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Hocken and Hunken; A Tale of Troy, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Book 3 - Chapter 24. Fancy Brings News |
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_ BOOK III CHAPTER XXIV. FANCY BRINGS NEWS "Which," Mrs Bowldler reported to Fancy, who had left her master's sick-bed to pay a fleeting visit to Palmerston's, "the treatment was drastic for a growin' child. First of all Mrs Bosenna, that never had a child of her own, sent down to the cabin for the mustard that had been left over from the Sailin' Committee's sangwidges, and mixed up a drink with it and a little cold water. Which the results was _nil_; that is to say, pecuniarily speakin'. Then somebody fetched along Mr Clogg the vet. from Tregarrick, that had come over for the day to judge the horses, and _he_ said as plain salt-and-water was worth all the mustard in the world, so they made the poor boy swallow the best part of a pint, and he brought up eighteenpence." "Saints alive! But I thought you told me--" "So I did: two solid golden sufferins. And _that_," said Mrs Bowldler, "was for some time the most astonishin' part of the business. Two solid golden sufferins: and low!--as the sayin' is--low and behold, eighteen pence in small silver!" "Little enough too, for a miracle!" mused Fancy. "It encouraged 'em to go on. Captain Hocken--he's a humane gentleman, too, and never graspin'--no, never in his life!--but I suppose he'd begun to get interested,--Captain Hocken ups and suggests as they were wastin' time, mixin' table-salt and water when there was the wide ocean itself overside, to be had for the dippin'. So they tried sea-water." "My poor Pammy.'" "Don't you start a-pityin' me," gasped a voice, faint but defiant, from the bed. "If I die, I die. But I got the account to balance." "I disremember what sum--er--resulted that time," confessed Mrs Bowldler; "my memory not bein' what it was." "Ninepence; an' two threepennies with the soap--total two-and-nine, which was correct. If I die, I die," moaned Palmerston. "'Ero!" murmured Fancy, stepping to the bedside and arranging his pillow. "You take my advice and lie quiet," counselled Mrs Bowldler. "You're not a-goin' to die this time. But there's been a shock to the system, you may make up your mind," she went on, turning to Fancy. "I'd most forgotten about the soap. That was Philp's suggestion, as I heard. They found a cake of Monkey Brand in the ship's fo'c'sle, and by the time Doctor Higgs arrived with his stomach-pump--" "They'd sent for _him?_ What, for two pounds?" "Less two-an'-nine, by this--as they thought. But, of course, there was the child's health to be considered . . . I ought to mention that before Dr Higgs came Captain Hunken remembered how he'd treated a seaman once, that had swallowed carbolic by mistake. He recommended tar: but there wasn't any tar to be found--which seems strange, aboard a ship." "It was lucky, anyhow." "There was a plenty of hard pitch about, and one or two reckoned the marine glue in the deck-seams might be a passable substitute. They were diggin' some out with their penknives when Doctor Higgs arrived with his pump." "And did he use it?" "He did not. He asked what First Aid they had been applyin', an' when they told him, his language was not to be repeated. 'D'ye think,' said he, 'as I'd finish the child for--'well, he named the balance, whatever 'twas." "One-seventeen-three," said the voice from the bed. "That's so. And 'Monkey Brand?' says he. 'Why, you've scoured his little stummick so, you might put it on the chimbly-piece and see your face in it! Fit an' wrap what's left of him in a blanket,' says Doctor Higgs; 'an' take him home an' put him to bed,' says he--which they done so," concluded Mrs Bowldler, "an' if you'll believe it, when I come to put him to bed an' fold his trowsers across the chair, out trickles the two sufferins!" "You don't say!" "He's been absent-minded of late. It they'd only turned his pockets out instead of--well, we won't go into details: but the two pounds was there all the time. 