It is a fact which we cannot deny, however much we may feel disposed to marvel at it, that laughter and weeping, at one and the same time, are compatible. The most resolute sceptic on this point would have been convinced of the truth of it had he been introduced into the Misses Martha and Jane Dunning’s parlour on the beautiful summer morning in which the remarkable events we are about to relate occurred.
On the morning in question, a letter-carrier walked up to the cottage with the yellow-painted face, and with the green door, so like a nose in the middle; and the window on each side thereof, so like its eyes; and the green Venetian blinds, that served so admirably for eyelids, attached thereto—all of which stood, and beamed, and luxuriated, and vegetated, and grew old in the centre of the town on the eastern seaboard of America, whose name (for strictly private reasons) we have firmly declined, and do still positively refuse to communicate.
Having walked up to the cottage, the letter-carrier hit it a severe smash on its green nose, as good Captain Dunning had done many, many months before. The result now, as then, was the opening thereof by a servant-girl—the servant-girl of old. The letter-carrier was a taciturn man; he said nothing, but handed in the letter, and went his way. The servant-girl was a morose damsel; she said nothing, but took the letter, shut the door, and laid it (the letter, not the door) on the breakfast-table, and went her way—which way was the way of all flesh, fish, and fowl—namely, the kitchen, where breakfast was being prepared.
Soon after the arrival of the letter Miss Jane Dunning—having put on an immaculately clean white collar and a spotlessly beautiful white cap with pink ribbons, which looked, if possible, taller than usual—descended to the breakfast-parlour. Her eye instantly fell on the letter, and she exclaimed—“Oh!” at the full pitch of her voice. Indeed, did not respect for the good lady forbid, we would say that she yelled “Oh!”
Instantly, as if by magic, a faint “oh!” came down-stairs like an echo, from the region of Miss Martha Dunning’s bedroom, and was followed up by a “What is it?” so loud that the most unimaginative person could not have failed to perceive that the elder sister had opened her door and put her head over the banisters.
“What is it?” repeated Miss Martha.
“A letter!” answered Miss Jane.
“Who from?” (in eager surprise, from above.)
“Brother George!” (in eager delight, from below.)
Miss Jane had not come to this knowledge because of having read the letter, for it still lay on the table unopened, but because she could not read it at all! One of Captain Dunning’s peculiarities was that he wrote an execrably bad and illegible hand. His English was good, his spelling pretty fair, considering the absurd nature of the orthography of his native tongue, and his sense was excellent, but the whole was usually shrouded in hieroglyphical mystery. Miss Jane could only read the opening “My dearest Sisters,” and the concluding “George Dunning,” nothing more. But Miss Martha could, by the exercise of some rare power, spell out her brother’s hand, though not without much difficulty.
“I’m coming,” shouted Miss Martha.
“Be quick!” screamed Miss Jane.
In a few seconds Miss Martha entered the room with her cap and collar, though faultlessly clean and stiff, put on very much awry.
“Give it me! Where is it?”
Miss Jane pointed to the letter, still remaining transfixed to the spot where her eye had first met it, as if it were some dangerous animal which would bite if she touched it.
Miss Martha snatched it up, tore it open, and flopped down on the sofa. Miss Jane snatched up an imaginary letter, tore it open (in imagination), and flopping down beside her sister, looked over her shoulder, apparently to make believe to herself that she read it along with her. Thus they read and commented on the captain’s letter in concert.
“‘Table Bay’—dear me! what a funny bay that must be—‘My dearest Sisters’—the darling fellow, he always begins that way, don’t he, Jane dear?”
“Bless him! he does, Martha dear.”
“‘We’ve been all’—I can’t make this word out, can you, dear?”
“No, love.”
“‘We’ve been all-worked!’ No, it can’t be that. Stay, ‘We’ve been all wrecked!’”
Here Martha laid down the letter with a look of horror, and Jane, with a face of ashy paleness, exclaimed, “Then they’re lost!”
“But no,” cried Martha, “George could not have written to us from Tablecloth Bay had he been lost.”
“Neither he could!” exclaimed Jane, eagerly.
Under the influence of the revulsion of feeling this caused, Martha burst into tears and Jane into laughter. Immediately after, Jane wept and Martha laughed; then they both laughed and cried together, after which they felt for their pocket-handkerchiefs, and discovered that in their haste they had forgotten them; so they had to call the servant-girl and send her up-stairs for them; and when the handkerchiefs were brought, they had to be unfolded before the sisters could dry their eyes.
When they had done so, and were somewhat composed, they went on with the reading of the letter.
“‘We’ve been all wrecked’—Dreadful—‘and the poor Red Angel’”—“Oh! it can’t be that, Martha dear!”
