Davy Jones's Locker

“ Depend on’t there’s nothing like having a beautiful, virtuous young woman on your side, to keep Davy Jones and all his devils at long range. The fact is, they’re afraid of her, she’s so different to theirselves. ”

“ The air was full of them, with processions of mourning men and women. The girl seemed to have a fondness for odd airs, played in imitation of the lower and middle registers of the voice, with treble accompaniment, and the listener almost imagined that a strong baritone, the voice of an actor in a play, was telling in plain English why Allan Dorris, the occupant of The Locks, came to Davy's Bend, and why he was discontented and ill at ease. ”

“ He wants to be sure of his ground before he jumps."
"Hub!" grunted Davy, "if I'd stopped to count ten before I slid down, I wonder now what would have happened to me. Some fellers act from impulse every time, and you can't change the spots of the leopard, they say. What's dyed in the wool can't be washed out, as took as Bumpus here with his carroty hair."
"You leave my hair alone, Davy Jones, and pay attention to your own business," complained the stout scout, aggressively. "You just know you're a going to get it when Thad makes his report, and you're trying to draw attention somewhere else. ”

“ Now about this going to New York to-night. He would like to be prevented from that journey. What shall do that for David Lockwin?
"Davy's sarcophagus!"
The thought seizes him with violence. Of course he cannot go. He seeks his room. He throws himself on his bed and gives way to all his grief. It takes the form of love for Davy. David Lockwin weeps for golden-head. He weeps for the past. He is living. He ought to be dead. He is poor. He is misshapen in feature. He is hungry for human sympathy. The world is giving him a stone. Oh, Davy! Davy! ”

“ This feeling seemed also to actuate Davy Jones, who limped along arm in arm with Nancy; she, even then not assuming the dependent position, but giving him her arm, as it were, in order to help him along. p. 196She even explained to us that, it being her “Sunday out” she had come all the way from Trehowel for this purpose. I may own that I distrusted that limp of Davy’s; it struck me he liked to play the maimed hero.
“Why, Davy,” I remarked, very audibly. “I saw you at market on Friday, and you weren’t limping a bit. Do you want to have the old women to look at you or Nancy—.” ”

“ The Locks appear to be located towards the river; not down where the railway train stops to take people on who desire to get away from Davy's Bend, but higher up the street running at right angles in front of the hotel, for the men walk in that direction, Davy and Tug ahead carrying the lantern, with their arms locked together, and the stranger behind, who thinks the two men are a queer pair, for they seem to enjoy being out in the rain, and one of them, the smaller one, laughs frequently but timidly, while the other snorts in a manner which the stranger recognizes as signifying pleasure. ”

“ He was precisely like the rest of the creatures, except that he was a little larger, and wore a blue paper coat and a sparkling tin crown, and held in his hand a long white wand, with red lines running screw-wise around it, like a barber's pole. He stared at Davy and the Hole-keeper for a moment, and then called out, "Are the chairs buttered?"
"They are!" shouted the crowd, like one man. ”

“ How else could he have divined all that he did?
"Well, Davy," he said in a wiry voice, which cut through the din of rattling harness and creaking wagon, "I see you're goin' a-fishin' for trout?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Shunk," I returned, with a politeness that told my respect for his occult powers.
"Well, mind," he said, intently studying his foot as though he were reading some mystic signals wigwagged from the gods, "mind, Davy, that you don't fall into the hands of the Professor. If the Professor catches you, Davy—" The foot stopped wiggling. The oracle was silent. ”

“ Unconsciously he had begun to walk toward Castle Mona. “I’m not for misdoubting my wife, not me; but then a man may be over certain. I’ll find out for myself; and if it’s true, if she’s there, if she meets him.... Well, well, be aisy for all, Davy; be aisy, boy, be aisy! If the worst comes to the worst, and you’ve got to cut your stick, you’ll be doing it without a heart-ache anyway. She’ll not be worth it, and you’ll be selling yourself to the Divil with a clane conscience. So it’s all serene either way, Davy, my man, and here goes for it.” ”

