For a long time Cai stared. Then, as 'Bias made no sign of lifting his sullen gaze from the strip of carpet by the bed, he turned half-about towards the door.
"'Bias Hunken," said he gently, "you're a good man, an' deserved this luck better'n me. . . . If you can't put away hard thoughts just yet, maybe you'll remember, some day, that I wished 'ee long life to enjoy it."
His hand was on the door. "Here, though—hold hard!" put in Fancy, who had picked up the bundle of papers. "I don't think Cap'n Hunken understands; nor I don't clearly understand myself. Was it both packets you carried home, sir? or only this one?"
"I thought as I'd made it clear enough," answered Cai. His eyes were still on his friend, and there was weariness as well as pain in his voice. "There's only one packet—'Bias's—what you have in your hand. I must have carried it home by mistake."
"Then your's is missin'?"
"That's so," said the broken man quietly.
The child turned and walked to the window. On her way she halted a moment and peered earnestly into the invalid's eyes, as if the riddle might possibly be read there. But they were vacant and answered her nothing. Then for some twenty seconds, almost pressing her forehead to the window-pane, she stood and gazed out upon the glancing waters of the harbour.
"There's only one thing to be done—" She wheeled about sharply. "Why, wherever is the man? . . . You don't mean to tell me," she demanded of 'Bias indignantly, "that you sat there an' let him go!"
"I couldn' help his goin', could I?" muttered 'Bias, but his eyes were uneasy under the wrath in hers.
"You couldn' help it?" she echoed in scorn, and pointed to the figure on the bed. "Here you come playin' the Early Christian over a man that, for aught you knew, had robbed you to a stair: and when 'tis your tried friend fetchin' back riches to you—fairly bringin' you back to life at the cost o' bein' a beggar hisself—you let him go without so much as a thank'ee!"
"Cai Hocken don't want my thanks."
"Didn't even want politeness, I suppose—after runnin' here hot foot with the news that made you rich an' him a poor man! Oh, you're past all patience! . . . Who should know what he wanted an' didn't get— I, that had my eyes on his face, or you, that sat like a stuck pig, glowerin' at the carpet?"
"Gently, missy! . . . There—there didn' seem anything to say."
"There was one thing to say," answered the girl sternly, "and there's one thing to be done."
"What's that?"
"It mayn't be an easy thing, altogether. But you'll be glad of it afterwards, and you may as well make up your mind to it."
"Out with it!"
"Mrs Bosenna—Why, what's the matter?"—for 'Bias had interrupted with a short laugh.
"I'd forgot Mrs Bosenna for the moment."
"Right. Then go on forgettin' her, an' give her up. When you come to think it over," urged Fancy with the air of a nurse who administers medicine to a child, "you'll find 'tis the only fit an' proper thing to do."
Again 'Bias laughed, and this time his laugh was even shorter and grimmer than before.
"Well and good—but wait one moment, missy! D'ye know what Cai Hocken said to me, last night in the garden, when he reckoned as I'd lost my money? No, you don't. 'Look here,' he said, 'if you've still a mind to that woman and she've a mind to you, I'll stand aside.' That's what he said: and d'ye know what I answered? I told him to go to hell."
"I see." Fancy stood musing.
"Makes it a bit awkward, eh?—Cai bein' a man of spirit, with all his faults."
"Well," she decided, "unless we can find his money for him, he'll have to marry her, whether or no. 'Faults,' indeed? I believe," went on the wise child, "you two be more to one another than that woman ever was to either, or ever will be."
"We won't discuss that," said 'Bias, "now that Cai's got to marry her."
Cai retired to bed early that night, wearied in all his limbs with much and aimless walking. If, as he trudged highroad or lane in the early summer heat, any thought of Mrs Bosenna arose for a moment and conquered the anodyne of bodily exercise, it was not a thought of grudging her to 'Bias. By the turn of Fortune's wheel 'Bias would win her now. To him, at all events, she was lost. Cai had never courted her for her money: but he had courted without distrust, on the strength of his own security in a competence. At the back of his mind there may have lurked a suspicion that Mrs Bosenna, as a business woman, was not in the least likely to bestow her hand on a penniless sailor: but there was no reason why he should allow this suspicion to obtrude itself, since self-respect would have forbidden him, being penniless, to pursue the courtship.