“Indeed, it looks very like it, Jane darling. Oh! I see; it’s Eric—‘and the poor Red Eric has been patched,’ or—‘pitched on a rock and smashed to sticks and stivers’—Dear me! what can that be? I know what ‘sticks’ are, but I can’t imagine what ‘stivers’ mean. Can you, Jane?”
“Haven’t the remotest idea; perhaps Johnson, or Walker, or Webster may—yes, Webster is sure to.”
“Oh! never mind just now, dear Jane, we can look it up afterwards—‘stivers—sticks and stivers’—something very dreadful, I fear. ‘But we’re all safe and well now’—I’m so thankful!—‘and we’ve been stumped’—No ‘starved nearly to death, too. My poor Ailie was thinner than ever I saw her before’—This is horrible, dear Jane.”
“Dreadful, darling Martha.”
“‘But she’s milk and butter’—It can’t be that—‘milk and’—oh!—‘much better now.’”
At this point Martha laid down the letter, and the two sisters wept for a few seconds in silence.
“Darling Ailie!” said Martha, drying her eyes, “how thin she must have been!”
“Ah! yes, and no one to take in her frocks.”
“‘We’ll be home in less than no time,’” continued Martha, reading, “‘so you may get ready for us. Glynn will have tremendous long yarns to spin to you when we come back, and so will Ailie. She has seen a Lotofun since we left you’—Bless me! what can that be, Jane?”
“Very likely some terrible sea monster, Martha; how thankful we ought to be that it did not eat her!—‘seen a Lotofun’—strange!—‘a Lot—o’’—Oh!—‘lot o’ fun!’—that’s it! how stupid of me!—‘and my dear pet has been such an ass’—Eh! for shame, brother.”
“Don’t you think, dear, Martha, that there’s some more of that word on the next line?”
“So there is, I’m so stupid—‘istance’—It’s not rightly divided though—‘as-sistance and a comfort to me.’ I knew it couldn’t be ass.”
“So did I. Ailie an ass! precious child!”
“‘Now, good-bye t’ye, my dear lassies,’
“‘Ever your affectionate brother,’
”(Dear Fellow!)
“‘George Dunning.’”
Now it chanced that the ship which conveyed the above letter across the Atlantic was a slow sailer and was much delayed by contrary winds. And it also chanced—for odd coincidences do happen occasionally in human affairs—that the vessel in which Captain Dunning with Ailie and his crew embarked some weeks later was a fast-sailing ship, and was blown across the sea with strong favouring gales. Hence it fell out that the first vessel entered port on Sunday night, and the second cast anchor in the same port on Monday morning.
The green-painted door, therefore, of the yellow-faced cottage, had scarcely recovered from the assault of the letter-carrier, when it was again struck violently by the impatient Captain Dunning.
Miss Martha, who had just concluded and refolded the letter, screamed “Oh!” and leaped up.
Miss Jane did the same, with this difference, that she leaped up before screaming “Oh!” instead of after doing so. Then both ladies, hearing voices outside, rushed towards the door of the parlour with the intention of flying to their rooms and there carefully arranging their tall white caps and clean white collars, and keeping the early visitor, whoever he or she might be, waiting fully a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, before they should descend, stiffly, starchly, and ceremoniously, to receive him—or her.
These intentions were frustrated by the servant-girl, who opened the green-painted door and let in the captain, who rushed into the parlour and rudely kissed his speechless sisters.
“Can it be?” gasped Martha.
Jane had meant to gasp “Impossible!” but seeing Ailie at that moment bound into Martha’s arms, she changed her intention, uttered a loud scream instead, and fell down flat upon the floor under the impression that she had fainted. Finding, however, that this was not the case, she got up again quickly—ignorant of the fact that the tall cap had come off altogether in the fall—and stood before her sister weeping, and laughing, and wringing her hands, and waiting for her turn.
But it did not seem likely to come soon, for Martha continued to hug Ailie, whom she had raised entirely from the ground, with passionate fervour. Seeing this, and feeling that to wait was impossible, Jane darted forward, threw her arms round Ailie—including Martha, as an unavoidable consequence—and pressed the child’s back to her throbbing bosom.
Between the two poor Ailie was nearly suffocated. Indeed, she was compelled to scream, not because she wished to, but because Martha and Jane squeezed a scream out of her. The scream acted on the former as a reproof. She resigned Ailie to Jane, flung herself recklessly on the sofa, and kicked.
Meanwhile, Captain Dunning stood looking on, rubbing his hands,—slapping his thighs, and blowing his nose. The servant-girl also stood looking on doing nothing—her face was a perfect blaze of amazement.
