 | I. Marjorie Daw, and other people |  |
1. I.
AT five o'clock on the morning of the tenth
of July, 1860, the front door of a certain
house on Anchor Street, in the ancient seaport
town of Rivermouth, might have been observed
to open with great caution. This door, as the
least imaginative reader may easily conjecture,
did not open itself. It was opened by Miss Margaret
Callaghan, who immediately closed it softly
behind her, paused for a few seconds with an
embarrassed air on the stone step, and then,
throwing a furtive glance up at the second-story
windows, passed hastily down the street towards
the river, keeping close to the fences and garden
walls on her left.
There was a ghostlike stealthiness to Miss Margaret's
movements, though there was nothing
She was a plump, short person, no longer
young, with coal-black hair growing low on the
forehead, and a round face that would have
been nearly meaningless if the features had not
been emphasized — italicized, so to speak — by
the small-pox. Moreover, the brilliancy of her
toilet would have rendered any ghostly hypothesis
untenable. Mrs. Solomon — we refer to the
dressiest Mrs. Solomon, which ever one that was
— in all her glory was not arrayed like Miss
Margaret on that eventful summer morning.
She wore a light-green, shot-silk frock, a blazing
red shawl, and a yellow crape bonnet profusely
decorated with azure, orange, and magenta
artificial flowers. In her hand she carried a
white parasol. The newly risen sun, ricocheting
from the bosom of the river and striking point-blank
on the top-knot of Miss Margaret's gorgeousness,
made her an imposing spectacle in
the quiet street of that Puritan village. But, in
spite of the bravery of her apparel, she stole
guiltily along by garden walls and fences until
she reached a small, dingy framehouse near the
wharves, in the darkened doorway of which she
figure is permissible.
Three quarters of an hour passed. The sunshine
moved slowly up Anchor Street, fingered
noiselessly the well-kept brass knockers on either
side, and drained the heeltaps of dew which had
been left from the revels of the fairies overnight
in the cups of the morning-glories. Not a soul
was stirring yet in this part of the town, though
the Rivermouthians are such early birds that not
a worm may be said to escape them. By and by
one of the brown Holland shades at one of the
upper windows of the Bilkins mansion — the
house from which Miss Margaret had emerged —
was drawn up, and old Mr. Bilkins in spiral
nightcap looked out on the sunny street. Not
a living creature was to be seen, save the dissipated
family cat, — a very Lovelace of a cat that
was not allowed a night-key, — who was sitting
on the curbstone opposite, waiting for the hall
door to be opened. Three quarters of an hour,
we repeat, had passed, when Mrs. Margaret
O'Rouke, née Callaghan, issued from the small,
dingy house by the river, and regained the door-step
of the Bilkins mansion in the same stealthy
fashion in which she had left it.
Not to prolong a mystery that must already
oppress the reader, Mr. Bilkins's cook had, after
the manner of her kind, stolen out of the premises
before the family were up, and got herself
married, — surreptitiously and artfully married,
as if matrimony were an indicatable offence.
And something of an offence it was in this
instance. In the first place, Margaret Callaghan
had lived nearly twenty years with the Bilkins
family, and the old people — there were no children
now — had rewarded this long service by
taking Margaret into their affections. It was
a piece of subtile ingratitude for her to marry
without admitting the worthy couple to her confidence.
In the next place, Margaret had married
a man some eighteen years younger than
herself. That was the young man's lookout, you
say. We hold it was Margaret that was to
blame. What does a young blade of twenty-two
know? Not half so much as he thinks he does.
His exhaustless ignorance at that age is a discovery
which is left for him to make in his
prime.
Billing and cooing is all your cheer;
Under Bonnybell's window panes, —
Wait till you come to Forty Year!”
In one sense Margaret's husband had come
to forty year, — she was forty to a day.
Mrs. Margaret O'Rouke, with the baddish cat
following closely at her heels, entered the Bilkins
mansion, reached her chamber in the attic without
being intercepted, and there laid aside her
finery. Two or three times, while arranging her
more humble attire, she paused to take a look at
the marriage certificate, which she had deposited
between the leaves of her Prayer-Book, and on
each occasion held that potent document upside
down; for Margaret's literary culture was of the
severest order, and excluded the art of reading.
The breakfast was late that morning. As
Mrs. O'Rouke set the coffee-urn in front of Mrs.
Bilkins and flanked Mr. Bilkins with the broiled
mackerel and the buttered toasts, Mrs. O'Rouke's
conscience smote her. She afterwards declared
that when she saw the two sitting there so innocent-like,
not dreaming of the comether she had
put upon them, she secretly and unbeknownt let a
few tears fall into the cream-pitcher. Whether or
penitence that spoiled the coffee, does not admit
of inquiry; but the coffee was bad. In fact, the
whole breakfast was a comedy of errors.
