Wigtown

“ The big man with the smooth face like a gun-muzzle sat down after a softly-uttered speech, and the group, instead of applauding with their hands, waved black handkerchiefs. The fluttering sound of them trickled along the wastes of hall towards the concealed eavesdropper. Then the Head Waiter rose to introduce the next speaker, and the instant Wiggins saw him he understood what it was in his face that was familiar. ”

“ I was ambling on, expecting to sharpen his curiosity gradually as I recited the joys of the tea-room; but at "Asolando" his spoon dropped, and he stared at me blankly. It should be known that Wiggins is not a man whose composure is lightly shaken. The waiter who served us glanced at him in surprise, a fact which I mention merely to confirm my assertion that the dropping of a spoon into his soup was an extraordinary occurrence in Wiggins's life. Wiggins was a proper person. On the ranch, twenty miles from a railroad, he always dressed for dinner. ”

“ Senator Wigman, a puffy, red-faced man, had been holding forth on the prospective glories of the Confederacy.
“Yes, sir,” said he, refilling his glass with Burgundy, “with the rest of the world we’ll trade, but never, never with the Yankees. Not one pound of cotton shall ever go from the South to their accursed cities; not one ounce of their steel or their manufactures shall ever cross our borders.” And Wigman emptied his glass at a single gulp.
“Good for Wigman!” exclaimed Mr. Robson, a round, full-faced young man, rather fat, and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. ”

“ In Household Words may be found an elaborate, amusing (but doubtless accurate) description of Wigton marketplace as seen at night nearly fifty years ago, and written with Dickens’s customary power, illustrating his marvellous acuteness of observation:
“Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain all down the street.... ‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘what I hope and believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes. I see the houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as if they were all in mourning. ”

“ The club is comparatively young, and it is our joke that we are so far all tortoises, creeping through our several professions without aid from any hare. I hasten to explain that I am a chimney doctor. Wiggins is a lawyer; at least I have seen his name in a list of graduates of the Harvard Law School, and he has an office down-town where I have occasionally found him sedately playing solitaire while he waited for some one to take him out to luncheon. He spends his summers on a South Dakota ranch, from which he derives a considerable income. ”

“ Ye’re a fool, man.”
Mornay paused to look at him curiously for a moment, and then he laughed.
“I am. And you’re another, mon ami, for going with me.” They walked along for a moment in silence before the Frenchman spoke again. “Here is what we shall do, Cornbury: Vigot shall go into the house next to the Fleece, which is upon the corner. It is a mercer’s shop, with lodgings above, to let. He will choose a room, and so gain his way to the roof. He will then steal over the leads to the dormer of the Fleece and down into the hall, making all clear for our escape. ”

“ Wickham had resolved on quitting the Militia.
"It was greatly my wish that he should do so," he added, "as soon as his marriage was fixed on. And I think you will agree with me, in considering a removal from that corps as highly advisable, both on his account and my niece's. It is Mr. Wickham's intention to go into the regulars; and, among his former friends, there are still some who are able and willing to assist him in the army. He has the promise of an ensigncy in General ———'s regiment, now quartered in the North. It is an advantage to have it so far from this part of the kingdom. ”

“ The old man had been body servant to a Union officer in the Civil War, and after the war had been carried to Boston, where he became the butler in a fashionable Back Bay family. When Mr. Washington first visited Boston, as an humble and obscure young negro school-teacher, pleading for his struggling school, he met Diggs, and Diggs succeeded in interesting his employers in the sincere and earnest young teacher. ”

“ The thick line of trees that are near Rathnew makes the way intensely dark even on clear nights, and when one is riding quickly, the contrast, when one reaches the lights of Wicklow, is singularly abrupt. The town itself after nightfall is gloomy and squalid. Half-drunken men and women stand about, wrangling and disputing in the dull light from the windows, which is only strong enough to show the wretchedness of the figures which pass continually across them. ”

