FLANNAGAN AND STEVEY TODD--CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM RETURNS TO GREENOUGH--THE
NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
The Flannagan and Imperial was the last cargo I carried, but I carried
it near five years. It was what you might call a continuous cargo; the
_Annalee_ was in partnership with it; that is, Flannagan and I went into
partnership together. Madame Bill's influence appeared to act expansive
on Flannagan's ideas, and they expanded the Company. She was an uncommon
woman, with a pushing mind, and exhibited as “The Princess Popocatapetl,
Lineal Descendant of Montezuma and Queen of the Caribbeans.” Flannagan
engaged Bill to exhibit as “The Fat Boy,” and he was very successful in
this way, weighing two hundred, and in height four feet eight inches,
though thirty to forty years old. His face was round and smooth as an
apple, and he wore a little jacket and sailor hat, and carried a piece
of gingerbread in general, when on exhibition; and in that way he looked
as young as might be needed, and satisfactory to every one. Flannagan
used to rent the advertising space on Bill's legs, for “Infants' Foods”
and “Patent Medicines for Dyspepsia,” which was popular and profitable.
But I was saying Madame Bill was a handsome woman, and valuable, and
Flannagan himself hadn't a better eye for giving the public sensations.
She expanded his ideas. Yet Flannagan had a knack. He was grand at
speech-making, and sudden and spectacular by nature.
He shipped with me then from Rosalia to the different ports I was billed
for that voyage, picking up more additions to the Company, till it was
a large company. I was free to admit he made good profits out of the
seaport cities between South America and Charleston; so at Charleston,
when he offered me a partnership, I felt agreeable, and took it, on this
agreement; I to put in the use and management of the _Annalee_, and he
to put in “The Flannagan and Imperial;” I to run the ship and he to
run the show. The profits should be divided half-yearly, after paying
expenses of ship and show.
We ran under this agreement several years, and exhibited all the way
from Boston to Rio, according to the season, and sometimes went inland
up navigable rivers, such as to Albany and Philadelphia. We summered
northward and wintered southward, and did better than most shows on
transportation expenses, besides having an open season through the year.
Prosperity kept us together until after Bill died, which came from his
being too ambitious, and proud of his line in the profession, and having
his heart set on two hundred and fifty pounds. Stevey Todd, here, he got
too interested in helping Bill along in his career, and fattening him up
to a high standard. But Bill's digestion was never good. He died rather
young.
Stevey Todd has cooked for me so long, that it's got to the point that
other victuals than Stevey Todd's seem unfriendly strangers, likely to
be hostile. I claim that, as a cook, Stevey's a bold and skilful
one, and enterprising. But outside the galley he's a backward man and
caution's his motto, and in argument he's, as you might say, a gradual
man. His nature, as differing there from Flannagan's, might be seen in
this way. For when Bill was dead, Flannagan and Stevey Todd each wanted
to marry Madame Bill, and their notions of it were as different as
sharks are different from mud-turtles, Flannagan's notion mainly
resembling a shark's, as follows. He says:
“Popo,” he says, pretty quick, “Bill's off. Here's to him, an' may his
ghost weigh two hundred and fifty. I'm on,” he says. “Whin shall it be?”
Then a madder woman than Madame Bill was seldom seen, for she threw
Montezuma's crown at Flannagan, and chased him under the tent ropes with
the gilt-headed and feather-tufted spear of the Queen of the Caribbeans,
which ruined an eighteen-dollar crown and stuck Flannagan vicious in the
shoulder-blade with the spear.
Whereas Stevey Todd bided a while, as a cautious man would do, until
some decent time had gone by; and then he gets me, as a friend, in
ambush inside the cabin window for precaution and testimony, and plants
the scornful typist at a distance to take photographs that might be
useful, and then he brings Madame Bill to the window.
“Now,” he says to her, “supposing there was a man that we'll call
middle-aged, and that might be a cook maybe by profession, for it
wouldn't do no harm if we took it he had leanings that way, and if you
said he was as good a one as ever stepped into a galley, I wouldn't go
so far as to say so myself, nor yet deny it, for Bill had that opinion
himself, and he was a man of good judgment on things that had to do with
his line, though when his feelings moved him he was apt to put it warm,
nor I ain't denying that when his digestion was otherwise, his remarks
was sometimes contrary. Now, supposing there was a lady, whose merits
I wouldn't nowise try to state, but if you was to say her talents was
good, and her weight a hundred and forty, I wouldn't say you was wrong,
which I've heard it put that as a Lineal Descendant she was worth
climbing the volcano to see, which supposing she complimented it by
borrowing that name, it's no harm if she did. Now, supposing those
parties was talking of this thing and that, as anybody might do, and,
say, they got to talking of the show business maybe, or, say, they
happened to mention such a thing as matrimony, now,” says Stevey Todd,
“what would be your idea of that last as a subject of conversation
between those parties?”