“ In two years Davy was skipper, and in three years more he was sailing a steamer of his own. Then the money began to tumble into his chest like crushed oats out of a Crown’s shaft.
The first hundred pounds he had saved he sent home to Dumbell’s bank, because he could not trust it out of the Isle of Man. But the hundreds grew to thousands, and the thousands to tens of thousands, and to send all his savings over the sea as he made them began to be slow work, like supping porridge with a pitchfork. ”

“ Here is a handsome Josephus--as fine as the one in Chicago. But did Davy's head ever lie on it?
Well, bear up then, Robert Chalmers. You are free at least. You need not lie and cheat at elections. You need not live with a woman whose heart is as cold as ice and whose pride is like the pride of an Egyptian Pharaoh. You sunk that yawl well in the sands of Georgian Bay! You filled it with stones!
You thought you were the sole survivor, yet how admirably the rescue of Corkey and the boy abetted your escape, Robert Chalmers. They saw David Lockwin die. They took his dying wishes. ”

“ Davy's Bend will never suit you. It don't suit anybody. The last man that came here stood it a week, when off he went, and we never expected to see another one. Look at these deserted houses in every direction," he continues, stepping out farther into the middle of the street, as if to point around him, but remembering that the night is so dark that nothing can be seen, he goes back to his companion, and pokes him in the ribs, which causes that worthy to snort once more in the odd way that the stranger noticed on coming up. ”

“ Floddin brought Davy through. He has been walking with Davy among the animals in Lincoln Park. "There's Santa Claus' horses," said Davy, of the elks.
There is a loud noise in the room.
"What on earth is it?" he asks. He is only partly awake.
"It is poor little Davy," Esther answers. "Oh, David!" The woman is sobbing. She herself has awakened her husband.
The man is out of bed in an instant. The room is cold. There is no stove. There is no stramonium. There is no flaxseed. There is no hot water.
It is not the lack of these appliances that drives Lockwin into his panic. ”

“ Davy had been brought up to be honest. I am sure that he did not mean to steal the cologne-bottle. The idea of stealing never entered his mind, and it would have shocked him had it done so. He was an imaginative little fellow, and the tiny waif seemed to him like a shell or a pebble, something coming out of the sea, which any one was at liberty to pick up and keep. He did not say to himself that it probably belonged to the captain, who might have a value for it, he did not think about the captain at all, he only thought of Bella. ”

“ The people of Davy's Bend were a good deal like a grumbling and idle man, who spends the time which should be devoted to improving his condition to grumbling about his own ill luck and the good luck of his industrious rival, who is steadily prospering; and as men frequently believe that the fates are against them when they are themselves their only opposition, so it was generally believed in this wretched little town that some sort of a powerful and alert goddess was in league with Ben's City. ”

“ If we believe with Johnson, that men have sometimes gained reputation from their foibles, we may certainly admit the converse of the proposition, that they have occasionally lost it from their virtues. Davy, as we have seen, possessed from his earliest years a frankness of disposition which endeared him to all his friends, but in after life it unquestionably exposed him to various annoyances, 31 which by a little reserve he would have certainly escaped. ”

“ It's the completest system that ever was invented. Oh! here you aren't!" he added, staring with great satisfaction at one of the blank pages. "Your name is Rupsy Frimbles."
"It's nothing of the sort," said Davy, indignantly.
"Tut! Tut!" said the Hole-keeper. "Don't stop to contradict or you'll be too late;" and Davy felt himself gently lifted off his feet and pushed head-foremost into the [Pg 33] hole. It was quite dark and rather sticky, and smelt strongly of burnt sugar, and Davy had a most unpleasant time of it crawling through on his hands and knees. ”

