A Rivermouth Romance | Page 6

frettin' hisself, wid money in
the bank? How much is it, Peggy darlint?"
And divil a stroke more of work did he do. He lounged down on the
wharves, and, with his short clay pipe stuck between his lips and his
hands in his pockets, stared off at the sail-boats on the river. He sat on
the door-step of the Finnigan domicile, and plentifully chaffed the
passers-by. Now and then, when he could wheedle some fractional
currency out of Margaret, he spent it like a crown-prince at The Wee
Drop around the corner. With that fine magnetism which draws
together birds of a feather, he shortly drew about him all the
ne'er-do-weels of Rivermouth.
It was really wonderful what an unsuspected lot of them there was.
From all the frowzy purlieus of the town they crept forth into the

sunlight to array themselves under the banner of the prince of
scallawags. It was edifying of a summer afternoon to see a dozen of
them sitting in a row, like turtles, on the string-piece of Jedediah Rand's
wharf, with their twenty-four feet dangling over the water, assisting Mr.
O'Rourke in contemplating the islands in the harbor, and upholding the
scenery, as it were.
The rascal had one accomplishment, he had a heavenly voice--quite in
the rough, to be sure--and he played, on the violin like an angel. He did
not know one note from another, but he played in a sweet natural way,
just as Orpheus must have played, by ear. The drunker he was the more
pathos and humor he wrung from the old violin, his sole piece of
personal property. He had a singular fancy for getting up at two or three
o'clock in the morning, and playing by an open casement, to the
distraction of all the dogs in the immediate neighborhood and
innumerable dogs in the distance.
Unfortunately, Mr. O'Rourke's freaks were not always of so innocent a
complexion. On one or two occasions, through an excess of animal and
other spirits, he took to breaking windows in the town. Among his
nocturnal feats he accomplished the demolition of the glass in the door
of The Wee Drop. Now, breaking windows in Rivermouth is an
amusement not wholly disconnected with an interior view of the
police-station (bridewell is the local term); so it happened that Mr.
O'Rourke woke up one fine morning and found himself snug and tight
in one of the cells in the rear of the Brick Market. His plea that the
bull's-eye in the glass door of The Wee Drop winked at him in an
insult-in' manner as he was passing by did not prevent Justice Hackett
from fining the delinquent ten dollars and costs, which made sad havoc
with the poor wife's bank account. So Margaret's married life wore on,
and all went merry as a funeral knell.
After Mrs. Bilkins, with a brow as severe as that of one of the Parcæ,
had closed the door upon the O'Rourkes that summer morning, she sat
down on the stairs, and, sinking the indignant goddess in the woman,
burst into tears. She was still very wroth with Margaret Callaghan, as
she persisted in calling her; very merciless and unforgiving, as the

gentler sex are apt to be--to the gentler sex. Mr. Bilkins, however, after
the first vexation, missed Margaret from the household; missed her
singing, which was in itself as helpful as a second girl; missed her hand
in the preparation of those hundred and one nameless comforts which
are necessities to the old, and wished in his soul that he had her back
again. Who could make a gruel, when he was ill, or cook a steak, when
he was well, like Margaret? So, meeting her one morning at the
fish-market--for Mr. O'Rourke had long since given over the onerous
labor of catching dinners--he spoke to her kindly, and asked her how
she liked the change in her life, and if Mr. O'Rourke was good to her.
"Troth, thin, sur," said Margaret, with a short, dry laugh, "he 's the
divil's own!"
Margaret was thin and careworn, and her laugh had the mild gayety of
champagne not properly corked. These things were apparent even to Mr.
Bilkins, who was not a shrewd observer.
"I 'm afraid, Margaret," he remarked sorrowfully, "that you are not
making both ends meet."
"Begorra, I 'd be glad if I could make one ind meet!" returned Margaret.
With a duplicity quite foreign to his nature, Mr. Bilkins gradually drew
from her the true state of affairs. Mr. O'Rourke was a very bad case
indeed; he did nothing towards her support; he was almost constantly
drunk; the little money she had laid by was melting away, and would
not last until winter. Mr. O'Rourke was perpetually coming home with
a sprained