Book 3 - Chapter 19. Roses And Three-Per-Cents

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_ BOOK III CHAPTER XIX. ROSES AND THREE-PER-CENTS

Although in her rose-garden--the rose-garden proper--Mrs Bosenna grew all varieties of "Hybrid Perpetuals" (these ranked first with her, as best suited to the Cornish soil and climate), with such "Teas" and "Hybrid Teas" as took her fancy, and while she pruned these plants hard in spring, to produce exhibition blooms, sentiment or good taste had forbidden her to disturb the old border favourites that lined the pathway in front of the house, or covered its walls and even pushed past the eaves to its chimneys. Some of these had beautified Rilla year by year for generations: the Provence cabbage-roses, for instance, in the border, the Crimson Damask and striped Commandant Beaurepaire; the moss-roses, pink and white, the China rose that bloomed on into January by the porch. These, with the Marechal Niel by her bedroom window, the scented white Banksian that smothered the southern wall, and the climbing Devoniensis that nothing would stop or stay until its flag was planted on the very roof-ridge, had greeted her, an old man's bride, on her first home-coming. They had, in the mysterious way of flowers, soothed some rebellion of young blood and helped to reconcile her to a lot which, for a shrewd and practical damsel, was, after all, not unenviable. She had no romance in her, and was quite unaware that the roses had helped; but she took a sensuous delight in them, and this had started her upon her hobby. A success or two in local flower-shows had done the rest.

Now with a rampant climber such as Rosa Devoniensis it is advisable to cut out each autumn, and clean remove some of the old wood; and this is no easy job when early neglect has allowed the plant to riot up and over the root-thatch. Mrs Bosenna had a particular fondness for this rose, and for the gipsy flush which separates it from other white roses as an unmistakable brunette. Yet she was sometimes minded to cut it down and uproot it, for the perverse thing would persist on flowering at its summit, and William Skin, sent aloft on ladders--whether in autumn or spring to prune this riot, or in summer to reap blooms by the armful-- invariably did damage to the thatch.

Mrs Bosenna, then, gloved and armed with a pair of secateurs, stood next morning by the base of the Devoniensis holding debate with herself.

The issue--that she would decide to spare the offender for yet another year--was in truth determined; for already William Skin had planted one ladder against the house-wall and had shuffled off to the barn for another, to be hoisted on to the slope of the thatch, and there belayed with a rope around the chimney-stack. But she yet played with the resolve, taken last year, to be stern and order execution. She was still toying with it when the garden-gate clicked, and looking up, she perceived Captain Cai.

"Ah! . . . Good morning, Captain Hocken!"

Cai advanced along the pathway and gravely doffed his hat. "Good morning, ma'am--if I don't intrude?"

"Not at all. In fact I was expecting you."

"Er--on which errand, ma'am?"

"--Which?" echoed Mrs Bosenna, as if she did not understand.

"Shall we take the more painful business first?" suggested Cai humbly. "If indeed it has not--er--wiped out the other. The damage done yesterday to your field, ma'am--"

"Have you brought Captain Hunken along with you?" asked Mrs Bosenna, interrupting him.

"No, ma'am. He will be here in half an hour, sharp." Cai consulted his watch.

"You have stolen a march on him then?" she smiled.

Cai flushed. "No, again, ma'am. Er--in point of fact we tossed up which should call first."

"Then," said she calmly, "we'll leave that part of the business until he arrives; though, since it concerns you both, I can't see why you did not bring him along with you. Do you know," she added with admirable simplicity, "it has struck me once or twice of late that you and Captain Hunken are not the friends you were?"

Still Cai stared, his face mantling with confusion. This woman was an enigma to him. Surely she must understand? Surely she must have received that brace of letters to which she evaded all allusion? And here was she just as blithely postponing all allusion to yesterday's offence!

But no; not quite, it seemed; for she continued--

"I cannot think why you two should challenge one another as you did yesterday, and make sillies of yourselves before a lot of farmers. It--it humiliates you."

"We were a pair of fools," conceded Cai.

"What men cannot see somehow," she went on angrily, "is that it doesn't end there. That kind of thing humiliates a woman; especially when--when she happens to be cast on her own resources and it is everything to her to find a man she can trust."

