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.
"What's that?" asked Mr Philp.
"It's—it's a cuff," Captain Cai admitted.
"Belongs to the Widow Bosenna, I shouldn't wonder?" Mr Philp hazarded with massive gravity. "It's the sort o' thing a woman wears now-a-days when she've lost her husband. I follows the fashions in my distant way." He paused and corrected himself carefully—"Them sort."
"I thought—it occurred to me—as it might be the handiest way of returnin' the thing."
"It seems early days to be carryin' that sort of article around in the crown o' your hat. Dangerous, too, if you use hair-oil. But you don't. I took notice that you said 'no' yesterday when Toy offered to rub something into your hair. Now that's always a temptation with me, there bein' no extra charge. . . . Did she give it to you?"
"Who? . . . Mrs Bosenna? No, she left it behind here."
"When?"
"Yesterday evening."
"What was she doin' here, yesterday evenin', to want to take off her cuffs?"
"If you must know, she was planting roses."
"What? In April? . . . You mustn't think I'm curious."
"Not at all," Captain Cai agreed grimly.
"Nice little place you've pitched on here, I must say." Mr Philp changed his tone to one of extreme affability. "There's not a prettier little nest in all Troy than these two cottages. And which of the pair might be your choice?"
"It's not quite decided."
"Well, you can't do wrong with either. But"—Mr Philp glanced back across the roadway and lowered his voice—"I'd like to warn you o' one thing. I don't know no unhandier houses for gettin' out a corpse. There's a turn at the foot o' the stairs; most awk'ard."
"I reckon," said Captain Cai cheerfully, "'Bias an' me'll leave that to them as it concerns. But, man! what a turn you've a-got for funerals!"
"They be the breath o' life to me," Mr Philp confessed, and paused for a moment's thought. "Tell 'ee what we'll do: you shall come with me down to Fore Street an' buy yourself a new hat at Shake Benny's: 'tis on your way to Rilla Farm. There in the shop you can hand me over the one you're wearin', and Shake can send mine home in a bandbox." He twinkled cunningly. "I shall be wantin' a bandbox, an' that gets me one cost-free."
The man was inexorable. Captain Cai gave up resistance, and the pair descended the hill together towards Mr Benny's shop.
Young Mr Benny, "S. Benny, Gents' Outfitter," had suffered the misfortune to be christened Shakespeare without inheriting any of the literary aspirations to which that name bore witness. It was, in any event, a difficult name to live up to, and so incongruous with this youth in particular that, as he grew up, his acquaintances abbreviated it by consent to Shake; and, again, when, after serving an apprenticeship with a pushing firm in Exeter, he returned to open a haberdashery shop in his native town, it had been reduced, for business purposes, to a bare initial.
But it is hard to escape heredity. Albeit to young Mr Benny pure literature made no appeal, and had even been summarised by him as "footle," in the business of advertising he developed a curious literary twist. He could not exhibit a new line of goods without inventing an arresting set of labels for it; and upon these labels (executed with his own hands in water-colour upon cardboard) he let play a fancy almost Asiatic. Not content with mere description, such as "Neck-wear in Up-to-date Helios" or "Braces, Indispensable," he assailed the coy purchaser with appeals frankly personal, such as "You passed us Yesterday, but We Hit you this time," or (of pyjamas) "What! You don't Tell us You Go to Bed like your Grandfather," or (of a collar) "If you Admire Lord Rosebery, Now is Your Time."
Captain Cai wanted a hat. "I be just returned from foreign," he explained; "and this here head-gear o' mine—"
Young Mr Benny smiled with a smile that deprecated his being drawn into criticism. "We keep ahead of the Germans yet, sir,—in some respects. Is it Captain Hocken I have the pleasure of addressin'?"
"Now, how did he know that?" Captain Cai murmured.
"Why, by your hat," answered Mr Philp with readiness.
"You'll be wanting something more nautical, Captain? Something yachty, if I may suggest. . . . I've a neat thing here in yachting caps." Mr Benny selected and displayed one, turning it briskly in his hands. "The Commodore. There's a something about that cap, sir,—a what shall I say?—a distinction. Or, if you prefer a straight up-and-down peak, what about the Squadron here? A little fuller in the crown, you'll observe; but that"—with a flattering glance—"would suit you. You'd carry it off."
"Better have it full in the crown," suggested Mr Philp; "by reason it's handier to carry things."
"None of your seafarin' gear, I'll thank you," said Captain Cai hastily.
"I've hauled ashore."
"And mean to settle among us, I hope, sir? . . . Well, then, with the summer already upon us—so to speak—what do we say to a real Panama straw? The Boulter's Lock here, f'r instance,—extra brim—at five and sixpence? How these foreigners do it for the money is a mystery to me."
"I see they puts 'Smith Brothers, Birmingham,' in the lining," said
Captain Cai.
"Importers' mark, sir,—to insure genuineness. . . . Let me see, what size were you saying? H'm, six-seven-eighths, as I should judge." Young Mr Benny pulled out a drawer with briskness, ran his hand through a number of genuine Panamas of identical pattern, selected one, and poised it on the tips of his fingers, giving it the while a seductive twist. "If you will stand so, Captain, while I tilt the glass a trifle?"
Captain Cai gazed hardily at his reflection in the mirror. "It don't seem altogether too happy wi' the rest of the togs," he hazarded, and consulted Mr Philp. "What do you think?"
"I ain't makin' no bid for your tail-coat, if that's what you mean," answered Mr Philp with sudden moroseness, pulling out his watch. "I got one."
"Our leading townsmen, sir," said young Mr Benny, "favour an alpaca lounge coat with this particular line. We stock them in all sizes. Alpacas are seldom made to measure,—'free-and-easy' being their motto, if I may so express it."
"It's mine, anyway."
"And useful for gardening, too. In an alpaca you can—" Young Mr Benny, without finishing the sentence, indued one and went through brisk motions indicative of digging, hoeing, taking cuttings and transplanting them.
The end of it was that Captain Cai purchased an alpaca coat as well as a Panama hat, and having bidden "so long" to Mr Philp, and pocketed his three-and-sixpence, steered up the street in the direction of Rilla Farm, nervously stealing glimpses of himself in the shop windows as he went. As he hove in sight of the Custom House, however, this bashfulness gave way of a sudden to bewilderment. For there, at the foot of the steps leading up to its old-fashioned doorway lounged his mate, Mr Tregaskis, sucking a pipe.
"Hullo! What are you doin' here?" asked Captain Cai.
"What the devil's that to you?" retorted Mr Tregaskis. But a moment later he gasped and all but dropped the pipe from his mouth. "Good Lord!"
"Took me for a stranger, hey?"
