“Why, blessings on me!” exclaimed Mrs. Saltren, on her return to the lodgings in Bloomsbury. “Whoever expected the pleasure! And—I am sorry that you should see us here, Captain Tubb; not settled into our West-End house. Me and my son are looking about for a suitable residence, genteel and commodious, and with a W. to the address; but there is that run on the West End, and it is almost impossible, without interest, to get a house. My brother, however, who is like to be an M.P., is using his influence. But, captain, you see that every house won’t suit me; I’m not going to be in the shade any more. Well, it is a pleasure to see an Orleigh face here; and, pray, what has brought you to town, Captain Tubb?”

The visitor was in a black suit, that obtained for his son’s funeral; he held his hat in one hand, with a broad black cloth band about it. With his disengaged hand he thrust up his beard and nibbled the ends.

Ladies play with their fans, coquette with them, talk with them, angle with them; and an uninitiated person looking on wonders what is the meaning of the many movements made with the fan—the unfurling, the snapping, the half-opening. Perhaps Captain Tubb may have been coquetting, talking with his hat, for he turned it about, then looked into it, then smoothed it where it was ruffled, then put it under his chair, then took it up and balanced it on his knee. I cannot tell. If he was not speaking with his hat, what else could he have meant by all the movements he went through with it?

“Well, ma’am,” said the captain; “seeing as how I was in London, I thought I’d come and inquire how you was getting along. How are you? And how is Mr. Jingles?”

“I, myself, am but middling,” answered Mrs. Saltren, with stateliness. “My son—Mr. Giles Inglett Saltren—is very well indeed. I have gone through a great deal of trouble, and that takes it out of one,” said Mrs. Saltren, “like spirits of nitre.”

“So it do, ma’am. There is a vale of misery; but the sale of Chillacot was an elevation in the same; and bank-notes are of that spongy nature that they sop up a lot o’ tears. How, if I may make so bold as to ask, is your son thinking of investing the money? You see, ma’am, poor Captain Saltren and I knowed each other that intimate, our lines o’ business running alongside of each other, that we was always a-hailing of each other. And now that he’s gone, it seems natural for me to come and consult with his relict.”

“You’re flattering, Mr. Tubb. I must say, it is a pity my poor Stephen did not oftener consult me. If he had—but there, I won’t say what I might. About Chillacot, he was that pig-headed that—but no, not another word. I’ve always heard say that the wife is the better half. What a mercy it is, and how it proves the wisdom of Providence, that the wusser half was took away first.”

“You don’t know, Mrs. Saltren, how dreadful you’re missed in Orleigh; the place don’t seem the same without you. And folks say such spiteful things too.”

“As what, captain?”

“As that, having sold Chillacot, you ought to spend the purchase money there, and not be throwing it about in town.”

“Do they now? But I’m not throwing it about; it is all in the bank.”

“I reckon Mr. Jingles—I mean your son, ma’am—has it there in his own name.”

“Not at all, cap’n. The money is mine.”

Captain Tubb whisked round the brim of his hat with both hands.

“There have been changes since you’ve gone,” he said. “For one, there is old Sam Ceely married.”

“Sam Ceely!” echoed Mrs. Saltren, and dropped her hands in her lap.

“It does seem almost wicked for a man at his time of life and crippled. But he and Joan Melhuish have been keeping company a long time, and now he has come in for some money. I hope,” said the captain, “that the childer, if there come any, mayn’t come into this world with half their fingers blowed off through poaching, and a bad life through drunkenness.”

Mrs. Saltren said nothing.

“There’s another thing,” pursued Captain Tubb. “The new quarry is running out, and we’re thinking of reopening the old one.”

“What—that which is full of water? It is worked out.”

“Oh, no! there is more lime if more head be taken off; but there can be nothing done till the water is pumped out.”

“You are thinking of pumping the quarry dry?”

“Yes, ma’am; with a water-wheel it could be cleared. I’ve talked the matter with Mr. Macduff and the trustees, and they are content to let me have the quarry rent free for five years, if I will put up the proper machinery to get out the water.”

“The expense will be very heavy.”

Captain Tubb stroked his beard, and put the ends into his mouth; then, after consideration, he admitted—

“Well, it will cost money.”