No; if he thought of Mrs Bosenna at all, it was in a sort of dull rage against her sex: not specially against her, who happened to be her sex's delegate to work this particular piece of mischief, but generally against womankind, that with a word or two, a look or two, it could rob a man of a friend—and of such a friend as 'Bias!
'Bias was undemonstrative, Cai had always prided himself on recognising a worth in him which did not leap to the eyes of other men—which hid itself rather, and shunned the light. It had added to his sense of possession that he constantly detected what others overlooked. In this matter of his behaviour to Rogers, 'Bias had eclipsed all previous records. It was (view it how you would) magnificent in 'Bias—a high Christian action—to tend, as he had tended, upon a man who presumably had robbed him of his all.
And at the same moment 'Bias could behave so callously to a once-dear friend—to a friend bringing glad tidings—to a friend, moreover, rejoicing to bring them, though they meant his own undoing! It was almost inconceivable. It was quite unintelligible unless you supposed the man's nature to be perverted, and by this woman.
Cai's heart was bruised. It ached with a dull insistent pain that must be deadened at all costs, even though his own wrecked prospects called out to be faced promptly, resolutely, and with a practical mind. He would face them to-morrow. To-day he would tire himself out: to-night he would sleep.
And he slept, almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. His sleep was dreamless too.
"Dame, get out and bake your pies—bake your pies—bake your pies—"
"Whoo-oo-sh!"
He sat up in bed with a jerk. . . . What on earth was it? A squall of hail on the window? Or a rocket?—a ship in distress, perhaps, outside the harbour? . . .
"Dame, get out and bake your pies—" piped a high childish voice. Some one was unbarring a door below. A voice—'Bias's voice—spoke out gruffly, demanding what was the matter?
Was the house on fire? . . . No: outside the half-open window lay spread the moonlight, pale and tranquil. The night wind entering, scarcely stirred the thin dimity curtains. This was no weather for sudden hail-storms or for shipwreck. Cai flung back the bedclothes, jumped out—and uttered a sharp cry of pain. His naked foot had trodden on a gritty pebble, small but sharp.
Someone had flung a handful of gravel at the window.
He picked his way cautiously across the floor, and looked out. . . . In the moonlit roadway, right beneath, a girl—Fancy Tabb—was dancing a fandango, the while in her lifted hand she waved a white parcel.
"Ah, there you be!" she hailed, catching sight of him. "I've found 'em!"
"Found what?"
"Your papers! . . . I couldn' sleep till I told you: and I had to fetch
Mr Benny along—here he is!"
"Good evening, Captain," spoke up Mr Peter Benny, stepping out into the roadway from the doorway where he had been explaining to 'Bias. "It's all right, sir. Your papers are found."
"Good evening, Benny! Tis kind of you, surely,"—Cai's voice trembled a little. "What's the hour?" he asked.
"Scarce midnight yet. I reckoned maybe you might be sittin' up, frettin' over this—'Twas the child here, though, that found it out and insisted on bringing me."