The mate stared, slowly passing a hand across his chin as though to make sure of his own beard. "What indooced 'ee?"
"When you're in Rome," said Captain Cai, with a somewhat forced nonchalance, "you do as the Romans do."
"Do they?" asked Mr Tregaskis vaguely. "Besides, we ain't," he objected after a moment.
"Crew all right?"
"Upstairs,"—this with a jerk of the thumb.
"Hey? . . . But why? We don't pay off till Saturday, as you ought to know, for I told 'ee plain enough, an' also that the men could have any money advanced, in reason."
"Come along and see," said the mate mysteriously. "I've been waitin' here on the look-out for 'ee." He led the way up the steps, along a twisting corridor and into the Collector's office, where, sure enough, the crew of the Hannah Hoo were gathered.
"Here's the Cap'n, boys!" he announced. "An' don't call me a liar, but take your time."
The men—they were standing uneasily, with doffed hats, around a table in the centre of the room—gazed and drew a long breath. They continued to breathe hard while the Collector bustled forward from his desk and congratulated Captain Cai on a prosperous passage.
"There's one thing about it," said Ben Price the bald-headed, at length breaking through the mortuary silence that reigned around the table; "it do make partin' easier."
"But what's here?" demanded Captain Cai, as his gaze fell upon a curious object that occupied the centre of the table. It was oblong: it was covered with a large red handkerchief: and, with the men grouped respectfully around, it suggested a miniature coffin draped and ready for committal to the deep.
"Well, sir," answered Nat Berry, who was generally reckoned the wag of the ship, "it might pass, by its look, for a concealment o' birth. But it ain't. It's a testimonial."
"A what?"
But here the mate—who had been standing for some moments on one leg— suddenly cleared his throat.
"Cap'n Hocken," said he in a strained unnatural voice, "we the undersigned, bein' mate and crew of the Hannah Hoo barquentine—"
"Be this an affidavit?"
"No it isn': 'tis a Musical Box. . . . As I was sayin', We the undersigned, bein' mate an' crew of the Hannah Hoo barquentine, which we hear that you're givin' up command of the same, Do hereby beg leave to express our mingled feelin's at the same in the shape of this here accompanyin' Musical Box. And our united hope as you may have live long to enjoy the noise it kicks up, which"—here Mr Tregaskis dropped to a confidential tone—"it plays 'Home, Sweet Home,' with other fashionable tunes, an' can be turned off at any time by means of a back-handed switch marked 'Stop' in plain letters. IT IS therefore—" here the speaker resumed his oratorical manner—"our united wish, sir, as you will accept the forthcoming Musical Box from the above-mentioned undersigned as a mark of respect in all weathers, and that you may live to marry an' pass it down to your offspring—"
"Hear, hear!" interjected Mr Nat Berry, and was told to shut his head.
"—to your offspring, or, in other words, progenitors," perorated Mr Tregaskis. "And if you don't like it, the man at the shop'll change it for something of equal value." Here with a sweep of the hand he withdrew the handkerchief and disclosed the gift. "I forget the chap's name for the moment, but he's a watchmaker, and lives off the Town Quay as you turn up west-an'-by-north to the Post Office. The round mark on the lid—as p'r'aps I ought to mention—was caused by a Challenge Cup of some sort standin' upon it all last summer in the eye of the sun, which don't affect the music, an' might be covered over with a brass plate in case of emergency; but time didn't permit." Thus Mr Tregaskis concluded, and stood wiping his brow.
Captain Cai stared at the gift and around at the men's faces mistily. "Friends"—he managed to say. "Friends," he began again after a painful pause, and then, "It's all very well, William Tregaskis, but you might ha' given a man warnin'—after all these years!"
"It don't want no acknowledgment: but take your time," said the mate handsomely, conscious, for his part, of having performed with credit.
At this suggestion Captain Cai with a vague gesture pulled out his watch, and amid the whirl of his brain was aware of the hour—10.45.
"I've—I've an appointment, friends, as it happens," he stammered. "And I thank you kindly, but—" On a sudden happy inspiration he fixed an eye upon the mate. "All sails unbent aboard?" he asked sternly.
"There's the mizzen, sir—"
"I thought so. We'll have discipline, lads, to the end—if you please.
We'll meet here on Saturday: and when you've done your unbendin' maybe
I'll start doin' mine."
He took up the musical box, tucked it under his arm, and marched out.
CHAPTER VI.
RILLA FARM.
The way was long, the sun was hot, the minstrel (as surely he may be called who carries a musical box) was more than once in two minds about turning back. He perspired under his absurdly superfluous burden.
To be sure he might—for Troy is always neighbourly—have knocked in at some cottage on his way through the tail-end of the town and deposited the box, promising to return for it. But he was flurried, pressed for time, disgracefully behind time, in fact; and, moreover, thanks to his attire and changed appearance, no friendly face had smiled recognition though he had recognised some half a dozen. There was no time to stop, renew old acquaintance, ask a small favour with explanations. . . . All this was natural enough: yet he felt an increasing sense of human selfishness, human ingratitude—he, toiling along with this token of human gratitude under his arm!
At the extreme end of the town his way led him through the entrance of a wooded valley, or coombe, down which a highroad, a rushing stream, and a railway line descend into Troy Harbour, more or less in parallels, from the outside world. A creek runs some little way up the vale. In old days—in Captain Cai's young days—it ran up for half a mile or more to an embanked mill-pool and a mill-wheel lazily turning: and Rilla Farm had in those days been Rilla Mill, with a farmstead attached as the miller's parergon.
But the railway had swept away mill-pool and wheel: and Rilla was now Rilla Farm. The railway, too, cutting sheer through the slope over which the farmstead stood, had transformed shelving turf to rocky cliff and farmstead to eyrie. You approached Rilla now by a footbridge crossing the line, and thereafter by a winding pathway climbing the cliff, with here and there a few steps hewn in the living rock. Nature in some twenty odd years had draped the cliff with fern—the Polypodium vulgare—and Mrs Bosenna in her early married days had planted the crevices with arabis, alyssum, and aubrietia, which had taken root and spread, and now, overflowing their ledges, ran down in cascades of bloom—white, yellow, and purple. The ascent, in short, was very pretty and romantic, and you might easily imagine it the approach to some foreign hill-castle or monastery: for the farmhouse on the summit hid itself behind out-buildings the walls of which crowned the escarpment and presented a blank face, fortress-like, overlooking the vale. The path (as you have gathered) was for pedestrians only. Mrs Bosenna's farm-carts and milk-carts—her dairy trade was considerable—had to fetch a circuit by the road-bridge, half a mile inland.
