Book 1 - Chapter 2. The Barber's Chair

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_ BOOK I CHAPTER II. THE BARBER'S CHAIR

"This _is_ home!" Captain Cai settled himself down in the barber's chair with a sigh of luxurious content. "I've heard married men call it better," said Mr Toy, fetching forth a clean wrapper.

"Very likely." The Captain sighed again contentedly. "I take no truck in marriage, for my part. A friend's company enough for me."

"What's his name, Cap'n? The whole town's dyin' to know."

"He's called Hunken--Tobias Hunken."

The barber paused, snapping his scissors and nodding. "Bussa was right then, or Bussa and Philp between 'em."

"Hey?"

"'Tis wonderful how news gets abroad in Troy. . . . 'Hunken,' now? And where might he be one of? I don't seem to fit the name in my mem'ry at all."

"You wouldn't. He comes from t'other side of the Duchy--a Padstow-born man, and he've never set eyes on Troy in his life."

"Yet he takes a house an' settles here? That's queer, as you might say."

"I see nothing queer about it. He's my friend--that's why. And what's more, the Lord never put bowels into a better man."

"He'll be a pleasure to shave, then," opined Mr Toy.

"No, he won't; he wears his hair all over his face. Talkin' of that reminds me--when you've done croppin' me I want a clean shave."

"Chin-beard an' all, Cap'n?"

"Take it off--take it off! 'Twas recommended to me against sore throat; but I never liked the thing nor the look of it."

"Then there's one point, it seems, on which you an' your friend don't agree, sir?"

The barber meant this facetiously, but Captain Cai considered it in all seriousness.

"You're mistaken," he answered. "Between friends there's a give-an'-take, and until you understand that you don't understand friendship. 'Bias Hunken likes me to do as I choose, and I like 'Bias to do as _he_ chooses: by consekence o' which the more we goes our own ways the more we goes one another's. That clear, I hope."

"Moderately," the barber assented.

"I'll put it t'other way--about an' make it still clearer. Most married folks, as I notice, start t'other way about. For argyment's sake we'll call 'em Jack an' Joan. Jack starts by thinkin' Joan pretty near perfection; but he wants her quite perfect and all to his mind--_his_ mind, d'ye see? Now if you follow that up, as you followed it between 'Bias and me--"

"I don't want my missus to wear a beard, if that's what you mean."

"'Twasn't a good illustration, I admit. But the p'int is, I like 'Bias because he's 'Bias, an' 'Bias likes me because I'm Cai Hocken. That bein' so, don't it follow we're goin' to be better friends than ever, now we've hauled ashore to do as likes us?"

The barber shook his head. "You're determined to have off your chin-beard?"

"_To_ be sure. I'm ashore now, aren't I?--and free to wear what face I choose."

"You won't find it so, Cap'n."

"T'ch't! You landsmen be so fed with liberty you don't know your privileges. If you don't like your habits, what hinders you from changin' 'em? But _do_ you? Here I come back: here's th' old Town Quay same as ever it was; and here likewise you all be, runnin' on as I left 'ee, like a clockwork--a bit slower with age maybe--that's all. Whereby I conclude your ways content ye."

"You're wrong, Cap'n Cai--you're wrong. We bide by our habits--an', more by token, here comes Mr Philp. 'Morning, Mr Philp." The barber, without turning, nodded towards the newcomer as he entered--a short man, aged about sixty, with a square-cut grey beard, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes that twinkled with a deceptive appearance of humour. "Here's Cap'n Cai Hocken, home from sea."

"Eh? I am very glad to see you, Cap'n Hocken," said Mr Philp politely. "There's a post-card waitin' for you, up at the Office."

Captain Cai sat bolt upright of a sudden, narrowly missing a wound from the scissors. "That will be from 'Bias! To think I hadn' sense enough to go straight to the Post Office and inquire!"

"'Tis from your friend, sure enough," announced Mr Philp. "He paid off his crew last Toosday, an' took his discharge an' the train down to Plymouth. He've bought a wardrobe there--real wornut--an' 'tis comin' round by sea. There's a plate-chest, too, he thinks you may fancy-- price thirty-five shillin secondhand: an' he hopes to reach Troy the day after next, which by the post-mark is to-morra."

