Book 3 - Chapter 18. The Ploughing

________________________________________________
_ BOOK III CHAPTER XVIII. THE PLOUGHING

It is possible--though not, perhaps, likely--that had Cai obeyed his first impulse and pursued 'Bias down the valley, to overtake him, the two friends might after a few hot words have found reconciliation, or at least have patched up an honourable truce. As it was, 'Bias carried home a bitter sense of betrayal, supposing that he had left Cai master of the field. He informed Mrs Bowldler that he would dine and sup alone.

"Which the joint to-day is a goose," protested that lady; "and one more difficult to halve at short notice I don't know, for my part."

"You must do the best you can." He vouchsafed no other reply.

Mrs Bowldler considered this problem all the rest of the morning. "Palmerston," she asked, as she opened the oven door to baste the bird, "supposin' you were asked to halve a roast goose, how would you begin?"

"I'd say I wouldn't," answered Palmerston on brief reflection.

"But supposin' you _had_ to?"

Palmerston reflected for many seconds. "I'd start by gettin' my knee on it," he decided.

Mrs Bowldler, albeit much vexed in mind, deferred solving the problem, and was rewarded with good luck as procrastinators too often are in this world.

Dinner-time arrived, but Captain Hocken did not. She served the goose whole and carried it in to Captain Hunken.

"Eh?" said 'Bias, as she removed the cover. "What about--about Cap'n Hocken?"

"He have not arrove."

'Bias ground his teeth. "Havin' dinner with _her!_" he told himself, and fell to work savagely to carve his solitary portion.

Having satisfied his appetite, he lit a pipe and smoked. But tobacco brought no solace, no charitable thoughts. While, as a matter of fact, Cai tramped the highroads, mile after mile, striving to deaden the pain at his heart, 'Bias sat puffing and let his wrath harden down into a fixed mould of resentment.

Dusk was falling when Cai returned. Mrs Bowldler, aware that something was amiss, heard his footsteps in the passage and presented herself.

"Which, having been detained, we might make an 'igh tea of it," she suggested, "and venture on the wing of a goose. Stuffing at this hour I would 'ardly 'int at, being onion and apt to recur." But Captain Hocken desired no more than tea and toast.

Mrs Bowldler was intelligently sympathetic, because Fancy had called early in the afternoon and brought some enlightenment.

"There's a row," said Fancy, and told about the sale of the parrot. "That Mrs Bosenna's at the bottom of it, as I've said all along," she concluded.

"Do you reelly think the bird has been talking?"

"I don't think: I know."

Mrs Bowldler pondered a moment. "Ho! well--she's a widow."

"I reckon," said Fancy, "if these two sillies are goin' to fall out over her and live apart, you'll be wantin' extra help. Two meals for every one--I hope they counted _that_ before they started to quarrel."

"I'll not have another woman in the house," declared Mrs Bowldler, and repeated it for emphasis after the style of the great Hebrew writers. "Another woman in the house have I will not! What do _you_ say, Palmerston?"

Palmerston, who had been on the edge of tears for some time, broke down and fairly blubbered.

"There's a boy!" exclaimed the elder woman. "Mention a little hard work and he begins to cry."

"I don't believe he's cryin' for that at all," spoke up Fancy. "Are you, Pammy dear?"

"Nun-nun-No-o!" sobbed Palmerston.

"He can't abide quarrellin'--that's what's the matter. . . . Ah, well!" sighed Fancy, and fell back on her favourite formula of resignation. "It'll be all the same a hundred years hence; when we mee-eet," she chanted, "when we mee-eet, when we mee-eet on that Beyewtiful Shore! _And_ in the meantime we three have got to sit tight an' watch for an openin' to teach 'em that their little hands were never made. No talkin' outside, mind!"

"As if I should!" protested Mrs Bowldler, and added thoughtfully, "I often wonder what happens to widows."

"They marry again, mostly."

"I mean up there--on the Beautiful Shore, so to speak. They don't marry again, because the Bible says so: but how some _contrytomps_ is to be avoided I don't see."

Chiefly through the loyalty of these three, some weeks elapsed before the breach of friendship between Captain Caius Hocken and Captain Tobias Hunken became a matter of common talk. Mr Rogers must have had an inkling; for the pair consulted him on all their business affairs and investments, and in two or three ships their money had meant a joint influence on the shareholders' policy. Now, as they came to him separately, and with suggestions that bore no sign of concerted thought, so astute an adviser could hardly miss a guess that something was wrong. Nor did it greatly mend matters that each, on learning the other's wish upon this or that point where it conflicted with his own, at once made haste to yield. "If that's how 'Bias looks at it," Cai would say, "why o' course we'll make it so. I must have misunderstood him:" and 'Bias on his part would as promptly take back a proposal--"Cai thinks otherwise, eh? Oh, well that settles it! We haven't, as you might say, threshed it out together, but I leave details to him." "If you call this a detail--" "Yes, yes: leave it to Cai." Mr Rogers blinked, but asked no questions and kept his own counsel.