The air in the valley was heavy, even on this April day. Captain Cai reached the footpath-gate in a bath of perspiration, despite his alpaca coat and notwithstanding that the last half mile of his way had lain under the light shade of budding trees. He gazed up at the ascent, and bethought him that the musical box was an intolerable burden for such a climb. It would involve him in explanations, too, being so unusual an accessory to a morning call. He searched about, therefore, for a hiding-place in which to bestow it, and found one at length in a clump of alder intermixed with brambles, that overhung the stream a few paces beyond the gate, almost within the shadow of the footbridge.
Having made sure that the bed on which it rested was firm and moderately dry, he covered the box with a strewing of last year's leaves, cunningly trailed a bramble or two over it, and pursued his way more lightsomely, albeit still under some oppression: for the house stood formidably high, and he feared all converse with women. For lack of practice he had no presence of mind in their company, Moreover, his recent fiasco in speech-making had dashed his spirits.
He reached the last turn of the path. It brought him in sight of a garden-gate some ten yards ahead, on his left hand. The gate was white, and some one inside was even at this moment engaged in repainting it; for as he halted to draw breath he caught sight of a paint-brush—or rather the point of one—briskly waggling between the rails.
The gate opened and Mrs Bosenna peeped out. "Ah, I thought I heard footsteps!" said she. She wore a widow's cap—a very small and natty one; and a large white apron covered the front of her widow's gown from bosom to ankles.
"I—I'm sorry to call so late, ma'am."
"Late? Why, it can't be past noon, scarcely. . . . We don't have dinner till one o'clock. You'll excuse my not shaking hands, but I never could paint without messing my fingers."
"But I hadn't an idea, ma'am—"
"Eh?"
"Nothing was farther from my thoughts than—than—"
"Staying to dinner? Oh, but it's understood! There's roast sucking-pig," said Mrs Bosenna tranquilly, as if this disposed of all argument. She added, "I didn't recognise you for the moment. You're wearing a different hat."
"Actin' under advice, ma'am."
"I don't know that it's an improvement." Her eyes rested on him in cool scrutiny, and he flinched under it. "There's always a—a sort of distinction about a top hat. Of course, it was very thoughtful of you to change it for something more free-and-easy. But different styles suit different persons, and—as I'm always telling Dinah—the secret of dressing is to find out the style that suits you, and stick to it."
"Bein' free-an'-easy, ma'am, was the last thing in my mind," stammered
Captain Cai.
"There, didn't I guess? . . . Well, you shall wear your top hat next time, and I'll take back my first impressions if I find 'em wrong."
"But, ma'am, the—the fact is—"
"Of course it was in the dusk," continued Mrs Bosenna; "but I certainly thought it suited you. One meets with so little of the real old-fashioned politeness among men in these days! Now "—she let her voice trail off reflectively as her eyes wandered past Captain Cai and rested on the tree-tops in the valley—"if I was asked to name my bo ideal of an English gentleman—and the foreigners can't come near it, you needn't tell me—'twould be Sir Brampton Goldsworthy, Bart., of Halberton Court, Devon."
"Ma'am?"
"That's close to Holsworthy, where I was brought up. 'Goldsworthy of Holsworthy' he liked to be known as, dropping the 'Sir': and he always wore a top hat, rather flat in the brim. But he'd off with it to anything in woman's shape. . . . And that's what women value. Respect. . . . It isn't a man's age—" She broke off and half closed her eyes in reverie. "And so particular, too, about his body-linen! Always a high stock collar . . . and his cuffs!"
"Talkin' about cuffs, now—" Captain Cai dived a hand into a hip-pocket and drew forth a circlet of white lawn, much flattened. "I found this in the garden last night—by the rose-bushes."
"Thank you—yes, it is mine, of course. I missed it on the way home." Mrs Bosenna reached out her hand for it. "You must have set me down for a very careless person? But with all my responsibilities just now—" She concluded the sentence with a sigh, and held open the gate, warning him to beware of the wet paint. "You see, there is so much to be looked after on a farm. One can never trust to servants—or at any rate not to the men kind. Dinah is different; but even with Dinah—" Mrs Bosenna let fall another, slightly fainter, sigh.
"That reminds me," said Captain Cai hardily entering, and for all his lack of observation falling at once under the spell of the little front garden—so scrupulously tidy it was, so trim and kempt, with a pathway of white pebbles leading up between clumps of daffodils and tulips to a neatly thatched porch: so homely too, with but a low fence of euonymus shutting off all that could offend in the court before the cow-byres; so fragrant already with scent of the just sprouting lemon verbena; so obviously the abode of cleanly health, with every window along the white-washed house front open to the April air. "That reminds me, I never mentioned the—the deceased—your late husband, I mean, ma'am—nor how sorry I was to hear of it."
"Did you know him?" asked Mrs Bosenna, scarcely glancing up as she pinched the fragrance out of an infant bud of the lemon verbena.
"Very slightly, ma'am. Indeed, I don't remember meetin' him but once, and that was at Summercourt Fair, of all places; me bein' home just then from a trip, an' takin' a day off, as you might say, just to see how things was gettin' on ashore. As fate would have it I happened into a boxin' booth, which was twopence, and there, as I was watchin' a bout, some one says at my elbow, ''Tis a noble art, deny it who can!' An' that was your late husband. We'd never met afore to my knowledge, an' we never met again; but his words have come back to me more'n once, an' the free manly way he spoke 'em."
"I feel sure," said Mrs Bosenna, "you and he would have found many things in common, had he been spared. . . Now, I dare say, you'd like to look around the place a bit before dinner. Where shall we begin? With the live stock?"
"As you please, ma'am."
"Well, as we're to eat sucking-pig, we'll go and have a look at the litter he was one of; and then we'll take the cows; and then you'll have to excuse me for a few minutes while I attend to the apple-sauce, about which I'm very particular."
They visited the sow and her farrows—a family group which Captain Cai pronounced to be "very comfortable-lookin'."
"But how stupid of me!" exclaimed Mrs Bosenna. "To forget that you sailors are tired to death with pork!"
"Not with this variety, ma'am," Captain Cai assured her.
They passed on to the cow-houses, which were empty just then, but nevertheless worth visiting, being brick-floored, well-ventilated, and roomy, with straw generously spread in the stalls, fresh and ready for the cattle's return. There were two houses, one for Jerseys (as Mrs Bosenna explained), the other for Devons; and she drew his attention to their drainage system. "If I had my way, every cow in the land should be as cleanly lodged as a cottager. None of your infected milk for me!"
From the cow-houses she conducted him through the mowhay, where the number and amplitude of the ricks fairly took his breath away. "Oh, we call Rilla quite a small farm!" said Mrs Bosenna carelessly. "But I could never endure to be short of straw. Clean bedding is a craze with me." She halted and invited him to admire some details in the thatching—the work of an old man past seventy, she told him, and sighed. "Thatching's a lost art, almost. Too much education nowadays, and everybody in a hurry—that's what's the matter. . . . In a few years we shall all be thatching with corrugated iron."