Mrs Bosenna threw into these words so much feeling that Cai in a moment forgot self. His awkwardness fell from him as a garment.

"You may trust me, ma'am. Truly you may. Tell me only what I can do."

At this moment William Skin--a crab-apple of a man, whose infirmity of deafness had long since reduced all the world for him to a vain tolerable show, in which so much went unexplained that nothing caused surprise--came stumbling around the corner of the house with a waggon-rope and a second ladder, which he proceeded to rest alongside the first one; showing the while no recognition of Cai's presence, even by a nod.

"I want you," said Mrs Bosenna, "to invest a hundred pounds for me. Oh!"--as Cai gave a start and glanced at Skin--"we may talk before him: he's as deaf as a haddock."

"A hundred pounds?" queried Cai, still in astonishment.

"Yes; it's a sum I happen to have lyin' idle. At this moment it's in the Bank, on deposit, where they give you something like two-and-a-half only: and in the ordinary way I should put it into Egyptian three per cents, or perhaps railways. My poor dear Samuel always had a great opinion of Egypt, for some reason. He used to say how pleasant it was in church to hear the parson readin' about Moses and the bulrushes, and the plague of frogs and suchlike, and think he had money invested in that very place, and how different it was in these days. Almost in his last breath he was beggin' me to promise to stick to Egyptians, or at any rate to something at three per cent and gilt-edged: because, you see, he'd always managed all the business and couldn't believe that women had any real sense in money affairs. . . . I didn't make any promise, really; though in a sort of respect to his memory I've kept on puttin' loose sums into that sort of thing. Three per cent is a silly rate of interest, when all is said and done: but of course the poor dear thought he was leavin' me all alone in the world, with no friend to advise. . . ."

"I see," said Cai, his heart beginning to beat fast. "And it's different now?"

"I--I was hopin' so," said Mrs Bosenna softly.

Cai glanced at the back of William Skin, who had started to hum--or rather to croon--a tuneless song while knotting a rope to the second ladder. No: it was impossible to say what he wished to say in the presence of William Skin, confound him! Skin's deafness, Skin's imperturbability, might have limits. . . .

"You wish me to advise you?" he controlled himself to ask.

"No, I don't. I wish you--if you'll do me the favour--just to take the money and invest it without consultin' me. It's--well, it's like the master in the Bible--the man who gave out the talents. . . . Only don't wrap it in a napkin!" She laughed. "I don't even want to be told _what_ you do with the money. I'd rather not be told, in fact. I want to trust you."

"Why?"

She laughed again, this time more shyly. "'Trust is proof,'" she answered, quoting the rustic adage. "You have given me some right to make that proof, I think?"

Ah--to be sure--the letters! She must, of course, have received his letter, along with 'Bias's, though this was her first allusion to it. . . . Cai's brain worked in a whirl for some moments. She was offering him a test; she was yielding upon honest and prudent conditions; she was as good as inviting him to win her. . . . To do him justice, he had never--never, at any rate, consciously--based his wooing on her wealth. For aught he cared, she might continue to administer all she possessed. The comforts of Rilla Farm may have helped to attract him, but herself had been from the first the true spell.

He did not profess any knowledge of finance. A return of four per cent on his own modest investments contented him, and he left these to Mr Rogers.

"Ah!"

His mind had caught, of a sudden, at a really brilliant idea.

"I accept," said he firmly, looking Mrs Bosenna hard in the eyes, and her eyes sank under his gaze.

"Hi! Heads!" sang out a voice, and simultaneously the ladder which William Skin had been hauling aloft, came crashing down and struck the flagged path scarcely two yards away.

A second later Cai had Mrs Bosenna in his arms. "You are not hurt?" he gasped.

She disengaged herself with a half-hysterical laugh. "Hurt? Am I? . . . No, of course I am not."

"The damned rope slipped," growled William Skin in explanation, from his perch on the ladder under the eaves.