Mr Philp was more dangerous. (Who in Troy could keep Mr Philp for long off the scent of a secret?) But, as luck would have it, Cai in pure innocence routed Mr Philp at the first encounter.

It happened in this way. Towards the end of the first week of estrangement Cai, who bore up pretty well in the day time with the help of Mr Rogers, Barber Toy, and other gossips, began to find his evenings intolerably slow. He reasoned that autumn was drawing in, that the hours of darkness were lengthening, and that anyway, albeit the weather had not turned chilly as yet, a fire would be companionable. He ordered a fire therefore (more work for Mrs Bowldler). But somehow, after a brief defeat, his _ennui_ returned. Then of a sudden, one night at bed-time, he bethought him of the musical box, and that John Peter Nanjulian needed hurrying-up.

Accordingly the next morning, as the church clock struck ten, found him climbing the narrow ascent to On the Wall: where, at the garden gate, he encountered Mr Philp in the act of leaving the house with a bulging carpet-bag.

"Eh? Good mornin', Mr Philp."

"Good mornin' to you, Cap'n Hocken." Mr Philp was hurrying by, but his besetting temptation held him to a halt. "How's Cap'n Hunken in these days?" he inquired.

"Nicely, thank you," answered Cai, using the formula of Troy.

"I ha'n't see you two together o' late."

"No?" Cai, casting about to change the subject, let fall a casual remark on the weather, and asked, "What's that you're carryin', if one may make so bold?"

"It's--it's a little commission for John Peter," stammered Mr Philp. "Nothin' to mention."

He beat a hasty retreat down the hill.

"'Tis curious now," said Cai to John Peter ten minutes later, "how your inquisitive man hates a question, just as your joker can't never face a joke that goes against him. I met Philp, just outside, with a carpet bag: and I no sooner asked what he was carryin' than he bolted like a hare."

"There's no secret about it, either," said John Peter. "He tells me that, for occupation, he has opened an agency for the Plymouth Dye and Cleanin' Works."

"And you've given him some clothes to be cleaned? Well, I don't see why he need be ashamed o' that."

"Well, I haven't, to tell you the truth. For my part, I like my clothes the better the more I'm used to 'em. But my sister's laid up with bronchitis."

"Miss Susan? . . . Nothin' serious, I hope?"

"She always gets it, in the fall o' the year. No, nothing serious. But the doctor says she must keep her bed for a week--and now she's _got_ to. . . . There'll be a rumpus when she finds out," said John Peter resignedly: "for she don't like clean clothes any better than I do. But one likes to oblige a neighbour; and if he'd taken my trowsers 'twould ha' meant the whole household bein' in bed, which," concluded John Peter with entire simplicity, "would not only be awkward in itself, but dangerous when only two are left of an old family."

Cai agreed, if he did not understand. He reclaimed his musical box-- needless to say, John Peter had not yet engraved the plate--and carried it home, promising to restore it when that adornment was ready. For the next night or two it soothed him somewhat while he smoked and meditated on public duties soon to engage his leisure. For he had been co-opted a member of the School Board in room of Mr Rogers, resigned: and in Barber Toy's shop it was understood that he would be a candidate not only for the Parish Council to be elected before Christmas, but for a Harbour Commissionership to fall vacant in the summer of next year.

The notification of his appointment on the School Board reached him by post on the last Tuesday in September. Now, as it happened, the Technical Instruction Committee of the County Council had arranged to hold at Troy, some four days later, an Agricultural Demonstration, with competitions in ploughing, hedging, dry-walling, turfing, the splitting and binding of spars, &c.

Behold, now, on the morning of the Demonstration, Captain Caius Hocken, School Manager and therefore _ex officio_ a steward, taking the field in his Sunday best with a scarlet badge in his buttonhole, "quite," declared Mrs Bowldler, "like a gentleman of the French Embassy as used frequent to take luncheon with us in the Square."

The morning was bright and clear: the sky a pale blue and almost cloudless, the season--

Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter,

--and Cai walked with a lightness of spirit to which since the quarrel he had been a stranger. The Demonstration was to be held at the Four Turnings, where the two roads that lead out of Troy and form a triangle with the sea for base, converge to an apex and branch off again into two County highways. The field lay scarcely a stone's throw from this apex--that is to say from the spot where the late Farmer Bosenna had ended his mortal career. It belonged in fact to Mrs Bosenna, and had been hired from her by the Technical Instruction Committee for a small sum; but Cai did not happen to know this, for the arrangement had been made some weeks ago, before his elevation to the School Board.