"An' by that time every one will be in steam."
"Eh?"
"Shipping, ma'am."
"Ah, yes—to be sure. And everybody making butter with a County Council separator. 'All very scientific,' I tell them, 'so long as you don't ask me to eat it!' Why, look at this!" Captain Cai looked. She was holding out her hand palm uppermost, and a very pretty, plump hand it was to be sure.
"I should be sorry to say how many hundredweights of butter I've made wi' that very hand—or how many hundreds of persons have eaten it."
Captain Cai dived his own hands into the hip-pockets of his new coat, aimlessly searching for pipe and tobacco-pouch; not that he would have ventured to smoke in her presence!—but it gave his hands something to do.
"'Glad,' I think you must mean, ma'am," said he slowly.
She laughed. "If you're going to make pretty speeches, it's time for me to run indoors," and she left him with a warning that dinner would be ready in ten minutes, or at one o'clock to the tick.
This was by the gate of a broad-acred field ("Parc Veor" she had called it) in which her Jerseys browsed. Captain Cai counted them—they were five—while still half-consciously searching for pipe and pouch, which, in fact, he had left behind in the shop, in the pockets of his old coat. By-and-by he realised this, and with a curious sense of helplessness—of having lost his bearings. . . .
Ten minutes later Dinah, coming across the mowhay to invite Captain Cai into the house, found him leaning against the gate, sunk in a brown study, contemplating the kine.
The smell of roasted sucking-pig dissipated this transient cloud upon his spirits. Mrs Bosenna (who had discarded her apron, and looked mighty genteel with a gold locket dependent from her throat) avowed, appealing to his sympathy, that it mightn't be sentimental, but she, for her part, adored the savour of crackling.
"And as for Robert—my late husband—he doted on it."
Captain Cai came within an ace of saying fatuously it was a pity the late Mr Bosenna couldn't be present to partake of this; but checked himself.
"To think that you should have met him! Well, it's a small world."
"There's a lot of folks attend Summercourt Fair—or used to," said Captain Cai, and added that the world was not so noticeably small, if you tried sailing up and down it a bit.
"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs Bosenna, dropping knife and fork and clasping her hands. "Yes, to be sure, the vastness of it—the great distances! . . . And so you met my late husband in a boxing tent? Sport of all kinds appealed to him. But isn't boxing a-er—more or less degrading exhibition?"
"Nothing of the sort, ma'am. I never went in for it myself—worse luck; never had the time. But my friend 'Bias, now! He's past his prime, o' course; but if only you'd seen him strip—in the old time—"
"Er—you're surely not referring to your friend Captain Hunken?"
"But I am, ma'am. . . . He had a way o' stepping back an' usin' his reach . . . a trifle slow with the left, always . . . that was his failin'. But the length of his arms would delight you—and he had a hug, too, of his own—if you happened to take an interest in such things."
"But I don't," protested Mrs Bosenna. "And you frighten me! If I'd guessed that my other tenant was a prize-fighter—"
"Prize-fighter, ma'am? What, 'Bias? . . . He's the gentlest you ever knew, and the easiest-goin': and for ladies' company—well, I don't know," confessed Captain Cai, "as he ever found himself in such, least-ways not to my knowledge. But I'll be bound he wouldn't be able to open his mouth."
"—Unless in defence of a friend," suggested Mrs Bosenna, laughing.
"You must bring him to call on me."
Captain Cai shook his head.
"Oh"—she nodded confidently—"I'll make him talk, never fear!
If he's half so true a friend to you as you are to him—"
"He's a truer."
"Then, as a last resource, I have only to run you down. So it's easy."
The sucking-pig was followed by a delectable junket with Cornish cream; and the junket—when Dinah had removed the cloth—by a plate of home-made biscuits, flanked by decanters of port and sherry.
"Widow's port is the best, they say." Mrs Bosenna invited him to fill his glass without waiting for ceremony. "You smoke?" she asked.
He confessed that he was without pipe or tobacco. Dinah was summoned again, left the room after a whispered consultation, and returned with a small sheaf of clean churchwarden pipes and a cake of tobacco, dark in hue, somewhat dry but (as a quick inspection assured Captain Cai) quite smokeable.
"Now you're to make yourself at ease," said Mrs Bosenna, rising and moving to the door. Captain Cai, remembering his manners, rose and held it open for her. "The wine is at your elbow and (oh, believe me, I understand men!) when you've finished your smoke you will find me in the rose-garden. That's my real garden, though nothing to boast of at this time of the year. But April's the month for pruning tea-roses, and this weather in April is not to be missed. I want to hear more of your friend; and when you are ready—you are not to hurry—Dinah will show you the way."
Captain Cai, left alone, carved a pipeful of tobacco with his pocket-knife; chose a clay; filled, lit it, and smoked. Two glasses of wine had sufficed him, for he was an abstemious man: but, for all his hard life, he could enjoy comfort. He found it here; in the good food, the generous liquor, the twinkle on the glass and decanter, the ill-executed but solid portraits on the walls, the hearthrug soft beneath his sole, the April combination of sunshine slanting through the window and a brisk but not oppressive coal fire on the hearth.
He smoked. The tobacco (smuggled and purchased at low cost by the late
Mr Bosenna) had been excellent in its time, and was palatable yet.
It stuck in Captain Cai's conscience, however, and pricked it while he smoked, that he had given Mrs Bosenna a wrong impression of his friend.
`Bias a mere prize-fighter! `Bias of all people! But that is what comes of laying stress on one particular accomplishment of an Admirable Crichton.
He ruminated on this: finished his pipe: and having knocked out the ashes thoughtfully on the bars of the grate, sought the back garden without the help of Dinah.
The rose-garden to the uninstructed eye was—now in April—but a wilderness of scrubby stunted thorns. In the midst of it he found Mrs Bosenna, gloved, armed with a pair of secateurs, and engaged in cutting the thorns back to a few ugly inches.
She smiled as he approached. "You don't understand roses?" she asked. "If you don't, you'll be surprised at my hard pruning. If there's real strength in the root, you can trust for June, no matter what a stick you leave. The secret's under the ground; or, as you may say, under the surface, as it is with folks."
"That helps me, ma'am," said Captain Cai, "to tell you it's like that with my friend 'Bias—"
A whistle sounded up the valley. "The three-thirty coming!" said Mrs
Bosenna. "It's at the signal-box outside the tunnel."
"The three-thirty?" Captain Cai gasped and pulled out his watch.
"But that's 'Bias's train—and I was to meet him!"
