Salt Water | Page 7

not dined; and when Larry, who was rather longer than I had expected, returned, I found that he had purchased all sorts of necessary provisions, and that they only wanted cooking for me to eat them. While he laid the cloth, the landlady performed the office of cook; and in a little time a very nice dinner of veal cutlets, ham, and fried potatoes made its appearance. When Larry had nothing to do but to look about him, I observed him fix his eyes in a strange sort of way on the model of the ship, and then at the shells and the other things in the room. At last he turned to the landlady.
"Please, marm," said he, "where did you get all them things from?"
"Oh, sir," answered the landlady, "they were given to me by my poor dear man, who has been dead and gone this many a long year."
"May I be bold to ask, and no offence, what is your name, marm?" said Larry.
"My husband was an Irishman, like you, and my name is Harrigan," answered the landlady, who held at the moment a jug of beer, from which she was going to pour me out a tumblerful.
"Faith, you may well say that he was like me, marm, for, curious enough, that's my name too," answered Larry.
"Your name!" exclaimed the landlady, standing still and looking doubtfully at him.
"Yes, my name--it is, indeed," said Larry. "And may I ask what is your Christian name, marm?"
"Jane is my name, and yours is Lawrence!" shrieked Mrs Harrigan, letting fall the jug of beer, which was smashed to pieces, and rushing towards him.
"By the pipers, you're right now; but if you're yourself--my own Jane Harrigan, whom I thought dead and buried, or married long ago to another man, it's the happiest day of my life that I've seen for a long time," cried Larry, throwing his arms round her and giving her a hug which I thought would have squeezed all the breath out of her body.
I looked up at the pictures on the wall, and fancied he was imitating one of the persons there represented; though, to be sure, my friends were rather aged lovers.
"And I thought you were lost at sea long, long ago," cried Mrs Harrigan, now sobbing in earnest.
"Faith, so I was, Jane, and it's a long time I've been being found again," said Larry; "and how we've both come to life again is more than I can tell."
"Oh, I never forgot you, and wouldn't listen to what any other man had to say to me," said Mrs Harrigan.
"Nor I, faith, what the girls said to me," returned Larry. "But for the matter of that, my timber toe wasn't much to their liking."
"I see, Larry, you've lost your leg since I lost you, and it was that puzzled me, or I should have known you at once--that I should," observed Mrs Harrigan, giving him an affectionate kiss on his rough cheek.
They did not mind me at all, and went on talking away as if I was not in the room, which was very amusing.
Larry afterwards confessed to me that he should not have recognised his wife, for when he went to sea and left her for the last time, she was a slim, pretty young woman; and though she was certainly not uncomely, no one could accuse her of not having flesh enough. Larry, as many another sailor has done, had married at the end of a very short courtship, his wife, then a nursery-maid in an officer's family at Portsmouth; and a few weeks afterwards he had been pressed and sent out to the East Indies. While there, he had been drafted into another ship, and the ship in which he had left home had been lost with all hands. Of this event his wife became acquainted, and having come from an inland county, and not knowing how to gain further information about him, she had returned to her parents in the country. They died, and she went again into service.
Meantime, Larry, having lost his leg, came home, and notwithstanding all his inquiries, he could gain no tidings of her. At last he came to the conclusion that she must have married again, probably another sailor, and gone away with him--no uncommon occurrence in those days; so he philosophically determined to think no more about her, but to return to the land of his birth to end his days.
She had gone through the usual vicissitudes of an unprotected female, and at last returned to Portsmouth with a family in whose service she acted as curse. Here, having saved up a little money, she determined to settle as a lodging-house keeper, and she had taken the house in which we found her.
This event, caused me very great satisfaction,