It was with a shock of surprise, therefore, that on passing the gate he found Mrs Bosenna close within, engaged in talk with two rosy-faced farmers; and, moreover, it brought a rush of blood to his face, for he had neither seen her nor heard from her since the fatal morning. There was, however, no way of retreat, and he stepped wide to avoid the group, lifting his hat awkwardly as he passed, not daring to meet the lady's eyes.

"Captain Hocken!" she called cheerfully.

"Ma'am?" Cai halted in confusion.

"Come here for a moment--that is, if it doesn't interrupt your duties-- and be introduced to our two ploughing judges. Mr Widger of Callington, Mr Sam Nicholls of St Neot--Captain Hocken." Cai's cheeks in rosiness emulated those of the two men with whom he shook hands. "Captain Hocken," she explained to them, "takes a great interest in education."

For a moment it struck Cai that the pair, on hearing this, eyed him suspiciously; but his brain was in a whirl, and he might easily have been mistaken.

"Not at all," he stammered; "that is, I mean--I am new to this business, you see."

"You are a practical man, I hope, sir?' asked Mr Nicholls.

"I--I've spent the most part of my life at sea, if you'd count that bein' practical," said Cai modestly.

"To be sure I do," Mr Nicholls assented. "It's as practical as farmin', almost."

"In a manner o' speakin' it is," agreed Mr Widger grudgingly. "Men haven't all the same gifts. Now you'll hardly believe what happened to me the only time I ever took a sea trip."

"No?" politely queried Cai.

"I was sick," said Mr Widger, in a tone of vast reminiscent surprise.

"It _does_ happen sometimes."

"Yes," repeated Mr Widger, "sick I was. It took place in Plymouth Sound: and you don't catch me tryin' the sea again."

"Now what," inquired Mr Nicholls, "might be your opinion about Labour Exemption Certificates, Captain Hocken?"

Cai was gravelled. His alleged interest in education had not as yet extended to a study of the subject.

Mrs Bosenna came to the rescue. Talk about education (she protested) was the last thing she could abide. Before the ploughing began she wanted to show Captain Hocken some work the hedgers had been doing at the lower end of the field.

At that moment, too, the local secretary came running with word that the first teams were already harnessed, and awaited the judges' preliminary inspection. Mr Widger and Mr Nicholls made their excuses, therefore, and hurried off to their duties.

"I have a bone to pick with you," said Mrs Bosenna, as she and Cai took their way leisurably across the field.

Cai groaned at thought of those unhappy letters.

But Mrs Bosenna made no allusion to the letters.

"You have not been near Rilla for weeks," she went on, reproachfully.

Cai glanced at her. "I thought--I was afraid you were offended," he said, his heart quickening its beat.

"Well, and so I was. To begin brawling as you did in a lady's presence--and two such friends as I'd always supposed you to be! It was shocking. Now, wasn't it?"

"It has made me miserable enough," pleaded Cai.

"And so it ought. . . . I don't know that I should be forgiving you now," added Mrs Bosenna demurely, "if it didn't happen that I wanted advice."

"_My_ advice?" asked Cai incredulous.

"It's a business matter. Women, you know, are so helpless where business is concerned." (Oh, Mrs Bosenna!)

"If I can be of any help--" murmured Cai, somewhat astonished but prodigiously flattered.

"Hush!" she interrupted, lifting a quick eye towards the knap of the hill they had descended. "Isn't that Captain Hunken, up above? . . . Yes, to be sure it is, and he's turned to walk away just as I was going to call him!" She glanced at Cai, and there was mischief in the glance. "I expect the ploughing has begun, and I won't detain either of you. . . . The business? We won't discuss it now. I have to wait here for Dinah, who is coming for company as soon as she's finished her housework. . . . To-morrow, then, if you have nothing better to do. Good-bye!"

He left her and climbed the hill again. He seemed to tread on air; and no doubt, when he reached the plateau where the ploughmen were driving their teams to and fro before the judges, with corrugated brows, compressed lips, eyes anxiously bent on the imaginary line of the furrow to be drawn, this elation gave his bearing a confidence which to the malignant or uncharitable might have presented itself as bumptiousness. He mingled with the small group of _cognoscenti_, listened to their criticisms, and by-and-by, cocking his head knowledgeably on one side, hazarded the remark that "the fellow coming on with the roan and grey seemed to be missing depth in his effort to keep straight."