“And are you really going to sink money in pumping out water?”

“Consider, Mrs. Saltren, that I shall have the working of the quarry for no rent at all during five years.”

“And you think it worth the outlay?”

“Seven per cent. guaranteed.”

“My son says that all I can expect to get for my capital if invested is five per cent.”

“I dare say, in town. At Orleigh, seven.”

Neither spoke for some time; Captain Tubb continued to play alternately with his beard and his hat; and Mrs. Saltren looked on the floor, then furtively at her visitor.

Presently the widow asked, “What will you take? Bottled stout or spirits and water?”

“Thank you, whichever you drink.”

“I drink neither,” answered Mrs. Saltren, drawing herself up. “I taste nothing but tea and water; but when an old friend comes and sees me, I make an exception. I have some whisky in the sideboard—Giles suffers in his inside, and I’m obliged to keep it by me against his attacks. If you will allow me, I will get it out.”

She rang for water and tumblers, and produced the spirits and sugar.

“Now tell me some further news of Orleigh,” she said, as she stirred a glass.

“There has been the cottage of Patience Kite done up again,” said he, “and she has gone back into it, which is unfortunate, for it would have suited me if I work the old quarry.”

“But surely it would not be large enough for you, cap’n?”

He shook his head. He had finished his glass, and now abstractedly he half filled it with water.

“Since poor Arkie died, I’m very lonely. It is fifteen years since I buried my wife. I feel as lonely as does this drop o’ water in the tumbler, without spirits to qualify it.”

Mrs. Saltren pushed the whisky bottle towards him.

“Mix to your liking, captain,” she said.

In old English country dances there is a figure known by the name of l’allemande, which consists of a couple dancing round each other, back to back, after which they join hands and dance down the middle. The allemande lingers on in Sir Roger de Coverley, but is never performed in polite society. It survives in full force in country courtships.

We who live in the midst of artificiality of all kinds in our time of roses sigh for the unchecked liberty of the rustic swain and his milkmaid, and kick at the little etiquettes which restrain us within the limits of decorum. But, as a matter of fact, the love-making below stairs is oblique, prosaic, and of a back-to-back description, full of restraints and shynesses, of setting to partners, and allemanding about them. From the contemplation of pastoral pictures in red crayon on our Queen Anne walls, we carry away the notion that country love-making is direct, idyllic, and flowery. It is nothing of the sort. Come, follow the allemanding of this mature pair.

“I’ve not yet been to Brighton and seen the Aquarium,” said Mrs. Saltren. “Have you, Captain Tubb?”

“Can’t say I have, ma’am. It’s lone work going by oneself to see fishes.”

“So have I thought,” said the widow. “And for that reason I’ve not been.”

“It is a wonderful consideration,” said the captain, “how fond cats are of fish; and how ill the skin and bones of a salt herring do make a cat! For myself, I like trout.”

“Well, so do I!” said the widow. “They’re fresher than salt-water fish, as stands to reason.”

“The old lord put trout into the quarry-pond,” said Tubb.

“So I’ve heard; and Saltren told me they were monstrous fat and large.”

“There is no catching them,” observed the captain; “the water is clear, and they are wary. If ever I pump the pond dry, ma’am, you shall have a dish.”

“Trout should be eaten when they are just out of the water,” said Mrs. Saltren; “they lose their flavour when a day old. I suppose it will not be possible for me to have them trout you so kindly offer the same day they are ketched.”

“Not possible if you are in London,” answered the captain. “Perhaps you’d best come to Orleigh to eat ’em.”

Then ensued a silence, broken at last by Mrs. Saltren, who remarked, with a sigh—

“There’ll be no eating of them trout till the pump is got.”

“That is true,” sighed Tubb. “But then the money is sure to be raised wherewith to put up the water-wheel and pump. Just consider, ma’am, seven per cent. You’ve not thought of investing, have you, what you got by the sale of Chillacot?”

This was a direct question, and the captain was scared at his temerity in putting it. He ate a whole mouthful of his beard.

“‘A fool and her money are soon parted,’ says the proverb,” answered Mrs. Saltren. “Consequently, I don’t think I’ll let my money go anywhere without me.”

