Now it so befell that on the very day when Capt’n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin
quarreled and separated, two of their friends were by their urgent
invitation crossing from England to visit them, Davy’s friend was
Jonathan Lovibond, an Englishman, whose acquaintance he had made on the
coast. Mrs. Quiggin’s was Jenny Crow, a young lady of lively manners,
whom she had annexed during her four years’ residence at Liverpool.
These two had been lovers five years before, had quarreled and parted on
the eve of the time appointed for their marriage, and had not since set
eyes on each other. They met for the first time afterward on the
steamer that was taking them to the Isle of Man, and neither knew the
destination of the other.
Miss Crow looked out of her twinkling eyes and saw a gentleman
promenading on the quarter-deck before her, whom she must have thought
she had somewhere seen before, but that his gigantic black mustache was
a puzzle, and the little imperial on his chin was a baffling difficulty.
Mr. Lovibond puffed the smoke from a colossal cigar, and wondered if the
world held two pair of eyes like those big black ones which glanced
up at him sometimes from a deck stool, a puffy pile of wool, two long
crochet needles, and a couple of white hands, from which there flashed a
diamond ring he somehow thought he knew.
These mutual meditations lasted two long hours, and then a runaway ball
of the wool from the lap of the lady on the deck stool was hotly pursued
by the gentleman with the mustache, and instantly all uncertainty was at
an end.
After exclamations of surprise at the strange recognition (it was all
so sudden), the two old friends came to closer quarters. They touched
gingerly on the past, had some tender passages of delicate fencing, gave
various sly hits and digs, threw out certain subtle hints, and came to
a mutual and satisfactory understanding. Neither had ever looked
at anybody else since their rupture, and therefore both were still
unmarried.
Having reached this stage of investigation, the wool and its needles
were stowed away in a basket under the chair, in order that the lady
might accept the invitation of the gentleman to walk with him on the
deck; and as the wind had freshened by this time, and walking in skirts
was like tacking in a stiff breeze, the gentleman offered his arm to the
lady, and thus they sailed forth together.
“And with whom are you to stay when we reach the island, Jenny?” said
Lovibond.
“With a young Manx friend lately married,” said Jenny.
“That’s strange; for I am going to do the same,” said Lovibond. “Where?”
“At Castle Mona,” said Jenny.
“That’s stranger still; for it’s the place to which I am going,” said
Lovibond. “What’s your Manx friend’s name?”
“Mrs. Quiggin, now,” said Jenny.
“That’s strangest of all,” said Lovibond; “for my friend is Captain
Quiggin, and we are bound for the same place, on the same errand.”
This series of coincidences thawed down the remaining frost between the
pair, and they exchanged mutual confidences. They had gone so far as
to promise themselves a fortnight’s further enjoyment of each other’s
society, when their arrival at Douglas put a sudden end to their
anticipations.
Two carriages were waiting for them on the pier--one, with a maid
inside, was to take Jenny to Castle Mona: the other, with a boy, was to
take Lovibond to Fort Ann.
The maid was Peggy Quine, seventeen years of age, of dark complexion,
nearly as round as a dolley-tub, and of deadly earnest temperament. When
Jenny found herself face to face and alone with this person, she lost no
time in asking how it came to pass that Mrs. Quiggin was at Castle Mona
while her husband was at Fort Ann.
“They’ve parted, ma’am,” said Peggy.
“Parted?” shrieked Jenny above the rattle of the carriage glass.
“Ah, yes, ma’am,” Peggy stammered; “cruel, ma’am, right cruel, cruel
extraordinary. It’s a wonder the capt’n doesn’t think shame of his
conduck. The poor misthress! She’s clane heartbroken. It’s a mercy to me
she didn’t clout him.”
In two minutes more Jenny was in Mrs. Quiggin’s room at Castle Mona,
crying, “Gracious me, Ellen, what is this your maid tells me?”
Nelly had been eating out her heart in silence all day long, and now the
flood of her pride and wrath burst out, and she poured her wrongs upon
Jenny as fiercely as if that lady stood for the transgressions of her
husband.
“He reproached me with my poverty,” she cried.
“What?”
“Well, he told me I had only married him for his money--there’s not much
difference.”
“And what did you say?” said Jenny.
“Say? What could I say? What would any woman say who had any respect for
herself?”
