A Rivermouth Romance | Page 2

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 Bonnybell's
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 close 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 unbeknownst 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 were unheard that forenoon.
The town clock was striking eleven, and the antiquated timepiece 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 début. 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 it 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