Hocken and Hunken Part 19

"Is it so serious as all that? . . . What I came about now, was to ask you to make a bra.s.s plate for the lid--with an inscription."

Captain Cai pulled out a sc.r.a.p of paper. "Something like this, 'Presented to Caius Hocken, Master of the _Hannah Hoo_, on the Occasion of his Retirement. By his affectionate undersigned': then the names, with maybe a motto or a verse o' poetry if s.p.a.ce permits."

"What sort of poetry?"

"Eh? . . . 'Tell ye the truth, I didn' know till this moment that there _were_ different sorts. Well, we'll have the best."

"Why not go to Benny, and get him to fix you up something appropriate?"

suggested John Peter. "Old Benny, I mean, that writes the letters for seamen. He's a dab at verses. People go to him regular for the In-Memoriams they put in the newspaper."

"That's an idea, too," said Captain Cai. "I'll consult him to-morrow.

But that won't hinder your getting ahead wi' the plate?" he added; for John Peter's ways were notorious.

"How would you like it?" John Peter looked purblindly about him, rubbing his spectacles with a thread-bare coat-tail.

"Well, I don't mind," said Cai with prompt.i.tude--"Though 'tis rather early in the morning."

"Old English?"

"Perhaps I don't know it by that name."

"Or there's Plain."

"Not for me, thank ye."

"--Or again, there's Italic; to my mind the best of all. It lends itself to little twiddles and flourishes, according to your taste."

Old John Peter led him to the wall and pointed with a dirty finger; and Cai gasped, finding his attention directed to a line of engraved coffin-plates.

"That's Italic," said John Peter, selecting an inscription and tracing over the flourishes with his thumb-nail. "'_William Penwarne, b.

1837--_' that's the year the Queen came to the throne. It's easier to read, you see, than old English, and far easier than what we call Gothic, or Ecclesiastical--which is another variety--though, of course, not so easy as Plain. Here you have Plain--" He indicated an inscription--'_Samuel Bosenna, of Rilla, b. 1830, d. 1895_."

"Would that be th' old fellow up the valley, as was?--Mrs Bosenna's husband?" asked Cai, somewhat awed.

"That's the man."

"But what's it doing here?"

"'Tis my unfortunate propensity," confessed John Peter with simple frankness. "You see, by the nature of things these plates must be engraved in a hurry--I _quite_ see it from the undertaker's point of view. But, on the other hand, if you're an artist, it isn't always you feel in the mood; you wait for what they call inspiration, and then the undertaker gets annoyed and throws the thing back on your hands."

With a pathetic, patient smile John Peter rubbed his spectacles again, and again adjusted them. "Perhaps you'd like Plain, after all?" he suggested. "It usually doesn't take me so long."

"No," decided Cai somewhat hurriedly; "it might remind--I mean, there isn't the same kind of hurry with a musical box."

"It would be much the better for a bath of paraffin," muttered John Peter, prying into the works. But Cai continued to stare at the plate on the wall, and was staring at it when a voice at the door called "Good mornin'!" and Mr Philp entered.

"Ho!" said Mr Philp, "I didn' know as you two were acquainted.

And what might _you_ be doin' here, cap'n?"

"A triflin' matter of business, that's all," answered Cai, who chafed under Mr Philp's inquisitiveness; but chafed, like everybody else, in vain.

"Orderin' your breastplate? . . . It's well to be in good time when you're dealin' with John Peter," said Mr Philp with dreadful jocularity.

"As I came along the head o' the town," he explained, "I heard that Snell's wife had pa.s.sed away in the night. A happy release. I dropped in to see if they'd given you the job."

John Peter shook his head.

"And I don't suppose you'll get it, neither," said Mr Philp; "but I wanted to make sure. Push,--that's what you want. That's the only thing nowadays. Push. . . . You're lookin' at John Peter's misfits, I see," he went on, turning to Cai. "Now, _there's_ a man whose place, as you might say, won't go unfilled much longer--hey?" Mr Philp pointed his walking-stick at the name of the late owner of Rilla, and achieved a sort of watery wink.

"I daresay you mean something by that, Mr Philp," said Cai, staring at him, half angry and completely puzzled. "But be dashed if I know what you _do_ mean."

"There now! And I reck'ned as you an' Cap'n Hunken had ne'er a secret you didn't share!"

'"Bias?" asked Cai slowly. "Who was talkin' of 'Bias?"

"It takes 'em that way sometimes," said Mr Philp, wiping a rheumy eye.

