Chapter II How Sir Peter Antrobus and Jerome Brooke-Hoskyn, Esquire, Smoked a Pipe Together
On Saturday afternoon, May 25, 1805, Pomander Walk was looking its very best. The sun transfigured the old houses; the elm rustled in the river-breeze; the Admiral’s thrush was singing wistfully; Mrs. Poskett’s cat, Sempronius, was seated in her little front garden, wistfully listening to the bird’s song; the Eyesore was patiently wasting worms on discriminating fish who knew a hook when they saw it; and Sir Peter Antrobus and Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn, both in their shirt-sleeves, were finishing a game of quoits.
“A ringer!” shouted Sir Peter, whose quoit had fallen fairly over the peg. Then he hurried up to the quoits, and, measuring their respective distances from it with a huge bandana handkerchief, added, “One maiden to you, Brooke! Game all! Peeled, by Jehoshaphat!”
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn flicked the dust off his waistcoat with magnificent indifference. The Admiral produced a boatswain’s whistle, and in answer to a blast, his man, Jim, appeared at an upstair window. “Ay, ay, Admiral!”
“The usual. Here, under the elm. And look lively.”
“Ay, ay, sir!”
Jim disappeared like a Jack-in-the-box. “We must play it off,” said Sir Peter.
But Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn protested. “Another time, Sir Peter. It is very warm, and my eye is out.”
“So ’s mine,” cried the Admiral, with a guffaw; “but I see straight, what?”
It was a matter of principle with Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn never to take the slightest notice of the Admiral’s jokes. Sir Peter might be the autocrat of the Walk, although Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn had his own views even on that point; but he himself was the acknowledged wit and man of fashion, and from that position nothing should shake him. He had spied Miss Ruth Pennymint working in her open bow-window, and Mrs. Poskett busy with her flowers. Assuming his grandest manner, he said warningly: “Should we not resume our habiliments? The fair are observing us.”
“Gobblessmysoul!” cried Sir Peter, shocked at being discovered in undress. They hastily helped each other into their coats, which were lying on the bench under the elm. Meanwhile, Jim had brought out a tray with two pewters, two long clay pipes, a jar of tobacco and a lighted candle, and had placed it on the bench. From the open upstair window of the Pennymint’s house came the strains of a violin: one passage, played over and over again, with varying degrees of success.
“Wish Mr. Pringle would stop his infernal scraping,” growled the Admiral.
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn shrugged his shoulders with condescending pity. “Poor fellow! What a way of earning his living!”
Sir Peter turned to the quarter from which the music came, and, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, roared, “Mr. Pringle! Mr. Pringle, ahoy!”
A hideous wrong note, as if the player had been scared out of his wits, was the answer, and Basil Pringle appeared at the window. “I beg your pardon, Admiral; I was engrossed.”
“Join us under the elm, what?”
“With pleasure. I ’ll just put away my Strad.”
As Basil retired Sir Peter turned to Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn. “His what?”
“His Stradivarius,” answered the latter, and as that obviously conveyed no meaning, “his violin.”
“Oh! His fiddle! Why could n’t he say so?—Jim!”
“Ay, ay, sir!”
“Another pewter.”
“Ay, ay, sir.” Jim hobbled off into the Admiral’s house and Sir Peter and Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn stood, facing each other, each grasping his pewter of foaming ale.
“Well!” cried Sir Peter, “The King!”
But Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn was not to be put off with so curt a toast. Planting his feet firmly together, and throwing his chest out, he boomed in a formal and stately manner, “His Most Gracious Majesty, King George the Third, God bless him!”
The Admiral eyed him curiously for a moment, and seemed about to speak, but thought better of it; and for an appreciable time the faces of both gentlemen were hidden. When they came to light again it was with a great sigh of satisfaction, and they both settled down on the bench for quiet enjoyment.
“Now!” cried Sir Peter, “a pipe of tobacco with you, Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn?”
“Delighted!”
“St. Vincent. Prime stuff: and—in your ear—smuggled!”
“No!—reely?”
The two men leant over the candle and lighted their pipes with artistic care.
“Was you at a banquet again last night, Brooke?” asked the Admiral, during this process.
“Yes—yes,” replied the other, with splendid indifference. “The Guildhall. All the hote tonn.”
“Lucky dog,” said Sir Peter, smacking his lips: “turtle, eh?”