It was a blessed relief to Margaret when the meal was ended. She retired in a cold perspiration
to the penetralia of the kitchen, and it was
remarked by both Mr. and Mrs. Bilkins that
those short flights of vocalism, — apropos of the
personal charms of one Kate Kearney who lived
on the banks of Killarney, — which ordinarily
issued from the direction of the scullery, were
unheard that forenoon.
The town clock was striking eleven, and the
antiquated timepiece on the staircase (which
never spoke but it dropped pearls and crystals,
like the fairy in the story) was lisping the hour,
when there came three tremendous knocks at the
street door. Mrs. Bilkins, who was dusting the
brass-mounted chronometer in the hall, stood
transfixed with arm uplifted. The admirable old
lady had for years been carrying on a guerilla
warfare with itinerant vendors of furniture polish,
and pain-killer, and crockery cement, and
the like. The effrontery of the triple knock convinced
that dissolute creature with twenty-four
sheets of note-paper and twenty-four envelopes
for fifteen cents.
Mrs. Bilkins swept across the hall, and opened
the door with a jerk. The suddenness of the
movement was apparently not anticipated by the
person outside, who, with one arm stretched feebly
towards the receding knocker, tilted gently
forward, and rested both hands on the threshold
in an attitude which was probably common
enough with our ancestors of the Simian period,
but could never have been considered graceful.
By an effort that testified to the excellent condition
of his muscles, the person instantly righted
himself, and stood swaying unsteadily on his toes
and heels, and smiling rather vaguely on Mrs.
Bilkins.
It was a slightly built, but well-knitted young
fellow in the not unpicturesque garb of our
marine service. His woollen cap, pitched forward
at an acute angle with his nose, showed
the back part of a head thatched with short,
yellow hair, which had broken into innumerable
curls of painful tightness. On his ruddy cheeks
Add to this a weak, good-natured mouth, a pair
of devil-may-care blue eyes, and the fact that the
man was very drunk, and you have a pre-Raphaelite
portrait — we may as well say it at once —
of Mr. Larry O'Rouke of Ballyshanty, County
Connaught, and late of the U. S. sloop-of-war
Santee.
The man was a total stranger to Mrs. Bilkins;
but the instant she caught sight of the double
white anchors embroidered on the lapels of his
jacket, she unhesitatingly threw back the door,
which, with great presence of mind, she had
partly closed.
A drunken sailor standing on the step of the
Bilkins mansion was no novelty. The street, as
we have stated, led down to the wharves, and
sailors were constantly passing. The house
abutted directly on the street; the granite door-step
was almost flush with the sidewalk, and the
huge old-fashioned brass knocker — seemingly a
brazen hand that had been cut off at the wrist,
and nailed against the oak as a warning to malefactors
— extended itself in a kind of grim appeal
to everybody. It seemed to possess strange
there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of
that knocker would frequently startle the quiet
neighborhood long after midnight. There appeared
to be an occult understanding between it
and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a
young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins, — a sad
losel, we fear, — who ran away to try his fortunes
before the mast, and fell overboard in a
gale off Hatteras. “Lost at sea,” says the chubby
marble slab in the Old South Burying-Ground,
“ætat 18.” Perhaps that is why no blue-jacket,
sober or drunk, was ever repulsed from the door
of the Bilkins mansion.
Of course Mrs. Bilkins had her taste in the
matter, and preferred them sober. But as this
could not always be, she tempered her wind, so
to speak, to the shorn lamb. The flushed, prematurely
old face that now looked up at her
moved the good lady's pity.
“What do you want?” she asked kindly.
“Me wife.”
“There's no wife for you here,” said Mrs.
Bilkins, somewhat taken aback. “His wife!”
she thought; “it's a mother the poor boy stands
in need of.”
“Me wife,” repeated Mr. O'Rouke, “for betther
or for worse.”
“You had better go away,” said Mrs. Bilkins,
bridling up, “or it will be the worse for you.”
“To have and to howld,” continued Mr.
O'Rouke, wandering retrospectively in the mazes
of the marriage service, “to have and to howld,
till death — bad luck to him! — takes one or the
ither of us.”
“You're a blasphemous creature,” said Mrs.
Bilkins, severely.
“Thim's the words his riverince spake this mornin',
standin' foreninst us,” explained Mr. O'Rouke. “I stood here,
see, and me jew'l stood there, and the howly chaplain beyont.”
And Mr. O'Rouke with a wavering forefinger
drew a diagram of the interesting situation on
the doorstep.
“Well,” returned Mrs. Bilkins, “if you're a
married man, all I have to say is, there's a pair
of fools instead of one. You had better be off;
the person you want does n't live here.”
“Bedad, thin, but she does.”
“Lives here?”
“Sorra a place else.”
“The man's crazy,” said Mrs. Bilkins to
herself.
While she thought him simply drunk she was
not in the least afraid; but the idea that she
was conversing with a madman sent a chill over
her. She reached back her hand preparatory to
shutting the door, when Mr. O'Rouke, with an
agility that might have been expected from his
previous gymnastics, set one foot on the threshold
and frustrated the design.
