Just at the moment, however, Major Deak was talking to the tw o Honourables andjack did not care to horn in. He was too well- bred for one thing, and for another he knew not but that the major as principal local landlord might not still exercise medieval powers — say, “the alcalde jurisdiction” or pervovnter in uccage and flemage, say, and order him to be staked out on the foreshore at Sandy Cave until two tides should have flowed and ebbed — and anyway a voice in his ear murmured, ’Jock” and he turned to fight.
“It’s not Jock, it’s — ah, Stickney!” They shook hands, Limekiller explaining that he didn’t wish to be Jock to anyone who w anted to trot out a sporranful of old Scotchman jokes, but, “and what brings you here? didn’t know you were a party-goer.?”
“Came to see Judge Deak, Major Deak, that is, my older brother knew him well when John Deak wras a judge in Golconda Colony and Richard was the Assistant Colonial Secretary. They both went back into the Army during the War, John became a major and Richard became dead; awfully pretty woman, that, you ugly young troll, ah youth! ah woe, the fleeting hours!” Very deftly did Stickney Forster give Jack all the information needed, and then turn the conversation so as to leave no room for feeling a formal need to express regret on the long ago death of someone he had never till now heard of, which expression could be nothing but hypocrisy, or, as Dr. Johnson called it, cant (Sir, clear your mind of cant!). “Deftly,” yes. Part of being a gentleman, and having nothing to do with money, position, and a command of the pickle forks. Jack envied.
Major Deak moved off and the Honourable Mrs. Whatsis stopped rummaging in her shoulder-bag or was it a knapsack, it looked roomy enough and durable enough to pack a waree or a wild bush hog in, assuming it to have been cleaned and quartered and cut up into chops, chines, and hams. The Black Arawack were very fond of the cheaper cuts of pig, referring to their favorite cuts as pigtaili and pigsnoutu. But neither they nor those were present. “Don’t know what I’m looking for,” she murmured. ‘Yes, I do. But it’s not in here. Somerset!” she adjured her husband, who looked up with a yes-my-dear expression on his lean and naturally tan face. “I think perhaps you ought to tell these people what you were telling me about the caye. you do recall, don’t you? the night after Sir Joshua prorogued the Assembly and we discovered that Mrs. Hodkins had stolen the cheese again. The caye, Somerset!” and, leaving her Honourable husband neither time nor chance to reply, swept on. “She’s a good housekeeper, a fine cook, and an absolutely splendid laundress, my sister Alice once compared her to Queen Elizabeth’s Silk Woman, of course one understands the first Elizabeth, I do think that was so squalid of the King of Spain to have kept a spy in the Virgin Queen’s laundry to see if she were still capable of having children. But she does „tote’ as the Americans say. Somerset?”
Limekiller, slightly dazed, nevertheless understood that it was not the first Elizabeth who had chosen to make off with the cheese. The Honourable Mrs. did not often speak at length, socially, but when she did, she spoke.
The Honourable Minister to Government carefully put his glass down. He gave a glance over his shoulder. “Where is Major — Ah. Down there. I am not quite sure that I wish him to hear this. Of course he must be told eventually. Well. What I said to my wife is this. This present attempt to develop this caye is not the first, you know. No, it is not. The United National Investment Association — what? Oh, yes, one of the Harrisite groups, remarkable man, Aurelius Harris, pity that those remarkably large hands were so remarkably sticky — mm, yes, the UNIA had bought this caye from the Crown, cash down, and planned to build an hotel here; my uncle George was one of the board of directors, a remarkable farseeing man, foresaw the tourist possibilities of such a place, and it was he who told my father about what they found. I was just a youngster at the time, but naturally I was all ears. The story seems to have quite faded away, but I well remember it, yes. ”
Jack, either still dazed or dazed again, trying hard to make the connection between Queen Elizabeth I and Aurelius Harris, of whom he had barely heard; Limekiller wondered if the Honourable Lady had learned discursiveness from the Honourable Minister, or if it had been the other way around, or if a mutual tendency had first attracted them to each other. Be that as it may..
Time: the late Nineteen Twenties. Scene: Galliards or whatever name Caye. Cast of Characters: A band of men, Nationals, delving and digging with shovels and spades and buckets in the mud and muck of the quaking soil, in the partially dried and partially drying soil, in the wet and mucky and boggy soil, had come across some heavy timbers. What kind? Some said, teak. Yes: teak. Despite a total absence of elephants, teak did grow in the hospitable soil of what was once called His Majesty’s Settlement of Woodcutters on the Bay of Hidalgo. Hard to cut, teak? Damnably hard to cut, teak. But that didn’t mean that they didn’t cut it. Teak. Others said that the timbers were mahogany. Would mahogany have been brought over from the mainland to a “pure mangrove bluff,” as these caves were called? Surely not to make furniture? No. Surely not to build a boat, for example? Nothing surely about it. For building purposes the wood of choice hereabouts had always been pine, the tropical hardwood pine. In fact, it was so choice, that one could not always obtain it. Jack well recalled a local builder of rowboats and skiffs telling him that he had gone looking for boat wood, and, “Wanted pine, you know, mahn: cou’n’t git it. Had to take mahogany,” a sad shake of the head. And, for that matter, he well knew that when Lemuel Cracovius the dentist had built a second house along the Spanish River he had built it out of mahogany, that being at the time cheaper than pine, European market had been depressed; had built the entire cottage out of mahogany, Lemueclass="underline" and then he had painted it green. Protective coloration, John, his only explanation.
“Well, it’s well known that wood kept under water or anyway well wet,” said the Honourable, making gestures to his Lady Wife, who delved into her dittybag and came out with a pipe and a pouch of tobacco and proceeded to fill the pipe as her lord talked on; “will keep very much better than wood which is seasoned dry. So it was no surprise that the timbers gave every evidence of being very old. the axe-marks and adze-marks had not been made by any modern tools, they saw that at once. Thank you, my dear.” He put the filled pipe between his teeth while she struck a large wooden “Swede’s match,” as they were locally called (on the Prairies they were called — farmer matches”; merely proves that there were a lot of Swedes farming on the Prairies; nothing new about that) and a puff of smoke from a pipe tobacco which had never been cured or blended by the Indians (whose slash-and-burn farmings were industriously ruining the slopes of the Mayan Mountains) filled the room with its delicious scent.