"After we'd locked up," broke in Fancy, "and just as I was packin' Dad off to bed, it came into my head to ask him—'I suppose you don't know,' said I, 'of anyone's havin' been to master's safe without my bein' told?' He thought a bit, and 'No,' says he; 'nobody 'cept myself, an' that but once. 'You?' says I, 'and whoever sent you there?' 'Why, the master hisself,' says Dad.—Who else?' 'But what for?' I asks, feelin' as you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'I meant to ha' told you,' says Dad, 'but it slipped my mind. 'Twas one afternoon, when you was out on your walk. I heard Master's stick tap on the plankin' overhead so I went up, thinkin' as he might be wantin' his tea in a hurry. He told me to open the safe an' take out a packet o' papers from the top shelf; which I did.' 'What papers?' said I 'How should I know?' says Dad: 'I don't meddle with his business—I've seen too much of it in my life. I didn' even glance at 'em, but locked the safe again, an' put 'em where he told me—which was in the japanned box by his chair!' 'Why,' says I,' that's his Insurance Box as he called it—the same as I handed to Mr Benny only yesterday, to take away and sort through!' . . . After that, as you may guess, I was like a mad person till we'd taken down the bolts again and I'd run to Mr Benny's."
"Ay," chimed in Mr Benny, "I was upstairs and half-undressed: but she had me dressed again an' down as if 'twas a matter of life and death. . . . And when we got out the box, there the papers were, sure enough. After that—for I saw their value to you—no one with a human heart could help running along with her, to bear the news. . . . So here we are."
"'Bias!" called Cai softly. "Didn' I hear 'Bias's voice below there, a while since?"
"Ay, here I be."—It was 'Bias's turn to step out from the shadow of his doorway into the broad moonlight. "And glad enough to hear this news."
"Would ye do me a favour? . . . Dressed, are you?"
"Ay—been sittin' up latish to-night."
"Well, I'm not azackly in a condition to step down—not for a minute or two; and I doubt Mrs Bowldler, if I called her, wouldn' be in no condition either. . . . 'Twould be friendly of you to ask Mr Benny in and offer him a drink; and as for missy—"
"No thank 'ee, Cap'n," interposed Mr Benny. "Bringin' you this peace o' mind has been cordial enough for me—and for the child too, I reckon, Good-night, gentlemen!"
"Cap'n Hunken," said Fancy, "will you take the papers up to him?
Then we'll go."
"May I bring the papers to 'ee?" asked 'Bias, lifting his face to the window.
"Ay, do—if they won't come in. . . . I'll step down and unbar the door."
He lit a candle and hurried downstairs, his heart in his mouth. By the time he had unbarred and opened, Mr Benny and Fancy had taken their departure; but their "good-nights" rang back to him, up the moonlit road, and his friend stood on the threshold.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MRS BOSENNA GIVES THE ROSE.
"It's a delicate thing to say to a woman," suggested Cai; "'specially when she happens to be your land-lady."
"You do the talkin', of course," said 'Bias hurriedly.
"Must I? Why?"
"Well, to begin with, you knew her first."
"I don't see as that signifies."
"No? Well, you used to make quite a point of it, as I remember.
But anyway you're a speaker, and it'll need some gift, as you say."
They had reached the small gate at the foot of the path. The day was hot, the highroad dusty. Cai halted and removed his hat; drew out a handkerchief and wiped his brow; wiped the lining of the hat; wiped his neck inside the collar.
"There's another way of lookin' at it," he ventured. "Some might say as 'twas more tactful to let your feelin's cool off by degrees."
"That's no way for me," said 'Bias positively. "Short and sharp's our motto."
"'Tis the best, no doubt," Cai agreed. "But there's the trouble of puttin' it into words. . . . I wish, now, I'd thought of consultin' Peter Benny. There'd be no harm, after all, in steppin' back and askin' his advice."
"No, you don't," said 'Bias shortly. "In my belief, if we hadn't made so free wi' consultin' Peter Benny in the past, we shouldn't be where we be at this moment."
If Cai's thought might be read in his face, he would not have greatly minded that, just now.
"In the matter of these letters for instance—"
"I wonder if she ever got 'em?"
"You bet she did. She's been playin' us off, one against t'other, ever since."
"We let our feelin's carry us away."
"We let Peter Benny's feelin's carry us away," 'Bias corrected him. "That's the worst of these writin' chaps. Before you know where you are they'll harrow you up with feelin's you wasn't aware you entertained. Now I don't mind confessin' that, afore Benny had started to make out a fair copy I found myself over head an' ears in love with the woman."
