The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light that lies in woman's eyes,
Has been my heart's undoing.
Though wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorned the love she brought me;
My only books were woman's looks.
And folly's all they've taught me.
—MOORE.
Admiral Harry Havenful sat alone in the parlor of the White Squall, the heels of his boots elevated on the knobs of the andirons, his chair tipped back to that sublime angle which women admire, but men only understand. A long meerschaum, with an amber mouth-piece, protruded from his lips, while whiffs of blue, vapory smoke curled from the corner of his mouth; his hands stuck in his trousers pockets, and his eyes fixed admiringly on the pink and yellow ship-of-war on the mantel. Admiral Harry Havenful was enjoying life hugely on a small scale, when a dispirited knock, such as moneyless debtors give, was heard at the outer door.
"Tumble up, below there! tumble up, ahoy-y-y!" roared the admiral, taking the pipe from his mouth to summon the servants.
In compliance with this zephyr-like request, one of the darkeys "tumbled up," accordingly, and on opening the door, Mr. O. C. Toosypegs stalked in, and with the head of his cane in his mouth, entered the parlor and presented himself to the jolly little admiral.
"D'ye do, Orlando? give us your flipper," said the admiral, protruding one huge hand without rising, or even turning his head, merely casting a glance over his shoulder, and smoking on as placidly as before.
"I'm very well—that is, I ain't very well at all, Admiral Havenful, I'm very much obliged to you," said Mr. Toosypegs, grasping the huge hand and wriggling it faintly a second or two. "My health ain't so good as it might be, and I don't expect it ever will be again, but I'm resigned to that and everything else that may happen. It's nasty to be always complaining, you know, Admiral Havenful."
"That's so," growled the admiral, in a tone so deeply bass that it was quite startling.
"Therefore, Admiral Havenful, though I ain't so well as I might be, I'm very well indeed, I'm very much obliged to you. It must be nice to die and have no more bother—don't you think so, Admiral Havenful?" said Mr. Toosypegs, with a groan so deep that the admiral took his pipe from his mouth and stared at him.
"What now?" grunted the admiral, who foresaw something was coming; "heave to!"
"Admiral Havenful, would you be so good as not to say that? You mean well, I know, but you can't imagine the unpleasant sensations it causes—ugh!" said Mr. Toosypegs, with a wry face and a shudder. "You never were sea-sick, were you, Admiral Havenful? If you were, you don't require to be told the pang that hearing that inflicts upon me. Therefore, please don't say it again, for it gives me the most peculiar sensations that even was."
The admiral grunted, and began smoking away like an ill-repaired chimney. Mr. Toosypegs sat uneasily on the edge of his chair, and continued to make a light and rather unsatisfactory repast off the head of his cane. Thus a mournful silence was continued for some fifteen or twenty minutes, and then the admiral took his pipe from his mouth, wiped it on the cuff of his sleeve, and without looking at Mr. Toosypegs, drew a long, placid breath, and held it out toward him with a laconic:
"Smoke?"
"Thankee, Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, mournfully, "I never do."
"More fool you, then," said the admiral, gruffly, putting it in his own mouth again.
"Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, in a large tone of voice, "I'm aware that I ain't so wise as some of my friends could wish me; but, at the same time let me assure you that I don't consider it a proof of wisdom to smoke at all. Smokers mean real well, I know, but it's unpleasant to others, besides setting the in'ards in a dingy state, blacking the teeth, adulterating the breath, and often producing spontaneous combustion. Which means, Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, elevating his cane to make the explanation, "getting worked up to a high degree of steam, and going off quite unexpected and promiscuous, some day, with a bang, and leaving nothing behind to tell the melancholy tale but a pinch of ashes, and that—"
"Oh, bother!" cut in the admiral, impatiently, "Belay your jawing tackle, young man, and let somebody else have sea-room. What port do you hail from last?"
"Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, in no way offended at this cavalier mode of treating his digression on the evils of smoking, "if you mean by that where I was all morning, I've just come from Dismal Hollow. Aunt Prisciller wasn't in—well, she wasn't in very good spirits—and so I got out of the back door and come away. I was going to Old Barrens Cottage, only I saw Judge Lawless' horse before the door, and so I came here."
"Always welcome, Orlando, boy—always welcome," said the admiral, briskly. "But hold on a minute! What the dickens brings that stiff bowspirit of a brother-in-law of mine so often to that cottage? Eh, Orlando?"
"I don't know, I'm sure, Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs. "It's real singular, too, because he never used to go there at all, and now his horse is at the door every day."
"So's yours, for that matter. Hey, Orlando?"
Mr. Toosypegs blushed to the very roots of his hair, and shifted his feet uneasily over the floor, as though it burnt them.
"Orlando," said the admiral—holding his pipe between his finger and thumb, and regarding significantly these emotions—"Orlando, I see breakers ahead!"
"Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, in a tone of mingled uneasiness and anguish, "I dare say you do; but, my gracious! don't keep looking at a fellow so! I couldn't help it, you know; and I know it's all my own fault to be miserable for life. I don't blame anybody at all, and I rather like being miserable for life than otherwise. I know you mean well, but I'd rather you wouldn't keep looking at me so. I'm very much obliged to you."
"Orlando," solemnly began the admiral, without removing his eyes from the other's face, "you're steering out of your course altogether. Come to anchor! Now, then, what's to pay?"
The unexpected energy with which this last question was asked had such an effect on the nerves of Mr. O. C. Toosypegs, that he gave a sudden jump, suggestive of sitting down on an upturned pin cushion, and grasped his stick in wild alarm.
"Now, Orlando," repeated the admiral, with a wave of his pipe—"now, Orlando, the question is, what's to pay?"
"Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs in terror, "there ain't nothing to pay; I don't owe a cent in the world, s'elp me Bob! I don't owe a single blamed brass farthing to a child unborn!"
"Pah!" said the admiral, with a look of intense disgust at his obtuseness, "I didn't mean that. I want to know what's up, where the wind sits; what you keep cruising off and on that cottage for all the time. Now, then, hold hard!"
"It's my intention to hold hard, Admiral Havenful," replied Mr. Toosypegs, blushing like a beet-root. "But I'd rather not mention what takes me there, if it's all the same to you. It's a secret, locked deep in the unfathomable recesses of this here bosom; and I never mean to reveal it to anybody till I'm a melancholy corpse in the skies. You'll excuse me, Admiral Havenful; a fellow can't always restrain his tears, you know; and I feel so miserable, thank you, of late, that it's a consolation even to cry," said Mr. Toosypegs, wiping his eye.
"Now, Orlando, you just hold on a minute—will you?" said the admiral, facing briskly round, with much the same air as an unfeeling dentist who determines to have your tooth out whether you will or not; "now, look here and let's do things ship-shape. Has our Firefly got anything to do with it?"
"Admiral Havenful, I'm happy to say she has not. I felt pretty badly about Miss Pet, there, one time; but I have got nicely over that. It wasn't near so dangerous as I expected it would be; but this—this is. The way I feel sometimes, Admiral Havenful, is awful to contemplate. I can't sleep nor eat, and I don't take no pleasure even in my new pantaloons with the blue stripe down the side. I often lie awake nights crying now, and I wish I had never been born! I do wish it!" said Mr. Toosypegs, with a sudden howl. "Where's the good of it, if a fellow's going to be made miserable this way, I want to know?"
"Orlando Toosypegs," said the admiral, rising, sternly, "just look here, will you? I'm not going to stand this sort of talk, you know—this flying in the face of Providence"—here the admiral raised his glazed hat, and looked reverently at a blue-bottle fly on the ceiling—"because it's not proper nor ship-shape, nohow you can fix it. Now, Orlando, I've advised you time and again—I've been a father to you before you was the size of a tar-bucket—I've turned you up and spanked you when you wasn't big as a well-grown marlin-spike, and I've often given you a good kicking when you were older, for your shortcomings; I've talked to you, Orlando Toosypegs, for your good till all was blue—I've made myself as hoarse as a boatswain splashing showers of good advice on you; and now what's my return? You say you don't see no use in being born. Orlando, it grieves me—it makes me feel as bad as if I had drank a pail of bilge-water; but there is no help for it! I give you up to ruin—I've lost all faith in human morals—I wash my hands of you altogether!"