Madame Bill didn't answer the question, though it seemed to me put
delicate, but she burst into melodious laughter, and ran away, and the
tin-type man, whose natural expression was dislike of his fellow man,
he looked disgusted more'n you'd believe, and went away too. Then Stevey
Todd put his head through the window, and he says:
“Now, supposing a party acted in such or such a way to one party, which
acted another way to another party, what would you say might happen to
be her meaning?”
I gave my opinion candid, and truthful. I said, as to Madame Bill, I
judged something or other pleased her, and by her behaviour to Flannagan
it looked as if there was something then which she hadn't liked, though
what it might be in either case was more than I could say, but speaking
generally it looked hopeful for Stevey Todd, and I stated that same
opinion. Stevey Todd went back to the galley, and it seemed to me the
difference between his nature and Flannagan's was something to wonder at
and admire, and when I saw Flannagan he seemed to have the same opinion
with me, for he says:
“Powers an' fryin' pans! Thot cook!” he says. “Thot galley shlave! Thot
boiled pertaty widout salt! Shall a barrel of flour put me in the soup?
Tell me thot!”
At the time we were exhibiting in the larger towns about Long Island
Sound, where it happened we'd never exhibited before, dropping into
harbours and setting up the big tent on any bit of land convenient to
the pier. We stayed a long or short time, according to patronage.
Whether it was that Flannagan was too busy, or angry at Madame Bill for
her actions, and didn't know if he wanted a wife with a spear, or one
that was reckless with her headgear, I couldn't have said at that time;
but he surely said no more to Madame Bill that I knew of, whereas Stevey
Todd kept arguing with her all over the ship, and mainly under the
cabin window. Sometimes he'd trim his sails close in to the subject of
matrimony, and sometimes he'd be sailing so far off the quarter that I
couldn't but call out to him through the window and tell him, “Hard a
lee there, Stevey! You'll never fetch it that tack;” when he'd shift his
helm, feeling the edge of the breeze with as neat a piece of seamanship
as a man could ask, and come up dead into the wind, his sails dropping
back stiff on his yardarms, and the subject of matrimony speared on
the end of his bowsprit; then Madame Bill would get up, and run away
laughing. She seemed to enjoy those arguments, and I judged Stevey
Todd would fetch port maybe in course of time. Meanwhile I sat smoking
peaceful at my cabin window, and watched the shore slipping by, that
I knew so well of old. By-and-by I saw Telford Point, and then the
Musquoit River mouth by Adrian. Stevey Todd sat under the window putting
fine edges on his arguments. And I says:
“Stevey,” I says, “I was born and bred on this coast,” but Stevey Todd
was that taken up with his points of argument to Madame Bill that
he didn't have any interest in my beginnings, and I went off to find
Flannagan.
“Flannagan,” I says, “I got a sentiment.”
“Sintimint, is it!” he says. “Come off! Ye salted codfish! If I ain't
got tin to your one, I'm another,” he says.
It made me mad to hear him talk that way, and I set him down on the
starboard anchor and I argued it. I told him of the little town of
Greenough, and then I told him of Madge Pemberton, that afterwards was
Madge McCulloch, and how the old shore village lay, its street and
white houses and its church with the gilded cupola, till Flannagan got
interested. And there we talked a long time.
“Why, ye are salted, Tom,” he says, “but I'm not just sayin' ye're
canned. We ain't due in New London till Thursday, an' it's on me moind
we'll exhibit a bit in this town of Greenough.”
That afternoon, then, we hauled into the harbour, by where the fishing
boats lay, and moored the _Annalee_ to the old stone pier. Flannagan saw
the tent, platform, and benches put up, and in the early evening he went
inland to the village and didn't come back for some hours.
It was a moonlight night, and the show people were still getting ready
for the next day. I was at the deck-cabin window, smoking an evening
pipe, looking at the tent that stood on the sandy piece of land beyond
the pier. I could see the trees of the village, and the church spire
against the sky, and I thought of the way I'd meant to come back to
Greenough, when I left it to go “romping and roaming,” as Sadler had
said, and how now I was come home with grey hairs.
There was the hill between Newport Street and the harbour, and far along
to the west I could see where Pemberton's stood, and see what might be
its lights.
