Hocken and Hunken Part 18

"Well, and you couldn't have been talking of anything more to the point," said Mrs Bosenna; "for, as it happens, it's fireworks that brought me here."

'Bias looked vaguely skyward, while "You don't tell me, ma'am, those fellows are making trouble down in the town?" cried Cai.

"Eh? I don't understand. . . . Oh, no," she laughed when he explained his alarm, "I am afraid my errand is much more selfish. You see, I positively dote on fireworks."

She paused.

"Well," said 'Bias, "that's womanlike."

"Hallo!" said Cai. "How do you know what's womanlike?"

"I am afraid it is womanlike," confessed Mrs Bosenna hastily.

"And from Rilla Farm you get no view at all on Regatta night. So I was wondering--if you won't think it dreadfully forward of me--"

"You're welcome to watch 'em from here, ma'am, if that's what you mean,"

said 'Bias.

"Or from my garden, ma'am, if you prefer it," said Cai.

"Why should she?" asked 'Bias.

"Well, 'tis a yard or two nearer, for one thing."

"Anything else?"

"Yes: the other summer-house fronts a bit more up the harbour; t'wards the fireworks, that's to say."

"You ought to know: _you_ chose it. . . . But anyway I asked her first."

"Thank you--thank you both!" interposed Mrs Bosenna, leaving the question open. "And may I bring Dinah too? She's almost as silly about fireworks as I am, poor woman! and life on a farm _can_ be dull."

She sighed, and added, "Besides, 'twould be more proper. We mustn't set people talking--eh, Captain Hocken?" She appealed to him with a laugh.

"Cai won't be here," announced 'Bias heavily.

"Who said so?" demanded Cai.

"'Said so yourself, not twenty minutes ago. . . . 'Said you didn' know how the fireworks was ever goin' off without you, or words to that effect. I didn' make no comment at the time. All I say now is, if Mrs Bosenna comes here to see fireworks, she'll expect 'em to go off: an' I leave it at that."

"They'll go off, all right," said Cai cheerfully, putting a curb on his temper. [But what ailed 'Bias to-night?] "I'll get a small Sub-committee appointed this very evening. But about takin' a hand myself, I've changed my mind."

"Indeed, Captain Hocken, I hope you'll not desert the party," said Mrs Bosenna prettily, and laughed again. "Do you know that, having made so bold I've a mind to make bolder yet, and pretend I am entertaining _you_ to-morrow. It's the only chance you give me, you two."

She said this with her eyes on 'Bias, who started as if stung and glanced first at her, then at Cai. But Cai observed nothing, being occupied at the moment in winding up the musical box, which had run down.

Mrs Bosenna smiled a demure smile. She had discovered what she had come to learn; and having discovered it, she presently took her leave, with a promise to be punctual on the morrow.

When she was gone the pair sat for some time in silence. _Tink, tink-tink-a-tink, tink_, went the musical box on the table. . . .

At length Cai stood up.

"Time to be gettin' along to Committee," he said, and stepped to the doorway; but there he turned and faced about. "'Bias--"

"Eh?"

"You don't really think as I chose th' other summer-house because it had a better view?"

"_Has_ it a better view?" asked 'Bias.

"For fireworks, it seems," said Cai sadly. "But I reckoned--though I hate to talk about it--as this one looked straighter out to sea an' by consequence 'd please ye better. That's why. . . . You're welcome to change gardens to-morrow."

"Mrs Bosenna's comin' to-morrow," grunted 'Bias, and then, after a second's pause, swore under his breath, yet audibly.

"What's the matter with ye, 'Bias?"

"I don't know. . . . Maybe 'tis that box o' tunes gets on my temper.

No, don't take it away. I didn' mean it like that, an' the music used to be pretty enough, first-along."

"We'll give it a spell," said Cai, stooping and switching off the tune.

"I'm not musical myself; I'd as lief hear thunder, most days. But the thing was well meant."

"Ay, an' no doubt we'll pick up a taste for it again--indoors of an evenin', when the winter comes 'round."

"Tell ye what," suggested Cai. "To-morrow, I'll take it off to John Peter and ask him to put a bra.s.s plate on the lid, with an inscription.

He's clever at such things, an' terrible dilatory. . . . An' to-night Mrs Bowldler can have it in the kitchen. She dotes on it--'_I dreamt that I dwelt_' in particular."

"Which," said Mrs Bowldler to Palmerston later on, as they sat drinking in that ditty, one on either side of the kitchen table, "it can't sing, but the words is that I dreamt I dwelt in Marble Halls with Princes and Peers by my si-i-ide--just like that. Princes!" She leaned back in the cheap chair and closed her eyes. "It goes through me to this day.

I used to sing it frequent in my 'teens, along with another popular favourite which was quite at the other end of the social scale, but artless--'My Mother said that I never should Play with the gypsies in the wood. If I did, She would say, Tum tiddle, tum tiddle, tum-ti-tay'

--my memory is not what it was." Mrs Bowldler wiped her eyes.

"And did you?" asked Palmerston. "Tell me what happened."

Next morning, while the Church bells were ringing in Regatta Day, Captain Cai tucked the musical box under his arm and called, on his way to the Committee Ship, upon Mr John Peter Nanjulian (commonly "John Peter" for short).

John Peter, an elderly man, dwelt with a yet more elderly sister, in an old roomy house set eminently on the cliff-side above the roofs of the Lower Town, approachable only by a pathway broken by flights of steps, and known by the singular name of On the Wall.

The house had been a family mansion, and still preserved traces of ancient dignity, albeit jostled by cottages which had climbed the slope and encroached nearer and nearer as the Nanjulians under stress of poverty had parted with parcel after parcel of their terraced garden.

Of the last generation--five sons and three daughters, not one of whom had married--John Peter and his sister "Miss Susan" were now the only survivors, and lived, each on a small annuity, under the old roof, meeting only at dinner on Sundays, and for the rest of the week dwelling apart in their separate halves of the roomy building, up and down the wide staircase of which they had once raced as children at hide-and-seek with six playmates.

John Peter was eccentric, as all these later Nanjulians had been: a lean, stooping man, with a touch of breeding in his face, a weak mouth, and a chin dotted with tufts of gray hair which looked as if they had been affixed with gum and absent-mindedly. He was reputed to be a great reader, and could quote the poetical works of Pope by the yard. He had some skill with the pencil and the water-colour brush. He understood and could teach the theory of navigation; dabbled in chess problems; and had once constructed an astronomical timepiece. His not-too-clean hands were habitually stained with acids: for he practised etching, too, although his plates invariably went wrong. He had considerable skill in engraving upon bra.s.s and copper, and was not above eking out his income by inscribing coffin-plates. But the undertaker was shy of employing him because he could never be hurried.

John Peter received Captain Cai in his workshop--a room ample enough for a studio and lit by a large window that faced north, but darkened by cobwebs, dirty, and incredibly littered with odds and ends of futile apparatus. He put a watchmaker's gla.s.s to his eye and peered long into the bowels of the musical box.

"The works are clogged with dust," he announced. "Fairly caked with oil and dirt. No wonder it won't go."

"But it _does_ go," objected Captain Cai.

"You don't tell me! . . . Well, you'd best let me take out the works, any way, and give them a bath of paraffin."