Hocken and Hunken Part 11

He confessed that he was without pipe or tobacco. Dinah was summoned again, left the room after a whispered consultation, and returned with a small sheaf of clean churchwarden pipes and a cake of tobacco, dark in hue, somewhat dry but (as a quick inspection a.s.sured Captain Cai) quite smokeable.

"Now you're to make yourself at ease," said Mrs Bosenna, rising and moving to the door. Captain Cai, remembering his manners, rose and held it open for her. "The wine is at your elbow and (oh, believe me, I understand men!) when you've finished your smoke you will find me in the rose-garden. That's my _real_ garden, though nothing to boast of at this time of the year. But April's the month for pruning tea-roses, and this weather in April is not to be missed. I want to hear more of your friend; and when you are ready--you are not to hurry--Dinah will show you the way."

Captain Cai, left alone, carved a pipeful of tobacco with his pocket-knife; chose a clay; filled, lit it, and smoked. Two gla.s.ses of wine had sufficed him, for he was an abstemious man: but, for all his hard life, he could enjoy comfort. He found it here; in the good food, the generous liquor, the twinkle on the gla.s.s and decanter, the ill-executed but solid portraits on the walls, the hearthrug soft beneath his sole, the April combination of sunshine slanting through the window and a brisk but not oppressive coal fire on the hearth.

He smoked. The tobacco (smuggled and purchased at low cost by the late Mr Bosenna) had been excellent in its time, and was palatable yet.

It stuck in Captain Cai's conscience, however, and p.r.i.c.ked it while he smoked, that he had given Mrs Bosenna a wrong impression of his friend.

'Bias a mere prize-fighter! 'Bias of all people! But that is what comes of laying stress on one particular accomplishment of an Admirable Crichton.

He ruminated on this: finished his pipe: and having knocked out the ashes thoughtfully on the bars of the grate, sought the back garden without the help of Dinah.

The rose-garden to the uninstructed eye was--now in April--but a wilderness of scrubby stunted thorns. In the midst of it he found Mrs Bosenna, gloved, armed with a pair of secateurs, and engaged in cutting the thorns back to a few ugly inches.

She smiled as he approached. "You don't understand roses?" she asked.

"If you don't, you'll be surprised at my hard pruning. If there's real strength in the root, you can trust for June, no matter what a stick you leave. The secret's under the ground; or, as you may say, under the surface, as it is with folks."

"That helps me, ma'am," said Captain Cai, "to tell you it's like that with my friend 'Bias--"

A whistle sounded up the valley. "The three-thirty coming!" said Mrs Bosenna. "It's at the signal-box outside the tunnel."

"The three-thirty?" Captain Cai gasped and pulled out his watch.

"But that's 'Bias's train--and I was to meet him!"

"You _might_ just do it," hazarded Mrs Bosenna. "We count it half a mile to the station, and by the time they have the luggage out--"

"I _must_ do it, ma'am! To think that--" Captain Cai held out a hand.

"I'd no notion--the time has flown so!"

"Dinah! Dinah!" called Mrs Bosenna, and as Dinah appeared at the back door with a prompt.i.tude almost suspicious,--"Run and fetch Captain Hocken's hat, girl! He has to catch a train."

Dinah vanished, and in the twinkling of an eye came running with the hat; with a clothes-brush, too. "Confound her!" Captain Cai swore inwardly as she insisted on brushing his coat, paying special attention to a dry spot of mud on the right hip-pocket. Feminine attentions may be overdone, and Mrs Bosenna showed more tactfulness than her maid.

"Have finished, you silly woman! Cannot you see that Captain Hocken is dying to leave us? . . . But you are to bring your friend, sir, at the first opportunity!"

She repeated this, calling it after him as he raced down the path.

At the footbridge he remembered the musical box in the bushes. But it was too late. Mrs Bosenna had followed him to the head of the slope, and stood watching, waving her handkerchief.

As he glanced back and up at her over his shoulder, his ear caught the rumble of a train, not far up the valley. He must run! . . .

He ran, sticking his elbow to his sides. But soon the rumble of the train grew to a roar. It was upon him. . . . It overtook him some three hundred yards from the station, and the carriage windows, as he staggered down the high road, went past him in a blur.

CHAPTER VII.

BIAS ARRIVES.

Captain Tobias Hunken sat patiently and ponderously upon a wooden sea-chest, alone on the platform, but stacked about by such a miscellany of luggage as gave him no slight resemblance to Crusoe on his raft.

Besides parcels, boxes, carpet-bags, canvas-bags, tarpaulin-bags, it included a pile of furniture swathed in straw, a parrot-cage covered with baize, and a stone jar calculated to hold nine gallons of liquor.

He was a dark-bearded man, heavy shouldered, of great bulk, and by temperament apparently phlegmatic; for when Captain Cai arrived, panting, red in the face, stammering contrition, he betrayed neither emotion nor surprise.

"'Twas all my thoughtlessness!" cried Captain Cai.

"What's the matter?" asked Captain Tobias. "No hurry, is there?

We've retired."

"If I'd known I was so late!"

"Five minutes." Captain Tobias gazed across at the station clock, then at his friend's face, as if comparing the two. "You've altered your appearance recently. Which some might say 'twas for the better."

"Glad you think so," said Captain Cai, modestly pleased.

"Others, again, mightn't. But, there!" added Captain Tobias with sudden intensity. "Who cares what folks say? If you chose to go about like a Red Indian, 'twouldn' be no affair o' _theirs_, I should hope?"

"Why, o' course not," Captain Cai agreed, albeit a trifle dashed.

"As you say, we've retired, an' can do as we like."

"Ah!" Captain Tobias eyed him and drew a long breath. "Got such a thing as a match about ye?" he asked, pulling forth a short clay pipe.

"No--yes!" Captain Cai, clapping a hand to either hip, was about to admit that he had come without pipe, tobacco, or matches, when he felt something hard and angular within the left pocket, and (to his confusion) produced--a silver matchbox. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed stupidly.

"That's a pretty trifle," said Captain Tobias, possessing himself of the box and extracting a match from it. "Where did ye pick it up, now!"

"From a--a lady--a Mrs Bosenna." Captain Cai recovered the box, pocketed it, and desperately changed the subject. "What's become of all the porters hereabouts?" he demanded. "Leavin' us alone an' all this luggage, like a wreck ash.o.r.e!"

"I sent 'em away," Captain Tobias explained with composure, "knowin' as you'd turn up sooner or later. Who's Mrs Bosenna?"

"She's our landlady; a widow-woman. She lives up the valley yonder."

Captain Cai jerked a thumb in that direction, and with renewed anxiety looked about for a porter. "Hadn't we better whistle one across?"

"Sells matches, does she?"

"No,"--he knew his friend's persistence, and faced about to make a clean breast. "I was callin' there to-day. There's the leases to be fixed up, you see--" He paused.

Captain Tobias a.s.sented with a slow nod. "Premises all satisfactory?"

"_And_ shipshape. That's one load off my mind, anyway," sighed Captain Cai. "You're bound to like 'em--that is, if you like Troy at all.

There's hot and cold water laid on, so's you can have a bath at a moment's notice."

"I don't _see_ myself, exactly," said Captain Tobias. "But never mind."

"Well, as I was sayin', I called there to-day--to break the ice, so to speak--"

"You didn't mention ice; or, if you did, I missed hearin' it."

"'Tis a way of speakin'. Well, the widow pressed me to stay to dinner, and there was a suckin' pig; and afterwards--"