 | CHAPTER XI.
TIGER TAMING. Cipher |  |
11. CHAPTER XI.
TIGER TAMING.
In pursuance of the intention expressed to his new retainer, Mr. Gillies took
an early opportunity of ascertaining Reuben's reputation in his native village.
“O, there ain't no harm in the fellow,” said Mr. Burroughs, to whom his first
inquiry was addressed. “I guess the worst that's to say of him is that he's sort
o' slack, and had rather luff and bear away than to keep her right up in the
wind's eye. But he's handy, Reub is, and can do first rate if he's a mind to. I
shouldn't wonder if he answered your purpose, Cap'n, as well as a better man.
But what does Nance say about it?”
“I do not know to whom you refer,” said Mr. Gillies, in his driest manner.
“Why, Reub's wife, Nancy Brume. If she hain't gi'n her consent, it won't
do no good to ship him. She'll be after him, and get him, too.”
Mr. Gillies looked puzzled and disgusted, but made no reply.
“Tell you what, Cap'n,” pursued the good-natured publican, “why don't you
jest step over there, and speak to Nance about it yourself. It seems a pity you
shouldn't have Reub, and I tell you now, Nance is skipper of that concern, and
is the one you've got to reckon with first or last. If you don't go and see her,
she'll be up to see you before many days are over.”
“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Gillies; and after a moment of consideration,
briefly added,
“Very well, I will go. Where does she live?”
Stepping out upon the porch, Burroughs pointed to the little cottage from
whose door the fish-horn had been so vigorously blown upon the evening when
Mr. Gillies was first introduced to the village of Carrick.
“That's the house, and I guess you'll find her to home. Don't be scared if
she's kind of rough at first, Cap'n. Her bark's worse'n her bite.”
To this friendly advice, Mr. Gillies deigned no answer whatever, but stepping
off the porch, walked briskly in the direction indicated.
The door of the cottage stood open, and the visitor paused a moment before
it, in some doubt how best to make his presence known, when a sudden uproar
arose within, and a boy, dressed in a fisherman's coarse clothes and heavy boots,
fled out of the door and down the street, pursued by a tall wiry woman holding
a large fish by the gills, which novel instrument of punishment she heartily
applied about the boy's head and shoulders whenever she could reach him,
shouting at the same time,
“I'll teach ye to fetch me a hahdock agin, ye young sculpin! Didn't I tell
ye I wanted a cod, and what d'ye s'pose I care how many they took up to Fred
Vaughn's. Think I'll be put off with a hahdock while other folks eats cod?
Take that, and that, and that!”
And as little else than the head of the offending haddock now remained in
the fair epicure's hand, she seized the lad by his shock of wiry hair, and bending
his head back upon her arm, scrubbed his face with the remnant of fish, until the
luckless fellow, screaming with mingled rage and terror, broke away and rushed
down the street.
Mrs. Brume looked after him a moment, and then slowly turned toward home,
wiping her hands upon her apron, and muttering to herself invectives, mingled
with self-gratulation.
Mr. Gillies stood upon the door-step with a face of unmoved gravity.
“Does Mrs. Brume live here?” inquired he, as the virago approached.
“Yes, I'm Miss Brume,” replied she, in an uncompromising manner.
“I should like to speak to you, then, for a few moments.
“Well, you can come in.” And Mrs. Brume led the way into a vigorously
tidy kitchen, and after setting a wooden chair for her guest, retired to a back
room to remove the traces of her late encounter. While she was gone, Mr.
Gillies cast an observant glance about the room. Everything was as clean, as
orderly, and as uninviting, as hands could make it. The white floor was scoured
and sanded, the stove blackened and polished, the windows as nearly transparent
as the green and wavy glass could be made. Even the cat blinking in the sunny
corner had a wan and subdued expression, as if her natural depravity, and with
it her vitality had been nearly cleansed away.