“ I have never opened my lips to any living man against you. But you are measuring me by your own yard, sir; for you led her to believe that I was a cat and a shrew and a nagger, and a thankless wretch who ought to be put down by the law just as it puts down biting dogs.”
“Now, begging you pardon, ma’am,” said Davy ”

“ Tug had uttered the word good in each instance like an oath, and Davy cowered under his cold stare as though fearing he might be good, and was about to be accused of it.
"Everything she does is right; everything you do is wrong,—there you have the old women in a mouthful," the outraged husband continued. "She is always jumping on you for not being Good, and for your refusal to see goodness in her; and no one around her sees a moment's peace, for she badgers them to death for their neglect to rid the earth of sin, or some other trifling matter like that. ”

“ The Hole-keeper began fumbling at the leaves of his book in great agitation, when the king, pointing at him with his wand, roared furiously: "Boil him, at all events!"
"Tut! Tut! your majesty," began the Hole-keeper, confusedly, with his stiff little tunic fairly rustling with fright; but before he could utter another word he was rushed upon and dragged away, screaming with terror.
[Pg 36] "Don't you go with them!" shouted Davy, made really desperate by the Hole-keeper's danger. "They're nothing but a lot of molasses candy!" ”

“ The floor was of tin, and greased to such a slippery degree that Davy could hardly keep his feet, and against the walls on all sides were ranged long rows of little tin chairs glistening like silver in the dazzling light.
The only person in the room was a little man, something like the Hole-keeper in appearance, but denser and darker in the way of complexion, and dressed in a brown paper tunic and cocked hat. ”

“ The man who has lost faith in the power of the ballot is to be revived with the stimulus of human speech. It can be done. It is done in every campaign.
Lockwin is doing it each afternoon and night. Bravely he meets the cry of "Money and machine." One would think he needed no better text.
But his secret text is Davy. Davy, whose life has been intrusted to Dr. Floddin, the friend of the poor, the healer who healed the eyes of the peddling huckster's son's sister, the eyes of the housekeeper's relatives, and the eyes of Davy himself. ”

“ All this, however, had not at all disturbed his complacent conceit; he was, if anything, more pompous than ever.
"How did you get here?" asked Davy, in astonishment.
"I'm banished," said the Hole-keeper, cheerfully. "That's better than being boiled, any day. Did you give Robinson my letter?"
[Pg 124] "Yes, I did," said Davy, as they walked along the beach together; "but I got it very wet coming here."
"That was quite right," said the Hole-keeper. "There's nothing so tiresome as a dry letter. Well, I suppose Robinson is expecting me by this time, isn't he?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," said Davy. ”

“ When its face is half obscured by the hill, the sun seems to remember The Locks, with whose history it has been familiar, and looks that way. So much shadow has gathered around it already from the woods across the river that objects are no longer to be distinguished: nothing but the huge outlines. At last the sun disappears behind the hill, but a friendly ray comes back, and looks toward The Locks until even the church steeple disappears; and Davy's Bend, and The Locks, with its sorrow and its step on the stair, are lost in the darkness. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ But human nature is frail and prone to temptation, and for the sum of fifty thousand dollars I’d inveigle Jones into signing with you, even though never again as long as I should dwell on this terrestrial sphere could I look my old college chump, Lefty Locke, in the countenance. ”

“ His overcoat collar was buttoned to the neck, hiding the uniform of his adversity. For a moment, as I watched him, he seemed to be in the gulch again; we looked over the towering walls of brick and stone, and to me they were the ridge-side, dark and sombre in the gray light; we looked beyond the crest of it, beyond the chimneys, the tall pines which pierced the sky-line, and our eyes rested on a flake of cloud. I think it must have been there. I felt the pressure of his hand.
"I'll not be gone long, Davy," he said. "I'm coming back very soon, and till then you will take care of Penelope ”

“ The little man had evidently been having a hard time since Davy had seen him. His complexion had quite lost its beautiful transparency, and his jaunty little paper tunic was sadly rumpled, and, moreover, he had lost his cocked hat. ”