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The Mayor of Troy, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 21. Faces In Water |
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_ CHAPTER XXI. FACES IN WATER
Dr. Hansombody during the last year or two had gradually withdrawn himself from professional cares, relinquishing them to his young and energetic assistant, Mr. Olver. Magisterial and other public business claimed more and more of the time he more and more grudgingly spared from domestic felicity and the business of rearranging his entomological cabinet. He had found himself, early in his third term of mayoral office, the father of a bouncing boy. A silver cradle, the gift of the borough, decorated his sideboard. As for the moths and butterflies, he designed to bequeath them, under the title of "The Hansombody Collection," to the town. They would find a last resting-place in the Hymen Museum, and so his name would go down to posterity linked with that of his distinguished friend. This was the first visit he had paid to the stranger's bedside; and even now he had only stepped in, at his assistant's request, from the next room, where for half an hour he had been engaged with Cai Tamblyn in choosing a position for the first case of butterflies. "Wants to get up, does he?" asked the Doctor absently, after a perfunctory look at the patient. "Restless, eh?" He still carried in his hand the two-foot rule with which he had been taking measurements. "You've tried a change of diet?" "I fancy," Mr. Olver suggested, "he is worried by the number of visitors--ladies especially." "Georgiana Pescod has been worrying?" The patient lifted his right hand from the bed and spread out all its fingers; lifted his left, and spread out three more. "What? Eight visits?" "And that's not the worst of it," put in the Nurse, Mrs. Snell, sympathetically, smoothing the coverlet. "First and last there's been forty-two in these six days. It can't be for his looks, as I tell en; and his name bein' Solomon won't account for the whole of it." "I sometimes think," said the Doctor pensively and with entire gravity, turning to his assistant, "we shall have to diminish the numbers of the Visiting Committee. My dear friend Hymen planned it, in years gone by, on a war footing; and even so I remember suggesting to him at the time that the scale was somewhat--er--grandiose. But it was characteristic of him, and we have clung to it for that reason, in a spirit perhaps _too_ piously conservative. Forty-two ladies! My good fellow"--he turned to the patient--"I really think-- if your leg is equal to it--a short stroll in the fresh air may be permitted. Pray do not think we desire to hurry your cure. Even setting aside the dictates of charity, and our natural tenderness towards one who, as I understand, has bled for our common country, we owe you something"--the Major's fingers plucked nervously at the bed-clothes--"some reparation," the Doctor went on, "for the--er--character of your reception. In short, I hope, on your complete recovery, to find you some steady employment, such as too many of our returning heroes are at this moment seeking in vain. In the meanwhile our town has some lions which may amuse your convalescence--a figurative term, meaning objects of interest." Once or twice, in the course of his first stroll, the Major's eyes came near to brimming with tears. The town itself had suffered surprisingly little change. The Collector--he seemed scarcely a day older--stood as of old at the head of the Custom House stairs, and surveyed the world benignly with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. Before the Major's own doorway the myrtles were in bloom, and a few China roses on the well-trimmed standards. By the Broad Ship as of old his nostrils caught the odours of tar and hemp with a whiff of smoke from a schooner's galley (the _Ranting Blade_, with her figure-head repainted, but otherwise much the same as ever). Miss Jex, the postmistress, still peered over her blind. She studied the Major's wooden leg with interest. He, on his part, seemed to detect that the down on her upper lip had sensibly lightened in colour. _En revanche_, from the corner of his eye, as he passed the open door, he saw that the portrait over the counter (supposed of yore to represent the Prince Regent) wore a frame of black ribbon. The black, alas! was rusty. The manners of the children had not improved. Half a dozen urchins, running into him here by the corner of the post-office on their way from school, fell back in a ring and began to call "Boney!" derisively. He escaped from them into the churchyard, and passing up between the graves, rested for a while, panting in the cool of the porch. The door stood ajar. Pushing it open, he stepped within and paused again, half terrified by the unfamiliar _tap-tap_ of his wooden leg on the pavement. The sunshine lay in soft panels of light across the floor, and ran in sharper lines along the tops of the pews, worn to a polish by generations of hands that had opened and shut their doors. Aloft, where the rays filtered through the clerestory windows, their innumerable motes swam like gold-dust held in solution. The Major found his own pew, dropped into the familiar seat, and strove to collect his thoughts. A week ago, on his way from Plymouth, it had seemed the easiest thing in the world to reveal himself and step back into his own. The only question had been how to select the most impressive moment. His eyes, travelling along the wall on his right, encountered an unfamiliar monument among the many familiar ones; an oval slab of black marble enclosed in a gilt wreath and inscribed with gilt lettering. He leaned forward, peering closer, blinking against the sunlight that poured through the window.
