Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon

by Sir Hall Caine

“Say that I’ve turned my husband out of doors, and that I’ve taken his money, and that I am a cat and shrew, and a nagger, and that there ought to be a law to put me down.”

“My dear Nelly,” said Jenny, “it was yourself that said so. I was speaking of the wife of the Manx sailor.”

“Yes, but you were thinking of me,” said Mrs. Quiggin.

“I was thinking of her,” said Jenny.

“You were thinking of me as well,” said Mrs. Quiggin.

“I tell you that I was only thinking of her,” said Jenny.

“You were thinking of me, Jenny Crow—you know you were; and you meant that I was as bad as she was. But circumstances alter cases, and my case is different. My husband is turning me out of doors: and, as for his money, I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it. I’ll go back home to-morrow morning. I will—indeed, I will. I’ll bear this torment no longer.”

So saying, with many gasps and gulps, breaking at last into a burst of weeping, she covered her face with both hands and flounced out of the room. Jenny watched her go, then listened to the sobs that came from the other side of the door, and said beneath her breath, “Let her cry, poor girl. The crying has to be done by somebody, and it might as well be she. Crying is good for a woman sometimes, but when a man cries it hurts so much.”

Half an hour later, as Jenny was leaving the room for dinner, she heard Mrs. Quiggin telling Peggy Quine to ask at the office for her bill, and to order a carriage to be ready at the door for her at eleven o’clock in the morning.

When the first burst of her vexation was spent Mrs. Quiggin made a secret and startling discovery. The man whom Jenny Crow had stumbled upon, first on the Head and afterward on the Laxey coach, could be no one in the world but her own husband. A certain shadowy suspicion of this had floated hazily before her mind at the beginning, but she had dismissed the idea and forgotten it. Now she felt so sure of it that it was beyond contempt of question. So the Manx sailor in whom Jenny had found so much to admire—the simple, brave, manly, generous, natural soul, all fresh air and by rights all sunshine—was no other than Capt’n Davy Quiggin! That thought brought the hot blood tingling to Mrs. Quiggin’s cheeks with sensations of exquisite delight, and never before had her husband seemed so fine in her own eyes as now, when she saw him so noble in the eyes of another. But close behind this delicious reflection, like the green blight at the back of the apple blossom, lay a withering and cankering thought. The Manx sailor’s wife—she who had so behaved that it was impossible for him to live with her—she who was a cat, a shrew, a nagger, a thankless wretch, a piece of human flint, a creature that should be put down by the law as it puts down biting dogs—she whose whole selfish body was not worth the tip of his little finger—was no one else than herself!