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.