"Slipped?" Cai ran to the rope and examined it. "Of course it slipped, you lubber!" He stepped back on the pathway and spoke up to Skin as he would have talked on shipboard to a blundering seaman in the cross-trees. "Ain't a slip-knot _made_ to slip? And when a man's fool enough to tie one in place of a hitch--"

He cast off the rope, bent it around the rung with, as it seemed, one turn of the hand, and with a jerk had it firm and true.

"Make way, up there!" he called.

"You're never going to--to risk yourself," protested Mrs Bosenna.

"Risk myself? Lord, ma'am, for what age d'ye take me?" Cai caught up the slack of the rope and hitched it taut over his shoulder. He was rejuvenated. He made a spring for the ladder, and went up it much as twenty years ago he would have swarmed up the ratlines. "Make yourself small," he commanded, as Skin, at imminent risk of falling, drew to one side before his onset. Cai was past him in a jiffy, over the eaves, balancing himself with miraculous ease on the slippery thatch. "Now ease up the ladder!"

He had anchored himself by pure trick of balance, and was pulling with a steady hand almost as soon as Skin, collecting his wits, could reach out to fend the ladder off from crushing the edge of the eaves. Ten seconds later, by seaman's sleight of foot, he had gained a second anchorage half-way up the slope, had gathered up all the slack of the rope into a seaman's coil, and with a circular sweep of the arm had flung it deftly around the chimney. The end, instead of sliding down to his hand, hitched itself among the thorns of the rampant Devoniensis. Did this daunt him? It checked him for an instant only. The next, he had balanced himself for a fresh leap, gained the roof-ridges, and, seated astride of it, was hauling up the ladder, hand over fist, close to the chimney-base.

The marvel was, the close thatch showed no trace of having been trampled or disturbed.

"Darn the feller, he's as ajjile as a cat!" swore William Skin.

"Pass up the clippers, you below!" Cai commanded, forgetting that the man was deaf. "If your mistress'll stand back in the path a bit, I'll pick out the shoots one by one and hold 'em up for her to see, so's she can tell me which to cut away."

"You'll scratch your hands to ribbons," Mrs Bosenna warned him.

"'Tisn't worth while comin' down for a pair of hedgin' gloves. . . . I say, though--I've a better notion! 'Stead of lettin' this fellow run riot here around the chimney-stack, why not have him down and peg him horizontal, more or less, across and along the thatch, where he can be seen?"

"Capital!" she agreed. "He'd put out more than twice the number of blooms too. They do always best when laid lateral."

"He'll come down bodily with a little coaxin'. The question is how to peg him when he's down?"

"Rick-spars," answered Mrs Bosenna promptly. "The small kind. There's dozens in the waggon-house loft." She signalled to William Skin to come down, bawled an order in his ear, and despatched him to fetch a score or so.

"Hullo!" cried Cai, who, being unemployed for the moment, had leisure to look around and enjoy the view from the roof-ridge. "If it isn't 'Bias comin' up the path! . . . Hi! 'Bias!" he hailed boyishly, in the old friendly tone.

'Bias, stooping to unlatch the gate, heard the call which descended, as it were, straight from heaven, and gazed about him stupidly. He was aware of Mrs Bosenna in the pathway, advancing a step or two to make him welcome. She halted and laughed, with a glance up towards the roof. 'Bias's eyes slowly followed hers.

"Lord!" he muttered, "what made ye masthead him up there? . . . Been misbehavin', has he? 'Tis the way I've served 'prentices afore now."

"On the contrary, he has been behaving beautifully--"

"Here, 'Bias!" called down Cai again. "Heft along the tall ladder half a dozen yards to the s'yth'ard, and stand by to help. I'm bringin' down this plaguy rose-bush, and I'll take some catchin' if I slip with it."

"'Who ran and caught him when he fell?' 'His Bias,'" quoted Mrs Bosenna. "He has been doin' wonders up there, Captain Hunken. But if I were you--a man of your weight--"

"I reckon," said 'Bias, stepping forward and seizing the ladder, which he lifted as though it had been constructed of bamboo, "I han't forgot all I learnt o' reefin' off the Horn." He planted the ladder and had mounted it in a jiffy. "Now, then, what's the programme?" he demanded.

