Hocken and Hunken Part 39

"But supposin' you _had_ to?"

Palmerston reflected for many seconds. "I'd start by gettin' my knee on it," he decided.

Mrs Bowldler, albeit much vexed in mind, deferred solving the problem, and was rewarded with good luck as procrastinators too often are in this world.

Dinner-time arrived, but Captain Hocken did not. She served the goose whole and carried it in to Captain Hunken.

"Eh?" said 'Bias, as she removed the cover. "What about--about Cap'n Hocken?"

"He have not arrove."

'Bias ground his teeth. "Havin' dinner with _her!_" he told himself, and fell to work savagely to carve his solitary portion.

Having satisfied his appet.i.te, he lit a pipe and smoked. But tobacco brought no solace, no charitable thoughts. While, as a matter of fact, Cai tramped the highroads, mile after mile, striving to deaden the pain at his heart, 'Bias sat puffing and let his wrath harden down into a fixed mould of resentment.

Dusk was falling when Cai returned. Mrs Bowldler, aware that something was amiss, heard his footsteps in the pa.s.sage and presented herself.

"Which, having been detained, we might make an 'igh tea of it," she suggested, "and venture on the wing of a goose. Stuffing at this hour I would 'ardly 'int at, being onion and apt to recur." But Captain Hocken desired no more than tea and toast.

Mrs Bowldler was intelligently sympathetic, because Fancy had called early in the afternoon and brought some enlightenment.

"There's a row," said Fancy, and told about the sale of the parrot.

"That Mrs Bosenna's at the bottom of it, as I've said all along," she concluded.

"Do you reelly think the bird has been talking?"

"I don't think: I know."

Mrs Bowldler pondered a moment. "Ho! well--she's a widow."

"I reckon," said Fancy, "if these two sillies are goin' to fall out over her and live apart, you'll be wantin' extra help. Two meals for every one--I hope they counted _that_ before they started to quarrel."

"I'll not have another woman in the house," declared Mrs Bowldler, and repeated it for emphasis after the style of the great Hebrew writers.

"Another woman in the house have I will not! What do _you_ say, Palmerston?"

Palmerston, who had been on the edge of tears for some time, broke down and fairly blubbered.

"There's a boy!" exclaimed the elder woman. "Mention a little hard work and he begins to cry."

"I don't believe he's cryin' for that at all," spoke up Fancy.

"Are you, Pammy dear?"

"Nun-nun-No-o!" sobbed Palmerston.

"He can't abide quarrellin'--that's what's the matter. . . . Ah, well!"

sighed Fancy, and fell back on her favourite formula of resignation.

"It'll be all the same a hundred years hence; when we mee-eet," she chanted, "when we mee-eet, when we mee-eet on that Beyewtiful Sh.o.r.e!

_And_ in the meantime we three have got to sit tight an' watch for an openin' to teach 'em that their little hands were never made.

No talkin' outside, mind!"

"As if I should!" protested Mrs Bowldler, and added thoughtfully, "I often wonder what happens to widows."

"They marry again, mostly."

"I mean up there--on the Beautiful Sh.o.r.e, so to speak. They don't marry again, because the Bible says so: but how some _contrytomps_ is to be avoided I don't see."

Chiefly through the loyalty of these three, some weeks elapsed before the breach of friends.h.i.+p between Captain Caius Hocken and Captain Tobias Hunken became a matter of common talk. Mr Rogers must have had an inkling; for the pair consulted him on all their business affairs and investments, and in two or three s.h.i.+ps their money had meant a joint influence on the shareholders' policy. Now, as they came to him separately, and with suggestions that bore no sign of concerted thought, so astute an adviser could hardly miss a guess that something was wrong.

