Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon

by Sir Hall Caine

Not long after that, Davy, who was fifteen years of age, went to live as farm lad with Kinvig, of Ballavolley. Kinvig was a solemn person, very stiff and starchy, and sententious in his way, a mighty man among the Methodists, and a power in the pulpit. He thought he had done an act of charity when he took Davy into his home, and Davy repaid him in due time by falling in love with Nelly, his daughter.

When that happened Davy never quite knew. “That’s the way of it,” he used to say. “A girl slips in, and there ye are.” Nelly was in to a certainty when one night Davy came home late from the club meeting on the street, and rapped at the kitchen window. That was the signal of the home circle that some member of it was waiting at the door. Now there are ways and ways of rapping at a kitchen window. There is the pit-a-pat of a light heart, and the thud-thud of a heavy one; and there is the sharp crack-crack of haste, and the dithering que-we-we of fear. Davy had a rap of his own, and Nelly knew it.

There was a sort of a trip and dance and a rum-tum-tum in Davy’s rap that always made Nelly’s heart and feet leap up at the same instant. But on this unlucky night it was Nelly’s mother who heard it, and opened the door. What happened then was like the dismal sneck of the outside gate to Davy for ten years thereafter. The porch was dark, and so was the little square lobby behind the door. On numerous other nights that had been an advantage in Davy’s eyes, but on this occasion he thought it a snare of the evil one. Seeing something white in a petticoat he thew his arms about it and kissed and hugged it madly. It struck him at the time as strange that the arms he held did not clout him under the chin, and that the lips he smothered did not catch breath enough to call him a gawbie, and whisper that the old people inside were listening. The truth dawned on him in a moment, and then he felt like a man with an eel crawling down his back, and he wanted nothing else for supper.

It was summer time, and Davy, though a most accomplished sleeper, found no difficulty in wakening himself with the dawn next morning. He was cutting turf in the dubs of the Curragh just then, and he had four hours of this pastime, with spells of sober meditation between, before he came up to the house for breakfast. Then as he rolled in at the porch, and stamped the water out of his long-legged boots, he saw at a glance that a thunder-cloud was brewing there. Nelly was busy at the long table before the window, laying the bowls of milk and the deep plates for the porridge. Her print frock was as sweet as the May blossom, her cheeks were nearly as red as the red rose, and like the rose her head hung down. She did not look at him as he entered. Neither did Mrs. Kinvig, who was bending over the pot swung from the hook above the fire, and working the porridge-stick round and round with unwonted energy. But Kinvig himself made up for both of them. The big man was shaving before a looking-glass propped up on the table, and against the Pilgrim’s Progress and Clark’s Commentaries. His left hand held the point of his nose aside between the tip of his thumb and first finger, while the other swept the razor through a hillock of lather and revealed a portion of a mouth twisted three-quarters across his face. But the moment he saw Davy he dropped the razor, and looked up with as much dignity as a man could get out of a countenance half covered with soap.

“Come in, sir,” said he, with a pretense of great deference. “Mawther,” he said, twisting to Mrs. Kinvig, “just wipe down a chair for the gentleman.”

Davy slithered into his seat. “I’m in for it,” he thought.

“They’re telling me,” said Kinvig, “that there is a fortune coming at you. Aw, yes, though, and that you’re taking notions on a farmer’s girl. Respectable man, too—one of the first that’s going, with sixty acres at him and more. Amazing thick, they’re telling me. Kissing behind the door, and the like of that! The capers! It was only yesterday you came to me with nothing on your back but your father’s ould trowis, cut down at the knees.”

Nelly slipped out. Her mother made a noise with the porridge-pot. Davy was silent. Kinvig walloped his razor on the strop with terrific vigor, then paused, pointed the handle in Davy’s direction, tried to curl up his lip into a withering sneer that was half lost in the lather, and said with bitter irony, “My house is too mane for you, sir. You must lave me. It isn’t the Isle of Man itself that’ll hould the likes of you.”

Then Davy found his tongue. “You’re right, sir,” said he, leaping to his feet, “It’s too poor I am for your daughter, is it? Maybe I’ll be a piece richer someday, and then you’ll be a taste civiler.”

“Behold ye now,” said Kinvig, “as bould as a goat! Cut your stick and quick.”