Hocken and Hunken Part 56

"Oh! . . . I--I beg your pardon--I didn't know--"

"There's no call to apologise, ma'am. . . . The deceased was not a relative. A farm-servant, ma'am--female--at the far end of the parish: Tuckworthy's farm, to be precise: and the woman, Sarah Jane Collins by name. Probably you didn't know her. No more did I except by sight: but a very respectable woman--a case of Bright's disease. In the midst of life we are in death, and, much as I enjoy Pa.s.sage Regatta--"

"You have missed it then?"

"The woman had saved money, ma'am. There was a walled grave, by request." Mr Philp sighed over this remembered consolation. "She could not help it clashin', poor soul."

"No, indeed!"

"And you may or may not have noticed it, ma'am, but when a man sets duty before pleasure, often as not he gets rewarded. Comin' back along the town before the streets filled, I picked up a piece o' news, and hurried along with it. I reckoned it might be of interest if I could reach here ahead of 'G.o.d Save the Queen.'"

"Gracious! What has happened?" Mrs Bosenna clasped her hands.

Indeed Mr Philp, big with his news and important, had somehow contrived to overawe everyone on deck.

"The news is," he announced slowly, "that the _Saltypool_ has gone down, within fifty miles of Philadelphia. Crew saved in the boats.

Cable reached Mr Rogers at eleven o'clock, and"--he paused impressively, "there and then Rogers had a second stroke. Point o' death, they say."

Above the sympathetic murmur of Mr Philp's audience there broke, on the instant, a gasping cry--followed by a yet more terrible sound, as of one in the last agony of strangulation.

All turned, as Palmerston--dashing forward between the music-stands of the band and scattering them to right and left--flung himself between Cai and 'Bias at their very feet.

"Masters--masters! I've a-swallowed the stakes!"

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 pa.s.sable subst.i.tute. 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 h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sage, 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.