Nor did it greatly mend matters that each, on learning the other's wish upon this or that point where it conflicted with his own, at once made haste to yield. "If that's how 'Bias looks at it," Cai would say, "why o' course we'll make it so. I must have misunderstood him:" and 'Bias on his part would as promptly take back a proposal--"Cai thinks otherwise, eh? Oh, well that settles it! We haven't, as you might say, threshed it out together, but I leave details to him." "If you call this a detail--" "Yes, yes: leave it to Cai." Mr Rogers blinked, but asked no questions and kept his own counsel.

Mr Philp was more dangerous. (Who in Troy could keep Mr Philp for long off the scent of a secret?) But, as luck would have it, Cai in pure innocence routed Mr Philp at the first encounter.

It happened in this way. Towards the end of the first week of estrangement Cai, who bore up pretty well in the day time with the help of Mr Rogers, Barber Toy, and other gossips, began to find his evenings intolerably slow. He reasoned that autumn was drawing in, that the hours of darkness were lengthening, and that anyway, albeit the weather had not turned chilly as yet, a fire would be companionable. He ordered a fire therefore (more work for Mrs Bowldler). But somehow, after a brief defeat, his _ennui_ returned. Then of a sudden, one night at bed-time, he bethought him of the musical box, and that John Peter Nanjulian needed hurrying-up.

Accordingly the next morning, as the church clock struck ten, found him climbing the narrow ascent to On the Wall: where, at the garden gate, he encountered Mr Philp in the act of leaving the house with a bulging carpet-bag.

"Eh? Good mornin', Mr Philp."

"Good mornin' to you, Cap'n Hocken." Mr Philp was hurrying by, but his besetting temptation held him to a halt. "How's Cap'n Hunken in these days?" he inquired.

"Nicely, thank you," answered Cai, using the formula of Troy.

"I ha'n't see you two together o' late."

"No?" Cai, casting about to change the subject, let fall a casual remark on the weather, and asked, "What's that you're carryin', if one may make so bold?"

"It's--it's a little commission for John Peter," stammered Mr Philp.

"Nothin' to mention."

He beat a hasty retreat down the hill.

"'Tis curious now," said Cai to John Peter ten minutes later, "how your inquisitive man hates a question, just as your joker can't never face a joke that goes against him. I met Philp, just outside, with a carpet bag: and I no sooner asked what he was carryin' than he bolted like a hare."

"There's no secret about it, either," said John Peter. "He tells me that, for occupation, he has opened an agency for the Plymouth Dye and Cleanin' Works."

"And you've given him some clothes to be cleaned? Well, I don't see why he need be ashamed o' that."

"Well, I haven't, to tell you the truth. For my part, I like my clothes the better the more I'm used to 'em. But my sister's laid up with bronchitis."

"Miss Susan? . . . Nothin' serious, I hope?"

"She always gets it, in the fall o' the year. No, nothing serious.

But the doctor says she must keep her bed for a week--and now she's _got_ to. . . . There'll be a rumpus when she finds out," said John Peter resignedly: "for she don't like clean clothes any better than I do. But one likes to oblige a neighbour; and if he'd taken my trowsers 'twould ha' meant the whole household bein' in bed, which," concluded John Peter with entire simplicity, "would not only be awkward in itself, but dangerous when only two are left of an old family."

Cai agreed, if he did not understand. He reclaimed his musical box-- needless to say, John Peter had not yet engraved the plate--and carried it home, promising to restore it when that adornment was ready. For the next night or two it soothed him somewhat while he smoked and meditated on public duties soon to engage his leisure. For he had been co-opted a member of the School Board in room of Mr Rogers, resigned: and in Barber Toy's shop it was understood that he would be a candidate not only for the Parish Council to be elected before Christmas, but for a Harbour Commissioners.h.i.+p to fall vacant in the summer of next year.

The notification of his appointment on the School Board reached him by post on the last Tuesday in September. Now, as it happened, the Technical Instruction Committee of the County Council had arranged to hold at Troy, some four days later, an Agricultural Demonstration, with compet.i.tions in ploughing, hedging, dry-walling, turfing, the splitting and binding of spars, &c.