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Neal Malone
by
Soon after this, Neal one evening met Mr. O’Connor by chance upon a plank which crossed a river. This plank was only a foot in breadth, so that no two individuals could pass each other upon it. We cannot find words in which to express the dismay of both on finding that they absolutely glided past each other without collision.
Both paused and surveyed each other solemnly; but the astonishment was all on the side of Mr. O’Connor.
“Neal,” said the schoolmaster, “by all the household gods, I conjure you to speak, that I may be assured you live!”
The ghost of a blush crossed the churchyard visage of the tailor.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, “why the divil did you tempt me to marry a wife?”
“Neal,” said his friend, “answer me in the most solemn manner possible; throw into your countenance all the gravity you can assume; speak as if you were under the hands of the hangman, with the rope about your neck, for the question is indeed a trying one which I am about to put. Are you still ‘blue-moulded for want of a beating’?”
The tailor collected himself to make a reply; he put one leg out–the very leg which he used to show in triumph to his friend, but, alas, how dwindled! He opened his waistcoat and lapped it round him until he looked like a weasel on its hind legs. He then raised himself up on his tiptoes, and, in an awful whisper, replied, “No!!! the divil a bit I’m blue-mowlded for want of a batin’!”
The schoolmaster shook his head in his own miserable manner; but, alas! he soon perceived that the tailor was as great an adept at shaking the head as himself. Nay, he saw that there was a calamitous refinement, a delicacy of shake in the tailor’s vibrations, which gave to his own nod a very commonplace character.
The next day the tailor took in his clothes; and from time to time continued to adjust them to the dimensions of his shrinking person. The schoolmaster and he, whenever they could steal a moment, met and sympathised together. Mr. O’Connor, however, bore up somewhat better than Neal. The latter was subdued in heart and in spirit, thoroughly, completely, and intensely vanquished. His features became sharpened by misery, for a termagant wife is the whetstone on which all the calamities of a henpecked husband are painted by the devil. He no longer strutted as he was wont to do, he no longer carried a cudgel as if he wished to wage a universal battle with mankind. He was now a married man. Sneakingly, and with a cowardly crawl, did he creep along, as if every step brought him nearer to the gallows. The schoolmaster’s march of misery was far slower than Neal’s, the latter distanced him. Before three years passed he had shrunk up so much that he could not walk abroad of a windy day without carrying weights in his pockets to keep him firm on the earth which he once trod with the step of a giant. He again sought the schoolmaster, with whom, indeed, he associated as much as possible. Here he felt certain of receiving sympathy; nor was he disappointed. That worthy but miserable man and Neal often retired beyond the hearing of their respective wives, and supported each other by every argument in their power. Often have they been heard in the dusk of evening singing behind a remote hedge that melancholy ditty, “Let us BOTH be unhappy together,” which rose upon the twilight breeze with a cautious quaver of sorrow truly heartrending and lugubrious.
“Neal,” said Mr. O’Connor on one of those occasions, “here is a book which I recommend to your perusal; it is called ‘The Afflicted Man’s Companion’; try if you cannot glean some consolation out of it.”
“Faith,” said Neal, “I’m forever oblaged to you, but I don’t want it. I’ve had ‘The Afflicted Man’s Companion’ too long, and not an atom o’ consolation I can get out of it. I have ONE o’ them, I tell you; but, be my sowl, I’ll not undertake A PAIR o’ them. The very name’s enough for me.” They then separated.