“But how did he come to accuse you of marrying him for his money? Had
you asked him for any?”
“Not I, indeed.”
“Perhaps you hadn’t loved him enough?”
“Not that either--that I know of.”
“Then why did he say it?”
“Just because I wanted him to respect himself, and have some respect for
his wife, too, and behave as a gentleman, and not as a raw Manx rabbit
from the Calf.”
Jenny gave a look of amused intelligence, and said, “Oh, oh, I see, I
see! Well, let me take off my bonnet, at all events.”
While this was being done in the bedroom Nelly, who was furtively wiping
her eyes, continued the recital of her wrongs:--
“Would you believe it, Jenny, the first thing he did when we arrived
here after the wedding was to shake hands with the hall porter, and
the boots who took our luggage, and ask after their sisters and their
mothers, and their sweethearts--the man knew them all. And when he heard
from his boy, Willie Quarrie, that the cook was a person from Michael,
it was as much as I could do to keep him from tearing down to the
kitchen to talk about old times.”
“Yes, I see,” said Jenny; “he has made a fortune, but he is just the same
simple Manx lad that he was ten years ago.”
“Just, just! We can’t go out for a walk together but he shouts, ‘How
do? Fine day, mates!’ to the drivers of the hackney cabs across the
promenade; and the joy of his life is to get up at seven in the morning
and go down to the quay before breakfast to keep tally with a chalk
for the fishermen counting their herrings out of the boats into the
barrels.”
“Not a bit changed, then, since he went away?” said Jenny, before the
glass.
“Not a bit; and because I asked him to know his place, and if he is a
gentleman to behave as a gentleman and speak as a gentleman and not make
so easy with such as don’t respect him any the better for it, he turns
on me and tells me I’ve only married him for his money.”
“Dreadful!” said Jenny, fixing her fringe. “And is this the old
sweetheart you have waited ten years for?”
“Indeed, it is.”
“And now that he has come back and you’ve married him, he has parted
from you in ten days?”
“Yes; and it will be the talk of the island--indeed it will.”
“Shocking! And so he has left you here on your honeymoon without a penny
to bless yourself?”
“Oh, for the matter of that, he fixed something on me before the
wedding--a jointure, the advocates called it.”
“Terrible! Let me see. He’s the one who sent you presents from America?”
“Oh; he piled presents enough on me. It’s the way of the men: the
stingiest will do that. They like to think they’re such generous
creatures. But let a poor woman count on it, and she’ll soon be wakened
from her dream. ‘You married me for my money--deny it?’”
“Fearful!”
Jenny was leaning her forehead against the window sash, and looking
vacantly out on the bay. Nelly observed her a moment, stopped suddenly
in the tale of her troubles, and said, in another voice, “Jenny Crow,
I believe you are laughing at me. It’s always the way with you. You can
take nothing seriously.”
Jenny turned back to the room with a solemn face, and said, “Nellie,
if you waited ten years for your husband, I suppose that he waited ten
years for you.”
“I suppose he did.”
“And, if he is the same man as he was when he went away, I suppose his
love is the same?”
“Then how _could_ he say such things?”
“And, if he is the same, and his love is the same, isn’t it possible
that somebody else is different?”
“Now, Jenny Crow, you are going to say it’s all my fault?”
“Not all, Nelly. Something has come between you.”
“It’s the money. Oh, Jenny, if you ever marry, marry a poor man, and
then he can’t fling it in your face that you are poorer than he.”
“No; it can’t be the money, Nelly, for the money is his, and yet it
hasn’t changed him. And, Nelly, isn’t it a good thing in a rich man not
to turn his back on his old poor comrades--not to think because he has
been in the sun that people are black who are only in the shade--not
to pretend to have altered his skin because his coat has changed--isn’t
it?”
“I see what you mean. You mean that I’ve driven my husband away with my
bad temper.”
“No; not that; but Nelly--dear old Nell--think what you’re doing. Take
warning from one who once made shipwreck of her own life. Think no man
common who loves you--no matter what his ways are, or his manners, or
his speech. Love makes the true nobility. It ennobles him who loves you
and you who are beloved. Cling to it--prize it--do not throw it away.
Money can not buy it, nor fame nor rank atone for it. When a woman is
loved she is a queen, and he who loves her is her king.”
