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Read Ebook: Hocken and Hunken A Tale of Troy by Quiller Couch Arthur
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Ebook has 2596 lines and 91896 words, and 52 pages
"'Tis wonderful how news gets abroad in Troy. . . . 'Hunken,' now? And where might he be one of? I don't seem to fit the name in my mem'ry at all."
"You wouldn't. He comes from t'other side of the Duchy--a Padstow-born man, and he've never set eyes on Troy in his life."
"Yet he takes a house an' settles here? That's queer, as you might say."
"I see nothing queer about it. He's my friend--that's why. And what's more, the Lord never put bowels into a better man."
"He'll be a pleasure to shave, then," opined Mr Toy.
"No, he won't; he wears his hair all over his face. Talkin' of that reminds me--when you've done croppin' me I want a clean shave."
"Chin-beard an' all, Cap'n?"
"Take it off--take it off! 'Twas recommended to me against sore throat; but I never liked the thing nor the look of it."
"Then there's one point, it seems, on which you an' your friend don't agree, sir?"
The barber meant this facetiously, but Captain Cai considered it in all seriousness.
"Moderately," the barber assented.
"I don't want my missus to wear a beard, if that's what you mean."
"'Twasn't a good illustration, I admit. But the p'int is, I like 'Bias because he's 'Bias, an' 'Bias likes me because I'm Cai Hocken. That bein' so, don't it follow we're goin' to be better friends than ever, now we've hauled ashore to do as likes us?"
The barber shook his head. "You're determined to have off your chin-beard?"
"You won't find it so, Cap'n."
"You're wrong, Cap'n Cai--you're wrong. We bide by our habits--an', more by token, here comes Mr Philp. 'Morning, Mr Philp." The barber, without turning, nodded towards the newcomer as he entered--a short man, aged about sixty, with a square-cut grey beard, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes that twinkled with a deceptive appearance of humour. "Here's Cap'n Cai Hocken, home from sea."
"Eh? I am very glad to see you, Cap'n Hocken," said Mr Philp politely. "There's a post-card waitin' for you, up at the Office."
Captain Cai sat bolt upright of a sudden, narrowly missing a wound from the scissors. "That will be from 'Bias! To think I hadn' sense enough to go straight to the Post Office and inquire!"
"'Tis from your friend, sure enough," announced Mr Philp. "He paid off his crew last Toosday, an' took his discharge an' the train down to Plymouth. He've bought a wardrobe there--real wornut--an' 'tis comin' round by sea. There's a plate-chest, too, he thinks you may fancy-- price thirty-five shillin secondhand: an' he hopes to reach Troy the day after next, which by the post-mark is to-morra."
"Mr Philp," explained the barber, "calls in at the Office every mornin' to read all the post-cards. 'Tis one of his habits."
"Recent bereavement?" asked Mr Philp, before Captain Cai could well digest this.
"Eh?"
"Recent bereavement?" Mr Philp was examining the tall hat, which he had picked up to make room for his own person on the customers' bench.
"That's another of his aptitoods," the barber interpolated. "He attends all the funerals in the parish."
"In the midst o' life we are in death," observed Mr Philp. "That's a cert, Cap'n Hocken, an' your hat put me in mind of it."
"Oh, 'tis my hat you're meanin'? What's wrong with it?"
"Did I say there was anything wrong? No, I didn't--God forbid! An' no doubt," concluded Mr Philp cheerfully, "the fashions'll work round to it again."
"I'll change it for another."
"You won't find that too easy, will you?" The barber paused in his snipping, and turned about for a thoughtful look at the hat.
"I mean I'll buy another, of a different shape. First the beard, then the headgear--as I was tellin' Toy, a man ashore can reggilate his ways as he chooses, an here's to prove it."
"What sort o' habits?"
"The sort that come to man first-along in the shape o' duties--like church-goin'. Look here, Cap'n, I'll lay a wager with 'ee. . . . Soon as you begin to walk about this town a bit, you'll notice a terrible lot o' things that want improvin'--"
"Ah, an' I daresay it came into your head that if you had the orderin' of Bussa you wouldn' be long about it? The town'll think it, anyway. We're a small popilation in Troy, all tied up in neighbourly feelin's an' hangin' together till--as the sayin' is--you can't touch a cobweb without hurtin' a rafter. What the town's cryin' out for is a new broom--a man with ideas, eh, Mr Philp?--above all, a man who's independent. So first of all they'll flatter ye up into standin' for the Parish Council, and put ye head o' the poll--"
"Tut, man!" interrupted Captain Cai, flushing a little. "What do I know about such things? Not o' course that I shan't take an interest--as a ratepayer--"
"A ship's captain needn't be altogether a born fool."
"No: an' next you'll be bent on larnin' to speak in public; and takin' occasions to practise, secondin' votes o' thanks an' such like. After that you'll be marryin' a wife--"
"I don't want to marry a wife, I tell 'ee!"
"Who said you did? Well, then, you'll get married--they dotes on a public man as a rule; and for tanglin' a man up in habits there's no snare like wedlock, not in the whole world. I've known scores o' men get married o' purpose to break clear o' their habits an' take a fresh start; but ne'er a man that didn't tie himself up thereby in twenty new habits for e'er a one he'd let drop."
"Go on with your folly, if it amuses you."
"Then, again, you've taken a house."
"So Rogers tells me. I don't even know the rent, at this moment."
"Twenty-five pound p'r annum," put in Mr Philp. Captain Cai--released just then from his wrapper--turned and stared at him.
"I had it from the Postmistress," Mr Philp's tone was matter-of-fact, his gaze unabashed. "Bein' paralytic, Rogers did your business with the widow by letter; he keeps a type-writin' machine an' pays Tabb's girl three shillin' a-week to work it. The paper's thin, as I've had a mind to warn 'er more than once."
"'Twould be a Christian act," suggested Mr Toy. "If there's truth in half what folks say, some of old Johnny Rogers' correspondence 'd make pretty readin' for the devil."
"Why, your landlady, to be sure--the Widow Bosenna, up to Rilla Farm."
"No--stop a minute--take that blessed latherin'-brush out o' my mouth! You don't tell me old Bosenna's dead, up there?"
"I mind Mrs Bosenna well," said Captain Cai, rising as the barber unwrapped him; "a smallish well-featured body, with eyes like bullace plums."
"Ay, an' young enough to ha' been old Bosenna's daughter--a penniless maid from Holsworthy in Devon, as I've heard; an' now she's left there, up to Rilla, happy as a mouse in cheese. Come to think, Cap'n Cai, you might do worse than cock your hat in that quarter."
But Captain Cai did not hear for the moment. He was peering into the looking-glass and thinking less of Mrs Bosenna than of his shaven-altered appearance.
"'Twould be a nice change for her, too," pursued Mr Toy in a rallying tone; "an adaptable man like you, Cap'n."
"Eh? What's that you were sayin' about my hat?" asked Captain Cai; and just then, letting his gaze wander to the depths of the glass, he was aware of Mr Philp shamelessly trying on that same hat before another mirror at the back of the shop.
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