“Girl,” said the captain, turning suddenly towards her, “is breakfast ready?”
“Yes,” gasped the girl.
“Then fetch it.”
The girl did not move.
“D’ye hear?” cried the captain.
“Ye–es.”
“Then look alive.”
The captain followed this up with a roar and such an indescribably ferocious demonstration that the girl fled in terror to the culinary regions, where she found the cat breakfasting on a pat of butter. The girl yelled, and flung first a saucepan, and after that the lid of a teapot, at the thief. She failed, of course, in this effort to commit murder, and the cat vanished.
Breakfast was brought, but, excepting in the captain’s case, breakfast was not eaten. What between questioning, and crying, and hysterical laughing, and replying, and gasping, explaining, misunderstanding, exclaiming, and choking, the other members of the party that breakfasted that morning in the yellow cottage with the much-abused green door, did little else than upset tea-cups and cream-pots, and sputter eggs about, and otherwise make a mess of the once immaculate tablecloth.
“Oh, Aunt Martha!” exclaimed Ailie, in the midst of a short pause in the storm, “I’m so very, very, very glad to be home!”
The child said this with intense fervour. No one but he who has been long, long away from the home of his childhood, and had come back after having despaired of ever seeing it again, can imagine with what deep fervour she said it, and then burst into tears.
Aunt Jane at that moment was venturing to swallow her first mouthful of tea, so she gulped and choked, and Aunt Martha spent the next five minutes in violently beating the poor creature’s back, as if she deemed choking a serious offence which merited severe punishment. As for the captain, that unfeeling monster went on grinning from ear to ear, and eating a heavy breakfast, as if nothing had happened. But a close observer might have noticed a curious process going on at the starboard side of his weather-beaten nose.
In one of his many desperate encounters with whales, Captain Dunning had had the end of a harpoon thrust accidentally into the prominent member of his face just above the bridge. A permanent little hole was the result, and on the morning of which we write, a drop of water got into that hole continually, and when it rolled out—which it did about once every two minutes—and fell into the captain’s tea-cup, it was speedily replaced by another drop, which trickled into the depths of that small cavern on the starboard side of the captain’s nose. We don’t pretend to account for that curious phenomenon. We merely record the fact.
While the breakfast party were yet in this April mood, a knock was heard at the outer door.
“Visitors!” said Martha, with a look that would have led a stranger to suppose that she held visitors in much the same estimation as tax-gatherers.
“How awkward!” exclaimed Aunt Jane.
“Send ’em away, girl,” cried the captain. “We’re all engaged. Can’t see any one to-day.”
In a moment the servant-girl returned.
“He says he must see you.”
“See who?” cried the captain.
“See you, sir.”
“Must he; then he shan’t. Tell him that.”
“Please, sir, he says he won’t go away.”
“Won’t he?”
As he said this the captain set his teeth, clenched his fists, and darted out of the room.
“Oh! George! Stop him! do stop him. He’s so violent! He’ll do something dreadful!” said Aunt Martha.
“Will no one call out murder?” groaned Aunt Jane, with a shudder.
As no one, however, ventured to check Captain Dunning, he reached the door, and confronted a rough, big, burly sailor, who stood outside with a free-and-easy expression of countenance, and his hands in his trousers pockets.
“Why don’t you go away when you’re told, eh?” shouted the captain.
“’Cause I won’t,” answered the man coolly.
The captain stepped close up, but the sailor stood his ground and grinned.
“Now, my lad, if you don’t up anchor and make sail right away, I’ll knock in your daylights.”
“No, you won’t do nothin’ o’ the kind, old gen’lem’n; but you’ll double-reef your temper, and listen to wot I’ve got to say; for it’s very partikler, an’ won’t keep long without spilin’.”
“What have you got to say, then?” said the captain, becoming interested, but still feeling nettled at the interruption.
“Can’t tell you here.”
“Why not?”
“Never mind; but put on your sky-scraper, and come down with me to the grog-shop wot I frequents, and I’ll tell ye.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort; be off,” cried the captain, preparing to slam the door.
“Oh! it’s all the same to me, in coorse, but I rather think if ye know’d that it’s ’bout the Termagant, and that ’ere whale wot—but it don’t matter. Good-mornin’.”
“Stay,” cried the captain, as the last words fell on his ears.
“Have you really anything to say to me about that ship?”
“In coorse I has.”
“Won’t you come in and say it here?”
“Not by no means. You must come down to the grog-shop with me.”
“Well, I’ll go.”
So saying the captain ran back to the parlour; said, in hurried tones, that he had to go out on matters of importance, but would be back to dine at five, and putting on his hat, left the cottage in company with the strange sailor.
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