At five o'clock of 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
toward 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 whatever of the ghost about Miss Margaret herself.
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 smallpox. Moreover, the brilliancy of her toilet
would have rendered any ghostly hypothesis untenable. Mrs. Solomon (we
refer to the dressiest Mrs. Solomon, whichever 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, ricochetting 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 frame house near the wharves, in the darkened doorway of which
she quenched her burning splendor, if so bold a 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 open. Three-quarters of an hour,
we repeat, had passed, when Mrs. Margaret O'Rourke, _née_ Callaghan,
issued from the small, dingy house by the river and regained the
doorstep 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
indictable offense.
And something of an offense 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 subtle 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.
"Curly gold locks cover foolish brains,
Billing and cooing is all your cheer;
Sighing and singing of midnight strains,
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'Rourke, 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'Rourke set the
coffee-urn in front of Mrs. Bilkins and flanked Mr. Bilkins with the
broiled mackerel and buttered toast, Mrs. O'Rourke's conscience smote
her. She afterward 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 unbeknownst let a few tears fall into the cream
pitcher. Whether or not it was this material expression of Margaret's
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 guerrilla warfare with itinerant venders of furniture polish,
and pain-killer, and crockery cement, and the like. The effrontery of
the triple knock convinced her the enemy was at her gates--possibly
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 toward 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 woolen 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 a sparse, sandy beard
was making a timid début. 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 at
once--of Mr. Larry O'Rourke of Mullingar, County Westmeath, and late of
the United States 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 doorstep 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 fascinations for all seafaring folk; and when
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 needs."
"Me wife," repeated Mr. O'Rourke, "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'Rourke, 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'Rourke. "I stood here, see, and me jew'l stood
there, and the howly chaplain beyont."
And Mr. O'Rourke 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 doesn'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'Rourke, 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 uptown, 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'Rourke's invading foot and pushed it
away. The effect of this attack was to cause Mr. O'Rourke to describe a
complete circle on one leg, and then sit down heavily on the threshold.
The lady retreated to the hat-stand, and rested her hand mechanically
on the handle of a blue cotton umbrella. Mr. O'Rourke partly turned his
head and smiled upon her with conscious superiority. At this juncture a
third actor appeared on the scene, evidently a friend of Mr. O'Rourke,
for he addressed that gentleman as a "spalpeen," and told him to go
home.
"Divil an inch," replied the spalpeen; 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 ever 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 ha'p'orth o' 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'Rourke, who had seated himself gravely on the scraper and was
weeping. "Hasn'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 spalpeen has dhrunk this day would
amaze ye. He give us the slip awhiles ago, bad cess to him, an' come
up here. Didn't I tell ye, Larry, not to be afther ringin' at the owle
gintleman's knocker? Ain't ye got no sinse at all?"
"Misther Donnehugh," responded Mr. O'Rourke with great dignity, "ye're
dhrunk again."
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' whisky he belaves he's dhrunk a
bar'lful. A gill o' wather out of a jimmy-john'd fuddle him, mum."
"Isn'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."
"Hasn't he any family in the town?"
"Sure, mum, he has a family; wasn'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 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.
"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'Rourke
critically, from the scraper.
Mrs. Bilkin'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 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!" cried Mr. O'Rourke, discovering her.
Mrs. Bilkins wheeled upon Margaret.
"Margaret Callaghan, _is_ that thing your husband?"
"Ye--yes, mum," faltered Mrs. O'Rourke, 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'Rourke 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'Rourke'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 little back-street romance.--_Majorie Daw, and
Other Stories._
* * * * *
The story is told of a famous Boston lawyer, that one day, after having
a slight discussion with the Judge, he deliberately turned his back
upon that personage and started to walk off.
"Are you trying, sir, to show your contempt for the Court?" asked the
judge, sternly.
"No, sir," was the reply; "I am trying to conceal it."