Love, The Fiddler

Love, The Fiddler

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Title: Love, The Fiddler
Author: Lloyd Osbourne
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4948] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 3,
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LOVE, THE FIDDLER
BY LLOYD OSBOURNE
TO LEWIS VANUXEM

CONTENTS
THE CHIEF ENGINEER, FFRENCHES FIRST, THE GOLDEN
CASTAWAYS, THE AWAKENING OF GEORGE RAYMOND,
THE MASCOT OF BATTERY B,

THE CHIEF ENGINEER
I
Frank Rignold had never been the favoured suitor, not at least so far as
anything definite was concerned; but he had always been welcome at
the little house on Commonwealth Street, and amongst the neighbours
his name and that of Florence Fenacre were coupled as a matter of
course and every old lady within a radius of three miles regarded the
match as good as settled. It was not Frank's fault that it was not, for he
was deeply in love with the widow's daughter and looked forward to
such an end to their acquaintance as the very dearest thing fate could
give him. But in these affairs it is necessary to carry the lady with
you--and the lady, though she had never said "no," had not yet been
prevailed upon to say "yes." In fact she preferred to leave the matter as
it was, and boldly forestalling a set proposal, had managed to convey to

Frank Rignold that it was her wish he should not make one.
"Let us be good friends," she would say, "and as for anything else,
Frank, there's plenty of time to consider that by and by. Isn't it enough
already that we like each other?"
Frank did not think it was enough, but he was not without intuition and
willing to accept the little offered him and be grateful--rather than risk
all, and almost certainly lose all, by too exigent a suit. For Florence
Fenacre was the acknowledged beauty of the town, with a dozen
eligible men at her feet, and was more courted and sought after than
any girl in the place. The place, to give it its name, was Bridgeport, one
of those dead- alive little ports on the Atlantic seaboard, with a dozen
factories and some decaying wharves and that tranquil air of having had
a past.
The widow and her pretty daughter lived in a low-roofed, red-brick
house that faced the street and sheltered a long deep shady garden in
the rear. Land and house had been bought with whale oil. Their little
income, derived from the rent of three barren and stony farms and
amounting to not more than sixty dollars a month, represented a
capitalisation of whale oil. Even the old grey church whither they went
twice of a Sunday, was whale oil too, and had been built in bygone
days by the sturdy captains who now lay all around it under slabs of
stone. There amongst them was Florence's father and her grandfather
and her great-grandfather, together with the Macys and the Coffins and
the Cabotts with whom they had sailed and quarrelled and loved and
intermarried in the years now gone. The wide world had not been too
wide for them to sail it round and reap the harvests of far-off seas; but
in death they lay side by side, their voyages done, their bones mingling
in the New England earth.
Frank Rignold too was a son of Bridgeport, and the sea which ran in
that blood for generations bade him in manhood to rise and follow it.
He had gone into the engine-room, and at thirty was the chief engineer
of