Hocken and Hunken Part 7

"No--o." Her mistress seemed to hesitate. "'Tisn't worth while; and ten chances to one somebody will find it."

"That's what I was thinkin'," agreed Dinah.

CHAPTER V.

A TESTIMONIAL.

Captain Cai's sea-chest had been conveyed to the s.h.i.+p Inn, Trafalgar Square (so called--as the landlord, Mr Oke, will inform you--after the famous battle of that name), and there he designed to lodge while his friend and he furnished their new quarters.

His bed, a four-poster, was luxurious indeed after his old bunk in the _Hannah Hoo_, and he betook himself to it early. Yet he did not sleep well. For some while sleep was forbidden by a confusion of voices in the bar-parlour downstairs; then, after a brief lull, the same voices started exchanging good-nights in the square without; and finally, when the rest had dispersed, two belated townsmen lingered in private conversation, now walking a few paces to and fro on the cobbles, but ever returning to anchorage under a street lamp beneath his window.

By-and-by the town lamplighter came along, turned off the gas-jet and wished the two gossips good-night, adding that the weather was extraordinary for the time of year; but still they lingered.

Captain Cai, worried by the murmur of their voices, climbed out of bed to close the window. His hand was outstretched to do so when, through the open sash, he caught a few articulate words--a fragment of a sentence.

Said one--speaking low but earnestly--"If I should survive my wife, _as I hope to do_--"

Unwilling to play the eavesdropper, or to startle them by shutting the window, Captain Cai very delicately withdrew, climbed back into bed, and drew the edge of the bedclothes over his ear. Soon he was asleep; but, even as he dropped off, the absurd phrase wove itself into the midnight chime from the church tower and pa.s.sed on to weave itself into his dreams and vex them. "If I should survive my wife--" In his dreams he was back in Troy, indeed, and yet among foreigners. They spoke in English, too; but they conversed with one another, not with him, as though he might overhear but could not be expected to understand.

One dream--merely ludicrous when he awoke and recalled it--gave him real distress while it lasted. In it he saw half a dozen townsmen--Barber Toy, Landlord Oke, the Quaymaster, and Mr Philp among them--gathered around the mound of sand on the Quay, solemnly playing a child's game with his tall hat. Mr Philp took it from the Quaymaster's head, transferred it to his own, and, lifting it by the brim, said reverently, "If I should survive my wife," &c., to pa.s.s it on to the barber, who recited the same formula to the same ritual. In the middle of the sandheap was a pit, which appeared to be somebody's grave; and somewhere in the background, on the far side of the pit, stood Mrs Bosenna and Tabb's girl together, the one watching with a queer smile, while the other kept repeating, "He's going to h.e.l.l. He couldn't change his habits, and it's high time the Quay was improved."

From this dream Captain Cai awoke in a sweat, and though the rest of the night yielded none so terrifying, his sleep was fitful and unrefres.h.i.+ng.

The return of day brought with it a sense of oppression, of a load on his mind, of a task to be performed.

Ah, yes!--he must pay a call on Mrs Bosenna. She had as good as engaged him by a promise, and, moreover, there was her cuff to be returned.

. . . Well, the visit must be paid this morning. 'Bias would be arriving by the afternoon train; and, apart from that, when you've a daunting job that cannot be escaped, the wise course is to play the man and get it over.

Still, he could not well present himself at Rilla Farm before eleven o'clock--say half-past eleven--or noon even. No, that would be too late; might suggest a hint of staying to dinner--which G.o.d forbid!

He resolved upon eleven.

He grudged to lose the latter half of the morning; for the gardens--his and Hunken's--had yet to be explored, and the rainwater cisterns in rear of the houses, and the back premises generally, and the patches where the cabbages grew. Also (confound the woman!) he could well have spent an hour or two about the streets and the Quay, renewing old acquaintance. The whole town had heard of his return, and there were scores of folk to remember him and bid him welcome. They would chase away this feeling of forlornness, of being an alien. . . . Strange that, wide awake though he was, it should continue to haunt him!

But Troy, on all save market mornings, is a slug-a-bed town; and even at nine o'clock, when he issued forth after an impatient breakfast, the streets wore an unkempt, unready, unsociable air. Housewives were still beating mats, s...o...b..ys was.h.i.+ng down windows; ash-buckets stood in the gutter-ways, by door and ope, awaiting the scavenger.

"These people want a Daylight Saving Bill," thought Captain Cai, and somewhat disconsolately wheeled about, setting his face for the Rope Walk. Here his spirits sensibly revived. There had been rain in the night, but the wind had flown to the northward, and the sun was already scattering the clouds with promise of a fine day. Cleansing airs played between the houses, the line of ash-buckets grew spa.r.s.er, and the buckets--for he had encountered the scavenger's cart on the slope of the hill--were empty now, albeit their owners showed no hurry to fetch them indoors.

A row of houses--all erected since his young days--still blocked the view of the harbour. But just beyond them, where a roadway led down to the ferry, the exquisite scene broke upon him--the harbour entrance, with the antique castles pretending to guard it; the vessels (his own amongst them) in the land-locked anchorage; the open sea beyond, violet blue to the morning under a steady off-sh.o.r.e breeze; white gulls flas.h.i.+ng aloft, and, in the offing, a pair of gannets hunting above the waters.

