Hocken and Hunken

Chapter 7

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 s*x 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!"