With the air of a man jaded by too much enjoyment Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn condescended to enlarge. “As usual. Believe me, personally I should much prefer seclusion and meditation in the company of poets and philosophers, or dallying with Selina; but my friends are good enough to insist. Only last night,” with a side glance to watch the effect he was producing, “Fox—my good friend, the Right Honourable Charles James Fox—said, ‘Brooke, my boy’—just like that—‘Brooke, my boy, what would our banquets be without you?’”
Sir Peter was deeply impressed. He felt himself in touch with the great world. “Gobblessmysoul!” he cried. “What’s your average?”
“I am sorry to say, I usually have to wrench myself away from my precious Selina four nights a week.”
“Think o’ that, now!—By the way, how is she?”
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn turned his lack-lustre eyes fondly towards his house. “Selina? Cheerful, sir. Selina is faint but pursuing. We have now been in the holy state of matrimony five years, and never a word of complaint has fallen from the dear soul’s lips.”
“Re-markable! And all that time Pomander Walk has seen scarcely anything of her.”
“She has been much occupied—much occupied,” put in Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn, with a deprecatory flourish of his pipe. And, as if in corroboration of his statement, the door of his house opened and a pretty maidservant came out, carrying a year-old baby in her arms. “Chck! chck!” said Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn.
“Four olive-branches in five years!” cried Sir Peter, instinctively sidling away from the baby.
“Of the female sex,” explained Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn: “all of the female sex. This is Number Four. Chck! chck!”
Mrs. Poskett, attracted by the baby, had hastily come out of her door carrying her cat, Sempronius, in her arms, and was beckoning to the maid.
“And another coming!” roared the Admiral. “That’s right, Brooke! Do your duty, and damn the consequences!—But let’s have a boy next time,” he went on, heedless of Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn’s frantic signals, “let ’s have a boy, and make a sailor of him!—Gobblessmysoul!” For Mrs. Poskett, having dropped the cat in the garden, had come up to the tree, and was simpering with pretty modesty.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said she. “Oh—don’t put your pipes away, please. I have been well trained. Alderman Poskett smoked even indoors. May I sit down?” She planted herself between the two men. “Now, go on talking, just as though I was n’t here.”
There was an awkward pause. Fortunately at this moment Jim created a diversion by bringing the third pewter. To his amazement Mrs. Poskett promptly seized it. “For me? How thoughtful of you!” she cried; and while Sir Peter and Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn looked on too much astonished to speak, she drained it as to the manner born.
“Jim, another,” grunted the Admiral.
But Mrs. Poskett protested. “Oh, no, I could n’t! Reely and posivitely I could n’t!”
“We was expecting Mr. Pringle, ma’am,” said the Admiral, stiffly.
But the hint was entirely lost. “Ah, poor Mr. Pringle! Poor fellow! An unhappy life, I fear; and him with one shoulder higher than the other. Not that you notice it much when you look at him sideways. There. I was rather alarmed when he arrived a month ago. Can’t be too careful, and me a lone woman. A musician, you know. One never knows what their morals may be.”
“Hoho!” shouted Sir Peter, “he’s quiet enough—except when he ’s making a noise!”
Mrs. Poskett looked puzzled. She never could see a joke.
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn received it with his customary stony stare and at once broke in. “He is some sort of cousin to the Misses Pennymint, I am told?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Poskett, with a sniff, “we are told. But who knows?—I fear—” she sank her voice to a mysterious whisper—“I fear he is—hush!—a lodger!”
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn was genuinely shocked. “You don’t say so!”
The Admiral began to grow uncomfortable. He hated tittle-tattle. “Where’s that cat of yours, ma’am?” he cried, with sudden suspicion.
“Sempronius? The dear thing is so happy. He ’s in the front garden, listening to your dear thrush.”
“By Jehoshaphat!” cried the Admiral, half rising.
“Oh, don’t be alarmed! Sempronius adores him. He would n’t touch a hair of his head.”
“I warn you, ma’am,” growled Sir Peter, reluctantly sinking back into his seat, “if he does, I ’ll wing him.” From which you might gather the speakers thought that thrushes had hair and cats wings.
Now Basil Pringle, who had carefully laid his famous Strad in its case and covered it with a magnificent silk handkerchief, joined the little group under the elm. He was—apart from a very slight malformation of one shoulder—a good-looking fellow. He had the musician’s pensive face, and a pair of very tender brown eyes, and his hands were the true violinist’s hands, with long and lissome fingers. Jim hobbled up at the same time with a fresh pewter of ale.
“Ah, Mr. Pringle,” said the Admiral, hospitably, “here ’s your pewter.”