'Twas the petty cash he'd swallowed, in the shock at hearin' about Mr Rogers. . . . And how's _he_, by the way?" "Bad," answered Fancy, "dreadful bad. I don't think he's goin' to die, not just yet-awhile: but he can't speak, and his mind's troubled." "Reason enough why, if all's truth that they tell of him." "But it isn't." "He brought your own father to beggary." "Well, you may put it that way if you choose. It's the way they all put it that felt for Dad without allowin' their feelin's to take 'em further. Not that he'd any claim to more'n their pity. He speckilated with Mr Rogers, and Mr Rogers did him in the eye, that's all. And I'm very fond of Dad," continued the wise child; "but the longer I live the more I don't see as one man can bring another to beggary unless the other man helps. The point is, Mr Rogers didn' leave him there. . . . We've enough to eat." "Ho! If _that_ contents you--" Mrs Bowldler shrugged her shoulders. "Who said it did? We don't ezackly make Gawds of our bellies, Dad and I; but there's a difference between that and goin' empty. Ask Pammy!" she added, with a twitch and a grin. "I've heard you say, anyway, that you was afraid Mr Rogers'd go to the naughty place. A dozen times I've heard you say it." "Rats!--you never did. What you heard me say was that he'd go to hell, and I was sure of it. . . . And you may call it weak, but I can't bear it," the child broke out with a cry of distress, intertwisting her fingers and wringing them. "It's dreadful--dreadful!--to sit by and watch him lyin' there, with his mind workin' and no power to speak. All the time he's wantin' to say something to me, and--and--Where's Cap'n Hocken?" "In his parlour. I heard his step in the passage, ten minutes ago, an' the door close." "I'm goin' down to him, if you'll excuse me," said Fancy, rising from the bedroom chair into which she had dropped in her sudden access of grief. "Why?" "I dunno. . . . He's a good man, for one thing. You haven't noticed any difference in him?" "Since when?" The question obviously took Mrs Bowldler by surprise. "Since he heard--yesterday--" "Me bein' single-handed, with Palmerston on his back, so to speak, I hev' not taken particular observation," said Mrs Bowldler. "Last night, as I removed the cloth after supper, he passed the remark that it had been a very tirin' day, that this was sad news about Mr Rogers, but we'd hope for the best, and when I mentioned scrambled eggs for breakfast, he left it to me. Captain Hunken on the other hand chose haddock: he did mention--come to think of it and when I happened to say that a second stroke was mostly fatal--he did go so far as to say that all flesh was grass and that Palmerston would require feedin' up after what he'd gone through." "He--Cap'n Hunken--didn' seem worried in mind, either?" "Nothing to notice. Of course," added Mrs Bowldler, "you understand that our appetites are not what they were: that there has been a distink droppin' off since--you know what. They both eats, in a fashion, but where's the pleasure in pleasin' 'em? Heart-renderin', I call it, when a devilled kidney might be a plain boiled cabbage for all the heed taken, and you knowin' all the while that a woman's at the bottom of it." Fancy moved to the door. "Well," said she, "I'm sorry for the cause of it: but duty's duty, and I reckon I've news to make 'em sit up." She went downstairs resolutely and knocked at Cai's parlour door. "Come in! . . . Eh, so it's you, missy? No worse news of the invalid, I hope?" "He isn' goin' to die to-day, nor yet to-morrow, if that's what you mean. May I take a chair?" "Why, to be sure." "Thank you." Fancy seated herself. "If you please, Cap'n Hocken, I got a very funny question to ask." "Well?" "You mustn't think I'm inquisitive--" "Go on." "If you please, Cap'n Hocken, are you very fond indeed of Mrs Bosenna?" Cai turned about to the hearth and stooped for the tongs, as if to place a lump of coal on the fire. Then he seemed to realise that, the season being early summer, there was no fire and the tongs and coal-scuttle had been removed. He straightened himself up slowly and faced about again, very red and confused (but the flush may have come from his stooping). "So we're not inquisitive, aren't we? Well, missy, appearances are deceptive sometimes--that's all I say." "But I'm not askin' out o' curiosity--really an' truly. And please don't turn me out an' warn me to mind my own business; for it _is_ my business, in a way. . . . I'll