gymnastic of courtesy she first crushed and then so molded a yawn that it glided into society a smile.

"We have spent a delightful evening, Lucy."

"Thanks to you, uncle."

"I hope you will sleep well, child."

"I am sure I shall, dear," said she, sweetly and inadvertently.

CHAPTER II.

A LARGE aspiration is a rarity; but who has not some small ambition, none the less keen for being narrow--keener, perhaps? Mrs. Bazalgette burned to be great by dress; Mr. Fountain, member of a s.e.x with higher aims, aspired to be great in the county.

Unluckily, his main property was in the funds. He had acres in ----s.h.i.+re; but so few that, some years ago, its lord lieutenant declined to make him an injustice of the peace. That functionary died, and on his death the mortified aspirant bought a coppice, christened it Springwood, and under cover of this fringe to his three meadows, applied to the new lord lieutenant as M'Duff approached M'Beth. The new man made him a magistrate; so now he aspired to be a deputy lieutenant, and attended all the boards of magistrates, and turnpike trusts, etc., and brought up votes and beer-barrels at each election, and, in, short, played all the cards in his pack, Lucy included, to earn that distinction.

We may as well confess that there lurked in him a half-unconscious hope that some day or other, in some strange collision or combination of parties, a man profound in county business, zealous in county interests, personally obnoxious to n.o.body, might drop into the seat of county member; and, if this should be, would not he have the sense to hold his tongue upon the noisy questions that waste Parliament's time, and the nation's; but, on the first of those periodical attacks to which the wretched landowner is subject, wouldn't he speak, and show the difference between a mere member of the Commons and a member for the county?

If anyone had asked this man plump which is the most important, England or ----s.h.i.+re, he would have certainly told you England; but our opinions are not the notions we repeat, and can defend by reasons or even by facts: our opinions are the notions we feel and act on.

Could you have looked inside Mr. Fountain's head, you would have seen ideas corresponding to the following diagrams:

[drawing]

Mr. Fountain courted the stomach of the county.

Without this, he knew, an angel could not reach its heart; and here one of his eccentricities broke out. He drew a line, in his dictatorial way, between dinner and feeding parties. "A dinner party is two rubbers. Four gentlemen and four ladies sit round a circular table; then each can hear what anyone says, and need not twist the neck at every word. Foraging parties are from fourteen to thirty, set up and down a plank, each separated from those he could talk to as effectually as if the ocean rolled between, and bawling into one person's ear amid the din of knives, forks, and mult.i.tude. I go to those long strings of noisy duets because I must, but I give _society_ at home."

The county people had just strength of mind to like the old boy's sociable dinners, though not to imitate them, and an invitation from him was very rarely declined when Lucy was with him.

And she was in her glory. She could carry complaisance such a long way at Font Abbey--she was mistress of the house.

She listened with a wonderful appearance of interest to county matters, i.e., to minute scandal and infinitesimal politics; to the county cricket match and archery meeting; to the past ball and the ball to come. In the drawing-room, when a cold fit fell on the coterie, she would glide to one egotist after another, find out the monotope, and set the critter Peter's, the Place de Concorde, the Square of St. Mark, Versailles, the Alhambra, the Apollo Belvidere, the Madonna of the Chair, and all the glories of nature and the feats of art could not warm. So, then, the fine gentleman began to act--to walk himself out as a person who had seen and could give details about anything, but was exalted far above admiring anything _(quel grand homme! rien ne peut lui plaire);_ and on this, while the women were gazing sweetly on him, and revering his superiority to all great impressions, and the men envying, rather hating, but secretly admiring him too, she who had launched him bent on him a look of soft pity, and abandoned him to admiration.

"Poor Mr. Talboys," thought she, "I fear I have done him an ill turn by drawing him out;" and she glided to her uncle, who was sitting apart, and n.o.body talking to him.

Mr. Talboys, started by Lucy, ambled out his high-pacing _nil admirantem_ character, and derived a little quiet self-satisfaction. This was the highest happiness he was capable of; so he was not ungrateful to Miss Fountain, who had procured it him, and partly for this, partly because he had been kind to her and lent her a pony, he shook hands with her somewhat cordially at parting. As it happened, he was the last guest.

"You have won that, man's heart, Lucy," cried Mr. Fountain, with a mixture of surprise and pride.

Lucy made no reply. She looked quickly into his face to see if he was jesting.

"Writing, Lucy--so late?"

"Only a few lines, uncle. You shall see them; I note the more remarkable phenomena of society. I am recalling a conversation between three of our guests this evening, and shall be grateful for your opinion on it. There! Read it out, please."

Mrs. Luttrell. "We missed you at the archery meeting--ha! ha! ha!"

Mrs. Willis. "Mr. Willis would not let me go--he! he! he!"

Mrs. James. "Well, at all events--he! he!--you will come to the flower show."

Mrs. Willis. "Oh yes!--he! he!--I am so fond of flowers--ha! ha!"

Mrs. Luttrell. "So am I. I adore them--he! he!"

Mrs. Willis. "How sweetly Miss Malcolm sings--he! he!"

Mrs. Luttrell. "Yes, she shakes like a bird--ha! ha!"

Mrs. James. "A little Scotch accent though--he! he!"

Mrs. Luttrell. "She is Scotch--he! he!" (To John offering her tea.) "No more, thank you--he! he!"

Mrs. James. "Shall you go the a.s.size sermon?--ha! ha!"

Mrs. Willis. "Oh, yes--he! he!--the last was very dry--he! he! Who preaches it this term?--he!"

Mrs. James. "The Bishop--he! he!"

Mrs. Willis. "Then I shall certainly go; he is such a dear preacher--he! he!"

"Just tell me what is the precise meaning of 'ha! ha!' and what of 'he! he!'"

"The precise meaning? There you puzzle me, uncle."