Mrs. Quiggin was weeping behind her hands by this time, but she lifted
swollen eyes to say, “I see; you would have me go to him and submit, and
explain, and beg his pardon. ‘Dear David, I didn’t marry you for your
money----’ No,” leaping to her feet, “I’ll scrub my fingers to the bone
first.”
“But, Nelly----”
“Say no more, Jenny Crow, We’re hot-headed people, both of us, and we’ll
quarrel.”
Then Jenny’s solemn manner was gone in an instant. She snapped her
fingers, kicked up one leg a little, and said lightly, “Very well; and
now let us have some dinner,”----
Meantime Lovibond was hearing the other side of the story from Captain
Davy at Forte Ann. On the way there he had heard of the separation from
the boy, Willie Quarrie, a lugubrious Manx lad, eighteen years old, with
a face as white as a haddock and as grim as a gannet.
“Aw, terr’ble doings, sir, terr’ble, terr’ble!” moaned Willie. “Young
Mistress Quiggin ateing her heart out at Castle Mona, and Captain Davy
hisself at Forte Ann over, drinking and tearing and carrying on till
all’s blue.”
Lovibond found Captain Davy in the smoke-room with a face as hard as a
frozen turnip, one leg over the arm of an elbow chair, a church-warden
pipe in his mouth, a gigantic glass of brandy and soda before him, and
an admiring circle of the laziest riff-raff of the town about him. As
soon as they were alone he said:
“But what’s this that your boy tells me, captain?”
“I’m foundered,” said Davy, “broke, wrecked, the screw of my tide’s gone
twisting on the rocks. I’m done, mate, I’m done.”
Then he proceeded to recite the incidents of the quarrel, coloring them
by the light of the numerous glasses with which he had covered his brain
since morning.
“‘You’ve married me for my money,’ says I. ‘What else?’ said she. ‘Then
d------ the money,’ says I, ‘I’ll lave you till it’s gone.’ ‘Do it and
welcome,’ says she, and I’m doing it, bad cess to it, I’m doing it.
But, stop this jaw. I swore to myself I wouldn’t spake of it to any man
living. What d’ye drink? I’ve took to the brandy swig myself. Join
in. Mate!” (this in a voice of thunder to the waiter at the end of the
adjoining room) “brandy for the gentleman.”
Lovibond waited a moment and then said quietly, “But whatever made you
give her an ungenerous stab like that, captain?”
Davy looked up curiously and answered, “That’s just what I’ve tooken six
big drinks to find out. But no use at all, and what’s left to do?”
“Why take it back?” said Lovibond.
“No, deng my buttons if I will.”
“Why not?”
“‘Cause it’s true.”
Lovibond waited again, and then said in another voice, “And is this the
little girl you used to tell of out yonder on the coast--Nessy, Nelly,
Nell, what was it?”
Davy’s eyes began to fill, but his mouth remained firm. He cleared his
throat noisily, shook the dust out of his pipe on to the heel of his
boot, and said, “No--yes--no--Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s Nelly
Kinvig, that’s sarten sure. But the juice of the woman’s sowl’s dried
up.”
“The little thing that used to know your rap at the kitchen window, and
come tripping out like a bird chirping in the night, and go linking down
the lane with you in the starlight?”
Davy broke the shaft of his churchwarden into small lengths, and flung
the pieces out at the open window and said, “I darn’t say no.”
“The one that stuck to you like wax when her father gave you the great
bounce out--eh?”
Davy wriggled and spat, and then muttered, “You go bail.”
“You have known her since you were children, haven’t you?”
Davy’s hard face thawed suddenly, and he said, “Ay, since she wore
petticoats up to her knees, and I was a boy in a jacket, and we played
hop-skotch in the haggard, and double-my-duck agen the cowhouse gable.
Aw dear, aw dear! The sweet little thing she was then any way. Yellow
hair at her, and eyes like the sea, and a voice same as the throstle!
Well, well, to think, to think! Playing in the gorse and the ling
together, and the daisies and the buttercups--and then the curlews
whistling and the river singing like music, and the bees ahumoning--aw,
terr’ble sweet and nice. And me going barefoot, and her bare-legged, and
divil a hat at the one of us--aw, deary me, deary me! Wasn’t much starch
at her in them ould days, mate.”
