L’ALLEMANDE.
“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.