Mrs. Brume returned, her face and hands red with ablution and excitement,
her hair, also red, smoothed, and a clean white apron tied tightly about her
waist. Seating herself in a chair opposite her guest, she opened the conversation
by saying.
“Like enough you thought strange to see me so mad with that young one,
but he hadn't no business to bring me a hahdock when I spoke for a cod, and I
ain't one of them kind as puts up with everything and never says a word. I'm
apt to speak my mind, specially if I'm a little riled, and I'd as lief one man
would hear me as another.”
To this ingenuous confession Mr. Gillies responded by a slight bow, and then
said,
“I called to let you know, Mrs. Brume, that your husband thinks of remaining
with me for the present. My name is Gillies, and I live at Cragness, the
estate of the late Mr. Reginald Vaughn.”
Mrs. Brume's color rose, and she twitched at the strings of her apron, but as
she raised her eyes they met the cold grave look steadily bent upon her, and
with a very unusual effort to suppress her rising wrath, she asked,
“How long does he think of stopping?”
“As long as I wish to employ him,” returned Gillies, coolly.
“O—h!” replied Mistress Brume, slowly, while an ominous pallor settled
about her lips, and her hands flew to her hips.
“And if I might ask without offence, Mr. Gillies, I'd just like to know how
long you calc'late to keep a honest woman's husband away from her?”
“So long as he wishes to remain,” replied Gillies, in the same imperturbable
manner, and beneath that manner and that steady gaze Nancy Brume found her
usually unfailing powers of invective mysteriously checked and subdued. She
bravely tried to rally her forces.
“O well,” said she, bridling, “I don't suppose its of no consequence to
either one of you what I think about it. A poor weak woman hain't got no
chance when the man as had ought to look out for her can get them as calls
themselves gentlemen to back him up and help him along in trampling onto
her feelings—”
But these same feelings of Nancy Brume's, denied full expression in their
usual manner, found sudden vent in another form, and she burst into tears, sobbing
from behind the white apron.
“I don't know, I'm sure, what I ever did to you, sir, that you should come
and take away my husband this way, and then set there as cold as I don't
know what, and—make from fun of me, and all.”
“Make fun of you, ma'am!” exclaimed Mr. Gillies, indignantly, and indeed
the phrase by which Dame Brume had sought to express the unsympathizing
and unassailable manner of her guest was ludicrously inappropriate, although
sufficiently significant of a jealousy almost universal in her class toward its
social superiors. Nancy, unable to defend her position, with feminine quickness
changed her base of operations.
“I'm sure I've been as good a wife to that man as there is in Carrick. His
house has been kept tidy and his vittles has been cooked reg'lar, and if his
clo's hain't always been whole and neat, it wasn't my fault, but his'n, which he
wouldn't leave 'em off—”
“Mrs. Brume! will you stop and listen to me!” interrupted Mr. Gillies, so
decidedly, that the white apron suddenly dropped into Nancy's lap, disclosing a
scarlet but attentive face.
Mr. Gillies glanced at it and then away. Poor Nancy's beauty was not of the
exceptional style to which tears are an added charm.
“What I wish to say is simply this,” continued the guest, rising to depart.
“I have taken your husband into my service for an indefinite period, and thinking
it proper you should be informed of the fact, I called here to mention it.
With your matrimonial virtues or faults I have, of course, no concern, and
merely came here to-day lest you should think it necessary to seek your husband
at Cragness.”
“I don't know but I've been kind o' ha'sh, sometimes,” pursued the wife,
more attentive to her own course of thought than to the cold words of her guest,
out and lock the door t'other day I never thought he was going off for good. I
wish't you'd let him come home and have a talk 'long o' me, Mr. Gillies, 'fore
you fix it all off.”
“I have no reason to suppose he wishes for such permission,” said Gillies,
with grim humor.
“You don't think he's give me up altogether,” cried Nancy, in sudden terror,
and again the white apron went over her head, and she rocked to and fro in a
paroxysm of grief. The guest silently walked toward the door.
