Part 36 (1/2)
”Hymen? Knew him intimate.”
”What--what sort of man was he?”
Cai Tamblyn transferred the shreds of tobacco to a pouch made of pig's bladder, pocketed it, and rubbed his two palms together, chuckling softly.
”Look here, I'll show you the bust of 'en if you like; that is”--he checked himself and added dubiously--”if you're sure it won't excite you.”
”Excite me?”
”Sure it won't give you a relapse or something o' the sort?
The woman Snell has stepped down to the Mayor's to wash up after the light refreshments, and I'm in charge. Prettily she'll blow me up if she comes back an' finds I've been an' gone an' excited you.”
He cleared a s.p.a.ce on the wash-stand. ”I've no business to be in here at all, really, talkin' wi' the pashent; but damme, you can't think what 'tis like, sittin' by yourself in a museum. I wish sometimes they'd take an' stuff me!”
He hobbled out and returned grunting under the weight of the bust, which he set down upon the wash-stand, turning it so that the Major might have a full view of its features.
”There!” he exclaimed, drawing back and panting a little.
”Good heavens!” The Major drew the bed-clothes hurriedly up to his chin. ”Was he--was he like _that_?”
”I thank the Lord he was not,” Mr. Tamblyn answered, slowly and piously. ”Leavin' out the question o' colour and the material, which is plaster pallis and terrible crips, and the shortage, which is no more than the head an' henge of 'en, so to speak, 'tis no more like the man than _you_ be. And I say again that I thank the Lord for it.
For to have the old feller stuck up in the corner an' glazin' at me nat'rel as life every time I turned my head would be more than nerves could stand.”
”You wouldn't wish him back, then, in the flesh?”
Cai Tamblyn turned around smartly and gazed at the patient, whose face, however, rested in shadow.
”Look 'ee here. You've a-been in a French war prison, I hear, but that's no excuse for talkin' irreligious. The man was blowed to pieces, I tell you, by a thing called a catamaran, off the coast o'
France; not so much left of 'en as would cover a half-crown piece.
And you ask me if I want 'en back in the fles.h.!.+”
”But suppose that should turn out to be a mistake?” muttered the Major.
”Hey?” Cai Tamblyn gave a start. ”Oh, I see; you're just puttin' it so for the sake of argyment. Well, then,”--the old man turned his quid deliberately--”did you ever hear tell what old Sammy Mennear said when his wife died an' left him a widow-man? 'I wouldn' ha' lost my dear Sarah for a hundred pound,' said he; 'an' I dunno as I'd have her back for five hundred.' That's about the size o't with Hymen, I reckon--though, mind you, I bear en no grudge. He left me fifty pound by will, and a hundred an' fifty to a heathen n.i.g.g.e.r; and how that can be reconciled with Christian principle I leave you to answer. But I bear 'en no grudge.”
”What? They proved his will?” The Major stared at his portrait and s.h.i.+vered.
”_In_ course they did. The man was blowed to pieces, I tell you.
'Tis written up on the pedestal. 'Take 'en for all in all'--or piece by piece, they might ha' said, for that matter--'we shall not look upon his like agen.' No, nor they don't want to, for all their speechifyin'. I ain't what the parson calls a _pessimist_; I thinks poorly o' most things, that's all; _and_ folks; and I say they don't want to. Why, one way and another, he left close on twelve thousand pound!”
The Major drew the bed-clothes maybe an inch farther over his chin and so lay still, answering nothing, his eyes fastened on the bust.
Beneath its hyacinthine curls it beamed on him with a fixed benevolent smile.
”Not that Hymen hadn't decent qualities, mind you,” Cai Tamblyn continued. ”The fellow was plucky, and well-meanin', too, in his way; and a better master you wouldn't find in a day's march. What he suffered from was wind in his stomach. With all the women settin'
their caps at him he couldn't help it: but so 'twas. And the men were a'most as bad. Just you hearken to this--”
Cai seated himself on the edge of the bed again, felt in his breast-pocket and drew out a spectacle-case and a folded pocket-book; adjusted the spectacles on his nose, slapped the pocket-book viciously, spread it on his knee, cleared his throat, and began to read:
”'As a boy he was studious in his habits, shy in company, unflinchingly truthful, and fond of animals. For obvious reasons these pets of his childhood are unrepresented among the memorials so piously preserved in the Hymen Museum; but through the kindness of our esteemed townswoman, Mrs. (or, as she is commonly called, 'Mother') Hanc.o.c.k, aged ninety-one, we are able to include in our collection a marble of the kind known as 'gla.s.s-alley,' with which she avers that, at the age of ten or thereabouts, our future hero disported himself. It must have been by some premonition that the venerable lady cherished it, having received it originally, as she remembers, in barter for a pennyworth of saffron cake, a species of delicacy to which the youthful Solomon was pardonably addicted. . . .'