"You might just do it," hazarded Mrs Bosenna. "We count it half a mile to the station, and by the time they have the luggage out—"
"I must do it, ma'am! To think that—" Captain Cai held out a hand.
"I'd no notion—the time has flown so!"
"Dinah! Dinah!" called Mrs Bosenna, and as Dinah appeared at the back door with a promptitude almost suspicious,—"Run and fetch Captain Hocken's hat, girl! He has to catch a train."
Dinah vanished, and in the twinkling of an eye came running with the hat; with a clothes-brush, too. "Confound her!" Captain Cai swore inwardly as she insisted on brushing his coat, paying special attention to a dry spot of mud on the right hip-pocket. Feminine attentions may be overdone, and Mrs Bosenna showed more tactfulness than her maid.
"Have finished, you silly woman! Cannot you see that Captain Hocken is dying to leave us? . . . But you are to bring your friend, sir, at the first opportunity!"
She repeated this, calling it after him as he raced down the path. At the footbridge he remembered the musical box in the bushes. But it was too late. Mrs Bosenna had followed him to the head of the slope, and stood watching, waving her handkerchief.
As he glanced back and up at her over his shoulder, his ear caught the rumble of a train, not far up the valley. He must run! . . .
He ran, sticking his elbow to his sides. But soon the rumble of the train grew to a roar. It was upon him. . . . It overtook him some three hundred yards from the station, and the carriage windows, as he staggered down the high road, went past him in a blur.
CHAPTER VII.
BIAS ARRIVES.
Captain Tobias Hunken sat patiently and ponderously upon a wooden sea-chest, alone on the platform, but stacked about by such a miscellany of luggage as gave him no slight resemblance to Crusoe on his raft. Besides parcels, boxes, carpet-bags, canvas-bags, tarpaulin-bags, it included a pile of furniture swathed in straw, a parrot-cage covered with baize, and a stone jar calculated to hold nine gallons of liquor.
He was a dark-bearded man, heavy shouldered, of great bulk, and by temperament apparently phlegmatic; for when Captain Cai arrived, panting, red in the face, stammering contrition, he betrayed neither emotion nor surprise.
"'Twas all my thoughtlessness!" cried Captain Cai.
"What's the matter?" asked Captain Tobias. "No hurry, is there?
We've retired."
"If I'd known I was so late!"
"Five minutes." Captain Tobias gazed across at the station clock, then at his friend's face, as if comparing the two. "You've altered your appearance recently. Which some might say 'twas for the better."
"Glad you think so," said Captain Cai, modestly pleased.
"Others, again, mightn't. But, there!" added Captain Tobias with sudden intensity. "Who cares what folks say? If you chose to go about like a Red Indian, 'twouldn' be no affair o' theirs, I should hope?"
"Why, o' course not," Captain Cai agreed, albeit a trifle dashed.
"As you say, we've retired, an' can do as we like."
"Ah!" Captain Tobias eyed him and drew a long breath. "Got such a thing as a match about ye?" he asked, pulling forth a short clay pipe.
"No—yes!" Captain Cai, clapping a hand to either hip, was about to admit that he had come without pipe, tobacco, or matches, when he felt something hard and angular within the left pocket, and (to his confusion) produced—a silver matchbox. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed stupidly.
"That's a pretty trifle," said Captain Tobias, possessing himself of the box and extracting a match from it. "Where did ye pick it up, now!"
"From a—a lady—a Mrs Bosenna." Captain Cai recovered the box, pocketed it, and desperately changed the subject. "What's become of all the porters hereabouts?" he demanded. "Leavin' us alone an' all this luggage, like a wreck ashore!"
"I sent 'em away," Captain Tobias explained with composure, "knowin' as you'd turn up sooner or later. Who's Mrs Bosenna?"
"She's our landlady; a widow-woman. She lives up the valley yonder." Captain Cai jerked a thumb in that direction, and with renewed anxiety looked about for a porter. "Hadn't we better whistle one across?"
"Sells matches, does she?"
"No,"—he knew his friend's persistence, and faced about to make a clean breast. "I was callin' there to-day. There's the leases to be fixed up, you see—" He paused.
Captain Tobias assented with a slow nod. "Premises all satisfactory?"
"And shipshape. That's one load off my mind, anyway," sighed Captain Cai. "You're bound to like 'em—that is, if you like Troy at all. There's hot and cold water laid on, so's you can have a bath at a moment's notice."
"I don't see myself, exactly," said Captain Tobias. "But never mind."
"Well, as I was sayin', I called there to-day—to break the ice, so to speak—"
"You didn't mention ice; or, if you did, I missed hearin' it."
"'Tis a way of speakin'. Well, the widow pressed me to stay to dinner, and there was a suckin' pig; and afterwards—"
"Hold hard." Captain Tobias removed the pipe from his mouth and stared earnestly at his friend. "Say that agen," he commanded.
"There was roast suckin' pig, I tell you. It melted in y'r mouth. Well, after dinner she left me alone with pipes an' tobacco; an' 'twas then, I suppose, that in my forgetful way I must have slipped the box into my pocket."
"'Twasn' very nice treatment, was it?—after the length she'd gone to put herself out."
"But 'twas absence o' mind, you understand."
"I seem to remember," mused Captain Tobias, "there was a Lord Somebody-or-other suffered from the same complaint. I read about it in the papers, an' only wish I'd cut it out. Any little valu'bles lyin' about he'd slip into his pocket. But I never heard of your bein' afflicted in that way."
"Of course I'm not!" Captain Cai protested warmly.
"Then I don't see what excuse you'll put up. . . . But wait till we get all this cargo stowed. Ahoy, there!" Captain Tobias called up the porters, and after consultation it was decided to convert the goods-shed into a cloak-room for housing the bulk of his luggage, but to send on his sea-chest and the birdcage by wheelbarrow to his lodgings.
"What's the address?" he asked, turning to Captain Cai.
"Ship Inn."
"What?" Captain Tobias paused in the act of picking up the nine-gallon jar. "Drinks on the premises?"
"Lashin's."
"What a world o' fuss that arrangement do save! Here!—" to the porter who stood checking the articles deposited—"this goes into hold wi' the rest. Contents, rum, an' don't you forget it, my son; leastways, pr'aps I'd better say, don't you remember it."
"I'm a total abstainer, sir," said the porter proudly.
"You don't tell me? . . . One meets with such cases, about. . . . Well,"—Captain Tobias turned to Captain Cai again, as one averting his face from a sorrow to which no help can be proffered—"what's the distance?"
"To the Ship? About half a mile—a nice easy walk, an' the barrow can follow us."
They were no sooner outside the station premises, however, than Captain Tobias called halt to the driver of the wheelbarrow, paid him, and instructed him to proceed ahead.