Captain Tubb drew his chair closer; and, instead of settling the matter at once, began a fresh allemand.

“What do you think of mutton here in London?”

“I don’t relish it; and it is awfully dear, so is beef. Elevenpence and a shilling for what at Orleigh cost eightpence and ninepence. What fortunes them butchers must be making!”

“It seems a sin to encourage them,” said Tubb.

“It does go against my conscience,” agreed Mrs. Saltren.

“Then,” argued the captain, “I wouldn’t encourage them. Twopence and threepence in the pound is too much.”

“I’ve a mind to return to the country,” said Mrs. Saltren; “I don’t want to encourage such wickedness.”

“And then, ma’am, you can eat the trout fresh.”

“Ah, captain! but the capital for pumping?”

Then Captain Tubb cautiously slid one arm round Mrs. Saltren’s waist, and said—

“Come, Marianne, with your capital, away from the mutton of town to the trout of the country.”

“I should like ’em fresh,” said the widow. “We’ll pump together for them.”

The youthful romance-reader exacts of a novel some love-making, and, to satisfy this reader, I have given this pathetic and romantic scene in full. To this sort of reader, style is nothing, characterisation is nothing, the grammar is nothing—indeed the whole story is nothing if there be in it no love-making.

That is the spice which flavours the dish, and without it the dish is rejected as unpalatable.

To encourage this reader, accordingly, at the outset a chapter was devoted to love-making in tandem, and another to love-making abreast. Only one of those love-affairs has come to a happy conclusion; one was broken off by the breaking-down of Patience Kite’s chimney. To make up to the reader for her disappointment, I have inserted this other love scene, and have introduced it near the end of my book to stimulate the jaded appetite to finish it.

Is it false to nature? Only those will say so who are ignorant of country courtships. Oh, for a Dionysian ear through which to listen to—not the sighs of prisoners, but the coo of turtle-doves! Now it so fell out that the writer of these lines was himself, on one occasion, an eye-and-ear witness to the wooing of a rustic couple—involuntarily. It came about in this way.

When I was a boy, on a Sunday, I had set a trap to catch rats that scared the scullery-maid in the back kitchen, and caused her to drop my mother’s best china. But as rat-catching was not considered by my parents a Sabbatical amusement, I set my traps on the sly when they were at church on Sunday afternoon, and I was at home with a cold. The house-maid was left in charge, and naturally admitted her lover to assist her in watching after the safety of the house. Both seated themselves in the kitchen, one in the settle, the other in a chair before the fire. When I, in the back kitchen, heard them enter, I was afraid to stir lest my parents should be informed of my proceedings, and the sanctity of the Sabbath be impressed tinglingly on me, across my father’s knee, with the back of a hair-brush, a paper-knife, or a slipper. Accordingly I kept still.

Twenty minutes had elapsed, and no words having passed I stole to the kitchen door and peeped through. The maid sat on the settle, the swain on the chair, unctuously ogling each other in silence.

After the lapse of twenty minutes by the clock, the youth lifted up his voice and said solemnly, “Mary, what be that there thing for?” and he pointed to a button above the kitchen range.

“That, Joshua, is the damper.”

Again silence fell over the kitchen, only broken by the ticking of the clock. After the expiration of twenty minutes more, the youth further inquired, “And what be the damper for, Mary?”

“For to make the fire go a smother-like, Joshua,” she replied.

Again twenty minutes elapsed: then I heard a long-drawn sigh, and Joshua said in a grave, emotionless voice, “Mary, there be no damper in my buzzom.”

“There come master and mistress from church,” exclaimed Mary; “Joshua, you must go.”

“Lord!” said the swain, slowly rising, “how I have enjoyed myself, Mary.”

Next Sunday the banns were called.

This was slow allemanding indeed, quite at the cinque-pace, but then it was the love-making of an inexperienced youthful couple. Marianne Saltren and Captain Tubb had gone through the process at least once previously, so that there was not the same shyness and stiffness in their courtship. Nevertheless they conformed to the rule of country courtship, and allemanded about each other, though, I grant you, at a sprightlier pace than that of Joshua and Mary, before they joined hands and went down the middle.