“I want me wife,” he said sternly.
Unfortunately Mr. Bilkins had gone up town,
and there was no one in the house except Margaret,
whose pluck was not to be depended on.
The case was urgent. With the energy of despair
Mrs. Bilkins suddenly placed the toe of her
boot against Mr. O'Rouke's invading foot, and
pushed it away. The effect of this attack was
to cause Mr. O'Rouke to describe a complete
circle on one leg, and then sit down heavily on
the threshold. The lady retreated to the hatstand,
and rested her hand mechanically on the
handle of a blue cotton umbrella. Mr. O'Rouke
partly turned his head and smiled upon her with
conscious superiority. At this juncture a third
of Mr. O'Rouke, for he addressed that gentleman
as “a sapleen,” and told him to go home.
“Divil an inch,” replied the sapleen; but he
got himself off the threshold, and resumed his
position on the step.
“It's only Larry, mum,” said the man; touching
his forelock politely; “as dacent a lad as
iver lived, when he's not in liquor; an' I've
known him to be sober for days togither,” he
added reflectively. “He don't mane a hap'orth
a' harum, but jist now he's not quite in his
right moind.”
“I should think not,” said Mrs. Bilkins, turning
from the speaker to Mr. O'Rouke, who had
seated himself gravely on the scraper, and was
weeping. “Has n't the man any friends?”
“Too many of 'em, mum, an' it's along wid
dhrinkin' toasts wid'em that Larry got throwed.
The punch that sapleen has dhrunk this day
would amaze ye. He give us the slip awhiles
ago, bad 'cess to him, an' come up here. Did
n't I tell ye, Larry, not to be afther ringin' at
the owld gintleman's knocker? Ain't ye got no
sinse at all?”
“Misther Donnehugh,” said Mr. O'Rouke with
great dignity, “ye're dhrunk agin.”
Mr. Donnehugh, who had not taken more than
thirteen ladles of rum-punch, disdained to reply
directly.
“He's a dacent lad enough,” — this to Mrs.
Bilkins, — “but his head is wake. Whin he's
had two sups o' whiskey he belaves he's dhrank
a bar'l full. A gill o' wather out of a jimmy-john'd
fuddle him, mum.”
“Is n't there anybody to look after him?”
“No, mum, he's an orphan; his father and
mother live in the owld counthry, an' a fine hale
owld couple they are.”
“Has n't he any family in the town —”
“Sure, mum, he has a family; was n't he
married this blessed mornin'?”
“He said so.”
“Indade, thin, he was, — the pore divil!”
“And the — the person?” inquired Mrs.
Bilkins.
“Is it the wife ye mane?”
“Yes, the wife: where is she?”
“Well thin, mum,” said Mr. Donnehugh,
“it's yerself that can answer that.”
“I?” exclaimed Mrs. Bilkins. “Good heavens!
this man's as crazy as the other!”
“Begorra, if anybody's crazy it's Larry, for
it's Larry has married Margaret.”
“What Margaret?” cried Mrs. Bilkins with
a start.
“Margaret Callaghan, sure.”
“Our Margaret? Do you mean to say that
OUR Margaret has married that—that good-for
nothing, inebriated wretch!”
“It's a civil tongue the owld lady has, anyway,”
remarked Mr. O'Rouke, critically, from
the scraper.
Mrs. Bilkins's voice during the latter part of
the colloquy had been pitched in a high key;
it rung through the hall and penetrated to the
kitchen, where Margaret was thoughtfully wiping
the breakfast things. She paused with a half-dried
saucer in her hand, and listened. In a
moment more she stood, with bloodless face and
limp figure, leaning against the banister, behind
Mrs. Bilkins.
“Is it there ye are, me jew'l!” cries Mr.
O'Rouke, discovering her.
Mrs. Bilkins wheeled upon Margaret.
“Margaret Callaghan, is that thing your
husband?”
“Ye-yes, mum,” faltered Mrs. O'Rouke, with
a woful lack of spirit.
“Then take it away!” cried Mrs. Bilkins.
Margaret, with a slight flush on either cheek,
glided past Mrs. Bilkins, and the heavy oak door
closed with a bang, as the gates of Paradise
must have closed of old upon Adam and Eve.
“Come!” said Margaret, taking Mr. O'Rouke
by the hand; and the two wandered forth upon
their wedding-journey down Anchor Street, with
all the world before them where to choose. They
chose to halt at the small, shabby tenement-house
by the river, through the doorway of which the
bridal pair disappeared with a reeling, eccentric
gait; for Mr. O'Rouke's intoxication seemed to
have run down his elbow, and communicated
itself to Margaret.
O Hymen! who burnest precious gums and
scented woods in thy torch at the melting of
aristocratic hearts, with what a pitiful penny-dip
thou hast lighted up our matter-of-fact romance!
| I. Marjorie Daw, and other people | |