“Is there now, captain?”
“Now? D’ye say _now_? My goodness! It’s always hemming and humming and a
heise of the neck, and her head up like a Cochin-China, with a topknot,
and ‘How d’ye do?’ and cetererar and cetererar. Aw, smooth as an ould
threepenny bit--smooth astonishing. And partic’lar! My gough! You
couldn’t call Tom to a cat afore her, but she’d be agate of you to make
it Thomas.”
Lovibond smiled behind his big mustache.
“The rael ould Manx isn’t good enough for her now. Well, I wasn’t
objecting, not me. She’s got the English tongue at her--that’s all
right. Only I’ll stick to what I’m used of. Job’s patience went at last
and so did mine, and I arn’t much of a Job neither.”
“And what has made all this difference,” said Lovibond.
“Why, the money, of coorse. It was the money that done it, bad sess to
it,” said Davy, pitching the head of his pipe after the shank. “I went
out yonder to get it and I got it. Middling hard work, too, but no
matter. It was to be all for her. ‘I’ll come back, Nelly,’ says I, ‘and
we’ll take Ballacry and have six craythurs and a pony, and keep a
girl to do for you, and you’ll take your aise--only milking maybe, or
churning, but nothing to do no harm.’ I was ten years getting it, and I
never took notions on no other girls neither. No, honor bright, thinks
I, Nelly’s waiting for you, Davy. Always dreaming of her, ‘cept when
them lazy black chaps wanted leathering, and that’s a job that isn’t
nothing without a bit of swearing at whiles. But at night, aw, at night,
mate, lying out on the deck in that heat like the miller’s kiln, and
shelling your clothes piece by piece same as a bushel of oats, and
looking up at the stars atwinkling in the sky, and spotting one of them,
and saying to yourself quietlike, so as them niggers won’t hear, ‘That’s
star is atwinkling over Nelly, too, and maybe she’s watching it now.’
It seemed as if we wasn’t so far apart then. Somehow it made the world
a taste smaller. ‘Shine on, my beauty,’ thinks I, ‘shine down straight
into Nelly’s room, and if she’s awake tell her I’m coming, and if she’s
asleep just make her dream that I’m loving nobody else till her.’ But,
chut! It was myself that was dreaming. Drink up! She married me for my
money, so I’m making it fly.”
“And when it’s gone--what then?” said Lovibond. “Will you go back to
her!”
“Maybe so, maybe no.”
“Will anything be the better because the money’s spent?”
“God knows.”
“Will she be as sweet and good as she once was when you are as poor as
you were?”
Davy heaved up to his feet. “What’s the use of thinking of the like of
that?” he cried. “My money’s mine, I baked for it out in that oven. Now
I’m spending it, and what for shouldn’t I? Here goes--healths apiece!”
Next day Lovibond and Jenny Crow met on the pier. There they pondered
the ticklish situation of their friends, and every word they said on it
was pointed and punctuated by a sense of their own relations.
“It’s plain that the good fools love each other,” said Jenny.
“Quite plain,” said Lovibond.
“Heigho! It’s mad work being angry with somebody you are dying to love,”
said Jenny.
“Colney Hatch is nothing to it,” said Lovibond.
“Smaller things have parted people for years,” said Jenny.
“Yes; five years,” said Lovibond.
“The longer apart the wider the breach, and the harder to cover it,”
said Jenny.
“Just so,” said Lovibond.
“They must meet. Of course they’ll fight like cat and dog, but better
that than this separation. Time leaves bigger scars than claws ever
made. Now, couldn’t we bring them together?”
“Just what I was thinking,” said Lovibond.
“I’m sure he must be a dear, simple soul, though I’ve never set eyes on
him,” said Jenny.
“And I’m certain she must be as sweet as an angel, though I’ve never
seen her,” said Lovibond.
Jenny shot a jealous glance at her companion, then cracked two fingers
and said eagerly, “There you are--there’s the idea in a cockle-shell.
Now _if each could see the other through other eyes!_”
“The very thing!” said Lovibond.
“Then why don’t you give me your arm at once, and let me think me over?”
said Jenny. In less than an hour these two wise heads had devised a
scheme to bring Capt’n Davy and his bride together. What that scheme was
and how it worked let those who read discover.