“ In Wicklow, as in the rest of Ireland, the union, though it is a home of refuge for the tramps and tinkers, is looked on with supreme horror by the peasants. The madhouse, which they know better, is less dreaded.
One night I had to go down late in the evening from a mountain village to the town of Wicklow, and come back again into the hills. As soon as I came near Rathnew I passed many bands of girls and men making rather ruffianly flirtation on the pathway, and women who surged up to stare at me, as I passed in the middle of the road. ”

“ A little nonplussed, a little puzzled, Wiggins agreed with a nod of the head. He did not know that head waiters referred to customers as “members.” For an instant it occurred to him that possibly he was being mistaken for somebody else. It was really⁠—but at that moment the oysters arrived. The Head Waiter said something in rapid Italian to his subordinate⁠—something that obviously increased that plush-headed person’s desire to please⁠—bent over with his best manner to murmur, “And I will get monsieur the wine he will like, the right kind of wine!” ”

“ And perhaps had not the Abbey Theatre grown to be a theatre for folk-drama and for poetic drama of court romance alone, Synge would have made Wicklow the background of dramas of a high life of yesterday. Certain it is that in these passages he is thinking of it:—
Every one is used in Ireland to the tragedy that is bound up with the lives of farmers and fishing-people; but in this garden one seemed to feel the tragedy of the landlord class also, and of the innumerable old families that are quickly dwindling away. ”

“ Nothing breaks the uniformity but a number of white spots moving slowly here and there—the down sheep, with their black faces and fine wool. About three miles from Whitby, as you descend from the hilly country, the scene gradually changes, and near the town becomes very romantic. Meanwhile English cleanliness and elegance sensibly diminish. Whitby is exactly like an old German town; without ‘trottoirs,’ equally dirty, and with as narrow streets. ”

“ Round and round that hall, up and down, over tables and under chairs, behind screens, shaking the handles of doors⁠—all immovable, past gleaming dish-covers on the wheeled joint-tables, taking cover by swing doors, curtains, palms, everything and anything, Wiggins flew for his life from the pursuing forces of a horrible death. ”

“ HERE and there in County Wicklow there are a number of little known places—places with curiously melodious names, such as Aughavanna, Glenmalure, Annamoe, or Lough Nahanagan—where the people have retained a peculiar simplicity, and speak a language in some ways more Elizabethan than the English of Connaught, where Irish was used till a much later date. In these glens many women still wear old-fashioned bonnets, with a frill round the face, and the old men, when they are going to the fair, or to Mass, are often seen in curiously-cut frock-coats, tall hats, and breeches buckled at the knee. ”

“ Wiggins is not a man to throw around his confidences."
"And I rather fancy that his love-affairs in particular are locked in his bosom."
Jewett was a master of the art of suggestion; he took an unnecessarily long time to light a cigar so that his words might sink deep into my consciousness.
"Saw her once last spring. Got a sight draft from the Bank of Eros. Followed her across the multitudinous sea. Bang!"
"But Wiggy has n't been abroad. Wiggy was on his Dakota ranch all summer. He's all tanned from the sun, just as he is every fall," I persisted. ”

“ Wiggin regarded you as quite his literary equal, and was gratified and pleased in numbering you among his literary friends. Everything he said conveyed this impression to us — that he regarded you as entirely unique and original. He told us laughingly why he accepted your invitation to sit through your class. He said he wanted to see if there was one woman under the sun who could keep to her text. When we asked him if he found you could do so, he replied “Yes,” and said that no man could have done so any better. ”

“ Among these emotions of the night one cannot wonder that the madhouse is so often named in Wicklow.
Many of the old people of the country, however, when they have no definite sorrow, are not mournful, and are full of curious whims and observations. One old woman who lived near Glen Macanass told me that she had seen her sons had no hope of making a livelihood in the place where they were born, so, in addition to their schooling, she engaged a master to come over the bogs every evening and teach them sums and spelling. ”

