Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 78

This does not sound logical, but that is only because the logic is so subtle and swift. She meant something of this kind: "I am of a yielding nature; I might have sacrificed myself to retain their affection; but they have roused a vice of mine, my pride, against them, so now I shall be immovable in right, thanks to my wicked pride.

Thank Heaven, they have insulted me!" She then laid her head upon her bed and moaned, for she was stricken to the heart. Then she rose and wrote a hasty note, and, putting it in her bosom, came downstairs and looked for Captain Kenealy. He proved to be in the billiard-room, playing the spotted ball against the plain one. "Oh, Captain Kenealy, I am come to try your friends.h.i.+p; you said I might command you."

"Yaas!"

"Then _will_ you mount my pony, and ride with this to Mrs.

Wilson, to that farm where I kept you waiting so long, and you were not angry as anyone else would have been?"

"Yaas!"

"But not a soul must see it, or know where you are gone."

"All raight, Miss Fountain. Don't you be fraightened; I'm close as the grave, and I'll be there in less than haelf an hour."

"Yes; but don't hurt my dear pony either; don't beat him; and, above all, don't come back without an answer."

"I'll bring you an answer in an hour and twenty minutes." The captain looked at his watch, and went out with a smartness that contrasted happily with his slowness of speech.

Lucy went back to her own room and locked herself in, and with trembling hands began to pack up her jewels and some of her clothes.

But when it came to this, wounded pride was sorely taxed by a host of reminiscences and tender regrets, and every now and then the tears suddenly gushed and fell upon her poor hands as she put things out, or patted them flat, to wander on the world.

While she is thus sorrowfully employed, let me try and give an outline of the feelings that had now for some time been secretly growing in her, since without their co-operation she would never have been driven to the strange step she now meditated.

Lucy was a very unselfish and very intelligent girl. The first trait had long blinded her to something; the second had lately helped to open her eyes.

If ever you find a person quick to discover selfishness in others, be sure that person is selfish; for it is only the selfish who come into habitual collision with selfishness, and feel how sharp-pointed a thing it is. When Unselfish meets Selfish, each acts after his kind; Unselfish gives way, Selfish holds his course, and so neither is thwarted, and neither finds out the other's character.

Lucy, then, of herself, would never have discovered her relatives'

egotism. But they helped her, and she was too bright not to see anything that was properly pointed out to her.

When Fountain kept showing and proving Mrs. Bazalgette's egotism, and Mrs. Bazalgette kept showing and proving Mr. Fountain's egotism, Lucy ended by seeing both their egotisms, as clearly as either could desire; and, as she despised egotism, she lost her respect for both these people, and let them convince her they were both persons against whom she must be on her guard.

This was the direct result of their mines and countermines heretofore narrated, but not the only result. It followed indirectly, but inevitably, that the present holy alliance failed. Lucy had not forgotten the past; and to her this seemed not a holy, but an unholy, hollow, and empty alliance.

"They hate one another," said she, "but it seems they hate me worse, since they can hide their mutual dislike to combine against poor me."

Another thing: Lucy was one of those women who thirst for love, and, though not vain enough to be always showing they think they ought to be beloved, have quite secret _amour propre_ enough to feel at the bottom of their hearts that they were sent here to that end, and that it is a folly and a shame not to love them more or less.

If ever Madame Ristori plays "Maria Stuarda" within a mile of you, go and see her. Don't chatter: you can do that at home; attend to the scene; the worst play ever played is not so unimproving as chit-chat.

Then, when the scaffold is even now erected, and the poor queen, pale and tearful, palpitates in death's grasp, you shall see her suddenly illumined with a strange joy, and hear her say, with a marvelous burst of feminine triumph,

"I have been _amata molto!!!"_

Uttered, under a scaffold, as the Italian utters it, this line is a revelation of womanhood.

The English virgin of our humbler tale had a soul full of this feeling, only she had never learned to set the love of s.e.x above other loves; but, mark you, for that very reason, a mortal insult to her heart from her beloved relatives was as mortifying, humiliating and unpardonable as is, to other high-spirited girls, an insult from their favored lover.

What could she do more than she had done to win their love? No, their hearts were inaccessible to her.

"They wish to get rid of me. Well, they shall. They refuse me their houses. Well, I will show them the value of their houses to me. It was their hearts I clung to, not their houses."

A tap came to Lucy's door.

"Who is that? I am busy."

"Oh, miss!" said an agitated voice, "may I speak to you--the captain!"

"What captain?" inquired Lucy, without opening the door.

"Knealys, miss.

"I will come out to you. Now. Has Captain Kenealy returned already?"

"La! no, miss. He haven't been anywhere as I know of. He had them about him as couldn't spare him."

"Something is the matter, Jane. What is it?"

Jane lowered her voice mysteriously. "Well, miss, the captain is--in trouble."

"Oh, dear, what has happened?"

"Well, the fact is, miss, the captain's--took"

"I cannot understand you. Pray speak intelligibly."

"Arrested, miss."

"Captain Kenealy arrested! Oh, Heaven! for what crime?"

"La, miss, no crime at all--leastways not so considered by the gentry.

He is only took in payment of them beautiful reg-mentals. However, black or red, he is always well put on. I am sure he looks just out of a band-box; and I got it all out of one of the men as it's a army tailor, which he wrote again and again, and sent his bill, and the captain he took no notice; then the tailor he sent him a writ, and the captain he took no notice; then the tailor he lawed him, but the captain he kep' on a taking no more notice nor if it was a dog a barking, and then a putting all them ere barks one after another in a letter, and sending them by the post; so the end is, the captain is arrested; and now he behooves to attend a bit to what is a going on around an about him, as the saying is, and so he is waiting to pay you his respects before he starts for Bridewell."

"My fatal advice! I ruin all my friends."

"Keep dark," says he; "don't tell a soul except Miss Fountain."

"Where is he? Oh?"

Jane offered to show her that, and took her to the stable yard.

Arriving with a face full of tender pity and concern, Lucy was not a little surprised to find the victim smoking cigars in the center of his smoking captors. The men touched their hats, and Captain Kenealy said: "Isn't it a boa, Miss Fountain? they won't let me do your little commission. In London they will go anywhere with a fellaa."

"London ye knows," explained the a.s.sistant, "but this here is full of hins and houts, and folyidge."

"Oh, sir," cried Lucy to the best-dressed captor, "surely you will not be so cruel as to take a gentleman like Captain Kenealy to prison?"

"Very sorry, marm, but we 'ave no hoption: takes 'em every day; don't we, Bill?"

Bill nodded.