Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature by Various

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"Forgive me! Do forgive me! I thought you were in earnest."

"So I was," she said, tremulously, as soon as she could catch her voice,
"in sending for my cousin Reginald."

"Oh, dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me,--let
me go and explain it to mother,--she'll tell the rest,--I couldn't do
it,--I'd die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!"

On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.

"Don't try to explain it now,--it may get Billy a scolding. Are there
any but intimate family friends here this evening?"

"No--I believe--no--I'm sure," replied Daniel, collecting his
faculties.

"Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've known
each other long; but we'll arrange it by-and-by. They'll think the more
of it the longer we stay out here,--hear them laugh! I must run back
now. I'll send you somebody."

A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the parlor,
and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her quick woman-wit
showed her how to retaliate and divide the embarrassment of the
occasion. As she passed me she said in an undertone,--"Answer quick!
Who's that fat lady on the sofa, that laughs so loud?"

"Mrs. Cromwell Craggs," said I, as quietly.

Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtesy, and spoke in a modest but
distinct voice,--"I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger,
you know; but is there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs,--Mrs. _Cromwell_
Craggs? For if so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs.
Cromwell Craggs."

Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to
go and get kissed like the rest of us.

Before the close of the evening, Billy was made as jealous as his
parents and I were surprised to see Daniel in close conversation with
Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and fuschias of the conservatory. "A
regular flirtation," said Billy, somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
they arrived at was, that after all no great harm had been done, and
that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun. If I
had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have
suspected that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not
unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I
could see showed me that the ice was broken....

--_Little Brother, and Other Genre Pictures_.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

(BORN, 1836.)

* * * * *

A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE.

I.

At five o'clock in 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 ghost-like 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 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 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 be opened. Three quarters of an hour, we repeat, had
passed, when Mrs. Margaret O'Rourke, _nee_ 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
indictable 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 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 Bonnybells 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
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 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 we're unheard that forenoon.

The town clock was striking eleven, and the antiquated time-piece 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 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 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 a sparse, sandy beard was
making a timid _debut_. 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 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 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, "_aetat._ 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'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 door-step.

"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' whiskey he belaves he's dhrunk a bar'l full. 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, 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, any way," remarked Mr. O'Rourke,
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!" 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.--_Marjorie Daw, and Other
Stories_.

END OF VOL. II.

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