LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2684, 14 November 1882, Page 4

LITERATURE.

MRS MULL'S NEURALGIA. Miss Carry Loo was the prettiest among the daughters of the widowed landlady who kept the Crown and Sceptre Hotel, Windsor, but she gave her good mother much cause for concern by falling in love with a curate named Duckie. It was not that the landlady objected to curates in a general way. She rather liked them in their proper places—pulpits and tea-tables —and she admitted that Mr Duckie had a kind, pleasant voice and dangerously soft eyes. But Duckie was not rich in this world's goods. He had to see more closely after his washing bills than was compatible with the wearing of fine linen, and as to sumptuous fare, why he looked, said the landlady, " as if he would go down on his bended knees and thank his stars if you asked him to step in and eat a slice oil the Sunday joint." Of course, such invitations were no longer offered to the reverend gentleman once Mrs Loo perceived that her daughter was so happy in his company. Duckie was kept at a distance. Being humble-minded, he did not remonstrate against his banishment, but sighed plaintively, and ogled Mis 3 Carry with doleful glances when he saw her in the church, all of which made Miss Carry's blood boil with sympathy, for she wa3 a spirited maiden, who for two pins would have, eloped with Mr Dnckie, and married him in private. So far from finding anybody disposed to offer her two pins for such a purpose she was much harassed by the supervision of her mother, brothers, and married sisters, who would scarcely allow her to walk out of their sight. So at length Carry Loo rebelled, and talked boisterously about the rights of damsels in a free country. She threatened to retire into the. Protestant nunnery of Clewer, and when she had scattered sufficient dismay amongst her relatives by this first menace, she followed it up by the second—of turning Papist. Mr Duckie seemed to have loaded her up to the muzzle with militant theology. The good landlady or the Crown and Sceptre felt sorely troubled. Her's was a

Protestant establishment ; none butortho- I dox liquors were sold there. If her J daughter turned Papist, her customers J would be quite likely to say that the Jesuits paid her to poison her boor ; on the other hand, she so strongly objected to see her pretty daughter marry a poor curate, that reflection only hardened her the more against Mr Duckie. Under these perplexing circumstances, the landlady consulted her man of business, Mr Bill, and a longheaded Scotchman, named Mi Mull, who supplied her with her whiskies. Now Bill and Mull were cronies; and Mull had a son called Johnnie, who was a well-favored young traveller in the whisky trade. Mull had heard that Carry Loo had a few j hundred pounds of her own, and would inherit a trifle more at her mother's death. Such money would not have lasted long in the hands of an improvident curate ; but it would make a nice little capital for a pushing young man of business like Johnnie. Mull bethought him that his son might do worse than marry Carry Loo, and he communicated his idea to Mr Bill, who agreed. Mrs Loo was then sounded, and declared that that the affair was the nicest one imaginable. She had often seen Johnnie Mull, and thought him a comely, respectable lad. He was not only a shrewd reckoner, but was of a pious turn, and had composed some psalm-tunes to be played on the bag-pipes-r-very suitable tunes for performance on large moors, where there was nobody within earshot. Of course, Carry Loo guessed why Johnnie Mull was so cordially received on his next visit to the Crown and Sceptre. Her mother wanted her to marry this acute and good lad, and she disliked him at first sight. But for all that she did not intend to refuse him. Carry's vocation for a cloistral life was much less strong than she had imagined; celibacy, indeed, when closely examined, was repugnant to her nature. Carry was also displeased at the pusillanimity of Mr Duckie. If that ecclesiastic had rapped at her chamber window in the dead of the night, and Jiad proposed that she should descend a laader and hie with him by the 2 a.m.- train to Gretna Green, she would have consented, and would have thought him a bold divine, worthy of- a girl's love. But young ladies get out of patience with young clergymen who snivel and mope overmuch. Besides, Carry was willing to marry in order to be free, and she felt the more disposed to accept Johnnie Mull, as that young man was by no means forward in making any proposal. He often rubbed his red poll with a bewildered expression, as he glanced at her through the corners of his eyes, and he seemed to be conning over all the Scotch proverbs which suggest caution in matrimony. But Johnnie Mull was not allowed to manage his affairs according to his own apprehensions and antipathies, for he had to reckon with old Mull and Mr Bill, the business man. Both these elderly persons asked him whether he were not ashamed of hanging back ' like a great gawk/ when he might have the prettiest girl in Windsor for the asking? Would it not be a great thing for him to marry the daughter of Mrs Loo, the landlady of such a renowned hotel as the Crown and Sceptre, where Scotch whiskey was always in great demand ? Johnnie admitted that it would, and his natural truthfulness made him own that Carry Loo was a nice girl enough when she looked pleased and talked to him with apparent interest about the hardships and emotions of a commercial traveller's life. So one Sunday afternoon, when Carry had been in a livelier mood than usual, Johnny plucked up courage, and said, with a blush on his rosy cheeks—- ' Eh, noo, will we twa' get married ?' ' Eh, noo, why not ?' she answered with a laugh; And so married they were six weeks afterwards at the Windsor Church, with all the pomp suitable to Carry's high rank in the world. There are two ways of looking at marriage; and Johnnie and his wife soon placed themselves on opposite standpoints for viewing that institution. Johnnie wanted a wife who could keep house for him, and enter actively into his business plan 3; Carry had married to get her liberty, and her favorite occupation lay in encouraging the assiduities of the lesser clergy. She had received a good education, could sing, and paint cows and trees a little, and chatter a good deal. Her refinement was great, and she had some notions of high art in connection with tea-cups and hair dressing. She despised old Mull and the entire family of Mull. When any of her husband's relatives called upon her, she stickled for the observance of etiquette until these unfortunates writhed on their chairs as if they were seated on hot plates. Even her husband seemed a low born person in her sight, and she failed not at times to remind him ofhis humble origin. When flirting with curates and other idle young young men, as she loved to do, she alluded to Johnnie as if he were a domestic, whose business it was to supply her with the luxuries of life, and to hold his tongue until he was spoken to. One day Johnnie Mull received a very good business offer. He was invited to go and act as manager to a prosperous hotel in America. Salary high, and everything found. As Carry was the daughter of hotel proprietors, Johnnie thought this would be just the thing for her. And Carry did condescend to cross the Atlantic, but she carefully disabused her husband's mind of the idea that he had become her equal because he was going to lord it over an hotel. It was one thing to have an hotel of one's own, and quite another thing to manage other people's property. Johnnie, who had grown to be very much afraid of his wife, acknowledged the justice of this axiom, and felt very proud when he had at last got his wife on board the Atlantic steamer. Carry, of course, had a first-class cabin, while Johnnie, from economical motives, travelled as a steerage passenger. He used to attend her with rugs and books when she took her airings on deck, and it was generally supposed that he was her servant. So he was, and very obedient. The Grand Confederation Hotel, which Johnnie Mull went to manage, was a much larger house than the Crown and Sceptre of Windsor, but, of course, in point of antiquity and prestige, it could not compare with the latter house; and Carry Mull, once installed in her functions as landlady, lost no time in letting her customers know that she came from a great land, a great hotel, and a great family, and would not suffer herself to be treated with familiifrity. It is not the custom of Americans to treat ladies with deficient respect, but much as the gentlemen who resorted to the Confederation Hotel endeavored to please the English landlady, she was disgusted with their manners, and plainly showed it. She thought the Americans insufferably vulgar, and their women still worse. She had a haughty way of receiving the lady customers of the house, as though she did them a groat honor in pocketing their money; and she made a great many vexatious little rules about wiping one's boots on the door-mat, dining at table d'hote in black coats, and not smoking in the passages, which ruffled old habitues of the hotel, and made them grumble about taking their custom elsewhere. But impudence pays sometimes, and by dint of her domineering, Carry Mull certainly did earn for the Confederation Hotel the reputation of a very decorously eonductedjjestablishinent. Nor did gay and-rich young men avoid it, for the good-looking and sentimental landlady was fond enough of being made love to. She waved rules of etiquette in favor of admirers who squeezed her hand and chucked her under the chin in dark corners. To do these things was perfect ton according to her judgment. So it came to pass that Johnnie Mull, who worked like a head negro under his wife's supervision, amassed some money in the hotel, and handed it over to Carry, who announced her intention of spending it on a trip to England. Johnny was not prepared for this ; but his wife cut short his expostulations by stamping her foot. The American climate did not suit her health ; she was subject to neuralgia, and a dry country like England.where it never rains, is notoriously propitious to complaints of this class. Besides, she wanted to see her family, and there was an end of it. Johnnie Mull had nothing to say. He meekly accompanied his wife to the steamboat, engaged for her the best cabin, and having recommended her to the respectful attentions of the captain, returnecl to his