"Me too," agreed Cai, musing.
"You're sure you're not any longer?"
"Eh? . . . Of course I am sure. I was only thinkin' how queer it was he should have pumped it out of us, so to say, with the same letters— almost to a syllable."
"There's two ways o' lookin' at that," said 'Bias thoughtfully. "You may put it that marryin's as common as dirt. Nine out o' ten indulges in it; and, that bein' so, the same form o' words'll do for everybody, more or less, in proposin' it; just as (when you come to think) the same Marriage Service does for all when they come to the scratch. If all men meant different to all women, there wouldn't be enough dictionary to go round."
Cai shook his head. "I'm the better of it now," he confessed; "but I got to own that, at the moment, though Benny did well enough, there didn't seem enough dictionary to go round."
"I felt something of a rarity myself at the time," owned 'Bias. "But there's another explanation I like better, though you'll think it far-fetched. . . . You and me—until this happened, there was never a cross word atween us, nor a cross thought?"
"That's so, 'Bias."
"Well, and that bein' so, if Benny hit the note for one, how could it help bein' the note for both? . . . I've had pretty rash thoughts about Benny: but—put it in that way—who's to blame the man? Or the woman, for that matter?"
"I like that explanation better," said Cai.
"—Or the woman? She can't help bein' a two-headed nightingale."
"To be sure she can't. . . . We might leave it at that and say no more about it. She'd be sure to understand in time."
"The agreement was, last night," insisted 'Bias with great firmness, "to put it to her straight and get it over."
They resumed their walk and mounted the pathway over which—from the first angle of the outbuildings to the garden-gate—Banksian roses hung from the wall in heavy honey-coloured clusters of bloom. These were scentless and already past their prime; but by the gate at the south-east end of the house the white Banksian, throwing far wider shoots, saluted them with a scent as of violets belated. And within the gate the old roses were coming on with a rush—Provence and climbing China; Moschata alba, pouring over an arch in a cascade of bloom that hid all its green as with shell-pink foam; crimson and striped Damask along the border; with Paul Neyron eclipsing all in size, moss-roses bursting their gummy shells, Gloire de Dijon climbing and asserting itself above the falsely named "pink Gloire"; Reine Marie Henriette— which, grown by everybody, is perhaps the worst rose in the world. Gloire de Dijon rampant smothered the pretender and covered the most of its mildewing buds from sight; to be conquered in its turn by the sheer beauty of Marechal Niel, whose every yellow star, bold on its stalk as greenhouses can grow it, shamed all feebler yellows. Devoniensis flung its sprays down from the thatch. La France and Ulrich Brunner competed—silver rose against cherry rose—on either side of the porch. Yet the fragrance of all these roses had to yield to that of the Cottage flowers, mignonette, Sweet-William, lemon verbena, Brompton stocks— annuals, biennials, perennials, intermixed—that lined the border, with blue delphiniums and white Madonna lilies breaking into flower above them.
Dinah, answering their ring at the bell after the usual delay for reconnaissance, opined that her mistress would probably be found in the new rose-garden. She said it, as they both observed, with a demure, half-mischievous smile.
"Amused to see us in company again, I reckon," said Cai to 'Bias as they went up through the old rose-garden, where the June-flowering H.P.'s ran riot in masses of colour from palest pink to deepest crimson.
"Ay," assented 'Bias, "we'll have to get used to folks smilin', these next few days. . . . Between ourselves, I never fancied that woman, though I couldn' give you any particular reason for it."
"Sly," suggested Cai.
"'Tis more than that. Slyness, you may say, belongs to the whole sex, and I've known men say as they found it agreeable, in moderation."
"I never noticed that in her mistress, to do her justice."
'Bias halted. "Look here. . . . You're sure you ain't weakenin'?"
"Sure."
