Then came another burst of weeping, but this time the tears were of shame, not of vexation, and they washed away every remaining evil humor and left the vision clear. She had been in the wrong, she was judged out of her own mouth; but she had no intention of fitting on the cap of the unknown woman. Why should she? Jenny did not know who the woman was—that was as plain as a pickle. Then where was the good of confessing?
CHAPTER VI.
While Jenny Crow was doing her easy duty at Castle Mona, Lovibond was engaged in a task of yet more simplicity at Fort Ann. On returning from Laxey he found Captain Davey occupied with Willie Quarrie in preparations for a farewell supper to be given that night to the cronies who had helped him to spend his fortune. These worthies had deserted his company since Lovibond had begun to take all the winnings, including some of their own earlier ones; and hence the necessity to invite them. “There’s ould Billy, the carrier—ask him,” Davy was saying, as he lay stretched on the sofa, puffing whorls of gray smoke from a pipe of thick twist. “And then there’s Kerruish, the churchwarden, and Kewley, the crier, and Hugh Corlett, the blacksmith, and Tommy Tubman, the brewer, and Willie Qualtrough, that keeps the lodging-house contagious, and the fat man that bosses the Sick and Indignant society, and the long, lanky shanks that is the headpiece of the Friendly and Malevolent Association—got them all down, boy?”
“They’re all through there in my head already, Capt’n,” groaned Willie Quarrie in despair, as he struggled at the table to keep pace with his slow pen to Davy’s impetuous tongue.
“Then ask whosomever you plaze, boy,” said Davy. “What’s it saying in the ould Book: ‘Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.’ Only it’s the back-courts and the public-houses this time, and you’ll be wanting no grappling hooks to fetch them. Just whip a whisky bottle under your arm, and they’ll be asking for no other invitation. Reminds me, sir,” he added, looking up as Lovibond entered, “reminds me of little Jimmy Quayle’s aisy way of fetching poor Hughie Collister from the bottom of Ramsey harbor. Himself and Hughie were same as brothers—that thick—and they’d been middling hard on the drink together, and one night Hughie, going home to Andreas, tumbled over the bridge by the sandy road and got hisself washed away and drowned. So the boys fetched grapplings and went out immadient to drag for the body, but Jimmy took another notion. He rigged up a tremenjous long pole, like your mawther’s clothes’ prop on washing day and tied a string to the top of it, and baited the end of the string with an empty bottle of Ould Tom, and then sat hisself down on the end of the jetty, same as a man that’s going fishing. ‘Lord-a-massy, Jemmy,’ says the boys, looking up out of the boat; ‘whatever in the name of goodness are you doing there?’ ‘They’re telling me,’ says Jemmy, bobbing the gin-bottle up and down constant, flip-a-flop, flip-a-flop atop of the water; ‘they’re telling me,’ says he, ‘that poor ould Hughie is down yonder, and I’m thinking there isn’t nothing in the island that’ll fetch him up quicker till this.’”
“But what is going on here, Capt’n?” said Lovibond, with an inclination of his head toward the table where Willie Quarrie was still laboring with his invitations.
“It’s railly wuss till ever, sir,” groaned Willie from behind his pen.
“What does it mean?” said Lovibond.
“It manes that I’m sailing to-morrow,” said Davy.