It was an innocent observation, uttered, may be, a thought too dogmatically, but truly with no deeper intent than to elicit fresh criticism from an expert who stood close beside his elbow. But a voice behind him said, and carried its sneer--

"Maybe he ain't the only one hereabouts as misses depth."

Cai, with a grey face, swung about. He had recognised the voice. Some demon in him prompted the retort--

"Eh, 'Bias? Is that you?--and still takin' an interest in agriculture?"

The shaft went home. 'Bias's voice shook as he replied--

"I mayn't know much about education, at two minutes' notice; and I mayn't pretend to know much about ploughin' and wear a button in my coat to excuse it. But I reckon that for a pound a side I could plough you silly, Cai Hocken."

It was uttered in full hearing of some ten or twelve spectators, mostly townsmen of Troy; and these, turning their heads, for a moment not believing their ears, stared speechlessly at the two men whose friendship had in six months passed into a local byword. Cap'n Hocken and Gap'n Hunken--what, _quarrelling?_ No, no--nonsense: it must be their fun!

But the faces of the pair told a different tale.

It was a stranger--a young farmer from two parishes away--who let off the first guffaw.

"A bet, naybours!--did 'ee hear _that?_ Take him up, little man--he won't eat 'ee."

"I'll go ten shillin' myself, rather than miss it," announced another voice. "Ten shillin' on the bantam!"

"Get out with 'ee both," spoke up a citizen of Troy. "You don't know the men. 'Tisn't serious now--is it, Cap'n Hocken?--well as you're actin'--"

"Why not?" Cai stood, breathing hard, eyeing his adversary. "If _he_ means it?"

"That's right! Cover his money?" cried an encouraging voice behind him.

The young farmer slapped his thigh, and ran off to the next group. "Hi, you fellows! A match!"

He shouted it. They turned about. "What is it, Bill Crago?"--for they read in his excited gestures that he had real news.

"The fun o' the fair, boys! Two ships'-cap'ns offering to plough for a pound a side--if you ever!"

"Drunk!" suggested somebody.

"What's the odds if they be? 'Twill be all the better fun," answered Mr Crago. "No--far's one can tell they're dead sober. Come along and listen--" He hurried back and they after him.

"If he chooses to back out?" Cai was taunting Bias as the crowd pressed around. So true is it that:--

"To be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."

"Who wants to back out?" answered 'Bias sullenly.

"If a man insults me, I hold him to his word: either that or he takes it back."

"Quite right, Cap'n';" prompted a voice. "And he can't tell us he didn't say it, for I heard him!"

"I ain't takin' nothin' back." 'Bias faced about doggedly.

By this time, as their wits cleared a little, each was aware of his folly, and each would gladly have retreated from this public exhibition of it. But as the crowd increased, neither would be the first to yield and invite its certain jeers. Moreover, each was furiously incensed: anything seemed better than to be shamed by _him_, to give _him_ a cheap triumph.

News of the altercation had spread. Soon two-thirds of the spectators were trooping to join the throng in the upper field, pressing in on the antagonists, jostling in their eagerness to catch a word of the dispute. The competitors in Class D were left to plough lonely furrows and finish them unapplauded. Young Mr Crago had run off meantime to secure the services of the two judges.

Now Mrs Bosenna, after waiting some ten minutes by the lower gate for Dinah (whose capital fault was unpunctuality), had lost patience and walked back towards Rilla to meet and reproach her. She had almost reached the small gate when she spied Dinah hurrying down the steep path to the highroad, and halted. Dinah, coming up, excused herself between catches of breath. She had been detained by the plucking of a fowl, and a feather--or, as you might call it a fluff--had found its way into her throat. "Which," said she, "the way I heaved, mistress, is beyond belief."

Mrs Bosenna having admonished her to be more careful in future, turned to retrace her steps to the field.

They reached it and climbed the slope crosswise. They had scarcely gained the edge of the upper plateau when Mrs Bosenna stopped short and gave a gasp. For at that moment there broke on their view, against the near sky-line, the figure of a man awkwardly turning a plough, behind a team of horses.

"Save us, mistress!" cried keen-eyed Dinah. "If it isn't--"

"It can't be!" cried Mrs Bosenna, as if in the same breath.

"It's Cap'n Hunken," said Dinah positively.

"But why? Dinah--why?"

"It's Cap'n Hunken," repeated Dinah. "The Lord knows why. If he's doin' it for fun, I never saw worse entry to a furrow in my life."

"Nor I. But what can it mean?" Mrs Bosenna, panting, paused at the sound of derisive cheers, not very distant.