"Because, as I told 'ee last night—and I'll say it again, here, at the last moment—she's yours, and welcome, if so be—"
"—'If so be as I didn' speak my true mind last night, when I said the same to you '—is that what you mean? Here, let's on and get it over!" said Cai, mopping his brow anew.
"'Tis a delicate business to broach, as you mentioned just now," said
'Bias dallying. "We'll have to be very careful how we put it."
"Very. As I told 'ee before, if you like to take it over—"
"Not at all. You're spokesman—only we don't want to put it so's she can round on us with 'nobody axed you.' And you gave me a turn, just then, by sayin' as you never noticed she was sly; because as I reckon, that's the very point we've come to make."
"As how?"
'Bias stared at him in some perturbation. "Why, didn't she put that trick on us over the investment? And ain't we here to give her back her money? And wasn't it agreed as we'd open on her reproachful-like? an' then, one thing leadin' to another—"
"Ay, to be sure—I got all that in my mind really." Cai wiped the back of his neck and pocketed his handkerchief with an air of decision—or of desperation. "What you don't seem to know—though with any experience o' speakin' you'd understand well enough—is that close upon the last moment all your thoughts fly, and specially if folks will keep chatterin': but when you stand up and open your mouth—provided as nobody interrupts you . . ."
"I declare! If it isn't Captain Hocken—and Captain Hunken with him!"
At the creaking of the small gate, as Cai opened it, Mrs Bosenna had looked up and espied them. She dropped the bundle of raffia, with the help of which she had been staking such of her young shoots as were overlong or weighted down by their heavy blooms, and came forward with a smile of welcome.
"Come in—come in, the both of you! What lovely weather! You'll excuse my not taking off my gloves? We are busy, you see, and some of my new beauties have the most dreadful thorns! . . . By the way"—she glanced over her shoulder, following Cai's incredulous stare. "I believe you know Mr Middlecoat? Yes, yes, of course—I remember!" She laughed and beckoned forward the young farmer, who dropped his occupation among the rosebuds and shuffled forward obediently enough, yet wearing an expression none too gracious.
"'Afternoon, gentlemen," mumbled Farmer Middlecoat, and his sulky tone seemed to show that he had not forgotten previous encounters. "Won't offer to shake hands. 'Cos why?" He showed the backs of his own, which were lacerated and bleeding. "Caterpillars," added Mr Middlecoat in explanation.
"There now!" cried Mrs Bosenna in accents of genuine dismay. "I'd no idea you were tearin' yourself like that—and so easy to ask Dinah to fetch out a pair o' gloves!"
"Do you mean to say, sir," asked Cai in his simplicity, "that caterpillars bite?"
"No, I don't," answered Mr Middlecoat. "But you can't get at 'em and avoid these pesky thorns."
Said Mrs Bosenna gaily,—"Mr Middlecoat called on me half an hour ago wi' the purpose to make himself disagreeable as usual—though I forget what his excuse was, this time—and I set him to hunt caterpillars."
"Dang it, look at my hands!" growled the young farmer, holding them out.
"And last month, wi' that spell of east wind, 'twas the green-fly. But I reckon we've mastered the pests by this time. Didn't find many caterpillars, eh?"
"No, I didn'," answered Mr Middlecoat, still sulkily. "But them as I did you bet I scrunched."
"Well, they deserved it, for the last few be the dangerousest. They give over the leaves to eat the buds. But 'tis labour well spent on 'em, and we'll have baskets on baskets now, by Jubilee Day."
"'Tis the Queen's flower—the royal flower—sure enough," said Cai, looking about him in admiration. He had not visited the new garden for some weeks, and on the last visit it had been but an unpromising patch stuck about with stiff, thorny twigs, all leafless, the most of them projecting but a few inches above the soil. The plants were short yet, and the garden itself far from beautiful; but the twigs had thrown up shoots, and on the shoots had opened, or were opening, roses that drew even his inexperienced eye to admire them.
