IN WHICH JIM GETS THE FURNITURE INTO HIS HOUSE, AND MIKE CONLIN GETS
ANOTHER INSTALLMENT OF ADVICE INTO JIM.
Jim had a weary winter. He was obliged to hire and to board a number of
workmen, whom it was necessary to bring in from Sevenoaks, to effect the
finishing of his house. His money ran low at last, and Mr. Benedict was
called upon to write a letter to Mr. Balfour on his behalf, accepting
that gentleman's offer of pecuniary assistance. This was a humiliating
trial to Jim, for he had hoped to enter upon his new life free from the
burden of debt; but Mr. Balfour assured him that he did not regard his
contribution to the building-fund as a loan--it was only the payment for
his board in advance.
Jim was astonished to learn the extent of Miss Butterworth's resources.
She proposed to furnish the house from the savings of her years of
active industry. She had studied it so thoroughly during its progress,
though she had never seen it, that she could have found every door and
gone through every apartment of it in the dark. She had received from
Mr. Benedict the plan and dimensions of every room. Carpets were made,
matting was purchased, sets of furniture were procured, crockery, glass,
linen, mirrors, curtains, kitchen-utensils, everything necessary to
housekeeping, were bought and placed in store, so that, when the spring
came, all that remained necessary was to give her order to forward them,
and write her directions for their bestowal in the house.
The long-looked for time came at last. The freshets of spring had passed
away; the woods were filling with birds; the shad-blossoms were reaching
their flat sprays out over the river, and looking at themselves in the
sunny waters; and the thrush, standing on the deck of the New Year, had
piped all hands from below, and sent them into the rigging to spread the
sails.
Jim's heart was glad. His house was finished, and nothing remained but
to fill it with the means and appliances of life, and with that precious
life to which they were to be devoted. The enterprise by which it was to
be supported lay before him, and was a burden upon him; but he believed
in himself, and was not afraid.
One morning, after he had gone over his house for the thousandth time,
and mounted to the cupola for a final survey, he started for Sevenoaks
to make his arrangements for the transportation of the furniture. Two
new boats had been placed on the river by men who proposed to act as
guides to the summer visitors, and these he engaged to aid in the water
transportation of the articles that had been provided by "the little
woman."
After his arrival in Sevenoaks, he was in consultation with her every
day; and every day he was more impressed by the method which she had
pursued in the work of furnishing his little hotel.
"I knowed you was smarter nor lightnin'," he said to her; "but I didn't
know you was smarter nor a man."
In his journeys, Jim was necessarily thrown into the company of Mike
Conlin, who was officiously desirous to place at his disposal the wisdom
which had been acquired by long years of intimate association with the
feminine element of domestic life, and the duties and practices of
housekeeping. When the last load of furniture was on its way to Number
Nine, and Jim had stopped at Mike's house to refresh his weary team,
Mike saw that his last opportunity for giving advice had come, and he
determined to avail himself of it.
"Jim," he said, "ye're jist nothing but a babby, an' ye must ax me some
quistions. I'm an owld housekaper, an' I kin tell ye everything, Jim."
Jim was tired with his work, and tired of Mike. The great event of his
life stood so closely before him, and he was so much absorbed by it,
that Mike's talk had a harsher effect upon his sensibilities than the
grating of a saw-mill.
"Ah! Mike! shut up, shut up!" he said. "Ye mean well, but ye're the
ignorantest ramus I ever seen. Ye know how to run a shanty an' a
pig-pen, but what do ye know about keepin' a hotel?"
"Bedad, if that's where ye are, what do ye know about kapin' a hotel
yersilf? Ye'll see the time, Jim, when ye'll be sorry ye turned the cold
shoolder to the honest tongue of Mike Conlin."
"Well, Mike, ye understand a pig-pen better nor I do. I gi'en it up,"
said Jim, with a sigh that showed how painfully Mike was boring him.