"And you may tell the landlord," he added, "to expect us when he sees us."
He watched the man out of sight before explaining this manoeuvre. "'Twas clever of you to mistake me, in front of those fellows; but I meant, what distance to this here widow's?"
"Eh? You don't mean to say—after your journey, too—"
"We'll get it over," said Captain Tobias firmly.
Captain Cai could not but approve. Here was prompt occasion not only to repair and apologise for his small blunder, but to make Mrs Bosenna acquainted with his paragon. She would soon correct that unfortunate image of him as a coarse prize-fighting fellow.
To tell the truth, while reproaching himself for having evoked that image by his clumsy praise, he had doubted it might be difficult to efface: knowing his friend's shyness of womankind. He had doubted that 'Bias, who (to use his own words) "shunned the fair sex in all its branches," might decline even to make the lady's acquaintance. Lo! here was that admirable man setting his face and—sternly, for friendship's sake—marching upon an introduction. What a friend!
They took their way up the valley, walking side by side. For a long while both kept silence.
"Pretty country!" by-and-by observed Captain Tobias. He paused as if to take stock of it, but his gaze was meditative rather than observant. "Suckin' pigs, too, . . ." he added after a while, and resumed his way.
"What about 'em?"
"Why, to drop in on a lone woman unexpected, an' find her sittin' down to roast suckin' pig . . . it's—it's like Solomon an' the lilies."
Captain Cai flushed half-guiltily. "I didn't say I called quite unexpectedly, did I?"
"To break the ice, was your words."
"You see, I'd happened to meet Mrs Bosenna the evenin' before, an'—hullo!"
They had come to the bend of the road beneath Rilla Farm, and either his eyesight had played him a trick or Captain Cai had caught a glimpse— just a glimpse and no more—of a print gown some fifty yards ahead, where the hedge made an angle about a clump of trees. The small entrance gate and the footbridge lay just beyond this angle.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Captain Cai.
"What's up?"
"Nothin'"—for the light apparition had vanished. "Besides, she'd be wearin' black, o' course."
"I wish you'd talk more coherent," said Captain Tobias, stopping short again and eyeing him. "I put it to you, now. Here I be, tumbled out 'pon a terminus platform in a country I've never set eyes on. As if that wasn' enough, straightaway things start to happen so that I want to hold my head. And as if that wasn' enough, you work loose on the jawin' tacks till steerage way there's none. I put it to you."
"I'm sorry, 'Bias," Cai assured him contritely as they moved on. "Maybe I'm upset by the pleasure o' seein' ye here. Many a time I've picter'd it, an'—I don't know if you've noticed, but these little things never do fall out just like a man expects."
"I've noticed it to-day, right enough," said Tobias with some emphasis. But he was mollified, and indeed seemed on the point of adding a word when of a sudden he came to yet another halt and eyed his friend more reproachfully than ever—no, not reproachfully save by implication: with bewilderment rather, and helpless surmise.
"What?" gasped Captain Tobias. "Which?"—and, with that, speech failed him.
The pair had come to the footbridge and were in the act of crossing it, when they became aware that the stream beneath them differed from all streams in their experience. It was not rippling like other streams; it was not murmuring; it was tinkling out a gay little operatic tune!
To be more precise, it was rendering the waltz-tune in "Faust," an opera by the late M. Gounod. Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken knew nothing of "Faust" or of its composer. But they could recognise a tune.
"Which?" repeated Tobias gasping, holding by the handrail of the bridge. "You or me? Or both, perhaps?"
"Two glasses o' port wine only, 'Bias . . . and you saw me at the station. I'd run all the way too. . . . Besides, you hear it." Relief, of a sudden, broke over Captain Cai's face. "It's the box!" he cried.
With that he was aware of the sound of a merry laugh behind him—a feminine laugh, too, not less musical than the melody still tinkling at his feet. He turned about and confronted Mrs Bosenna as she stepped forth from her hiding in the bushes, her maid Dinah in attendance close behind her.
"Good afternoon again, Captain Hocken! And is this Captain Hunken?
. . . It was polite of you—polite indeed—to bring him so soon."
She held out a hand to Tobias, who, to take it, was forced to relinquish for a moment his clutch on the rail.
"Servant, ma'am," said he in a gruff unnatural voice, and fell back on his support.
She laughed again merrily. "And you'll forgive me for making you welcome with musical honours? That was a sudden notion of Dinah's. She spied you coming up the road, and—Dinah, can you manage to stop that silly tune?"
"I'll try, mistress." Dinah stooped, groped amid the grasses, and produced the musical box from its lair.
"You can," stammered Captain Cai, as if repeating a formula, "turn it off—at any time—by means of a back-handed switch."
"It's yours, then!" Mrs Bosenna clapped her hands together as she turned on him.
"It's mine," confessed Captain Cai. "The question might occur to you, ma'am—"
"It has. Oh, it has!" She rippled with laughter. "You should have seen Dinah's face when she came upon it!"
"Caius," said Captain Hunken, interrupting her mirth as with a stroke tolled on a bell, "would ye mind pinching me?"
"Not at all, 'Bias—if you'll tell me where."
"Anywheres. Only rememberin' we're in the presence o' ladies."
"It's perfectly simple," said Captain Cai, "if you'll only let me explain! You see, the thing's what you might call a testimonial. I picked it up, comin' through the town to-day."
"A testimonial? How interesting!" murmured Mrs Bosenna.
"From my late crew, ma'am. As I was sayin', on my way through the town to call on you, ma'am, I was taken on the hop, so to speak, an' made the recipient—"
"What for?" demanded 'Bias. He was breathing hard.
"It don't become me," said Captain Cai, and, speaking under stress of desperation, he found himself of a sudden wondering at his own fluency. "It don't become me to repeat all the—sentiments which, er, emanated."
"Give me some," growled Captain Tobias, and was heard to add, under stertorous breath—"Testimonial? I'd like to ha' seen my lot try it on me!"
"They said," confessed Captain Cai, "as how it was their united wish—" Here he recalled Mr Tregaskis' allusion to possible offspring, and blushed painfully.
"Well?"
"That was the words: as how it was their united wish—adding 'in all weathers.'"
"And, the next news, it's playin' tunes in a ditch," pursued Captain
Tobias.
"I think I can explain," put in Mrs Bosenna sweetly, hastening to close up the little breach which, for some reason or other, had suddenly opened between these two good friends. "Captain Hocken, being cumbered with the box on his way to pay me a visit, hid it in the bushes here for a time, meaning to recover it on his way back to the station."
"That's so, ma'am," Captain Cai corroborated her.
"But having misjudged the time, and in his hurry to meet you—good friend that he is—Oh, Captain Hunken, if you could have heard the way he spoke of you! What he led me to expect—not," she added prettily, "that I admit to being disappointed."
