"How would Holmes have acted if this had happened to him?"
And Peters said, "For once I can see as clear as mud what Sherlock would
have done. He would have said, 'I think in this extraordinary case,
Watson, we may safely let well alone.'"
And that's what Peters did.
*THE DOCTOR'S PARROT*
*No. II*
*THE DOCTOR'S PARROT*
When Johnson maximus, young Corkey's cousin, left Merivale, he went to
sea, and a very curious thing happened. He went into what is called the
mercantile marine, which means liners, and not battleships or
destroyers; still you see a good deal of the world, and have not got to
fight for your country, but only for yourself. A pension is not so
certain in the mercantile marine as it is in the Royal Navy; but,
Johnson maximus told Corkey, when he came off a voyage from the East
Indies, that he was hopeful. He had seen a good many curious things and
brought home several, including a parrot, chiefly grey with a good deal
of red about its tail. But what was far more wonderful than the parrot
was the reason that Johnson maximus had brought it home.
He had brought it home, and also a very fine tiger's skin, as gifts to
Dr. Dunstan, and when Corkey reminded him very naturally that he had
always hated Dunstan as much as anybody when he was at Merivale, and
been jolly thankful to leave and go on to the _Worcester_, training ship
for the mercantile marine, Johnson maximus admitted it, but confessed
that, looking back, he had found it different, and felt that Dunstan was
an awfully good sort and that he owed him a great deal. But all the
same, Johnson maximus never would come and see the Doctor in after life.
Corkey asked him why, and he said he wanted to remember the awe and
terror of the Doctor, and thought, if he ever saw him again it might not
be the same; because, since the Merivale days, Johnson had seen so many
queer places and things, including his own captain in the mercantile
marine, who, Johnson maximus said, was himself one of the wonders of the
deep.
Of course Johnson maximus left Merivale long before I came there. He
was, in fact, nearly twenty when he sent the parrot by young Corkey; and
it seemed that the Doctor had never had a gift from an old pupil until
that time; and though Corkey said he thought the Doctor would rather
have had almost anything than a parrot, still it was so; and he took the
parrot and the tiger skin; and Corkey told me that Johnson maximus got a
letter of four pages from Dr. Dunstan, thanking him for these things,
and telling Johnson many facts about parrots in general.
The great point about the parrot was not so much its appearance as the
thing that Johnson had taught it to say. Simply looked at from the
parrot point of view, it was grey with a black tongue, and curious white
lids to its eyes that went up and down like blinds. It climbed about
its cage with its claws and bill, and had a way of eating nuts,
especially walnuts, which was rather amusing. We hoped that it might
have learnt some sailor words and would bring them out some day when
least expected: but if it knew them it never spoke them. It only said
three words, and they were rather cheek; but they were rather romantic
in a way, when you knew what young Corkey knew and was able to tell me.
It was this: that Milly Dunstan and Johnson maximus were undoubtedly
engaged in secret during his last term at Merivale. She was just an
ordinary little squirt of a girl, with nothing to look round after but a
lot of hair, and eyes that happened to be uncommonly blue by some
accident; and, naturally, the moment Johnson went into the mercantile
marine, she forgot him and turned her attention to other chaps, until
old Dunstan sent her to a boarding-school. But she jolly soon made him
let her come back again, and she was back some terms before the parrot
arrived.
Then the parrot settled down and suddenly said (after it had been at
Merivale four days), "Dear Milly Dunstan, dear Milly Dunstan"; and after
that the wretched girl chucked about ten chaps and blubbed in secret for
hours, so Corkey said, and let it be known to the sixth that she was
true to Johnson maximus, because through many and many a watch on the
trackless main, when he ought to have been resting from his labours in
the mercantile marine, he had sat hour after hour by the parrot and
repeated, doubtless many millions of times, the footling words, 'Dear
Milly Dunstan.'
I don't think the Doctor was so pleased about it as Milly was.
Certainly he did not cry, and Corkey said if the parrot had begun by
speaking, Dr. Dunstan might have considered it cheek on Johnson's part
and sent the parrot back with the four-page letter; but seeing that he
had accepted it before it said "Dear Milly Dunstan," he couldn't well
return it. Besides, in the meantime, Johnson maximus had set sail for
South America, and Steggles foretold that he would bring another parrot
back from there which he might train to say something even stronger. He
told Milly so, and rose her hopes a good deal; but Steggles also told
her that she needn't get excited about it, because her father would
never let her marry a chap in the mercantile marine, and that sailors
have a wife in every port. This was that same Steggles who did many
things at Merivale in the past, but he was now exceedingly old, and
expected at any time to be taken away. Many believed he was nearly
eighteen, but he had nothing much to show it except experience.