"Yes, Jim, an' ye think a pig-pen is benathe ye, forgittin' a pig is the
purtiest thing in life. Ah, Jim! whin ye git up in the marnin', a falin'
shtewed, an' niver a bit o' breakfast in ye, an' go out in the djew
barefut, as ye was borrn, lavin' yer coat kapin' company wid yer ugly
owld hat, waitin' for yer pork and pertaties, an' see yer pig wid his
two paws an' his dirty nose rachin' oover the pin, an sayin'
'good-marnin' to ye,' an' squalin' away wid his big v'ice for his
porridge, ye'll remimber what I say. An', Jim, whin ye fade 'im, ah!
whin ye fade 'im! an' he jist lays down continted, wid his belly full,
an' ye laugh to hear 'im a groontin' an' a shwearin' to 'imself to think
he can't ate inny more, an' yer owld woman calls ye to breakfast, ye'll
go in jist happy--jist happy, now. Ah, ye can't tell me! I'm an owld
housekaper, Jim."
"Ye're an old pig-keeper; that's what you be," said Jim. "Ye're a
reg'lar Paddy, Mike. Ye're a good fellow, but I'd sooner hearn a loon
nor a pig."
"Divil a bit o' raison have ye got in ye, Jim. Ye can't ate a loon no
more nor ye can ate a boot."
Mike was getting impatient with the incorrigible character of Jim's
prejudices, and Jim saw that he was grieving him.
"Well, I persume I sh'll have to keep pigs, Mike," he said, in a
compromising tone; "but I shan't dress 'em in calliker, nor larn 'em to
sing Old Hundred. I sh'll jest let 'em rampage around the woods, an'
when I want one on 'em, I'll shoot'im."
"Yis, bedad, an' thin ye'll shkin 'im, an' throw the rist of 'im intil
the river," responded Mike, contemptuously.
"No, Mike; I'll send for ye to cut 'im up an' pack 'im."
"Now ye talk," said Mike; and this little overture of friendly
confidence became a door through which he could enter a subject more
profoundly interesting to him than that which related to his favorite
quadruped.
"What kind of an owld woman have ye got, Jim? Jist open yer heart like a
box o' tobacky, Jim, an' lit me hilp ye. There's no man as knows more
about a woman nor Mike Conlin. Ah, Jim! ye ought to 'ave seed me wid the
girrls in the owld counthry! They jist rin afther me as if I'd been
stalin' their little hearrts. There was a twilve-month whin they tore
the very coat tails aff me back. Be gorry I could 'ave married me whole
neighborhood, an' I jist had to marry the firrst one I could lay me
honest hands on, an' take mesilf away wid her to Ameriky."
This was too much for Jim. His face broadened into his old smile.
"Mike," said he, "ye haven't got an old towel or a hoss blanket about
ye, have ye? I feel as if I was a goin' to cry."
"An' what the divil be ye goin' to cry for?"
"Well, Mike, this is a world o' sorrer, an' when a feller comes to think
of a lot o' women as is so hard pushed that they hanker arter Mike
Conlin, it fetches me. It's worse nor bein' without victuals, an' beats
the cholery out o' sight."
"Oh, ye blaggard! Can't ye talk sinse whin yer betthers is thryin' to
hilp ye? What kind of an owld woman have ye got, now?"
"Mike," said Jim, solemnly, "ye don't know what ye're talkin' about. If
ye did, ye wouldn't call her an old woman. She's a lady, Mike. She isn't
one o' your kind, an' I ain't one o' your kind, Mike. Can't ye see
there's the difference of a pig atween us? Don't ye know that if I was
to go hazin' round in the mornin' without no clo'es to speak on, an'
takin' comfort in a howlin' pig, that I shouldn't be up to keepin' a
hotel? Don't be unreasomble; and, Mike, don't ye never speak to me about
my old woman. That's a sort o' thing that won't set on her."
Mike shook his head in lofty pity.
"Ah, Jim, I can see what ye're comin' to."
Then, as if afraid that his "owld woman" might overhear his confession,
he bent toward Jim, and half whispered:
"The women is all smarter nor the men, Jim; but ye mustn't let 'em know
that ye think it. Ye've got to call 'em yer owld women, or ye can't keep
'em where ye want 'em. Be gorry! I wouldn't let me owld woman know what
I think of 'er fur fifty dollars. I couldn't kape me house over me head
inny time at all at all, if I should whishper it. She's jist as much of
a leddy as there is in Sivenoaks, bedad, an' I have to put on me big
airs, an' thrash around wid me two hands in me breeches pockets, an'
shtick out me lips like a lorrd, an' promise to raise the divil wid her
whiniver she gits a fit o' high flyin', an' ye'll have to do the same,
Jim, or jist lay down an' let 'er shtep on ye. Git a good shtart, Jim.