"Go on, ma'am," said Captain Tobias sturdily. But in truth it had come to his turn to look ashamed.
"Well, you see, in his haste he forgot it. And now he brings you back to fetch it—am I not right?"
"Not exactly, ma'am," confessed Captain Cai. "The truth is—"
"Well, you shall hear how meantime we happened on it. . . . We are very particular about our cream, here at Rilla: and with this warm weather coming on, Dinah has been telling me it's time we stood the pans out in running water. Haven't you, Dinah?"
Dinah smoothed her print gown. It was not for her to admit here that early in the day from an upper window she had been watching for Captain Hocken's approach, had witnessed it, had witnessed also the act of concealment, and had faithfully reported it to her mistress.
"So," continued Mrs Bosenna hardily, "reckoning that the bed of the stream may have been choked by what the winter rains carry down, and this being our favourite place for the pans, under the cool of the bridge, down happens Dinah—"
"Excuse me, ma'am; but ain't it rather near the high road?"
"It is, Captain Hunken: and I have often thought of it at nights.
But the folks are honest in these parts—extraordinarily honest."
She broke off, perceiving that Captain Tobias was looking with sudden earnestness at Captain Cai, and that Captain Cai was somewhat awkwardly evading the look.
"Be a man, Caius!" Tobias exhorted his friend.
"It's—it's this way, ma'am," said Captain Cai sheepishly, after a long pause, diving in his pocket. "We wasn't exactly bound to fetch the—the musical box—which, Lord forgive me! I'd forgot for the moment—but to return this. How it came to find its way to my pocket I don't know."
"And I don't know, either," mused Mrs Bosenna, as Dinah helped her to undress that night. (This undressing was, in fact, but a well-worn excuse for mistress and maid to chat and—due difference of position observed—exchange confidences before bedtime). "Captain Hocken is simple-minded, as any one can tell; but not absent-minded by nature. At least, I hope not. I hate absent-minded men."
She glanced at her glass, and turned about sharply.
"Dinah, you designing woman! I believe you slipped that box into his pocket? Yes, when you pretended that his coat wanted brushing,—I saw you!"
CHAPTER VIII.
'BIAS APPROVES.
As they departed and went their way down the coombe, a constrained silence fell between the two friends. Nor did either break it until they came again in sight of the railway station.
"I don't altogether like the air in this valley," announced 'Bias.
"It is a trifle close, now you mention it," Cai agreed.
"Nor I don't altogether cotton to the valley, neither. Pretty enough, you may say; but it gives you a feelin'—like as if you didn't know what was goin' to happen next."
"Places do have that effect with some," Cai assented again, but more dejectedly. Horrid apprehension—if 'Bias should extend his dislike to Troy itself!
"I'm feeling better already," 'Bias continued, answering and allaying this unspoken fear. "Is that the gasworks yonder?"
"Yes. The real scenery's at the other end o' the town."
"The smell's healthy, they tell me." 'Bias halted in the roadway, and casting back his head took a long stare up at the gasometer. "You mustn' hurry me," he said, "I've got to enjoy everything."
"No hurry at all," said Cai, from whose heart the words lifted a burden at least as heavy as the musical box under his arm. "Hullo! here's Bill Tregaskis with his missus! . . . Evenin', William—good evenin', ma'am!" Captain Cai pulled off his hat. "I hope you find your husband none the worse for the voyage?—though, to be sure, 'tisn' fair on him nor on any seamen, the way some folks reproaches us when we get back home."
Mrs Tregaskis dropped a curtsey. "But be sure, sir—what reproaches?"
"Your looks, ma'am—your looks, if I may say so! . . . William married you soon as he could, I'll wager; but, to be fair, that should ha' been ten years afore you married him."
"La, sir!" answered Mrs Tregaskis blushing. "I wonder you never married, yourself—you talk such nonsense! But you're in spirits to-day, as any one can see." She glanced at the broad back of Captain Tobias, who stood a few paces away, with legs planted wide and gaze still wrapped in contemplation of the gasometer. "Makin' so bold, sir, is that your friend we've heard tell so much about?"
"It is, ma'am," Captain Cai turned about to call up 'Bias to be introduced, when Mr Tregaskis gently checked him, laying a hand on the musical box.
"I didn' think it worth mentionin' at the time, sir; but these instruments aren't intended for carryin' about."
"No, no," Captain Cai agreed hastily. "Here, 'Bias! Look around an' see who's the first to welcome ye! Tregaskis, of all men! And this here's his missus."
"How d'e do, Mr Tregaskis," said Captain Tobias, shaking hands. He knew the mate of the Hannah Hoo, and respected him for a capable seaman. "I hope I see you well, ma'am?"
"Nicely, sir, thank you!" Mrs Tregaskis curtseyed and beamed.
But Captain Tobias, though with her, too, he shook hands politely
enough, was plainly preoccupied. "'Tis a wonderful invention," said he.
"You just let the gas run in, an' then it is ready for use at any time.
I hadn't a notion you was so up-to-date here."
Mr Tregaskis looked puzzled. "It don't work by gas. You wind it up with a cog arrangement, which acts on a spring coil, I'm told—just like the inside of a watch. But we can see by liftin' up the lid."
"Eh?" Captain Tobias glanced back over his shoulder.
"But as I was tellin' the boss, 'twas never intended for a country walk. You sets it down at home and calls for a tune—as it might be drinks," continued Mr Tregaskis lucidly.
Captain Cai touched his friend's elbow. "You're talkin' o' different things, you two," he explained in a nervous haste, anxious to get off delicate ground. "Tregaskis was alludin' to—er—this here; which" he concluded, "nobody could have been more taken aback than I was this mornin' . . . when it happened."
"You don't say that's the musical box!" cried Mrs Tregaskis. "Now, don't you agree, sir"—she appealed to Captain Tobias—"with what I said to William at dinner-time, when he told me about the presentation and the speeches? [Here Captain Cai shot a look at his mate, who flushed but kept his eyes averted, pretending carelessness.] I said that for a lot of ignorant seamen 'twas quite a happy thought, an' nobody could say as Captain Hocken didn' deserve it; but, the thing bein' bought in such a hurry—an' knowin' William as I do—ten to one he'd been taken in an' the thing wouldn't work when it came to be tried."
"I told you," put in her spouse, "as the salesman had shown us how to work it, an' it played the most life-like tunes, 'Home Sweet Home' inclooded."
"The salesman!" said Mrs Tregaskis scornfully. "A long way you'll go in the world if you trust a salesman! Why, there was a young man once in Harris's Drapery showed me a bonnet—with humming-birds—perfectly outrageous; I wouldn' ha' been seen in it; and inside o' five minutes he had me there with the tears in my eyes to think I couldn' afford it."