explain it all, later on, if only you'll tell." "I admire Mrs Bosenna very much indeed," said Cai slowly. "There now,-- will that satisfy you?" Fancy shook her head. "Not quite," she confessed, "I want to know, Are you so fond of her that you wouldn' give her up, not on any account?" Cai flushed again. "Well, missy, since you put it that way, we'll make it so." Still the answer did not appear to satisfy the child. She fidgetted in her chair a little, but without offering to go. "Not for no one in the wide world?" she asked at length. "Why, see here,"--Cai met her gaze shyly--"isn't that the right way to feel when you want to make a woman your wife?" "Ye-es--I suppose so," admitted Fancy with a sigh. "But it makes things so awkward--" She paused and knit her brows, as one considering a hard problem. "What's awkward?" Her response to this, delayed for a few seconds, was evasive when it came. "I used to think you an' Cap'n Hunken was such friends there was nothin' in the world you wouldn' do for him." "Ah!" Cai glanced at her with sharp suspicion. "So that's the latest game, is it? He's been gettin' at you--a mere child like you!--and sends you off here to work on my feelin's! . . . I thought better of 'Bias: upon my soul, I did." "An' you'd better go on thinkin' better," retorted Fancy with spirit. "Cap'n Hunken sent me? What next? . . . Why, he never spoke a word to me!" "Then I don't see--" "Why I'm here? No, you don't; but you needn't take up with guesses o' _that_ sort." "I'm sorry if I mistook ye, missy." "You ought to be. Mistook me?--O' course you did. And as for Cap'n Hunken's sendin' me, he don't even know yet that he's lost his money: and if he did he'd be too proud, as you ought to know." "Lost his money?" echoed Cai. "What money?" "Well, to start with, you don't suppose Mr Rogers got his stroke for nothin'? 'Twas the news about the _Saltypool_ that bowled him out: an' between you an' me, in a few days there's goin' to be a dreadful mess. He always was a speckilator. The more money he made--and he made a lot, back-along--the more he'd risk it: and the last year or two his luck has been cruel. In the end, as he had to tell me--for I did all his writin', except when he employed Peter Benny,--he rode to one anchor, and that was the _Saltypool_. He ran her uninsured." "Uninsured?" Cai gave a low whistle. "But all the same," said he, "an' sorry as I am for Rogers, I don't see how that affects--" "I'm a-breakin' it gently," said Fancy, not without a small air of importance. "Cap'n Hunken had a small sum in the _Saltypool_--a hundred pounds only." "I wonder he had a penny. 'Tisn't like 'Bias to put anything into an uninsured ship." "Mr Rogers did it without consultin' him. Cap'n Hunken didn' know, and _I_ didn' know, for the money didn' pass by cheque. Some time back in last autumn--I've forgot the date, but the books'll tell it--the old man handed me two hundred pound in notes, not tellin' me where they came from, with orders to pay it into his account: which I took it straight across to the bank--" "Belay there a moment," interrupted Cai. "A moment since you mentioned _one_ hundred." "So I did, because we're talkin' of Cap'n Hunken. Two hundred there were, and all in bank notes: but only one hundred belonged to _him_--and I only found _that_ out the other day, when he heard that Mr Rogers had put it into the _Saltypool_, and there was a row. As for the other-- Lawks, you don't tell me 'twas yours!" exclaimed Fancy, catching at the sudden surmise written on Cai's face. "Why not? . . . If he treated 'Bias that way? Sure enough," said Cai. "I took him a hundred pounds to invest for me, about that time." "Did he pay you a dividend this last half-year?" "To be sure--seven pound, eight-an'-four." "That was on the _Saltypool_," Fancy nodded. "And oh! Cap'n Hocken, I am so sorry! but that hundred pound o' yours is at the bottom of the sea." "Well, my dear," said Cai after a pause, pulling a wry face, "to do your master justice, he warned me 'twas a risk. There's naught to do but pay up un' look pleasant, I reckon. 'Twon't break me." "Cut the loss, you mean. The shares was paid up in full, and there can't be no call." "You're knowledgeable, missy: and yet you're wrong this time, as it happens. For (I may tell you privately) the money didn' belong to me, but to Mrs Bosenna, who asked me to invest it for her." "Oh!