Don't ye gin 'er the bit for five minutes. She'll rin away wid ye. Ye
can't till me anything about women."
"No, nor I don't want to. Now you jest shut up, Mike. I'm tired a
hearin' ye. This thing about women is one as has half the fun of it in
larnin' it as ye go along. Ye mean well enough, Mike, but yer eddication
is poor; an' if it's all the same to ye, I'll take my pudden straight
an' leave yer sarse for them as likes it."
Jim's utter rejection of the further good offices of Mike, in the
endeavor to instruct him in the management of his future relations with
the little woman, did not sink very deep into the Irishman's
sensibilities. Indeed, it could not have done so, for their waters were
shallow, and, as at this moment Mike's "owld woman" called both to
dinner, the difference was forgotten in the sympathy of hunger and the
satisfactions of the table.
Jim felt that he was undergoing a change--had undergone one, in fact. It
had never revealed itself to him so fully as it did during his
conversation with Mike. The building of the hotel, the study of the
wants of another grade of civilization than that to which he had been
accustomed, the frequent conversations with Miss Butterworth, the
responsibilities he had assumed, all had tended to lift him; and he felt
that Mike Conlin was no longer a tolerable companion. The shallowness of
the Irishman's mind and life disgusted him, and he knew that the time
would soon come when, by a process as natural as the falling of the
leaves in autumn, he should drop a whole class of associations, and
stand where he could look down upon them--where they would look up to
him. The position of principal, the command of men, the conduct of, and
the personal responsibility for, a great enterprise, had given him
conscious growth. His old life and his old associations were
insufficient to contain him.
After dinner they started on, for the first time accompanied by Mike's
wife. Before her marriage she had lived the life common to her
class--that of cook and housemaid in the families of gentlemen. She knew
the duties connected with the opening of a house, and could bring its
machinery into working order. She could do a thousand things that a man
either could not do, or would not think of doing; and Jim had arranged
that she should be housekeeper until the mistress of the establishment
should be installed in her office.
The sun had set before they arrived at the river, and the boats of the
two guides, with Jim's, which had been brought down by Mr. Benedict,
were speedily loaded with the furniture, and Mike, picketing his horses
for the night, embarked with the rest, and all slept at Number Nine.
In three days Jim was to be married, and his cage was ready for his
bird. The stoop with its "settle," the ladder for posies, at the foot
of which the morning-glories were already planted, and the "cupalo," had
ceased to be dreams, and become realities. Still, it all seemed a dream
to Jim. He waked in the morning in his own room, and wondered whether he
were not dreaming. He went out upon his piazza, and saw the cabin in
which he had spent so many nights in his old simple life, then went off
and looked up at his house or ranged through the rooms, and experienced
the emotion of regret so common to those in similar circumstances, that
he could never again be what he had been, or be contented with what he
had been--that he had crossed a point in his life which his retiring
feet could never repass. It was the natural reaction of the long strain
of expectation which he had experienced, and would pass away; but while
it was upon him he mourned over the death of his old self, and the
hopeless obliteration of his old circumstances.
Mr. Balfour had been written to, and would keep his promise to be
present at the wedding, with Mrs. Balfour and the boys. Sam Yates, at
Jim's request, had agreed to see to the preparation of an appropriate
outfit for the bridegroom. Such invitations had been given out as Miss
Butterworth dictated, and the Snow family was in a flutter of
expectation. Presents of a humble and useful kind had been pouring in
upon Miss Butterworth for days, until, indeed, she was quite
overwhelmed. It seemed as if the whole village were in a conspiracy of
beneficence.
In a final conference with Mrs. Snow, Miss Butterworth said:
"I don't know at all how he is going to behave, and I'm not going to
trouble myself about it; he shall do just as he pleases. He has made his
way with me, and if he is good enough for me, he is good enough for
other people. I'm not going to badger him into nice manners, and I'm
going to be just as much amused with him as anybody is. He isn't like
other people, and if he tries to act like other people, it will just
spoil him. If there's anything that I do despise above board, it's a
woman trying to train a man who loves her. If I were the man, I should
hate her."