"Mr Philp," explained the barber, "calls in at the Office every mornin' to read all the post-cards. 'Tis one of his habits."

"Recent bereavement?" asked Mr Philp, before Captain Cai could well digest this.

"Eh?"

"Recent bereavement?" Mr Philp was examining the tall hat, which he had picked up to make room for his own person on the customers' bench.

"That's another of his aptitoods," the barber interpolated. "He attends all the funerals in the parish."

"In the midst o' life we are in death," observed Mr Philp. "That's a cert, Cap'n Hocken, an' your hat put me in mind of it."

"Oh, 'tis my hat you're meanin'? What's wrong with it?"

"Did I say there was anything wrong? No, I didn't--God forbid! An' no doubt," concluded Mr Philp cheerfully, "the fashions'll work round to it again."

"I'll change it for another."

"You won't find that too easy, will you?" The barber paused in his snipping, and turned about for a thoughtful look at the hat.

"I mean I'll buy another, of a different shape. First the beard, then the headgear--as I was tellin' Toy, a man ashore can reggilate his ways as he chooses, an here's to prove it."

"They _do_ say a clean shave is worth two virtuous resolutions," answered the barber, shaking his head Again. "And you're makin' a brave start, I don't deny. But wait till you pick up with a few real habits."

"What sort o' habits?"

"The sort that come to man first-along in the shape o' duties--like church-goin'. Look here, Cap'n, I'll lay a wager with 'ee. . . . Soon as you begin to walk about this town a bit, you'll notice a terrible lot o' things that want improvin'--"

"I don't need to walk off the Town Quay for _that_."

"Ah, an' I daresay it came into your head that if you had the orderin' of Bussa you wouldn' be long about it? The town'll think it, anyway. We're a small popilation in Troy, all tied up in neighbourly feelin's an' hangin' together till--as the sayin' is--you can't touch a cobweb without hurtin' a rafter. What the town's cryin' out for is a new broom--a man with ideas, eh, Mr Philp?--above all, a man who's independent. So first of all they'll flatter ye up into standin' for the Parish Council, and put ye head o' the poll--"

"Tut, man!" interrupted Captain Cai, flushing a little. "What do I know about such things? Not o' course that I shan't take an interest--as a ratepayer--"

"_To_ be sure. I heard a man say, only last Saturday, sittin' in that very chair, as there was never a ship's captain hauled ashore but in three weeks he'd be ready to teach the Chancellor of th' Exchequer his business an' inclined to wonder how soon he'd be offered the job."

"A ship's captain needn't be altogether a born fool."

"No: an' next you'll be bent on larnin' to speak in public; and takin' occasions to practise, secondin' votes o' thanks an' such like. After that you'll be marryin' a wife--"

"I don't want to marry a wife, I tell 'ee!"

"Who said you did? Well, then, you'll get married--they dotes on a public man as a rule; and for tanglin' a man up in habits there's no snare like wedlock, not in the whole world. I've known scores o' men get married o' purpose to break clear o' their habits an' take a fresh start; but ne'er a man that didn't tie himself up thereby in twenty new habits for e'er a one he'd let drop."

"Go on with your folly, if it amuses you."

"Then, again, you've taken a house."

"So Rogers tells me. I don't even know the rent, at this moment."

"Twenty-five pound p'r annum," put in Mr Philp. Captain Cai--released just then from his wrapper--turned and stared at him.

"I had it from the Postmistress," Mr Philp's tone was matter-of-fact, his gaze unabashed. "Bein' paralytic, Rogers did your business with the widow by letter; he keeps a type-writin' machine an' pays Tabb's girl three shillin' a-week to work it. The paper's thin, as I've had a mind to warn 'er more than once."

"'Twould be a Christian act," suggested Mr Toy. "If there's truth in half what folks say, some of old Johnny Rogers' correspondence 'd make pretty readin' for the devil."

"But look here," interposed Captain Cai, "what's this about doin' business with a widow? _Whose_ widow?"

"Why, your landlady, to be sure--the Widow Bosenna, up to Rilla Farm."

"No--stop a minute--take that blessed latherin'-brush out o' my mouth! You don't tell me old Bosenna's dead, up there?"