--and Cap'n Hunken's hundred too?" Cai reached a hand to the mantelpiece for the tobacco-jar, filled a pipe very deliberately, lit it, and drawing a chair up to the table, seated himself in face of her. "I shouldn't wonder," said he, resting both arms on the table and eyeing her across a cloud of tobacco-smoke. "Though I don't understand what she--I mean, I don't understand what the game was." "Me either," agreed the child, musing. "No hurry, though: I'll be a widow some day, please God--which is mor'n _you_ can hope. But now we get to the point: an' the point is, you can pay the woman up. Cap'n Hunken can't." "Why not?" "He don't know it yet, but he can't." "So you said: an' Why not? I ask. Within a thousand pound 'Bias owns as much as I do." The child stood up, pulled her chair across to the table, and reseating herself, gazed steadily across at him through the tobacco-smoke. "Where d'ye keep your bonds an' such like?" she asked. "In my strong box, for the most part: two or three in the skivet of my sea-chest." "You got 'em all?" "All. That's to say all except the paper for this hundred pounds, which 'twas agreed Rogers should keep." "You're a lucky man. . . . Where did Cap'n Hunken keep his?" "Darn'd if I know. Somewheres about. He was always a bit careless over his securities--and so I've told him a dozen times," "When did you tell him last?" This was a facer, and it made Cai blink. "We haven't discussed these things much--not of late," he answered lamely. "I reckoned not. He don't keep 'em in his strong-box?" "He hasn't one." "In his chest?" "Maybe." "But he don't. He's left 'em with Mr Rogers from the first, or I'm mistaken. I used to see the two bundles, his and yours, lyin' side by side on the upper shelf o' the safe when the old man sent me to unlock it an' fetch something he wanted--which wasn't often. Then, about six months back, I noticed as one was gone. I mentioned it to him, and he said as 'twas all his scrip--that was his word--made up in a parcel an' docketed by you, and that some time afterwards you'd taken it away." "Quite correct, missy. And t'other one is 'Bias's, as I know. I had 'em in my hands together when I opened the safe as Mr Rogers told me to do, givin' me the key. I took out the two, not knowing t'other from which, made sure, docketed mine careful--to take away--and put 'Bias's back in the safe afore lockin' it. That would be back sometime in October last." Fancy nodded. "That's what he told me: and up to this mornin' I reckoned Cap'n Hunken's bonds was still there, though it must be a month since I opened the safe. This mornin' I had a talk with Dad--he doesn't know the half about the master's affairs, nor how they've been these two years, and I didn' let on: but I allowed as we ought to look into things and call in Peter Benny--knowin' that Peter Benny was made execlator, if anything happened. So we agreed, and called him in: and I told Peter Benny enough to let him see that things were serious. In the end I fetched the keys, and he unlocked the safe. There was a good few papers in it, which he overhauled. But there wasn' no parcel 'pon the top shelf where I'd seen it last." "Then you may depend he'd given it to 'Bias unbeknown to you, same as he handed mine over to me. Wasn' that Benny's opinion?" "Oh, you make me tired!" exclaimed the wise child frankly. "As if I'd no more sense than to go there an' then an' frighten him--an' him with all those papers to look over!" "Then if you're so shy about worriting Benny--and I don't blame you--why be in such a hurry to worrit yourself? 'Bias has the papers--that you may lay to." Fancy tapped her small foot on the floor, which it just reached. "As if I should be wastin' time, botherin' you! On my way here I ran against Cap'n Hunken, and of course he wanted to hear the latest of master--said he was on his way to inquire. So I told him that matters was bad enough but while there was life there was hope--the sort o' thing you _have_ to say: and I went on that the business would be all in a mess for some time to come, and I hoped he'd got all his papers at home, which would save trouble. 'Papers?' said he. 'Not I!'