"An' the longer they puts it off the more you can't never tell which way it will take 'em. O' course, if Cap'n Hunken didn't tell you he'd been visitin' Rilla lately, he must have had his reasons, an' I'm sorry I spoke."

Cai was breathing hard. "Bias? . . . When?"

"The last time I spied him was two days ago . . . in the late afternoon.

Now you come to mention it, I'd a notion at the time he wasn't anxious to be seen. For he came over the fields at the back--across the ten-acre field that Mrs Bosenna carried last week--and a very tidy crop, I'm told, though but moderate long in the stalk. . . . Well, there he was comin' across the stubble--at a fine pace, too, with his coat 'pon his arm--when as I guess he spied me down in the road below and stopped short, danderin' about an' pretendin' to poke up weeds with his stick.

'Some new-fas.h.i.+oned farmin',' thought I; 'weedin' stubble, and in August month too! I wonder who taught the Widow that trick'--for I won't be sure I reckernised your friend, not slap-off. But Cap'n Hunken it was: for to make certain I called and had a drink o' cider with Farmer Middlecoat, t'other side of the hill, an' _he'd_ seen your friend frequent these last few weeks. . . . There now, you don't seem pleased about it!--an' yet 'twould be a very good match for him, if it came off."

Cai's head was whirling. He steadied himself to say, "You seem to take a lot of interest, Mr Philp, in other people's affairs."

"Heaps," said Mr Philp. "I couldn' live without it."

CHAPTER X.

REGATTA NIGHT.

It must be admitted, though with sorrow, that on the Committee s.h.i.+p that day Captain Cai did not s.h.i.+ne. He bungled two "flying starts" by nervously playing with his stop-watch and throwing it out of gear; he fired off winning guns for several hopelessly belated compet.i.tors; he made at least three mistakes in distributing the prize-money (and n.o.body who has not committed the indiscretion of paying out a first prize to a crew which has actually come in third can conceive the difficulty of enforcing its surrender); finally, he provoked something like a free fight on deck by inadvertently crediting two boats each with the other's time on a close handicap. It was the more vexatious, because he had in committee meetings taken so many duties upon himself, virtually cas.h.i.+ering many old hands, whose enforced idleness left them upon the s.h.i.+p with a run of the drinks, and whose resentment (as the day wore on) made itself felt in galling comments while, with no offer to help, they stood by and watched each painful development. The worst moment arrived when Captain Cai, who had replaced the old treasurer by a new and pus.h.i.+ng man, and had, further, carried a resolution that prizes for all the major events should be paid by cheque, discovered his _protege_ to be too tipsy to sign his name. This truly terrible emergency Captain Cai met by boldly subscribing his own name to the cheques. They would be drawn, of course, upon his private account, and he trusted the Committee to recoup him, while reading in the eyes of one or two that they had grasped this opportunity of revenge. But Regatta Day happens on a Wednesday, when the banks in Troy close early; and these cheques were accepted with an unflattering show of suspicion.

The longest day, however, has its end. All these vexations served at least to distract our friend's mind from the morning's discovery; and when at length, the last gun fired, he dropped into a boat to be pulled for sh.o.r.e, he was too far exhausted physically--having found scarcely a moment for bite or sup--to load his mind any more than did Walton's milk-maid "with any fears of many things that will never be."

He reached home, washed off the cares of the day and the reek of black gunpowder together in a warm bath, dressed himself with more than ordinary spruceness, and was descending the stair on his way to Bias's garden, when at the foot of them he was amazed to find Mrs Bowldler, seated and rocking herself to and fro with her ap.r.o.n cast over her head.

Nay, in the dusk of the staircase he but just missed turning a somersault over her.

"Hullo! Why, what's the matter, missus?"

"Oh--oh!" sobbed Mrs Bowldler. "Bitter is the bread of poverty, deny it who can! And me, that have gone about Troy streets in my time with one pound fifteen's worth of feathers on my hat! Ostrich. And now to be laying a table for the likes of _her_, that before our reverses I wouldn't have seen in the street when I pa.s.sed her!"

Captain Cai, already severely shaken by the events of the day, put a hand to his head.

"For goodness' sake, woman, talk sense to me! _Who_ is it you're meanin'?--Mrs Bosenna? And what's this talk about layin' table?"

"Mrs Bosenna?" echoed Mrs Bowldler, who had by this time arisen from the stair. She drew her skirts close with a gesture of dignity. "It is not for me to drag Mrs Bosenna into our conversation, sir--far from it,--and I hope I know my place better. For aught I know, Captain Hocken--if, as a _menial_, I may use the term--"