hotel, where some witlings were foolish to I chaff him, saying, " Where's your fine j wifo, Johnnie? Has she stopped it?"! What did this mean ? Why were they continually bantering him about his fine wife ? Johnnie Mull could not understand it. The hotel customers relapsed into their old, easy-going ways after madam's departure, and though there was a good deal of talk about this lady, nobody seemed particularly anxious to see her return. As for Johnnie, ho wrote to her sometimes, but got scant answers. Carry said that her neuralgia was still very bad, and she was taking care of herself. Johnnie felt sure she would do that, and was in a manner comforted. Yet he did think it a little strange occasionally, when he found time to think on such a subjeot, that his wife should have married him apparently for no other purpose than to livo thousands of miles away from him, and to spend his money —for she spent a good deal. Her neuralgia was altogether a costly affair.

At last old Mull put his hand to paper, and wrote a grievous letter to his son John. He had heard strange things of Carry's goings on, he said. She was going about the country like a fine lady, living upon the best, and dressing as if silks and satins coat sixpence a yard. She was often to be seen with Mr Duckie, whom she invited to afternoon tea ; but she had quite a string of other admirers, chiefly military, who did not scruple to wink at her in public places instead of lifting their hats. All this, remarked old Mull, did not-tally with his views of matrimonial proprieties; and wound up by asking his son John what the latter meant to do ? Do ? Why, first of all, Johnnie sent his wife some more money, because he had just received a note asking imperiously for a rexuittance. Afterwards he sat down to think, but could make nothing of his reflections beyond this, that it was not the slightest use for his wife to flirt with Mr Duckie and with the winking officers, seeing that she was married, and could not consequently espouse these gallants. This thought put him into a proper philosophical mood, so that he rubbed his hands. "If she were not married it would be a different thing," he said to himself; " but I all the winking in the world won't prevent her from being my wife. And as my wife she owes me obedience, of course. Everybody knows that." Thereupon Johnnie posted his remittance; and he has been posting the same kind of things at regular intervals ever since. And so do many henpecked husbands—here, there, and everywhere. '