"It works all right indeed, ma'am," Captain Cai assured her.
"Ah, maybe you're cleverer with machinery than William? I don't know how you find him at sea, but I can't trust him to wind the clock."
"I didn' set it goin' myself, ma'am; not personally."
"Well," sighed Mrs Tregaskis, "I wish William had consulted me, anyway, before buying the thing in such a hurry. It's shop-soiled, he has to admit; which I only hope you'll overlook."
"I've told you, my dear," put in Mr Tregaskis patiently, "that the mark was done by a Challenge Cup. The fellow was quite honest about it."
"A more thoughtful man," the lady insisted, "would have consulted his wife—would have brought the thing home, maybe, for a trial, to have her opinion on it. The others wouldn't have raised any objection, I'm sure. And," she concluded with another sigh, "he knows that I fairly dote on music!"
"If that's so, ma'am," began Captain Cai, and hesitated, overtaken by sudden caution, "I might let you have the loan of it, some time."
"You got out o' that very well," said Tobias, as they moved on. "I like this place—" He paused, to scan a bill hoarding. "I likes it the more the further I gets. But the women hereabouts seem more than usual forward. Which an unprejoodiced man might call it a drawback."
"I'm sorry, 'Bias, she would keep talkin' about the darned box. . . . I couldn' prevent the lads, d'ye see—not knowin' they'd any such thing in their minds."
"She as good as invited herself to call an' listen to it," Tobias pursued stolidly. "You headed her off very well. 'Tis possible, o' course, we may get tired o' the tunes in time; an' then she may be welcome to it for a spell. We'll see. Plenty o' time for that when we've done listenin' to it together."
Captain Cai halted and gazed at his friend with an emotion too deep for words. But Tobias did not see: he was staring up at a wire which crossed the street overhead.
"Telephone! What next? . . . You never told me, neither—or not to my recollection—as you went in for speech-makin'."
"But I don't. I—er—the fact is, I had thoughts of takin' a lesson or two. Private lessons, you understand."
"You don't need to, so far as I can see. What was it I heard you tellin' that widow-woman?—'You was made the recipient—of sentiments— which emanated'—that's the way to talk to 'em in public life. I can reckernise the lingo, though I couldn' manage it for worlds, an' don't know as I want to try."
"Troy is my native town, you see," explained Cai, drinking encouragement.
"An' a rattlin' fine one, too!" Tobias halted in front of a wall letter-box. "Look at that, now! 'Hours of Collection' so-an'-so. It do make a difference—fancy a thing o' that sort at sea! . . . D'ye know, although you never expressed yourself that way, I'd always a thought at the back o' my head that you'd end by takin' up with public life in one form or another."
"It has been hinted to me," confessed Cai, colouring. "As one might say, it has been—er—"
"Emanated," his friend suggested.
"It has been emanated, then—that there was a thing or two wanted puttin' to rights."
"We'll make notes as we go along."
"But I don't want you to start by lookin' out our little weaknesses!" cried Cai, suddenly fearful for his beloved town.
Nevertheless he was in the seventh heaven, divining that his friend (so chary of speech as a rule) had been trying to make amends, to sweep away the little cloud that for a moment—no more—had crossed their perfect understanding. 'Bias was here, determined to like Troy: and 'Bias was succeeding. What else mattered?
"Tidy little trade here," commented 'Bias, as they reached the Passage Slip and conned the business reach of the river, the vessels alongside the jetties, the cranes at work, the shipping moored off at the buoys— vessels of all nations, but mostly Danes and Russians, awaiting their turn.
"Twenty thousand tons a-month, my boy! See that two-funnelled craft 'longside the second jetty? Six thousand—not a fraction under. We're things o' the past, you an' me, an' 'twas high time we hauled out o' the competition."
"China clay?"
"All of it."
"I don't know much about china clay," said 'Bias reflectively. "But I never met twenty thousand tons of anything where it wasn' time for somebody to protect the public."
"There's a Harbour Commission here, o' course—bye-laws an' all that sort o' thing."
"Ay; there's one openin' for ye. We'll find others."
They resumed their way. The street—Troy has but one street, but makes up for this by calling various lengths of it by various names—was in places so narrow that to avoid passing vehicles they were forced to take refuge in handy doorways. In three out of four the door stood open, and Captain Cai, popping his head in at kitchen or small parlour, would beg pardon for intruding, pass the time of day with the mistress of the house, inquire for her husband's health—"Do I remember him, I wonder?" —and how many children there were, and what might be their ages? He always wound up by introducing his friend. Nobody resented these salutations, these questions. Indeed how was it possible to be morose with Captain Cai?—he bubbled such transparent gaiety, kindliness, innocence.
"'Tis our way in Troy, you see," he told 'Bias as they dived into a cobbler's shop to escape the omnibus. "You have to be neighbourly if you don't want to be run over. . . . In London, now, you'd waste a lot o' time explainin' that you didn' want your boots mended."
"It's like what I've heard about canvassin' for Parlyment," said 'Bias.
"And that's another suggestion fur ye."
Of the most important shops in the length of thoroughfare known as Fore Street and in Church Square (which is the same street with a corkscrew twist in it) 'Bias showed much appreciation. He was especially allured by the rainbow-tinted goods in Mr Shake Benny's window, and by the cards recommending them for sale. If you admire Lord Rosebery, Now is Your Time—He studied this for some moments.
"Time for what?" he asked, rubbing his ear softly.
"Drinks," suggested Cai, and laughed in pure pleasure of heart. "Come along, man—or you'll be makin' me Prime Minister before we get to the Ship. . . Yes, yon's the church—Established. You can tell by the four spikes an' the weathercock; like-wise by the tombstones. But they bury folks up the hill nowadays." He paused—"That reminds me"—he paused again.
"What of?"
"Oh—er—nothing; nothing particular. . . . Well, if you must know, I was thinkin' about that old hat o' mine."
"You don't tell me you've buried it?"
"No."
"It is time for drinks," said 'Bias with decision. They called at the Ship Inn, where they ascertained that Captain Hunken's chest and parrot-cage had been duly delivered.
"Very decent beer," pronounced 'Bias as they shared a quart.
"When a man has a job to tackle—" began Cai, and glanced at his friend. "You're sure we hadn' better wait till you've had a meal?—till to-morrow mornin' if you like."
'Bias drained his tankard and arose—a giant visibly refreshed.
"I'm a-goin' to see the house, instanter."
"Things," said Cai, "strike different parties from different points o' view. That's notorious. One man's born an' bred in a place, and another isn't. . . . Now if the latter—as we'll call him for argyment's sake—"
But 'Bias, cutting short this parley, had gained the door and was marching forth.