Pretty soon I heard David, the trick dog, barking, and I looked out, and
saw Stevey Todd and Madame Bill coming along in the wake of David, and
I judged that Stevey Todd was meaning to put in an odd moment or two
arguing, and that Madame Bill was going to be joyous about it. David
appeared to be feeling tolerable cheerful, as if saying to himself,
“They're going to do something now, sure.” They sat down by the window,
and Madame Bill was speaking:
“Stevey Todd,” she says, “I think it would not be such advantage, not at
all. Because it is not good to my looks that I become two hundred pounds
like my Bill, and if now I have a husband who cook so delicious, so
perfect, as you, and who make me laugh between meals without rest and
without pity, as you, which gives the appetite enormous, so that I
have gained five pounds since I weigh before, and by this am alarmed,
disconsolate, helas! what do I do? Am I elephants in this show? But how?
I observe you do not ask that I marry you, but you say, 'It is a good
time to talk here or there, about this or that--eh? Well, perhaps about
matrimony.' Haw! haw! ho! ho! But how so? If you do not say, 'Will you?'
how can I say 'No'?”
“Taking that argument so stated,” says Stevey Todd, “it might be
called a tidy argument and no harm done, or you might say there was two
arguments in it. Now, taking the first one, a man might make this point
as bearing on it: for you take the tin-typist, who's a good eater and
a well-fleshed man, and yet he's a gloomy man, as you might say, not
putting it too strong; and on the other hand here's David, who's what
you'd call a joking dog, and as an eater without an equal of his size,
though an elderly dog, and yet he's a thin dog, as his business in
the show makes needful for him. Which, I says, might be put up as an
argument by such as wanted to use it, if any one was speaking contrary
to cooks as being dangerous to parties in the show business, on account
of interests not being along the line of weight, nor yet advertising
space on legs which they're able to furnish. Now, taking the second
argument, I wouldn't deny you might be right, and there's the point. For
not to speak of giving no cause for crowns throwed around expensive, or
spears stuck into parties disrespectful to memory of deceased, I says,
here's the point. For if you can't say 'No,' till I say 'Will you?' it
follows you can't do it till I say those words.”
“I can too!” says Madame Bill.
“No, ye can't! No, ye can't!” says Stevey Todd.
Madame Bill began to laugh, and Flannagan, who was coming over the
ship's side, he stopped at hearing her, and slid across the deck behind
the companion. Then Madame Bill went below, ha-ha-ing melodious, and
Flannagan called in a loud whisper over the roof:
“Hoi! Stevey Todd! Are ye done wid it?”
“She ain't said no,” says Stevey Todd. “She ain't said no.”
It came afternoon of the next day, and the show was opened, and the
people came flocking in. Near by the tent door was Stevey Todd's
“Cocoanut Cake, Hot Waffle and Fizz Table.” On the platform the company
sat in a half-circle, ready for Flannagan's opening speech to explain
the qualities and talents of each. It was a show to be proud of, and in
point of colour resembling solar spectrums, or peacocks' tails. Madame
Bill had charge of costumes, and her tastes were what you might call
exhilarated. Flannagan began:
“Ladies and gintlemen,” he says. “The pleasure I take in inthroducin'
'The Flannagan an' Imparial Itinerant Exhibition,' to this intelligent
aujunce, has niver been equalled in me mimory.
“I see before me,” he says, “a ripresentative array of this grreat
counthry's agricultural pursuits, to say nothin' of thim that fish. I
see before me numerous handsome an' imposin' mathrons, to say nothin'
of foine washed babies. I see before me many a rosy girrl a-chewin'
cocoanut candy that ain't so swate as herself, an' many a boy wid his
pockets full of paynuts an' his head full of divelthries.
“Is it the prisence of such an aujunce which gives me the pleasure
unequalled in me mimory? No!
“Ye see before ye 'The Flannagan an' Imparial Itinerant Exhibition,'” he
says. “Yonder is the three Japanese tumblers from the private company of
the Meekado, trained to expriss by motion an' mysthical attichude, the
eternal principles of poethry as understood by Orientals, Hinjoos,
an' thim Chinaysers: forninst the same, the beaucheous Princess
Popocatapetl, whose royal ancesthors was discovered by Columbus, an'
buried by another cilibrated Dago, that ought t'have been ashamed of it;
nixt her, the Hairy Man, wid a chin beard on the bridge of his nose an'
the hair of his head growin' out of the shmall of his back; nixt, the
cilibrated performin' dog, David, that you'll recognise by his shmilin'
looks an' polkadot complexion; an' so on, the others in due order, that
will soon be increasin' your admiration for the marvels of creation, an'
servin' as texts, I doubt not, for the future discoorses of me frind,
the venerable clergyman of this parish, that sits in the front row--May
Hiven bless him!--all mimbers of the Flannagan an' Imparial, includin',
aye, even down to the poor wake-minded man that sells hot waffles at the
door, which if ye tell him, afther this performance, that his waffles
is the same kind of waffles that a shoemaker pegs on for the sole of a
shoe, it's me private opinion he'll be in no timper to arguy the point.
