Hocken and Hunken Part 62

"Come!" said Cai with a quick smile, playing up towards his grand _coup_. "What would you say to s.h.i.+ppin' aboard the _Hannah Hoo?_"

"What?--as mate under _you_? . . . I'd say," answered 'Bias slowly, "as I'd see you d.a.m.ned first."

"But"--Cai stared at him in bewilderment--"who was proposin' any such thing? As skipper I thought o' you--what elst? Leastways--"

"And you?"

"Me? . . . But why? There's no call for _me_ goin' to sea again."

"Ah, to be sure," said 'Bias bitterly, "I was forgettin'. You'll stay ash.o.r.e and make up your losses by marryin'!"

"But I haven't _had_ any losses!" stammered Cai. "Not beyond the hundred pound in the _Saltypool_. . . . Didn't I make that plain?"

"No, you didn't." 'Bias laid down his pipe. "Are you standin' there and tellin' me that _your_ papers are all right and safe?"

"To be sure they are. Rogers handed 'em over to me, and I took 'em home and locked 'em in my strong-box--it may be four months ago."

"Ay, that would be about the time. . . . Well, I congratulate you," said 'Bias, with deepening bitterness of accent. "The luck's yours, every way, and that there's no denyin'."

"Wait a bit, though. You haven't heard me finish."

"Well?"

"Since this news came I've been thinkin' pretty hard over one or two things . . . over our difference, f'r instance, an' the cause of it.

To be plain, I want a word with you about--well, about Mrs Bosenna."

"Stow that," growled 'Bias. "If you've come here to crow--"

"The Lord knows I've not come here to crow. . . . I've come to tell you, as man to man, that I don't hold 'twas a pretty trick she played us over them two hundreds. You may see it different, and I hope you do.

I don't bear her no grudge, you understand? . . . But if you've still a mind to her, and she've a mind to you, I stand out from this moment, and wish 'ee luck!"

'Bias stood up, stiff with wrath.

"And the Lord knows, Cai Hocken, how at this moment I keep my hands off you! . . . Wasn't it bad enough before, but you must stand patronisin'

there, offerin' me what you don't want? First I'm to s.h.i.+p in your sarvice, eh? When that won't do, I'm to marry the woman you've no use for? And there was a time I called 'ee friend! h.e.l.l! if you must poison this garden, poison it by yourself! Let me get out o' this.

Stand aside, please, ere I say worse to 'ee!"

He strode by, and up the garden path in the gathering twilight.

Poor 'Bias!

Poor Cai, too! His renunciation had cost him no small struggle, and he had meant it n.o.bly; but for certain he had bungled it woefully.

His heart was sore for his friend: the sorer because there was now no way left to help. The one door to help--reconcilement--was closed and bolted! closed through his own clumsiness.

It had cost him much, a while ago--an hour or two ago, no more--to resign his pretensions to Mrs Bosenna's hand. The queer thing was how little--the resolutions once taken--Mrs Bosenna counted. It was 'Bias he had lost.

As he sat and smoked, that night, in face of Mrs Bowldler's fire-screen, staring at its absurd decorations, it was after 'Bias that his thoughts harked--always back, and after 'Bias--retracing old friends.h.i.+p faithfully as a hound seeking back to his master.

'Bias would never think well of him again. As a friend, 'Bias was lost, had gone out of his life. . . . So be it! Yet there remained a 'Bias in need of help, though stubborn to reject it: a 'Bias to be saved somehow, in spite of himself, an unforgiving 'Bias, yet still to be rescued.

Cai smoked six pipes that night, pondering the problem. He was aroused by the sound of the clock in the hall striking eleven. Before retiring to bed he had a mind to run through his parcel of bonds and securities on the chance--since he and 'Bias had made many small investments by consent and in common--of finding some hint of possible salvage.

His strong-box stood in a recess by the chimnney-breast. A stuffed gannet in a gla.s.s case surmounted it--a present from 'Bias, who had shot the bird. The bird's life-like eye (of yellow gla.s.s) seemed to watch him as he thrust the key into the lock.

He took out the parcel, laid it on the table under the lamp, and--with scarcely a glance at the docket as he untied the tape--spread out the papers with his palm much as a card-player spreads wide a pack of cards before cutting. . . . He picked up a bond, opened it, ran his eye over the superscription and tossed it aside.

So he did with a second--a third--a fourth.

On a sudden, as he took up the fifth and, before opening it, glanced at the writing on the outside, his gaze stiffened. He sat upright.

After a moment or two he unfolded the paper. His eyes sought and found two words--the name "Tobias Hunken."

He turned the papers over again. Still the name not his--"Tobias Hunken!"

He pushed the paper from him, and timorously, as a man possessed by superst.i.tious awe, put out his fingers and drew forward under the lamplight the four doc.u.ments already cast aside.

The name on each was the same. The bonds belonged to 'Bias.

By mistake, those months ago, he had carried them off and locked them up for his own.

Should he arouse 'Bias to-night and tell him of the good news?

He gathered up the bonds in his hand, went to the front door, unbarred it, and stepped out into the roadway. Not a light showed anywhere in the next house.

Cai stepped back, barred the door, and sought his chamber, after putting out the lamp. He slept as soundly as a child.

CHAPTER XXVI.

'BIAS RENOUNCES.

"Is Cap'n Hunken upstairs?"

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Mr Tabb from behind his pile of biscuit tins and soapboxes. The pile had grown--or so it seemed to Cai--and blocked out more of the daylight than ever. "Won't you step up? You'll be kindly welcome."

"I was told I should find him here." Cai, on requesting Mrs Bowldler that morning to inform him how soon Captain Hunken would be finis.h.i.+ng breakfast, had been met with the information that Captain Hunken had breakfasted an hour before, and gone out. ("Which," said Mrs Bowldler, "it becomes not one in my position to carry tales between one establishment and another: but he bent his steps in the direction of the town. I beg, sir, however, that you will consider this to be strickly between you and me and the gatepost, as the saying is.") Cai at once surmised the reason of this early sallying forth, and, following in chase, ran against the Quaymaster, from whom he learnt that 'Bias had entered the s.h.i.+p-chandler's shop half an hour ago. "He has not since emerged," added the Quaymaster Bussa darkly, as doubtful that in the interim Captain Hunken might have suffered forcible conversion into one of the obscurer "lines" of s.h.i.+p-chandlery, wherein so much purports to be what it is not.

--"I was told I should find him here," said Cai. "But would ye mind fetchin' him down to me? The fact is, I want him on a matter of private business."

Mr Tabb considered for a moment. "If I may advise, sir," he suggested meekly, "you'll find it as private up there as anywhere. The master's past hearin' what you say--or, if he hears, he's past takin' notice: whereas down here, you're liable to be interrupted by customers--let alone that I mustn't leave the shop. And," concluded Mr Tabb, "I would hardly recommend the Quay. Mr Philp's just arrived there."

On recovering from his previous stroke, Mr Rogers had given orders that, if another befell him, his bed was to be fetched downstairs and laid in the great bow-window of the parlour. There Cai found him with Fancy in attendance, and 'Bias seated on a chair by the bedside.

"Good-mornin'," Cai nodded, hus.h.i.+ng his voice, and advanced towards the bed almost on tiptoe. "He won't reckernise me, I suppose?"

The invalid reclined in a posture between lying and sitting, his back propped with pillows, his eyes turned with an expressionless stare towards the harbour. Save for its rigidity and a slight drawing down of the muscles on the left side of the mouth, there was nothing to shock or terrify in the aspect of the face, which kept, moreover, its customary high colour.