“ Now, mamma, Pancho and I will go down to the main road, and you wait patiently here. Make all the noise you can, children; and the one who finds him must come back to the camp and blow the horn. Hop Yet, we go now; if Dicky comes back, you blow the horn yourself, will you?”
“All light, boss. You eat um dinner now; then go bime-by; mutton heap cold; you—”
“Dinner!” shouted Jack. “Confound your impudence! If you say dinner again, I’ll cut the queue off your stupid head.”
“Good!” murmured Polly, giving a savage punch to her blue Tam o’ Shanter cap.
“Jack, Jack!” remonstrated Aunt Truth. ”

“ Gypsy never took any trouble very deeply to heart, and the morning sunlight, and the sight of the dear, familiar mountains, drove away, to a great extent, the repentant and anxious thoughts of the night.
As the train shrieked into Yorkbury, she forgot everything but that she was at home,—miles away from Boston, her mother near, and Tom, and the dear old days of paddling about on rafts, and having no dinner-parties to disgrace herself at, and no aunt to be afraid of. ”

“ Wickham's table-linen.
"Roll him up in the tablecloth," was The Freak's next order, "and set him on a chair."
This time Jebson found his tongue.
"Gentlemen all," he gasped between revolutions--the Master of the Bloodhounds and Baron Guldenschwein were swiftly converting him into a snowy cocoon--"a joke's all very well in its way between pals; but--"
"Put him on that chair," continued Dicky, taking not the slightest notice.
Willing hands dumped the mummified and inanimate form of Jebson into an armchair, and the unique collection of Sports sat round him in a ring. ”

“ He would have given his whole year’s legacy to be out of it, for behind that voice of silver and sweetness there crowded even to her lips the rush of something that was unutterable⁠—loathsome. Wiggins felt it. The uncertainty as to its exact nature only added to his horror and distress.
“... so this question of supply, my friends,” she was saying, “is becoming more and more difficult. It resolves itself into a question of ways and means.” ”

“ Do ye think the man has but one suit? Ye’ll lose your labor, sir. He has hidden yer proofs most secretly by this.”
“None the less, mon ami, I’m going to pick his pocket!”
There was a thin skim of storm over the face of the moon as Mornay and Cornbury left the Swan Tavern. The wind was fitful in the streets, and, though the season was June, as they passed a corner now and then a heavy gust, full of the dampness and rigor of October, flew full in their faces and caused them to pull their summer cloaks more closely about them. Following in their footsteps were three men, one of whom was Vigot. ”

“ Not until then had there been a word spoken, a cry uttered; but now, almost at the same instant that Mornay and Ferrers crashed to the floor, Wynne set up a loud cry, which resounded down the corridor and stairs. In a moment there was a sound of tumbling furniture, and the cries of men seemed to come from every part of the building. But Vigot and his two fellows from above were first upon the landing, and set so vigorously upon the men mounting the stairs that their ascent was halted and they were thrown back in confusion. ”

“ Mrs. Wiggin, as she is known in literature, was Kate Douglas Smith; she was born in Philadelphia, and spent her young womanhood in California, but when a very young child she removed to Hollis in the State of Maine, and since her maturity has usually made her summer home there; her earliest recollections thus belong to the place, and she draws inspiration for her character and scene painting very largely from this New England neighborhood. ”

“ But to my surprise she introduced the subject of Wiggins immediately, and with laughter struggling for one of those fountain-like splashes that were so beguiling.
"Oh, Wiggy is staying there! Do you know Wiggy?"
"Know Wiggy, Hezekiah? I know no man better."
"Wiggy is no end of fun, isn't he? I've heard him speak of you. You are his friend the Chimney Man. He was the last man over the stile. ”

“ He thought he saw a chance to escape by running across in front of the fortune-telling tent, and he started that way, but a Gypsy man, with a gun, saw him and fired at him. I'm glad to say, however, that he didn't shoot Uncle Wiggily, or else I couldn't tell any more stories about him.
Uncle Wiggily got safely past the tent, but the dogs were almost up to him now. One of them was just going to catch him by his left hind leg, when one of the Gypsy men cried out:
"Grab him, Biter! Grab him! We'll have rabbit potpie for dinner; that's what we'll have!" ”