"It didn' altogether surprise most of us when it happened," said the barber philosophically. "A man risin' sixty-five, with _his_ habits! . . . But it all came about by the County Council's widenin' the road up at Four Turnin's. . . . You see, o' late years th' old man 'd ride home on Saturdays so full he _had_ to drop off somewhere 'pon the road; an' his mare gettin' to find this out, as dumb animals do, had picked up a comfortable way of canterin' hard by Four Turnin's and stoppin' short, slap in the middle of her stride, close by th' hedge, so 's her master 'd roll over it into the plantation there, where the ditch is full of oak-leaves. There he'd lie, peaceful as a suckin' child; and there, every Sabbath mornin' in the small hours, one o' the farm hands 'd be sent to gather 'em in wi' the new-laid eggs. So it went on till one day the County Council, busy as usual, takes a notion to widen th' road just there; an' not only pulls down th' hedge, but piles up a great heap o' stones, ready to build a new one. Whereby either the mare hadn' noticed the improvement or it escaped her memory. Anyway--the night bein' dark--she shoots old Bosenna neck-an'-crop 'pon the stones. It caused a lot o' feelin' at the time, an' the coroner's jury spoke their minds pretty free about it. They brought it in that he'd met his death by the visitation o' God brought about by a mistake o' the mare's an' helped on by the over-zealous behaviour of the County Surveyor. Leastways that's how they put it at first; but on the Coroner's advice they struck out the County Surveyor an' altered him to a certain party or parties unknown."

"I mind Mrs Bosenna well," said Captain Cai, rising as the barber unwrapped him; "a smallish well-featured body, with eyes like bullace plums."

"Ay, an' young enough to ha' been old Bosenna's daughter--a penniless maid from Holsworthy in Devon, as I've heard; an' now she's left there, up to Rilla, happy as a mouse in cheese. Come to think, Cap'n Cai, you might do worse than cock your hat in that quarter."

But Captain Cai did not hear for the moment. He was peering into the looking-glass and thinking less of Mrs Bosenna than of his shaven-altered appearance.

"'Twould be a nice change for her, too," pursued Mr Toy in a rallying tone; "an adaptable man like you, Cap'n."

"Eh? What's that you were sayin' about my hat?" asked Captain Cai; and just then, letting his gaze wander to the depths of the glass, he was aware of Mr Philp shamelessly trying on that same hat before another mirror at the back of the shop.

"Hullo, there!"

Mr Philp faced about solidly, composedly.

"I was thinkin'," said he, "as I'd bid you three-an'-six for this, if you've done with it. I've long been wantin' something o' the sort, for interments."

"Done with you!" said Captain Cai, reaching for it and clapping it on his head. "Only you must send round for it to-morrow, when I've found myself something more up-to-date." Again he contemplated his shaven image in the mirror. "Lord! A man do look younger without a chin-beard!"

"Ay, Cap'n." Barber Toy, knuckles on hips, regarded and approved his handiwork. "The world's afore 'ee. Go in and win!"

As he stepped out upon the Quay, Captain Cai lifted his gaze towards the tower of the Parish Church, visible above an alley-way that led between a gable-end of the Town Hall and the bulging plank of the "King of Prussia." Aloft there the clock began to chime out the eight notes it had chimed, at noon and at midnight, through his boyhood, and had been chiming faithfully ever since.

Yes, it was good to be home! Captain Cai would have been astonished to learn that his thirty-five years at sea had left any corner for sentiment. Yet a sudden mist gathered between him and the face of the old clock. Nor had it cleared when, almost punctually on the last stroke, a throng of children came pouring from school through the narrow alley-ways. They ran by him with no more than a glance, not interrupting their shouts. In a moment the Quay was theirs; they were at leap-frog over the bollards; they were storming the sand-heap, pelting a king of the castle, who pelted back with handfuls. Captain Cai felt an absurd sense of being left out in the cold. Not a child had recognised him.

All very well . . . but to think that these thirty-odd years had made not a scrap of difference--that the Quay lay as it had lain, neglected, untidy as ever! Thirty-odd years ago it had been bad enough. But what conscience was there in standing still and making no effort to move with the times? As Barber Toy said, it was scandalous. _

Read next: Book 1: Chapter 3. Tabb's Child

Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 1. Captain Cai Hauls Ashore

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