Home > Authors Index > Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch > Hocken and Hunken; A Tale of Troy > This page
Hocken and Hunken; A Tale of Troy, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
||
Book 2 - Chapter 16. Is In Two Parts |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ BOOK II CHAPTER XVI. IS IN TWO PARTS PART I. Cai and 'Bias supped together that night, greatly to Mrs Bowldler's relief. But they exchanged a very few words during the meal, being poor hands at dissimulation. The meal, for the third time running, was laid in Cai's parlour, Mrs Bowldler having delicately elected to ignore the upset caused by the parrot and to treat yesterday as a _dies non_. 'Bias, if he noted this, made no comment. The cloth having been removed, they drew their chairs as usual to front the fireplace. Cai arose, found a clean church-warden pipe on the mantelshelf, passed it to 'Bias, and selected one for himself. "I sent off that letter to-day," he said carelessly. "Right," said 'Bias; "I sent mine, too." "Four-thirty post, mine went by." "So did mine." "She'll get 'em together, then, first delivery to-morrow." "Ay." "That puts us all square. She'll be amused, I shouldn't wonder." "I didn' try to be amusin' in mine," said 'Bias after a pause, puffing stolidly. "No more did I." Cai filled and lit his pipe in silence. His conscience troubled him a little. "Well," said he, dropping into his arm-chair, "the matter's settled one way or another, so far as we're consarned. The letters are in the post, and there's no gettin' them out unless by Act o' Parliament. I don't mind tellin' you just what I said, if you think 'twould be fairer-like." "I'm agreeable." "You won't take it amiss that I pitched it pretty strong?" "Not at all," answered 'Bias. "Come to that, I pitched it pretty strong myself." Cai smiled tolerantly, and felt for the rough draft in his pocket. He fished it forth, unfolded the paper, and spread it on his knee under the lamp-light. Then, having adjusted his glasses, he picked up his pipe again. "I just started off," said he, "by hintin' that she might be a bit surprised at hearin' from me." "That's true enough," agreed 'Bias. "She'll be more'n surprised, if I'm not mistaken." "I don't see why." "Don't you? . . . Well, no offence. It's a very good way to begin. In fact," said 'Bias in a slightly patronising tone, "it's pretty much how I began myself. Only I went on quick to hope she wasn't--how d'ye call it?" "I don't know what word _you_ used. _I_ should have said affronted,' if I take your meanin'." 'Bias gave a start. "As it happens I--er--hit on that very word. I remember, because it looked funny to me, spelt with two f's. But I went on to say that I meant honourable, and that she mustn't blame me, because this kind o' thing happened without respect o' persons." Cai sat up, stiff and wondering. He took off his glasses and wiped them. "You said--_that?_" he asked slowly. "I said a damned sight more than that," chuckled 'Bias. "I said that love had its victims as well as its something else beginning with a v, which I forget the exact expression at this moment, and that I'd never looked on myself as bein' in the former cat--no, case. You can't think how I pitched it," said 'Bias, folding his hands comfortably over his stomach. "The words seemed just to flow from the pen." "Oh, can't I?" Cai, sitting up with rigid backbone, continued to gaze at him. "Oh, they _did_--did they? And maybe you didn' go on to explain you weren't precisely in the first flush o' youth--not what you might call a _passionate boy_--" It was 'Bias's turn to sit erect. He sat erect, breathing hard. "There--there's nothing unusual about the expression, is there?" he stammered. "Though how you come to guess on it--" "You've been stealin' my letter, somehow!" flamed Cai. But 'Bias did not seem to hear. He continued to breathe hard, to stare into vacancy. "Did you pay a visit to Peter Benny this mornin'?" he asked at length, very slowly. "Well, yes--if you must know," Cai answered sullenly, his wrath checked by confusion, much as the onset of a tall wave is smothered as it meets a backwash. "That's right," 'Bias nodded. "Somehow or 'nother Benny's sold us a dog: and, what's more, he sold us the same dog. . . . I don't think," went on 'Bias after a pause, "that it showed very good feelin' on your part, your goin' to Benny." "Why not?" demanded Cai, whose thoughts were beginning to work. "Far as I can see you did the very same thing; so anyway you can't complain." "Yes, I can. You know very well I never set up to be a scholar, same as you. By rights you're the scratch boat on this handicap, yet you tried to steal allowance. I thought you'd a-been a better sportsman." "My goin' to Benny," urged Cai sophistically, "was a case of one eddicated man consultin' another, as is frequently done." "Oh, is it? Well, you done it pretty thoroughly, I must say." "Whereas _your_ goin' was a clean case o' tryin' to pass off goods that weren't your own, or anything like it. . . . Come, I'll put it to you another way. Supposin' your letter had worked the trick, and she'd said 'yes' on the strength of it--I'm puttin' this for argyment's sake, you understand?" "Go on." "And supposin' one day, after you was married, she'd come to you and said, ''Bias, I want a letter written. I thought o' writin' it myself, but you're such a famous hand at a letter.' A nice hole you'd a-been in!" "No, I shouldn'. I'd say, 'You rate me too high, my dear. Still,' I'd say, 'if you insist upon it, you just scribble down the main points on a sheet o' paper, and I'll take a walk and think it over.' Then I'd carry it off to Benny." 