Here the admiral looked around for some water to literally fulfill his threat; but, seeing none, he wiped his hands on the table-cloth, and resumed his seat with the air a Spartan father may be supposed to have worn when condemning his own son to death.
So deeply affected was Mr. Toosypegs by this pathetic exhortation that he sobbed away like a hyena in his flaring bandanna, with a great noise and much wiping of eyes and nose, which showed he was not lost to all sense of human feeling.
"Yes, Orlando," said the admiral, mournfully, "I repeat it, I'm determined to wash my hands of you. The basin ain't here; but it's no matter. Your father was a nice man, and I'm sorry his son ever come to this."
"Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, hiccoughing violently, "I'm ashamed of myself. I oughtn't to have said it and I won't do so no more at any price. I know—I know I oughtn't mind being wretched, but somehow I do, and I can't help it. If you'll only forgive me, and not wash your hands of me, I'll tell you what's the matter and promise to try and do better for the time to come."
"Well, heave ahead!" said the somewhat mollified mariner.
"Admiral Havenful!" exclaimed Mr. Toosypegs, springing to his feet with such startling energy that the old sailor jumped up, too, and brandished his pipe, expecting a violent personal assault and battery—"will you be good enough not to say that? Oh, my gracious!" exclaimed Mr. Toosypegs, in a wildly-distracted tone, "if it ain't too darned bad. Ugh!"
And with a violent shudder and a sea-green visage, the unhappy young man sat down, with one hand on his mouth and the other on his dinner.
With a violent snort of unspeakable contempt, the admiral flung himself back in his chair, and turned up his Roman nose to the highest possible angle of scorn.
"Excuse me, Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, at length, in a fainting voice, "I feel better, now. It was so—so sudden, and took me so unexpected, that—that it rather startled me; but I'm quite well now. I'm very much obliged to you. Ugh! The very mention of—you know what follows sea-sickness—turns my very skin to goose-flesh. We won't speak of it any more, if it's all the same to you, Admiral Havenful. I promised to tell you the cause of my misery—didn't I? Yes? Well, it's—it's Miss Minnie."
"Little Snowflake! hea—I mean go ahead."
"I went and fell in love with her, Admiral Havenful," said Mr. Toosypegs, looking around blushing.
"Stand from under!" growled the bewildered admiral.
"Admiral Havenful, it's my intention to stand from under as much as possible. I'm very much obliged to you," said Mr. Toosypegs, politely. "I dare say you're surprised to hear it, but I really couldn't help it. I assure you she was so—so stunning, so as—I don't know what to call it; but it's enough to turn a fellow crazy, by granny! I know she don't care a pin for me. I know she don't, and nobody can tell the state it throws me into. I thought I felt dreadfully about Miss Pet's black eyes, and I did, too; but it ain't no circumstance to the state Miss Minnie's blue ones pitches me into. Admiral Havenful, I don't expect you've ever been in love, but it's the most awful state to be in ever was. It makes you feel worse than sitting down into a wasp's nest—it really does. In fact, I don't know anything, except, perhaps, sea-sickness, that's equal to it in unpleasantness."
So completely unexpected was this declaration, that the admiral so far forgot himself as to look appealingly at his pipe and growl out, "Heave ahead!"
The effect of this command on Mr. Toosypegs, in his present disordered state of mind was perfectly electrifying. Springing to his feet, he seized his hat and cane, clapped his bandanna to his mouth, and, with a look of intense anguish no pen can describe, made a rush from the door, fled from the house, and vanished for the remainder of that day from mortal eye.