LITMIR.BIZ

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and you, Preserved Green, and you, Faithful Wanton,” cried Desire, as he came within hearing, pausing to catch a morsel of breath, before she proceeded in her affecting appeal to the neighbourhood; “and you too, Upright Crook, and you too, Relent Flint, and you, Wealthy Poor, to be witnesses and testimonials in my behalf. You, and all and each of you, can qualify if need should be, that I have ever been a slaving and loving consort of this man who has deserted me in my age, leaving so many of his own children on my hands, to feed and to rear, besides”—

      “What certainty is it,” interrupted the landlord of the “Foul Anchor” most inopportunely, “that the good-man has absconded? It was a merry day the one that is just gone, and it is quite in reason to believe your husband was, like some others I can name—a thing I shall not be so unwise as to do—a little of what I call how-come-ye-so, and that his nap holds on longer than common. I’ll engage we shall all see the honest tailor creeping out of some of the barns shortly, as fresh and as ready for his bitters as if he had not wet his throat with cold water since the last time of general rej’icing.”

      A low but pretty general laugh followed this effort of tavern wit, though it failed in exciting even a smile on the disturbed visage of Desire, which, by its doleful outline, appeared to have taken leave of all its risible properties for ever.

      “Not he, not he,” exclaimed the disconsolate consort of the good-man; “he has not the heart to get himself courageous, in loyal drinking, on such an occasion as a merry-making on account of his Majesty’s glory; he was a man altogether for work; and it is chiefly for his hard labour that I have reason to complain. After being so long used to rely on his toil, it is a sore cross to a dependant woman to be thrown suddenly and altogether on herself for support. But I’ll be revenged on him, if there’s law to be found in Rhode Island, or in the Providence Plantations! Let him dare to keep his pitiful image out of my sight the lawful time, and then, when he returns, he shall find himself, as many a vagabond has been before him, without wife, as he will be without house to lay his graceless head in.”1 Then, catching a glimpse of the inquiring face of the old seaman, who by this time had worked his way to her very side, she abruptly added, “Here is a stranger in the place, and one who has lately arrived! Did you meet a straggling runaway, friend, in your journey hither?”

      “I had too much trouble in navigating my old hulk on dry land, to log the name and rate of every craft I fell in with,” returned the other, with infinite composure; “and yet, now you speak of such a thing, I do remember to have come within hail of a poor fellow, just about the beginning of the morning-watch somewhere hereaway, up in the bushes between this town and the bit of a ferry that carries one on to the main.”

      “What sort of a man was he?” demanded five or six anxious voices, in a breath; among which the tones of Desire, however, maintained their supremacy rising above those of all the others, like the strains of a first-rate artist flourishing a quaver above the more modest thrills of the rest of the troupe.

      “What sort of a man! Why a fellow with his arms rigged athwart ship, and his legs stepped like those of all other Christians, to be sure: but, now you speak of it, I remember that he had a bit of a sheep-shank in one of his legs, and rolled a good deal as he went ahead.”

      “It was he!” added the same chorus of voices. Five or six of the speakers instantly stole slyly out of the throng, with the commendable intention of hurrying after the delinquent, in order to secure the payment of certain small balances of account, in which the unhappy and much traduced good-man stood indebted to the several parties. Had we leisure to record the manner in which these praiseworthy efforts, to save an honest penny, were conducted the reader might find much subject of amusement in the secret diligence with which each worthy tradesman endeavoured to outwit his neighbour, on the occasion, as well as in the cunning subterfuges which were adopted to veil their real designs, when all met at the ferry, deceived and disappointed in their object As Desire, however, had neither legal demand on, nor hope of favour from, her truant husband, she was content to pursue, on the spot, such further inquiries in behalf of the fugitive as she saw fit to make. It is possible the pleasures of freedom, in the shape of the contemplated divorce, were already floating before her active mind, with the soothing perspective of second nuptials, backed by the influence of such another picture as might be drawn from the recollections of her first love; the whole having a manifest tendency to pacify her awakened spirit, and to give a certain portion of directness and energy to her subsequent interrogatories.

      “Had he a thieving look?” she demanded, without attending to the manner in which she was so suddenly deserted by all those who had just expressed the strongest sympathy in her loss. “Was he a man that had the air of a sneaking runaway?”

      “As for his head-piece, I will not engage to give very true account,” returned the old mariner though he had the look of one who had been kept a good deal of his time, in the lee scuppers. If should give an opinion, the poor devil has had too much”—

      “Idle time, you would say; yes, yes; it has been his misfortune to be out of work a good deal latterly and wickedness has got into his head, for want of something better to think of. Too much”—

      “Wife,” interrupted the old man, emphatically. Another general, and far less equivocal laugh, at the expense of Desire, succeeded this blunt declaration Nothing intimidated by such a manifest assent to the opinion of the hardy seaman, the undaunted virago resumed,—

      “Ah! you little know the suffering and forbearance I have endured with the man in so many long years. Had the fellow you met the look of one who had left an injured woman behind him?”

      “I can’t say there was any thing about him which said, in so many words, that the woman he had left at her moorings was more or less injured;” returned the tar, with commendable discrimination, “but there was enough about him to show, that, however and wherever he may have stowed his wife, if wife she was, he had not seen fit to leave all her outfit at home. The man had plenty of female toggery around his neck; I suppose he found it more agreeable than her arms.”

      “What!” exclaimed Desire, looking aghast; “has he dared to rob me! What had he of mine? not the gold beads!”

      “I’ll not swear they were no sham.”

      “The villain!” continued the enraged termagant, catching her breath like a person that had just been submerged in water longer than is agreeable to human nature, and forcing her way through the crowd, with such vigour as soon to be in a situation to fly to her secret hordes, in order to ascertain the extent of her misfortune; “the sacrilegious villain! to rob the wife of his bosom, the mother of his own children, and”—

      “Well, well,” again interrupted the landlord of the ‘Foul Anchor,’ with his unseasonable voice, “I never before heard the good-man suspected of roguery, though the neighbourhood was ever backward in calling him chicken-hearted.”

      The old seaman looked the publican full in the face, with much meaning in his eye, as he answered,—

      “If the honest tailor never robbed any but that virago, there would be no great thieving sin to be laid to his account; for every bead he had about him wouldn’t serve to pay his ferryage. I could carry all the gold on his neck in my eye, and see none the worse for its company. But it is a shame to stop the entrance into a licensed tavern, with such a mob, as if it were an embargoed port; and so I nave sent the woman after her valuables, and all the idlers, as you see, in her wake.”

      Joe Joram gazed on the speaker like a man enthralled by some mysterious charm; neither answering nor altering the direction of his eye, for near a minute. Then, suddenly breaking out in a deep and powerful laugh, as if he were not backward in enjoying the artifice, which certainly had produced the effect of removing the crowd from his own door to that of the absent tailor, he flourished his arm in the way of greeting, and exclaimed,—“Welcome, tarry Bob; welcome, old boy, welcome! From what cloud have you fallen? and before what wind have you been running, that Newport is again your harbour?”

      “Too many questions to be answered in an open roadstead, friend Joram; and altogether too dry a subject for a husky conversation. When I am birthed in one of your inner cabins, with a mug of flip and a kid of good

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