Captain Cai took no truck (as he would have said) in the beauties of nature; but here was a scene he understood, and he began to feel at home again. He halted, rested his elbows on a low wall and watched the gannets at their evolutions--the poise, the terrific dive, the splash clearly visible at more than a mile's distance. The wall on which he leaned overhung a trim garden, gay with scentless flowers such as tulips and late daffodils, and yet odorous--for early April has a few days during which the uncurling leaf has all the fragrance of blossom: and this was such a day, l.u.s.trous from a bath of rain. To our uninstructed seaman the scent seemed to exhale from the tulips; it recalled his attention from the gannets, and he drew in deep breaths of it, pondering the parterres of Kaiserskroon and d.u.c.h.esse de Parme--bold scarlet splashed with yellow--of golden Chrysoloras, of rosy white Cottage Maids. Unknowing it, he had a sense of beauty, and he decided that horticulture, for a leisured man, was well worth a trial.

"That's the best of living ash.o.r.e," he told himself. "A man can choose what hobby he will and, if he don't like it, pick up another."

He climbed the hill briskly, to view his own garden and take stock of its possibilities. . . . The roses planted by Mrs Bosenna had scarcely flagged at all, thanks to the night's rain. Around them and to right and left along the border under the walls of the two first terraces, green shoots were pus.h.i.+ng up from the soil--sword-like spikes of iris, red noses of peonies, green fingers of lupins. Into what flowers these various shootlets would expand Captain Cai knew no more than Adam, first of gardeners. He would consult some knowledgeable person--no, not Mrs Bosenna--and label them 'as per instructions': or, stay! 'Bias Hunken had a weakness for small wagers. Here was material for a long summer game, more deliberate even than draughts; to buy a botanical book and with its help back one's fancy, flower or colour. A capital game: no doubt (thought Captain Cai) quite commonly played among landsmen possessing gardens.

At this point he made a discovery he had missed in the dusk overnight.

His eyes fell on a flat-topped felt-covered roof, almost level with his feet and half-hidden between two bushes (the one a myrtle, the other a mock-orange; but he knew no such distinctions). There was yet a third terrace, then; and on this third terrace--yes, by the Lord, a summer-house fit for a king! Gla.s.s-fronted, with sliding sashes; match-boarded within, fitted with racks and shelves for garden tools; with ample room for chairs and a table at which two could sup and square their elbows. Such a view, moreover! It swept the whole harbour. . . .

Captain Cai's first impulse was to search around for a rack whereon to stow a telescope: his next, to run to the party-wall and hoist himself high enough to scan his friend's garden.

Yes! 'Bias, too, had a summer-house; not precisely similar in shape, however. Its roof was a lean-to, and its frontage narrower; but of this Captain Cai could not be sure. He was short of stature, and with toes digging into the crevices of the wall and hands clutching at its coping he could take no very accurate survey. He dropped back upon _terra firma_ and hurried up the flights of steps to the roadway, in haste to descend from it into 'Bias's garden and resolve his doubts.

For you must understand that the two cottages comprised by the name of Harbour Terrace were (according to Mr Rogers) "as like as two peas, even down to their water-taps," and even by name distinguished only as Number 1 and Number 2: and that, taking this similarity on trust, Captain Cai had chosen Number 2, Because--well, simply because it _was_ Number 2. If inadvertently he, being first in the field, had collared the better summer-house!--The very thought of it set him perspiring.

At the head of the garden, to his annoyance, he found Mr Philp leaning over the gate.

"Ah, Good morning!" said Mr Philp. "You was expectin' me, o' course."

"Good morning," returned Captain Cai. "Expectin' you? No, I wasn't.

Why?"

"About that hat. I've brought you the three-an'-six." He held out the coins in his palm.

"You can't have it just now. I'm in a hurry."

"So I see," said Mr Philp deliberately, not budging from the gate.

"It don't improve a hat as a rule."

"What d'ye mean?"

"Perspiration works through the linin'. I've seen hats ruined that way."

"Very well, then: we'll call the bargain off. The fact is, I'd forgot about it; and you can't very well have the hat now. 'Tis my only one, an'--well the fact is, I'm due to pay a call."

"Where?"

"I don't see as 'tis any business o' yours," answered Captain Cai with vexation; "but, if you want to know, I've to call on my landlady, Mrs Bosenna."

"Is that where you're hurryin' just now?"

"Well, no: not at this moment," Captain Cai had to confess.

"Where, then?"

"Oh, look here--"

"You needn't tell, if you don't want to. But _I'm_ goin' to a funeral at eleven o'clock," said Mr Philp. "Eleven A.M.," he added pointedly.

"Not that I hold with mornin' funerals in a general way: but the corpse is old Mrs Wedlake, and I wasn't consulted."

"Relative?" asked Captain Cai.

"No relation at all; though I don't see as it matters." Mr Philp was cheerful but obdurate. "A bargain's a bargain, as I take it."

"That fact is--"

"_And_ a man's word ought to be good as his bond. Leastways that's how I look at it."

"Here, take the darned thing!" exclaimed Captain Cai. His action, however, was less impulsive than his speech: he removed the hat carefully, lowering his head and clutching the brim between both hands.

A small parcel lay inside.