Arrah Neil; or, Times of OldJames, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
History
Arrah Neil; or, Times of Old
James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
Falgate immediately caught the look, and, as it unfortunately happened
for Mr. Dry, recollected in him a personage whom he had seen in no
very respectable plight in the streets of Hull the night before. He
instantly paused, then, and bursting into a laugh, began to sing
the well-known old words--older than they are generally supposed to
be--
My wife Joan's a Presbyterian;
She won't swear, but she will lie;
I to the ale-home, she to the tavern;
She'll get drunk as well as I.
and, ending with another laugh, he walked on to Mrs. White's little
room.
The wrath of Mr. Dry, of Longsoaken, was overpowering; but it could
not find vent in words, and after once more lifting up his eyes, and
his hands also, he hurried out of the house, resolved that, if he
staid beyond the following day in Hull, he would quit an inn where
such godless people were permitted to pass the door.
We will not pursue him on his track through the town, but return to
poor Arrah Neil, whose day, as we have said, had passed in anxiety and
pain; and who now sat with her hand beating time upon the table to
some fancied tune, as the sun sank lower and lower, and the hues of
evening began to spread over the sky.
As she thus sat, she saw Mr. Dry walk away from the door, cross over
the street, and enter a house opposite. He turned before he went in,
and looked up at the windows of the "Swan," but Arrah Neil was in one
of those meditative moods, when the spirit seems to be separate from
the body, or scarcely conscious of a connection between the two. She
saw the man she so much hated and despised gaze up to where she was
sitting; but in thinking of him and his baseness, of the power he had
obtained over her, of his perseverance in maintaining that power, of
how she could escape from him, and whither he could now be going--she
seemed to forget altogether that it was upon her his eyes were turned,
and, without moving her place, she remained watching him as if he were
a mere piece of mechanism, whose springs and whose wheels were worthy
of observation, but incapable of observation in return.
It was the best course she could have pursued, though she did so
unconsciously; for, after Mr. Dry had been a minute or two in the
house which he entered, he came out again, and seeing her still
sitting there immoveable, with her eyes fixed upon the same spot, he
muttered, "The girl is a fool, that's clear!" and went on about his
business.
Other eyes had been watching him as well as those of Arrah Neil, and
before he had actually quitted the street the step of Mrs. White was
heard upon the stairs. But ere the good landlady could reach the top,
the voice of Nancy from below, exclaimed, "Here's a gentleman, ma'am,
wants to speak to you!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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