"I'm afraid there's no doubt of it," said Mrs Bosenna. "I love the old H.P.'s: but you must grow the Teas and Hybrid Teas nowadays, if you want to exhibit. Yet I love the old H.P.'s, and I've planted a few, to hold their own and just show as they won't be shamed. See this one now— there's a proper Jubilee rose, and named Her Majesty! Brought out, they tell me, in 'eighty-five: but the Yankees bought up all the stock, and it didn't get back into this country until 'eighty-seven, the last Jubilee year. See the thorns on her, and the stiff pride o' stem, and the pride o' colour—fit for any queen! She's not the best, though. . . . She'll do for last Jubilee—not for this. Wait till you've seen the best of all!"
She led them to a plant—stunted by the secateurs, yet vigorous—which showed, with three or four buds as yet closed and green, one solitary bloom, pure white and of incomparable shape.
"There!" said she proudly. "That's a tea, and the finest yet grown, to my mind. That's the rose for this Diamond Jubilee, and white as a diamond. A proper royal Widow's rose!"
"Is that its name?" asked Cai.
Mrs Bosenna laughed and plucked the bloom.
"On the contrary," said she with a mischievous twitch of the mouth, "'tis called The Bride! There's only one bloom, you see, and I can't offer to part it. Now which of you two 'd like it for a buttonhole?"
She held out the rose, challenging them.
"I—I—" stammered Cai, backing against 'Bias's knuckles which dug him in the back—"I grant ye, ma'am, 'tis a fine rose—a lovely rose—but for my part, a trace o' colour—"
"Bright red," prompted 'Bias.
"Bright red—for both of us—"
"And now I've plucked it," sighed Mrs Bosenna.
"Well, if you won't, perhaps Mr Middlecoat will, rather than waste it."
Mr Middlecoat stepped forward and allowed the enormous bloom to be inserted in his buttonhole, where its pure white threw up a fine contrast to his crimsoning face.
"You won't think me forward, I hope?" said Mrs Bosenna, turning about.
"The fact is—though I don't want it generally known yet—that yesterday
Mr Middlecoat, in his disagreeable way, made me promise to marry him?"
Before the pair could recover, she had moved to another bush.
"Red roses, you prefer? Red is rare amongst the Teas—there's but one, as yet, that can be called red—if this suits you? And, by luck, there are two perfect buttonholes."
She plucked the buds and held them out.
"It's name," said she, "is Liberty."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
JUBILEE.
For the best part of a week before the great Day of Jubilee Cai and 'Bias toiled together and toiled with a will, erecting the framework of a triumphal arch to span the roadway. Within-doors, in the intervals of household duty, Mrs Bowldler measured, drew, and cut out a number of capital letters in white linen, to be formed into a motto and sewn upon red Turkey twill, while Palmerston industriously constructed and wired gross upon gross of paper roses—an art in which he had been instructed by Fancy, who had read all about it in a weekly newspaper, 'The Cosy Hearth.' The two friends talked little to one another during those busy June days. Strollers-by—and it had become an evening recreation in Troy to stroll from one end of the town to the other and mark how things were getting along for the 22nd—found Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken ever at work but little disposed to chat; and as everyone knew of the old quarrel, so everyone noted the reconciliation and marvelled how it had come to pass. Even Mr Philp was baffled. Mr Philp, passing and repassing many times a day, never missed to halt and attempt conversation; with small result, however.
"It's a wonder to me," he grumbled at last, "how men of your age can risk scramblin' about on ladders with your mouths constantly full o' nails."
In the evenings they supped together. Mrs Bowldler had made free to suggest this.
"Which," said Mrs Bowldler in magnificent anacoluthon, "if we see it as we ought, this bein' no ordinary occasion, but in a manner of speakin' one of Potentates and Powers and of our feelin's in connection therewith; by which I allude to our beloved Queen, whom Gawd preserve!— Gawd bless her! I say, and He will, too, from what I know of 'im—and therefore deservin' of our yunited efforts; and, that bein' the case, it would distinkly 'elp, from the point of view of the establishment (meanin' Palmerston and me) if we (meanin' you, sir, and Captain Hunken) could make it convenient to have our meals in common. . . . The early Christians were not above it," she added. "Not they! Ho, not,—if I may use the expression—by a long chalk!"
