A Rivermouth Romance Part 3

There sat Mr. Bilkins, with his wig pushed back from his forehead, and his eyes fixed vacantly on The Weekly Chronicle, which he held out at arm's length before him.

"Good heavens, Ezra! what _is_ the matter?"

Mr. Bilkins turned his eyes upon her mechanically, as if he were a great wax-doll, and somebody had pulled his wire.

"Can't you speak, Ezra?"

His lips opened, and moved inarticulately; then he pointed a rigid finger, in the manner of a guide-board, at a paragraph in the paper, which he held up for Mrs. Bilkins to read over his shoulder. When she had read it she sunk back into her chair without a word, and the two sat contemplating each other as if they had never met before in this world, and were not overpleased at meeting.

The paragraph which produced this singular effect on the aged couple occurred at the end of a column of telegraph despatches giving the details of an unimportant engagement that had just taken place between one of the blockading squadron and a Confederate cruiser. The engagement itself does not concern us, but this item from the list of casualties on the Union side has a direct bearing on our narrative:--

"_Larry O'Rourke, seaman, splinter wound in the leg.

Not serious_."

That splinter flew far. It glanced from Mr. O'Rourke's leg, went plumb through the Bilkins mansion, and knocked over a small marble slab in the Old South Burying Ground.

If a ghost had dropped in familiarly to breakfast, the constraint and consternation of the Bilkins family could not have been greater. How was the astounding intelligence to be broken to Margaret? Her explosive Irish nature made the task one of extreme delicacy. Mrs. Bilkins flatly declared herself incapable of undertaking it. Mr. Bilkins, with many misgivings as to his fitness, a.s.sumed the duty; for it would never do to have the news sprung suddenly upon Margaret by people outside.

As Mrs. O'Rourke was clearing away the breakfast things, Mr. Bilkins, who had lingered near the window with the newspaper in his hand, coughed once or twice in an unnatural way to show that he was not embarra.s.sed, and began to think that may be it would be best to tell Margaret after dinner. Mrs. Bilkins fathomed his thought with that intuition which renders women terrible, and sent across the room an eye-telegram to this effect, "Now is your time."

"There 's been another battle down South, Margaret," said the old gentleman presently, folding up the paper and putting it in his pocket.

"A sea-fight this time."

"Sure, an' they 're allus fightin' down there."

"But not always with so little damage. There was only one man wounded on our side."

"Pore man! It's sorry we oughter be for his wife an' childer, if he's got any."

"Not badly wounded, you will understand, Margaret--not at all seriously wounded; only a splinter in the leg."

"Faith, thin, a splinter in the leg is no pleasant thing in itself."

"A mere scratch," said Mr. Bilkins lightly, as if he were constantly in the habit of going about with a splinter in his own leg, and found it rather agreeable. "The odd part of the matter is the man's first name.

His first name was Larry."

Margaret nodded, as one should say, There's a many Larrys in the world.

"But the oddest part of it," continued Mr. Bilkins, in a carelessly sepulchral voice, "is the man's last name."

Something in the tone of his voice made Margaret look at him, and something in the expression of his face caused the blood to fly from Margaret's cheek.

"The man's last name!" she repeated, wonderingly.

"Yes, his last name--O'Rourke."

"D'ye mane it?" shrieked Margaret--"d' ye mane it? Glory to G.o.d! O worra! worra!"

"Well, Ezra," said Mrs. Bilking, in one of those spasms of base ingrat.i.tude to which even the most perfect women are liable, "you 've made nice work of it. You might as well have knocked her down with an axe!"

"But, my dear"--

"Oh, bother!--my smelling-bottle, quick!--second bureau drawer--left-hand side."

Joy never kills; it is a celestial kind of hydrogen of which it seems impossible to get too much at one inhalation. In an hour Margaret was able to converse with comparative calmness on the resuscitation of Larry O'Rourke, whom the firing of a cannon had brought to the surface as if he had been in reality a drowned body.

Now that the whole town was aware of Mr. O'Rourke's fate, his friend Mr.

Donne-hugh came forward with a statement that would have been of some interest at an earlier period, but was of no service as matters stood, except so far as it a.s.sisted in removing from Mr. Bilkins's mind a pa.s.sing doubt as to whether the Larry O'Rourke of the telegraphic reports was Margaret's scape-grace of a husband. Mr. Donnehugh had known all along that O'Rourke had absconded to Boston by a night train and enlisted in the navy. It was the possession of this knowledge that had made it impossible for Mr. Donnehugh to look at Mr. O'Rourke's gravestone without grinning.

At Margaret's request, and in Margaret's name, Mr. Bilkins wrote three or four letters to O'Rourke, and finally succeeded in extorting an epistle from that gentleman, in which he told Margaret to cheer up, that his fortune was as good as made, and that the day would come when she should ride through the town in her own coach, and no thanks to old flint-head, who pretended to be so fond of her. Mr. Bilkins tried to conjecture who was meant by old flint-head, but was obliged to give it up. Mr. O'Rourke furthermore informed Margaret that he had three hundred dollars prize-money coming to him, and broadly intimated that when he got home he intended to have one of the most extensive blow-outs ever witnessed in Rivermouth.

