Part 18 (1/2)
At the time we were exhibiting in the larger towns about Long Island Sound, where it happened we'd never exhibited before, dropping into harbours and setting up the big tent on any bit of land convenient to the pier. We stayed a long or short time, according to patronage.
Whether it was that Flannagan was too busy, or angry at Madame Bill for her actions, and didn't know if he wanted a wife with a spear, or one that was reckless with her headgear, I couldn't have said at that time; but he surely said no more to Madame Bill that I knew of, whereas Stevey Todd kept arguing with her all over the s.h.i.+p, and mainly under the cabin window. Sometimes he'd trim his sails close in to the subject of matrimony, and sometimes he'd be sailing so far off the quarter that I couldn't but call out to him through the window and tell him, ”Hard a lee there, Stevey! You'll never fetch it that tack;” when he'd s.h.i.+ft his helm, feeling the edge of the breeze with as neat a piece of seamans.h.i.+p as a man could ask, and come up dead into the wind, his sails dropping back stiff on his yardarms, and the subject of matrimony speared on the end of his bowsprit; then Madame Bill would get up, and run away laughing. She seemed to enjoy those arguments, and I judged Stevey Todd would fetch port maybe in course of time. Meanwhile I sat smoking peaceful at my cabin window, and watched the sh.o.r.e slipping by, that I knew so well of old. By-and-by I saw Telford Point, and then the Musquoit River mouth by Adrian. Stevey Todd sat under the window putting fine edges on his arguments. And I says:
”Stevey,” I says, ”I was born and bred on this coast,” but Stevey Todd was that taken up with his points of argument to Madame Bill that he didn't have any interest in my beginnings, and I went off to find Flannagan.
”Flannagan,” I says, ”I got a sentiment.”
”Sintimint, is it!” he says. ”Come off! Ye salted codfis.h.!.+ If I ain't got tin to your one, I'm another,” he says.
It made me mad to hear him talk that way, and I set him down on the starboard anchor and I argued it. I told him of the little town of Greenough, and then I told him of Madge Pemberton, that afterwards was Madge McCulloch, and how the old sh.o.r.e village lay, its street and white houses and its church with the gilded cupola, till Flannagan got interested. And there we talked a long time.
”Why, ye are salted, Tom,” he says, ”but I'm not just sayin' ye're canned. We ain't due in New London till Thursday, an' it's on me moind we'll exhibit a bit in this town of Greenough.”
That afternoon, then, we hauled into the harbour, by where the fis.h.i.+ng boats lay, and moored the _Annalee_ to the old stone pier. Flannagan saw the tent, platform, and benches put up, and in the early evening he went inland to the village and didn't come back for some hours.
It was a moonlight night, and the show people were still getting ready for the next day. I was at the deck-cabin window, smoking an evening pipe, looking at the tent that stood on the sandy piece of land beyond the pier. I could see the trees of the village, and the church spire against the sky, and I thought of the way I'd meant to come back to Greenough, when I left it to go ”romping and roaming,” as Sadler had said, and how now I was come home with grey hairs.
There was the hill between Newport Street and the harbour, and far along to the west I could see where Pemberton's stood, and see what might be its lights.
Pretty soon I heard David, the trick dog, barking, and I looked out, and saw Stevey Todd and Madame Bill coming along in the wake of David, and I judged that Stevey Todd was meaning to put in an odd moment or two arguing, and that Madame Bill was going to be joyous about it. David appeared to be feeling tolerable cheerful, as if saying to himself, ”They're going to do something now, sure.” They sat down by the window, and Madame Bill was speaking:
”Stevey Todd,” she says, ”I think it would not be such advantage, not at all. Because it is not good to my looks that I become two hundred pounds like my Bill, and if now I have a husband who cook so delicious, so perfect, as you, and who make me laugh between meals without rest and without pity, as you, which gives the appet.i.te enormous, so that I have gained five pounds since I weigh before, and by this am alarmed, disconsolate, helas! what do I do? Am I elephants in this show? But how?
I observe you do not ask that I marry you, but you say, 'It is a good time to talk here or there, about this or that--eh? Well, perhaps about matrimony.' Haw! haw! ho! ho! But how so? If you do not say, 'Will you?'
how can I say 'No'?”
”Taking that argument so stated,” says Stevey Todd, ”it might be called a tidy argument and no harm done, or you might say there was two arguments in it. Now, taking the first one, a man might make this point as bearing on it: for you take the tin-typist, who's a good eater and a well-fleshed man, and yet he's a gloomy man, as you might say, not putting it too strong; and on the other hand here's David, who's what you'd call a joking dog, and as an eater without an equal of his size, though an elderly dog, and yet he's a thin dog, as his business in the show makes needful for him. Which, I says, might be put up as an argument by such as wanted to use it, if any one was speaking contrary to cooks as being dangerous to parties in the show business, on account of interests not being along the line of weight, nor yet advertising s.p.a.ce on legs which they're able to furnish. Now, taking the second argument, I wouldn't deny you might be right, and there's the point. For not to speak of giving no cause for crowns throwed around expensive, or spears stuck into parties disrespectful to memory of deceased, I says, here's the point. For if you can't say 'No,' till I say 'Will you?' it follows you can't do it till I say those words.”
”I can too!” says Madame Bill.
”No, ye can't! No, ye can't!” says Stevey Todd.
Madame Bill began to laugh, and Flannagan, who was coming over the s.h.i.+p's side, he stopped at hearing her, and slid across the deck behind the companion. Then Madame Bill went below, ha-ha-ing melodious, and Flannagan called in a loud whisper over the roof:
”Hoi! Stevey Todd! Are ye done wid it?”
”She ain't said no,” says Stevey Todd. ”She ain't said no.”
It came afternoon of the next day, and the show was opened, and the people came flocking in. Near by the tent door was Stevey Todd's ”Cocoanut Cake, Hot Waffle and Fizz Table.” On the platform the company sat in a half-circle, ready for Flannagan's opening speech to explain the qualities and talents of each. It was a show to be proud of, and in point of colour resembling solar spectrums, or peac.o.c.ks' tails. Madame Bill had charge of costumes, and her tastes were what you might call exhilarated. Flannagan began:
”Ladies and gintlemen,” he says. ”The pleasure I take in inthroducin'
'The Flannagan an' Imparial Itinerant Exhibition,' to this intelligent aujunce, has niver been equalled in me mimory.
”I see before me,” he says, ”a ripresentative array of this grreat counthry's agricultural pursuits, to say nothin' of thim that fish. I see before me numerous handsome an' imposin' mathrons, to say nothin'
of foine washed babies. I see before me many a rosy girrl a-chewin'
cocoanut candy that ain't so swate as herself, an' many a boy wid his pockets full of paynuts an' his head full of divelthries.
”Is it the prisence of such an aujunce which gives me the pleasure unequalled in me mimory? No!
”Ye see before ye 'The Flannagan an' Imparial Itinerant Exhibition,'” he says. ”Yonder is the three j.a.panese tumblers from the private company of the Meekado, trained to expriss by motion an' mysthical attichude, the eternal principles of poethry as understood by Orientals, Hinjoos, an' thim Chinaysers: forninst the same, the beaucheous Princess Popocatapetl, whose royal ancesthors was discovered by Columbus, an'