She contrived it so delicately that afterwards neither Cai nor 'Bias could remember precisely at what date—whether on the Wednesday or on the Thursday—they slipped back into the old comfortable groove.
The arch occupied their thoughts. After supper, as they sat and smoked, their talk ran on it: on details of its construction; on the chances (exiguous indeed!) of its being eclipsed by rivals in the town, some in course of construction, a few as yet existent only in the promises of rumour.
Cai would say, "I hear the Dunstans are makin' great preparations in their back-yard. They mean to bring their show out at the last moment, and step it in barrels."
"I don't believe in barrels," 'Bias would respond. "Come a breeze o' wind, where are you? Come a strong breeze, and over you go, endangerin' life. It ought to be forbidden."
"No chance of a breeze, though." Cai had been studying the glass closely all the week.
"Fog, more like. 'Tis the time o' the year for fogs."
Other matters they discussed more desultorily; meetings of the Procession Committee, of the Luncheon Committee (all the parish was to feast together), of the Tree-planting Committee, of the Tea Committee; the cost of the mugs and the medals for the children, the latest returns handed in by Mr Benny, who had undertaken the task of calling on every householder, poor or rich, and collecting donations. But to the arch their talk recurred.
—And rightly: for in the arch they were building better than they knew. In it, though unaware (being simple men), they were rebuilding friendship.
By Saturday evening the scaffolding was complete, firmly planted, firmly nailed, firmly clasped together by rope—in sailors' hitches such as do not slip. They viewed it, approved it, and soberly, having gathered up tools, went in to supper. On Sunday they attended morning service in church, and oh! the glow in their hearts when, in place of the usual voluntary, the organ rolled out the first bars of "God Save the Queen" and all the worshippers sprang to their feet together!
On Monday the town awoke to the rumbling of waggons. They came in from the plantations where since the early June daybreak Squire Willyams's foresters and gardeners had been cutting young larches, firs, laurels, aucubas. The waggons halted at every door and each householder took as much as he required. So, all that day, Cai and 'Bias packed their arch with evergreens; until at five o'clock Mr Philp, happening along, could find no chink anywhere in its solid verdure. He called his congratulations up to them as, high on ladders, they affixed flags to the corner poles and looped the whole with festoons of roses.
And now for the motto to crown the work! Fancy Tabb coming up the roadway and pausing while she conned the structure, shading her eyes against the sun-rays that slanted over it, beheld Mrs Bowldler and Palmerston issue from the doorway in solemn procession, bearing between them a length of Turkey twill. Mrs Bowldler passed one end up to Captain Hocken, high on his ladder: Captain Hunken reached down and took the other end from Palmerston. Between them, as they lifted the broad fillet above the archway, its folds fell apart, and she read:—
MANY DAUGHTERS HAVE DONE VIRTUOUSLY BUT THOU EXCELLEST THEM ALL.
"My! I'd like to be a Queen!"
"If I had my way, you WOULD," whispered Palmerston, who, edging close to her, had overheard.
"Eh? Is that Fancy Tabb?" interrupted Cai. He had happened to glance over his shoulder and spied her from the ladder. "Well, and what d'ee think of it?" he asked, as one sure of the answer.
"I was sayin' as I'd like to be a Queen," said Fancy. "Queen of
England, I mean: none of your second-bests."
"Well, my dear," Cai assured her, bustling down the ladder and staring up at the motto to make sure that it hung straight, "that you won't never be: but you're among the many as have done virtuously, and God bless 'ee for it! Which is pretty good for your age."
"You're not," retorted the uncompromising child.
"Eh?"
"'Tis three days now since you've been near the old man, either one of 'ee. How would you like that, if you was goin' to hell?"