"Och!" laughed Margaret, "that's jist Larry over agin. The pore lad was allus full of his nonsense an' spirits."

"That he was," said Mr. Bilkins, dryly.

Content with the fact that her husband was in the land of the living, Margaret gave herself no trouble over the separation. O'Rourke had s.h.i.+pped for three years; one third of his term of service was past, and two years more, G.o.d willing, would see him home again. This was Margaret's view of it. Mr. Bilkins's view of it was not so cheerful The prospect of Mr. O'Rourke's ultimate return was anything but enchanting.

Mr. Bilkins was by no means disposed to kill the fatted calf. He would much rather have killed the Prodigal Son. However, there was always this chance: he might never come back.

The tides rose and fell at the Rivermouth wharves; the summer moonlight and the winter snow, in turn, bleached its quiet streets; and the two years had nearly gone by. In the mean time nothing had been heard of O'Rourke. If he ever received the five or six letters sent to him, he did not fatigue himself by answering them.

"Larry's all right," said hopeful Margaret. "If any harum had come to the gossoon, we'd have knowed it. It's the bad news that travels fast."

Mr. Bilkins was not so positive about that. It had taken a whole year to find out that O'Rourke had not drowned himself.

The period of Mr. O'Rourke's enlistment had come to an end. Two months slipped by, and he had neglected to brighten River-mouth with his presence. There were many things that might have detained him, difficulties in getting his prize-papers or in drawing his pay; but there was no reason why he might not have written. The days were beginning to grow long to Margaret, and vague forebodings of misfortune possessed her.

Perhaps we had better look up Mr. O'Rourke.

He had seen some rough times, during those three years, and some harder work than catching cunners at the foot of Anchor Street, or setting out crocuses in Mr. Bil-kins's back garden. He had seen battles and s.h.i.+pwreck, and death in many guises; but they had taught him nothing, as the sequel will show. With his active career in the navy we shall not trouble ourselves; we take him up at a date a little prior to the close of his term of service.

Several months before, he had been transferred from the blockading squadron to a gun-boat attached to the fleet operating against the forts defending New Orleans. The forts had fallen, the fleet had pa.s.sed on to the city, and Mr. O'Rourke's s.h.i.+p lay off in the stream, binding up her wounds. In three days he would receive his discharge, and the papers ent.i.tling him to a handsome amount of prize-money in addition to his pay. With n.o.ble contempt for so much good fortune, Mr. O'Rourke dropped over the bows of the gun-boat one evening and managed to reach the levee. In the city he fell in with some soldiers, and, being of a convivial nature, caroused with them that night, and next day enlisted in a cavalry regiment.

Desertion in the face of the enemy--for, though the city lay under Federal guns, it was still hostile enough--involved the heaviest penalties. O'Rourke was speedily arrested with other deserters, tried by court-martial, and sentenced to death.

The intelligence burst like a sh.e.l.l upon the quiet household in Anchor Street, listening daily for the sound of Larry O'Rourke's footstep on the threshold. It was a heavy load for Margaret to bear, after all those years of patient vigil. But the load was to be lightened for her. In consideration of O'Rourke's long service, and in view of the fact that his desertion so near the expiration of his time was an absurdity, the Good President commuted his sentence to imprisonment for life, with loss of prize-money and back pay. Mr. O'Rourke was despatched North, and placed in Moyamensing Prison.

If joy could kill, Margaret would have been a dead woman the day these tidings reached Rivermouth; and Mr. Bilkins himself would have been in a critical condition, for, though he did not want O'Rourke shot or hanged, he was delighted to have him permanently shelved.

After the excitement was over, and this is always the trying time, Margaret accepted the situation philosophically.

"The pore lad's out o' harum's rache, any way," she reflected. "He can't be git-tin' into hot wather now, and that's a fact. And maybe after awhiles they 'll let him go agin. They let out murtherers and thaves and sich like, and Larry's done no hurt to n.o.body but hisself."

Margaret was inclined to be rather severe on President Lincoln for taking away Larry's prize-money. The impression was strong on her mind that the money went into Mr. Lincoln's private exchequer.

"I would n't wonder if Misthress Lincoln had a new silk gownd or two this fall," Margaret would remark, sarcastically.

The prison rules permitted Mr. O'Rourke to receive periodical communications "from his friends outside." Once every quarter Mr. Bilkins wrote him a letter, and in the interim Margaret kept him supplied with those doleful popular ballads, printed on broadsides, which one sees pinned up for sale on the iron railings of city churchyards, and seldom anywhere else. They seem the natural exhalations of the mould and pathos of such places, but we have a suspicion that they are written by sentimental young undertakers. Though these songs must have been a solace to Mr. O'Rourke in his captivity, he never so far forgot himself as to acknowledge their receipt. It was only through the kindly chaplain of the prison that Margaret was now and then advised of the well-being of her husband.

Towards the close of that year the great O'Rourke himself did condescend to write one letter. As this letter has never been printed, and as it is the only specimen extant of Mr. O'Rourke's epistolary manner, we lay it before the reader _verbatim et literatim_:--