The first thing to do was to give the parrot a name, and Milly told us
in triumph that she had made the Doctor call it 'Joe.' Of course this
was the Christian name of Johnson maximus, though I believe the Doctor
had quite forgotten that. Anyway, 'Joe' is a very good name for a
parrot, and everybody got very fond of him, and old Briggs lectured on
him and told us that parrots reach a great age, and have often been
known to live a hundred years and more, owing to their healthy diet and
the number of bites they take to each mouthful, and their habit of never
worrying whatever happens. Old Briggs himself is frightfully keen about
fruit and nuts and such things, and I believe, in secret, he hopes he'll
live a hundred years too. But nobody else does. Steggles discovered a
likeness between 'Joe' and old Briggs. They shut their eyes in the same
way certainly, but 'Joe's' eyes are like grey diamonds, and old
Briggs's, through many years of looking through microscopes at seeds,
and bits of seaweeds, and stones, and so on, have got a sort of film
over them, and are not up to much now, even with two pairs of spectacles
to help them.
Well, 'Joe' was as good a parrot as ever you saw, and there is no doubt
that he would have outlived everybody at Merivale and got to be a sort
of heirloom in Dr. Dunstan's family, if he had been spared; but after he
had been there two years--at the beginning of his seventh term, in
fact--the great and sorrowful death of the parrot took place; and such
was the general feeling about him that there would certainly have been a
public funeral if the Doctor had allowed it.
Mathers went further, and wanted it to be a military funeral and have
the cadet corps out with reversed muskets; but Mathers, who is merely
Mathers minimus really, though his brothers have long since left, is a
chap who is like a girl in some ways, being easily made to laugh or cry.
To show you the peculiar sort of ass he is, I may say that he always
writes home letters of dreadful anguish at the beginning of the term,
and then, when the holidays really do come, seems never to want to go
home at all! Trelawny says this is contrary to nature, and will end in
pure insanity for Mathers; but Fowle, on the other hand, says that
Mathers is already mad. I heard Browne, the mathematical master, speak
about Mathers too--to Mannering, a new under-master. They were watching
Mathers in the playground, and he was in one of his most cheerful moods,
and imitating a monkey on a barrel-organ catching fleas. He certainly
did it jolly well, and even a chap or two from the sixth stopped to
watch. And then, when he saw these chaps looking on, he got above
himself and began playing the giddy ox, and spoilt the show. Then it
was that Browne gave his opinion of Mathers, and said that he had 'the
artistic temperament,' whatever that may be. Anyway, it is no catch,
for though boys laugh at you, they despise you, and so do masters.
Masters never seem to have the artistic temperament much; or, if they
have had it, they get well over it after being masters a few terms. I
suppose it was the artistic temperament that made Mathers join the cadet
corps; which he did do, chiefly that he might wear the red bags with
black stripes, and drill once a week under the sergeant. He was rather
small, and it took all his strength to carry the musket round; for the
corps had twenty-five old muskets, and I believe it was a regular
military affair under Government in a sort of vague way. Anyhow, we had
percussion caps for the muskets, and fired them off at times in the
course of the drill; and the first time that young Mathers had a musket
with caps he turned rather white, hating explosions and noise of all
kinds, and said out loud in the face of the corps, to the drill sergeant
who stood in front of the brigade, "Is it loaded, sergeant?" The
sergeant, who was old and had seen battle, and had a grey moustache and
medals and a fierce expression, looked at him and merely said, "Good
God, boy, d'you think I should be standing here if it was?" Then he
spat a scornful spit and twirled his moustache, and seemed to think he'd
come down a good deal in the world to have to drill kids like Mathers.
So always, afterwards, if anybody wanted to rot Mathers, and most people
did, they had only to say, "Is it loaded, sergeant?" and he instantly
became depressed and mournful, or got into a frightful bate--one or
other according to his frame of mind at the time.
I am telling you all these things about Mathers for two reasons. First,
because he is the principal person, after 'Joe,' in this story, and
secondly, because he was my chum.
My name is Blount, well known at Dunstan's as having had diphtheria and
two doctors in my first term, and recovering. What I saw in Mathers I
never could tell, but there was something about the piffling duffer that
I liked. His good nature was very marked, and he was peculiarly
generous of dried fruits, which drew me to him as much as anything. His
father was a merchant, and traded with various foreign places especially
celebrated for dried fruits; and in this manner much grand tuck, that
ordinary people have to pay pretty stiffly for, such as candied melons
and crystallized pineapples and other amazing food, very seldom seen in
a general way, came to Bunny Mathers as a matter of course from time to
time; and he thought no more of opening a hamper and finding the richest
and rarest things in it than I should of getting a windfall from our
apple-orchard. This provender he gave to his friends and to those he
wanted to be his friends; and some became his friends in consequence;
but their friendship, as Mathers rather bitterly pointed out to me, sank
to nothing between the times of the hampers. Whereas I made Mathers a
real chum, and once, when, owing to some fearful crisis in the sugared
violet trade with France, his father forgot for six weeks to send
Mathers any hamper at all, I remained unchanged.