"You see this rose? Well, I got to collect it--I've tried the main stem, and it'll bend all right,--and then I got to slide down to you. After that we've to peg it out somewheres above the eaves, as Madam gives orders. See?"

"I see. When you're ready, slide away."

Just then William Skin came hurrying back with an armful of rick-spars: and within ten minutes the two rivals were hotly at work--yet cheerfully, intelligently, as though misunderstanding had never been,-- clipping out dead wood from the rose-bush, layering it, pegging it, driving in the spars,--while Mrs Bosenna called directions, and William Skin gazed, with open mouth.

"This is better than ploughin', ma'am?" challenged Cai in his glee.

"So much better," agreed the widow, smiling up, "that I've almost a mind to forgive the pair of you."

"But I won't ask you to stay for dinner to-day," she said later, when the tangled mass of the Devoniensis had been separated, shoot from shoot, and pegged out to the last healthy-looking twig, and the two men stood, flushed but safe, on the pathway beside her. She stole a confidential little glance at Cai. "For I understand from Captain Hocken that you prefer to make your excuses separately. I have already forgiven _him_: and it's only fair to give Captain Hunken his turn."

Who less suspicious than Cai? Had he been suspicious at all, what better reassurance than the sly pressure of her hand as he bade her good-day? . . . Poor 'Bias!

Once past the gate, and out of sight, Cai felt a strange desire to skip!

"Well, mistress, you are a bold one, I must say!" commented Dinah that night by the kitchen fire, where Mrs Bosenna enjoyed a chat and, at this season of the year, a small glass of hot brandy-and-water, with a slice of lemon in it, before going to bed.

"I don't see where the boldness comes in," said the widow. She was studying the fire, and spoke inattentively.

"Two hundred pounds!"

"Eh? . . . There's no risk in that. You may say what you like of Captain Hocken or of Captain Hunken: but they're honest as children. The money's as safe with them as in the bank."

"Well, it do seem to me a dashin' and yet a very cold-blooded way of choosin' a man. Now, if I was taken with one--"

"Well?" prompted Mrs Bosenna, as Dinah paused.

"Call me weak, but I couldn't help it. I should throw myself straight at his head, an' ask him to trample me under his boots!"

"A nice kind of husband you'd make of him then!" said her mistress scornfully.

"I know, I know," agreed Dinah. "I've no power o' resistance at all, an' I daresay the Almighty has saved me a lifetime o' trouble. 'Twould ha' been desperet pleasant at the time though." She sighed.

"But to give two men a hundred pound each, an' choose the one that manages it best--"

"Worst," corrected Mrs Bosenna. "You ninny!" she went on with sovereign contempt. "Do you really suppose I'd marry a man that could handle my money, or was vain enough to suppose he could?"

"O--oh!" gasped Dinah as she took enlightenment. . . . "But two hundred pounds is a terrible sum to spend in findin' out which o' two men is the bigger fool. Why not begin wi' the one you like best, and find out first if he's foolish enough to suit?"

"Because," answered Mrs Bosenna, turning meditative eyes again upon the fire, "I don't happen to know which I like best."

"Then you can't be in love," declared foolish Dinah.

"Sensible women ain't; not until afterwards. . . . Now, which would you advise me to marry?"

"Captain Hunken." Dinah's answer was prompt. "He's that curt. I like a man to be curt; he makes it so hard for 'ee to say no. Besides which, as you might say, that parrot of his did break the ice in a manner of speakin'."

"Dinah, I'm ashamed of you."

"Well, mistress, natur' is natur': and we knows what we can't help knowin'."

"That's true," Mrs Bosenna agreed. It was her turn to sigh.

"Cap'n Hunken's the man," repeated Dinah. She nodded her head on it and paused. "Though, if you ask my opinion, Cap'n Hocken 'd make the better husband."

"It's difficult."

"Ay. . . . For my part I don't know what you want with a husband at all."

"Nor I," said Mrs Bosenna, still gazing into the fire.

"At the best 'tis a risk."

Mrs Bosenna sighed again. "If it weren't, where'd be the fun?" _

Read next: Book 3: Chapter 20. A Newspaper Paragraph

Read previous: Book 3: Chapter 18. The Ploughing

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