But Basil waved it away. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Poskett—Gentlemen. Thank you, Admiral, but I ’m sure you ’ll excuse me. I have a long night’s work.”
Jim was ready for the occasion. He hobbled back quicker than he had come, and drained the pewter at one draught under the very nose of the Eyesore.
“Fiddling at Vauxhall?” asked the Admiral.
“As usual, Sir Peter. It is a gala night. Fireworks.”
Mrs. Poskett gave a little scream of delight.
“Fireworks! Oh, ravishing!”
“And Mrs. Poole is to sing; and Incledon.”
Up jumped the Admiral, slapping his thigh. “Incledon! Then, by gum, I must be there! He was a sailor, y’ know. I remember him in ’85, on the Raisonable. Lord Hervey, and Pigot and Hughes—they ’d have him up to sing glees together!—Lord! Did ye ever hear him sing:
‘A health to the Captain and officers too,
And all who belong to the jovial crew
On board of the Arethusa’?”
Now, the Admiral’s voice was an admirable substitute for a fog-horn, but as a vehicle for a ballad, it left much to be desired. Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn writhed in melodramatic agony, and even Mrs. Poskett winced. Basil tried to turn the enthusiast’s thoughts into a gentler channel by interpolating that to-night Incledon was to sing “Tom Bowling.” At once the Admiral’s face took on an expression of the tenderest pathos. “Tom Bowling?—Ah!” and he was off again, in a roar he intended for a mere sentimental whisper
“Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling—”
This was too much for Jim’s feelings, never more receptive to melodious sorrow than when he had just absorbed a pint of ale, and he joined his master in a sympathetic howl.
Mrs. Poskett was overcome. “Oh, don’t, Sir Peter,” she cried. “Alderman Poskett used to sing just like that. You could hear him a mile off, but you could never tell what the tune was.” The tender recollection very nearly moved her to tears.
Sir Peter stopped his song abruptly, with a penitent, “Gobblessmysoul! I beg your pardon!”
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn felt he had been out of the conversation long enough. He turned condescendingly to Basil. “Are we not to see the Misses Pennymint to-day?”
“They are very busy,” replied the young violinist.
Mrs. Poskett saw her opportunity. “I saw Miss Ruth sewing at a ball-dress,” she said; and then added with a meaning look at Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn, “I wonder which of them is going to a ball?”
Basil knew from experience what was coming. Mrs. Poskett continued, “I’ve seen them making wedding-dresses, and even,” with pretty confusion, “even christening robes.”
Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn turned to her with an outraged expression: “I trust you do not insinuate Pomander Walk harbours mantua-makers?”
“It harbours a poor, hunchback fiddler,” remarked Basil, very quietly.
Sir Peter was getting red in the face. “The Misses Pennymint are estimable ladies, and we are fortunate to have them among us. Frequently when I have my periodical headaches—”
“Hum,” said Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn.
“The result, sir, of voyages in unhealthy regions!—they have sent me their home-made lavender water. When you had your last fit of asthma, Mrs. Poskett, did n’t they come and sit with you and give you treacle-posset? And when Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn presented you with your fourth daughter, whose calves-foot jelly comforted her? We have nothing to do with their means of livelihood; we are, I am happy to say, like one family. What, Brooke?”
Thus appealed to, Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn could only assent: but he did so with a bad grace, and with a contemptuous glance at Basil. It was really too bad of Sir Peter to suggest that he, Jerome Brooke-Hoskyn, the Man of Fashion, the friend of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox, had anything in common with this shabby musician.
Mrs. Poskett bridled. “Do you include the French people at Number Four?” she said.
“They are not French, ma’am,” retorted the Admiral, “and if they were, they couldn’t help it.”
Mrs. Poskett pointed with a giggle to the Eyesore, who was at that moment lovingly fixing one more worm on his hook. “Do you include the Eyesore?”
“No, I do not!” roared the Admiral, in a rage. “He doesn’t live here. If England were under a proper government, he would be hanged for trespassing. I ’ve tried to remove him, as you know, but—ha!—it appears he has as much right here as any of us.”
“After all,” said Basil, soothingly, “he never moves from one spot.”
“He never speaks to anybody,” added Mrs. Poskett.
“He’d better not, ma’am!”
And Mr. Brooke-Hoskyn summed up with a laugh, “And I will do him the justice to say, he never catches a fish!”
Basil held up a warning hand, for the door of Number Four had just opened.