He spelled out the inscription slowly, and, turning at the sound of a footstep in the porch, was aware of a tall figure in the doorway--his own faithful Scipio. Least of all was Scipio changed. Ten years apparently had not even tarnished his livery. It shone in its accustomed scarlet and green and gold in the rays which, falling through the windows of the south aisle, lit up his white teeth and his habitual gentle grin. "Mistah will be studyin' de board--berry fine board. Not so fine board in Cornwall, dey tell me." The Major turned his face, avoiding recognition. "No, not dat; dat's modern trash," went on Scipio, affably, following his gaze. "Good man, all same, Massa Hymen; lef plenty money. One hundred fifty pound. Lef Cai Tamblyn fifty. Every person say remarkable difference. But doan' you look at _him_; he's modern trash. Massa Hymen lef' me _one_ hundred fifty pound. Dat all go to board up yonder, you see; 'Scipio Johnson, Esquire, of this Parish' in red letters an' gilt twirls. I doan' mind tellin' you. De hull parish an' Lawyer Chinn has it drafted--Vicar he promises me it shall go in--'Scipio Johnson, Esquire, _of_ this Parish,' an' twiddles round de capital letters. Man, I served Mas' Hymen han' an' foot, wet an' dry, an' look like he las' anudder twenty year." "You mean to say that I--that you, I mean--" "Dat's so," put in Scipio, nodding cheerfully, while the stained-glass windows flung flecks of red and blue on his honest ebony features. "An' Cai Tamblyn all de while no better'n a fool. '_Him_,' he'd sneer, not playin' up, but pullin' his cross face. Dat's a lesson if ebber dere was one. Cai Tamblyn left with fifty, an' me with three time fifty. 'To my faithful servant, Scipio Johnson. . . .' And so Miss Marty, when it came to choose, took me on--Scipio Johnson, Esquire, of this Parish--and Cai Tamblyn no more than 'Mister,' nor ebber a hope of it."
He read the name. It was the name of a man whom he had left hale and young--a promising corporal. He made his way back slowly to the hospital, leaning heavily on his stick. Strange shrill noises brought him to a halt on the threshold. They came from the back of the house. At the sound of his wooden leg in the brick passage, Cai Tamblyn thrust his head out from the kitchen doorway. "You come in," said he. "Please the Lord, the worst is over; but I had to tell her." "Her?" echoed the Major in bewilderment. "Who?" "Why, you see, fixed up as we were here--the woman with six empty beds to nurse, and me on 'tother side with a roomful o' momentoes, an' no end to it but the grave--there seemed no way out but matterimony. What with my fifty an' her little savin's we might ha' managed it, too, comfertable enough. But when along comes you an' upsets the apple-cart, w'y, in justice, the woman had to be told. Which it took her like a slap in the wind, an' I'm surprised the way she'd set her heart on it. But never you mind; she's sensible enough when she comes round." "Cai," said the Major, solemnly, "I thought we had agreed that no one was to be told?" "So we did, sir," answered Mr. Tamblyn, setting his jaw. "But, come to think it over, 'twasn't fair to the woman. Not bein' a married man yourself, sir, or as good as such--" "Excuse me," said the Major, lifting a hand. "I quite well understand. But suppose that I have not come back after all!" _ |
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