"Hush 'ee now! . . . 'Bias and me had clean forgot—there's so much to do in all these rejoicin's! Run back and tell 'n we'll be down in half-an-hour, soon as we've tidied up here."
On their way down to visit the sick man, Cai and 'Bias had to pause half-a-score of times at least to admire an arch or a decorated house-front. For by this time even the laggards were out and working for the credit of Troy.
But no decorations could compare with their own.
"That's a handsome bunch, missus," called Cai to a very old woman, who, perched on a borrowed step-ladder, was nailing a sheaf of pink valerian (local name, "Pride of Troy") over her door-lintel. "Let me give 'ee a hand wi' that hammer," he offered; for her hand shook pitiably.
"Ne'er a hand shall help me—thank 'ee all the same," the old lady answered. "There, Cap'n! . . . there's for Queen Victoria! an' it's done, if I die to-morrow." She tottered down to firm earth and gazed up at the doorway, her head nodding.
"She've got to be in London to-morrow, of course. . . . But what a pity she can't take a walk through Troy too! Main glad she'd be. . . . Oh, I know! She an' me was born the same year."
Of the doings of next day—the great day; of the feasting, the cheering, the salvo-firing, the marching, the counter-marching, the speechifying, the tea-drinking, the dancing, the illuminations, the bonfires; the tale may not be told here. Were they not chronicled, by this hand, in a book apart? And does not the chronicle repose in the Troy Parish Chest? And may not a photograph of the famous arch constructed by Captains Hocken and Hunken be discovered therein some day by the curious?
To be sure, Queen Victoria herself did not pass beneath that arch. But there passed beneath that arch many daughters who since have grown into women and done virtuously, I hope. If not, I am certain there was no lack of encouragement that day in the honest, smiling faces of Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken as they stood with proprietary mien, one on either side of the roadway, and each with an enormous red rose aglow in his button-hole.
Pulvis et umbra sumus—"The tumult and the shouting dies."—A little before ten o'clock that night Mr Middlecoat and Mrs Bosenna walked up through the dark to Higher Parc to see the bonfires. The summit commanded a view of the coast from Dodman to Rame, and inland to the high moors which form the backbone of the county. Mrs Bosenna counted eighteen fires: her lover could descry sixteen only.
"But what does it matter?" said he. They had started the climb arm-in-arm: but by this time his arm was about her waist.
"My eyes are sharper than yours, then," she challenged.
"Very likely," he allowed. "Sure, they must be: for come to think I reckoned 'em both in my list."
She laughed cosily.
"Shall we go over the ridge?" he suggested. "We may pick up one or two inland from my place."
"No," she answered, and mused for a while. "It's strange to think our two farms are goin' to be one henceforth. . . . The ridge has always seemed to me such a barrier. But I'll not cross it to-night. Good-bye!"
"Nay, but you don't go back alone. I'll see you to the door."
"Why? I'm not afraid of ghosts."
But he insisted: and so, arm linked in arm, they descended to Rilla, where the roses breathed their scent on the night air.
Cai and 'Bias—the long day over—sat in Cai's summer-house, overlooking the placid harbour. Loyal candles yet burned in every window on the far shore and scintillated their little time on the ripple of the tide. Above shone and wheeled in their courses the steady stars, to whom our royalties are less than a pinch of dust in the meanest unseen planet that spins within their range.
The door of the summer-house stood wide to the night. Yet so breathless was the air that the candles within (set by Mrs Bowldler on the table beside the glasses and decanters) carried a flame as unwavering as any star of the firmament. So the two friends sat and smoked, and between their puffed tobacco-smoke penetrated the dewy scents of the garden. Both were out-tired with the day's labours; for both were growing old.
"'Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all,'" murmured Cai. "'Twas a noble text we chose."
"Ay," responded 'Bias, drawing the pipe from his lips. "She've kept a widow just thirty-six years. An unusual time, I should say."
"Very," agreed Cai.
They gazed out into the quiet night, as though it held all their future and they found it good.