“Stop just a minit, please, sir,” sobbed the deserted wife, and as Gillies reluctantly
paused, she wiped her eyes, and looking up in his face with a piteous
smile upon her hard mouth, said,
“I wish't you'd take me, too, sir.”
Gillies recoiled.
“Take you, too!” exclaimed he, in solemn horror.
“Yes, I'd do all the work of your house, and keep it real nice and tidy, too.
Reub can't do that, nor—though he can cook pretty well, he can't come up to
me, and I'm a first-rate washer and ironer, too, and I'll do just as you'd like to
have me. Do take me 'long o' Reub, Mr. Gillies, for it don't seem as if I
could make up my mind to part with him. I'll come real cheap, too, it won't
hardly cost more for both than one, and I'm awful saving about a house.”
There was a pathos in the rude tones and sharp face of the wife thus pleading
for leave to work at her husband's side, to which no man could have been
quite insensible, and the shrewd arguments by which she supported her proposition
produced their full effect upon the mind of her listener.
He considered for a moment, and then said,
“But your husband came to me with the intention of separating from you.
I cannot refuse him my protection.”
“O, I'll settle with Reub,” said his spouse, with feminine confidence in her
own conciliatory powers. “He sets by me, same as I do by him, more'n either
of us let on. He kind o' calc'lates on me, too, to push him along and hold him
up straight. Reub'll agree fast enough.”
Gillies considered again.
“Your plan has its advantages, Mrs. Brume,” said he, at length, “and if I
find Reuben is satisfied with it, you may come to Cragness on trial, and under
one condition, but that a stringent one.”
“And what's that, sir?” asked Nancy, beamingly.
“That you shall never raise your voice above its present tones while upon
my premises, and that you never scold your husband in any tones. When you
find the vivacity of your temper beyond your control, I will always give you
permission to come to Carrick, and expend it either upon the fisher boy or in
any other manner you see fit, but while under my roof, I shall expect it to be
held in perfect control. I am a quiet man, and strongly object to disturbance of
any kind, especially discordant noises.”
“I'll do my best, sir,” said Nancy, meekly.
“That will not be sufficient, unless your best comes up to my requirements,”
returned Gillies, coldly. “And I wish you to come with the understanding that
unless my conditions are fulfilled, I shall expect you to retire from my house,
leaving your husband there so long as he wishes to stay.”
“I ain't used to being beat by anything, and if I once tackle my own temper,
Nancy, with the calm confidence of a habitual conqueror.
“Then I will speak to Reuben, and, if he wishes for your society, he may
come down to-night and tell you so. Good-morning, Mrs. Brume.”
“Good-day, sir.”
As Mr. Gillies walked away, he smiled, in his own dry fashion, and said, in
his own mind,
“Surely, no man in his senses will voluntarily place himself in that woman's
power, after having once escaped from it.”
But, probably, Reuben Brume's ideas of sanity differed from those of his
master; for the very next day saw Nancy installed in the kitchen of Cragness,
and commencing an indignant but noiseless raid upon its many crypts and by-places,
while Lazarus, seated beside the fire, watched her vigorous movements
with dire astonishment; and Reuben obeyed her numerous mandates with cheerful
alacrity.
“Looks kind o' good, arter all, to see you round, Nance, specially when
you're so good-natered,” said he, in the course of these operations; and Nancy,
womanlike, retorted:
“Yes; and I was a big fool not to let well enough alone, and leave you to
muddle along here, best way you could.”
But Mrs. Brume, besides being a woman of quick temper, was a woman of
powerful will, and the resolution she had taken in coming to Cragness she kept
as perfectly as the faulty nature of humanity would permit; and the occasions
when her husband was forced to enquire if he should “speak to Mr. Gillies”
became so rare that Reuben privately blessed the day of his emancipation, and
looked upon his master with the admiring awe due to a moral Van Amburgh.
| CHAPTER XI.
TIGER TAMING. Cipher | |