--and I wonder I didn' drop: you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'Papers?' said he. 'I haven't seen 'em for months. _I_ don't trouble about papers! But you'll find 'em in the safe all right, though I haven't seen 'em for months.' Those were the very words he used: and nothin' would interest him but to hear how the invalid was doin'. He went off, cheerful as a chaffinch. It's plain to me," Fancy wound up, "that he hasn't the papers. He trusted you, to start with, and he's gone on trustin' you and the master. Didn' you intejuce him?" "Sure enough I did," Cai allowed. "But--confound it, you know!--'Bias Hunken isn't a child." "Oh! if that contents you--" But well she knew it did not. "Mr Rogers never would--" "I've told you," said Fancy, "more'n ever I ought to have told. There's no knowin', they say, what a man'll do when he's in Queer Street: _and_ the papers have gone: _and_ Cap'n Hunken thinks they're in the safe, where they ain't: _and_ I come to you first, as used to be his friend." "Good Lord '" Cai stood erect. "If--if--" "That's so," assented Fancy, seated and nodding. "If--" "But it can't be!" "But if it _is?_" She slipped from her chair and stood, still facing him. He stared at her blankly. "Poor old 'Bias!" he murmured. "But it can't be." "Right O! if you _will_ have it so. But, you see, I didn' put the question out o' curiosity altogether." "The question? What question?" "Why, about Mrs Bosenna." "What has Mrs Bosenna to do with--Oh, ay, to be sure! You're meanin' that hundred pounds." His wits were not very clear for the moment. "No, I'm not," said Fancy, moving to the door. In the act of opening it she paused. "'Twas through you, I reckon, he first trusted master with his money." "I--I never suggested it," stammered Cai. "I'm not sayin' you did," the girl answered back coldly. "But he went to master for your sake, because you was his friend and he had such a belief in you. Just you think that out." With a nod of the head she was gone. Before leaving the house she visited the kitchen, to bid good-night to Mrs Bowldler. But Mrs Bowldler was not in the kitchen. She mounted the stairs and tapped at the door of Palmerston's attic chamber. "Hullo!" said she looking in, "what's become of Geraldine?" (Mrs Bowldler's Christian name was Sarah, but the two children vied in inventing others more suitable to her gentility). "If by Geraldine you mean Herm-Intrude," said Palmerston, sitting up in bed and grinning, "she's out in the grounds, picking--" "Culling," corrected Fancy. "Her own word." "Well then--culling lamb mint." "I should ha' thought sage-an'-onions was the stuffin' relied on by this establishment." "Seasonin'," corrected Palmerston. "But what have _you_ been doin' all this time?" "My dear, don't ask!" Fancy seated herself at the foot of the bed. "If you _must_ know, I've been playin' Meddlesome Matty life-size. . . . These grown-ups are all so _helpless_--the men especially! . . . Feelin' better?" "Heaps. 'Tis foolishness, keepin' me in bed like this, and I wish you'd tell her so. _I'm_ all right--'xcept in my mind." "What's wrong with your mind?" "'Shamed o' myself: that's all--but it's bad enough." "There's no call to be ashamed. You did it in absence o' mind, and all the best authors have suffered from that. It's well known." "To go through what I did," said Palmerston bitterly, "just to bring up two-an'-nine! 'Tis such a waste of material!" "That's one way of puttin' it, to be sure." "I mean, for a book--for' Pickerley.' I s'pose there's not one man in a thousand--not one liter'y man, anyhow--has suffered anything like it. And I can't put it into the book!" "No," agreed Fancy meditatively. "I don't suppose you could: not in 'Pickerley' anyhow. You couldn' make your 'ero swallow anything under a di'mund tiyara, and that's not easy." "I'll have to write the next one about low life," said Palmerston. "If only I knew a bit more about it! Mrs Bowldler says it can be rendered quite amusin', and I wouldn' mind makin' myself the 'ero." "Wouldn't you? Well, _I_ should, and don't you let me catch you at it! The man as I marry'll have to keep his head up and show a proper respect for his-self." Poor Palmerston stared. The best women in the world will never understand an artist. _ |
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