“Is it pride in this grreat show that gives me the pleasure on this
occasion unequalled in me mimory? No!
“What is it, ladies and gintlemen? What is it?
“Gintlemen and ladies,” he says, “'tis no other than the approach of
the public ciremonial of the rite of mathrimony between mesilf, Michael
Flannagan, an' a party that has no notion what I'm talkin' about, but is
further named in this docyment, which if your riverence will now
shtep up on the platform, he will find to be signed and sealed by the
honourable town clerk of this pasthoral an' marine community. Ladies
an' gintlemen, was ye iver invited before to the weddin' of a man of
me impressive looks an' oratorical gifts, that first published his own
banns, an' thin proposed, in your intelligent an' sympathetic prisence,
to a lady of exalted ancesthry an' pre-eminent fame? Ye was not? Ye have
now that unparallelled experience. For, as ye see by this license an'
authority, this lady, the Lineal Descendant of Mexican Emperors, is
known an' admired in private life as Madame Anatolia Bill.'”
With that he stepped back, and offered his hand, and said something to
Madame Bill that was lost in the cheering of the audience. Madame Bill
near fell off her chair with surprise, and began ha-ha-ing melodious.
What with the roaring and clapping of the crowd, Flannagan and Madame
Bill were up in front of the minister before Stevey Todd could be heard
from the door, crying, “She ain't said no, Flannagan! She ain't said no!
It ain't right!”
“Will somebody near the door,” says Flannagan, “kindly take the
hot-waffle-man an' dhrop a hot waffle down the back of his neck, to
disthract his attintion while the ciremonies proceed?” Stevey Todd ran
out of the door. But the people of Greenough was happy in front, and the
show was hilarious behind. David turned handsprings till he sweated his
spots into streaks.
But I've always had my doubts what may have been previous in Madame
Bill's mind as regards intentions to Flannagan and Stevey Todd. Which is
not saying but Flannagan's ambush was what you'd call a good ambush,
as arranged by one that knew Madame Bill well, and knew her to be a
show-woman by nature and gifts, that would never have the heart to spoil
a fine act in the middle of it, when it was coming on well. The facts
are no more than that she did nothing to spoil the act. She let it go
through. Her statement was she hadn't made up her mind before. Stevey
Todd's opinion was that she'd have taken himself, barring Flannagan's
laying that stratagem, desperate and unrighteous. On the other hand,
Flannagan thought it was predestined on account of his natural gifts. As
for me, I had my doubts.
But Stevey Todd wouldn't stay with the show after that. We went on east,
and left him here, boarding at Pemberton's. He said he liked Pemberton's
and would stay there a bit. I says, “There's good points in a quiet
life, Stevey;” and Stevey Todd says, showing what was on his mind:
“Aye, but Abe Dalrimple, he argues matrimony ain't quiet, and I don't go
so far as to dispute he may be right, and that's a point to be allowed,
for she throwed Montezuma's crown, not to speak of spears.”
“Didn't neither,” says Abe Dalrimple. “It was kettles. It wa'n't none of
them things,” he says, alluding at Mrs. Dalrimple.
But as to Madame Bill, she was tropical, but not balmy, and matrimony
that wasn't balmy wouldn't have been good for Stevey Todd.
“But,” says Stevey Todd, “as to her leanings to me and intentions
pursuant,” he says, “I'd argue it, as shown by actions previous.”
It was Pemberton told me Madge McCulloch was dead. She died ten years
back, about the time I was leaving the Pacific. He told me she left a
daughter grown up since, and that Andrew McCulloch was an irritated man
by nature.
I went on with the show, but I kept thinking of a quiet life, and about
Greenough and Pemberton's, and about things that were long gone by. And
then, eating other victuals than Stevey Todd cooked was come to seem
to me like taking liberties with strangers. Then I kept wondering if I
hadn't had enough going up and down the seas. I says:
“What's the use of it? A man had best get cured of his restlessness
before he comes to lie still for aye, and that's the truth,” I says.
At the end of October I sold out the _Annalee_. Flannagan took his show
inland, and I came back, thinking to sit down at Pemberton's and get
over being restless.