'Bias, who so far had held the better of the argument by keeping his temper, clinched his triumph with a nod and refilled his pipe. "Benny's an old man, and might die at any moment," objected Cai. "Now you're gettin' too far-fetched altogether. . . . Besides, 'twouldn't be any affair o' yours--would it?--after I'm married to her." "Well, you won't be--now: and no more shall I," said Cai bitterly. "Benny's seen to that!" "'Tis a mess, sure enough," agreed 'Bias, lighting his pipe and puffing. "She'll be affronted--oh, cuss the word! Just fancy it, to-morrow morning, when she opens her post! A nice pair of jokers she'll think us!" Cai paced the room. "Couldn't we go up to-night and explain?" "Five minutes to ten," said 'Bias with a glance at the clock. "Ask her to get out o' bed and come down to hear we've made fools of ourselves? I don't see myself. You can do what you like, o' course." "I shan't sleep a wink," declared Cai, still pacing. "How on earth Benny--" He halted of a sudden. "You don't suppose Benny himself--" "Ch't! a man of his age. . . . No, I'll tell you how it happened, as I allow: and, if so, Benny's not altogether to blame. First you goes to him, and wants a letter written. You give him no names, but he learns enough to guess how the wind sits . . . am I right, so far?" Cai nodded. "So he writes the letter and off you goes with it. Later on, in _I_ drops with pretty much the same request. I remember, now, the old fellow behaved rather funny: asked me something about bein' the 'first person,' and then wanted to know if I didn' wish the letter written for a friend. I wasn't what you might call at my ease with the job, and so--as the time was gettin' on for dinner, too--I let it go at that." "You did? . . . But so did I!" "Hey?" "I let Benny think he was writin' it for a friend o' mine. Far as I remember, he suggested it. . . . Yes, he certainly did," said Cai with an effort of memory. "It don't matter," said 'Bias after a few seconds' reflection. "He took it for granted that one of us was tellin' lies: and likely enough he's chucklin' now at the thought of our faces when the thing came to be cleared up. Come to consider, there was no vice about the trick, 'specially as he wouldn' take any money from me." "Nor from me," Cai dropped into his chair and reached for the tobacco-jar. "Well," he sighed, "the man's done for both of us, that's all!" "Not a bit," said 'Bias sturdily. "We'll walk up early to-morrow, and explain. Ten to one it'll put her in the best o' tempers, havin' such a laugh against us both." PART II. "He can't have known!" said Mrs Bosenna early next morning, sitting in a high-backed chair beside the kitchen-table. Her face was slightly flushed, and the toe of her right shoe kept an impatient tap-tap on the flagged floor. "He can't possibly have known." "We'll hope not," said Dinah. "It's thoughtless, though--put it at the best: and any way it don't speak too well for his past." "He may have _bought_ it, you know," urged Mrs Bosenna; "late in life." "Well, he's no chicken," allowed Dinah; "since you put it like that." "I wasn't referring to Captain Hunken, you silly woman. I meant _it_." "Eh?" said Dinah. "Oh!--_him?_" "'Him' if you like," Mrs Bosenna mused. "It can't possibly be a female, can it?" "I should trust not, for the sake of a body's sex . . . to say things like that. Besides, I've surely been told somewhere--in the 'Child's Guide to Knowledge,' it may have been--that the females don't talk at all." "Are you sure of that?" "Pretty sure. It was _something_ unnatural anyhow; or I shouldn' have remembered it." "Well, and if so," said Mrs Bosenna, "one can see what Providence was driving at, which is always a comfort. . . . I was wondering now if you mind going and carrying him out to the garden somewhere. He couldn't take harm in this weather,--under the box-hedge, for instance." Dinah shook her head. "I couldn', mistress; no really!" "The chances are," said Mrs Bosenna persuasively, "he wouldn't say anything,--anything like that again, not in a blue moon." "He said it to me first, and he said it to me again not ten minutes later. But, o' course, if you're so confident, there's nothing hinders your goin' and takin' him where you like. If you ask my opinion, though, he don't wait for no blue moons. He turns 'em blue as they come." Mrs Bosenna tapped her foot yet more pettishly. "It's perfectly ridiculous," she declared, "to be kept out of one's own parlour by a bird! Go and call in William Skin, and tell him to take away the nasty thing." "And him with a family?" "He's hard of hearin'," said Mrs Bosenna. "It's a