The two women ran forward a pace or two, until their gaze commanded the whole stretch of the upper slope. 'Bias, stolidly impelling his team-- a roan and a rusty-black--had, in the difficult process of steering the turn, been too closely occupied to let his gaze travel aside. He was off again: his stalwart back, stripped to braces and shirt, bent as he trudged in wake of the horses, clinging to the plough-tail, helplessly striving to guide them by the wavy parallel his last furrow had set.

Down the field, nearer and nearer, approached Cai, steering a team as helplessly. Ribald cheers followed him.

Mrs Bosenna, though quite at a loss to explain it, grasped the situation in less than a moment. She followed up 'Bias, keeping wide and running--yet not seeming to hasten--over the unbroken ground to the left.

"Captain Hunken!"

'Bias, throwing all his weight back on the plough-tail, brought his team to a halt and looked around. He was bewildered, yet he recognised the voice.

While he paused thus, Cai steadily advanced to meet and pass him. He was plainly at the mercy of his team--a grey and a brown, both of conspicuous height--and they were drawing the furrow at their own sweet will. But he, too, clung to the plough-tail, and his lips were compressed, his eyes rigid, as he drew nearer, to meet and pass his adversary. He, likewise, had cast coat and waistcoat aside: his hat he had entrusted to an unknown backer. He saw nothing, as he came, but the line of the furrow he prayed to achieve.

"Captain Hocken!" She stepped forward hardily, holding up a hand, and Cai's team, too, came to a halt as if ashamed. "What--_what_ is the meaning of this foolishness?"

"I've had enough, it _he_ has," said Cai sheepishly, glancing past her and at 'Bias.

"I ain't doin' this for fun, ma'am," owned 'Bias. "Fact is, I'd 'most as lief steer a monkey by the tail."

"Then drop it this instant, the pair of you!"

'Bias scratched his head.

"As for that, ma'am, I don't see how we can oblige. There's money on it--bets."

"There won't be money's worth left in my field, at the rate you're spoilin' it." She turned upon the two judges, who were advancing timidly to placate her, while the crowd hung back. "And now, Mr Nicholls--now, Mr Widger--I'd like to hear what _you_ have to say to this!"

"'Tis a pretty old cauch, sure 'nough," allowed Mr Sam Nicholls, pushing up the brim of his hat on one side and scratching his head while his eye travelled along the furrows. "Cruel!"

"And you permitted it! You, that might be supposed to have _some_ knowledge o' farmin'!"

"Why, to be sure, ma'am," interposed Mr Widger, "we never reckoned as 'twould be so bad as all this. . . . Young Bill Crago came to us with word as how these--these two gentlemen--had made a match, and he asked us to do the judgin' same as for the classes 'pon the bills--"

"And so you started them? And then, I suppose, you couldn't stop for laughin'?"

"Something like that, ma'am, _as_ you say," Mr Widger confessed.

"And what sort o' speech will you make, down to County Council, when I send in my bill for damages?--you that complained to me, only this mornin', how the rates were goin' up by leaps and bounds! . . . As for these gentlemen," said Mrs Bosenna, turning on Cai and 'Bias with just a twinkle of mischief in her eyes, "I shall be at home to-morrow morning if they choose to call and make me an offer--unless, o' course, they prefer to do so by letter."

At this, Dinah put up her hand suddenly to cover her mouth. But Cai and 'Bias were in no state of mind to catch the double innuendo.

Having thus reduced the judges to contrition, and having proceeded to call forward the local secretary and to extort from him a long and painful apology, Mrs Bosenna wound up with a threat to bundle the whole Demonstration out of her field if she heard of any further nonsense, and, taking Dinah's arm, sailed off (so to speak) with all the trophies of war.

Cai and 'Bias walked away shamefacedly to seek out their bottleholders and collect each his hat, coat, and waistcoat.

"But which of ee's won?" demanded their backers.

"_Damn_ who's won!" was 'Bias's answer; and he looked too dangerous to be pressed further.

A wager is a wager, however; and the judges' decision was clamoured for, with threats that, until it was given, the Agricultural Demonstration would not be suffered to proceed. Mr Sam Nicholls consulted hastily with Mr Widger, and announced the award as follows:--

"We consider Captain Hunken's ploughin' to be the very worst ploughin' we've ever seen. But we award him the prize all the same, because we don't consider Captain Hocken's ploughin' to be any ploughin' at all."

_Solvuntur risu tabulae_--They can laugh, too, at Troy! _

Read next: Book 3: Chapter 19. Roses And Three-Per-Cents

Read previous: Book 2: Chapter 17. Apparently Divides Into Three

Table of content of Hocken and Hunken; A Tale of Troy


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book