hardness you can t depend on. I've knowed William hear fast enough,--when he wasn't wanted. He'll be wantin' to know, too, why we can't put the bird out for ourselves: his deafness makes him suspicious. . . . And what's more," wound up Dinah, "it won't help us, one way or 'nother, whether he hears or not. We shall go about _thinkin_ he's heard; and I tell ye, mistress, I shan't be able to face that man again without a blush, not in my born life." "It's perfectly ridiculous, I tell you!" repeated Mrs Bosenna, starting to her feet. "Am I to be forced to breakfast in the kitchen because of a bird?" "Then, if so be as you're so proud as all that, why not go back to bed again, and I'll bring breakfast up to your room." "Nonsense. Where d'ye keep the beeswax? And run you up to the little store-cupboard and fetch me down a fingerful of cotton-wool for my ears. I'll do it myself, since you're such a coward." "'Tisn't that I'm a coward, mistress--" "You're worse," interrupted her mistress severely. "You never ought to know anything about such words, and it's a revelation to me wherever you managed to pick them up." Dinah smoothed her apron. "I can't think neither," she confessed, and added demurely, "It could never have been from the old master, for I'm sure he'd never have used such." Mrs Bosenna wheeled about, her face aflame. But before she could turn on Dinah to rend her, the sound of a horn floated up from the valley. Dinah's whole body stiffened at once. "The post!" she cried, and ran forth from the kitchen to meet it, without asking leave. Letters at Rilla Farm were rare exceedingly, for Mrs Bosenna made a point of paying ready-money (and exacting the last penny of discount) wherever it was possible; so that bills, even in the shape of invoices, were few. She had no relatives, or none whom she encouraged as correspondents, for, as the saying is, "she had married above her." For the same reason, perhaps, she had long since stopped the flow of sentimental letters from the girl-friends she had once possessed in Holsworthy, Devon. If Mrs Bosenna now and again found herself lonely at Rilla Farm in her widowhood, it is to be feared the majority of her old acquaintances would have agreed in asserting, with a touch of satisfied spite, that she had herself to blame,--and welcome! "There's _two!_" announced Dinah, bursting back into the kitchen and waving her capture. "_Two!_--and the Troy postmark on both of 'em!" "Put them down on the table, please. And kindly take a look at the oven. You needn't let the bread burn, even if I _am_ to take breakfast in the kitchen." "But ain't you in a hurry to open them, mistress?" asked Dinah, pretending to go, still hanging on her heel. "Maybe I am; maybe I ain't." Mrs Bosenna picked up the two envelopes with a carelessness which was slightly overdone. They were sealed, the pair of them. She broke the seal of the first carefully, drew out the letter, and read-- "HONOURED MADAM,--You will doubtless be surprised--" She turned to the last page and read the subscription-- "Yours obediently," "TOBIAS HUNKEN." "Who's it from, mistress?" asked Dinah, making pretence of a difficulty with the oven door. "Nobody that concerns you," snapped Mrs Bosenna, and hastily stowed the letter in the bosom of her bodice. She picked up the other. Of that, in turn, she broke the seal-- The handwriting was somewhat superior. "HONOURED MADAM,--You will doubtless be Mrs Bosenna, mildly surprised, in truth, turned the epistle over. It was signed-- "Your obedient servant, "CAIUS HOCKEN."
But of a sudden she started, turned to the first letter again, and spread it on her lap. "Well, if I ever!" breathed she, after a pause. "A proposal! I knew it was!" cried Dinah, swinging about from the oven door. Mrs Bosenna, if she heard, did not seem to hear. She was holding up both letters in turn, staring from the one to the other incredulously. Her roseal colour came and went. "Them and their parrots! I'll teach 'em!" Before Dinah could ask what was the matter, a bell sounded. It was the front door bell, which rang just within the porch. Dinah smoothed her apron and bustled forth. It had always been her grievance--and her mistress shared it--against the nameless architect of Rilla farmstead, that he had made its long kitchen window face upon the strawyard, whereas a sensible man would have designed it to command the front door in flank, with its approaches. This mistake of his cost Dinah a circuit by way of the apple-room every time she answered the porch bell; for as little as any porter of old in a border fortress would she have dreamed of admitting a visitor without first making reconnaissance. A minute later she ran back and thrust her head in at the kitchen-door. "Mistress," she whispered excitedly, "it's _them!_" "Oh!" exclaimed Mrs Bosenna, as the bell jangled again. "They seem in a hurry, too." She smiled, and the smile, if the curve of her mouth forbade it to be grim, at any rate expressed decision. She picked up the two letters and slipped them into her pocket. "You can show them in." "Where, mistress?" "Here. And, Dinah, nothing about the post, mind! Now, run!" _ |
||