There & Back

“That grandson of yours—” he began, the moment they were in Simon’s little parlour.

Simon started. “The old wretch knows!” he said to himself.

“—has been too much for me!” continued sir Wilton. “He got a cheque out of me whether I would or not!”

“And got the money for it, sir!” answered the smith. “He seemed to think the money better than the cheque!”

“I don’t blame him, by Jove! There’s decision in the fellow!—They say his father’s a bookbinder in London!”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know better! I don’t want humbug, Armour! I’m not fond of it!”

“You told me people said his father was a bookbinder, and I said ‘Yes, sir’!”

“You know as well as I do it’s a damned lie! The boy is mine. He belongs neither to bookbinder nor blacksmith!”

“You’ll allow me a small share in him, I hope! I’ve done more for him than you, sir.”

“That’s not my fault!”

“Perhaps not; but I’ve done more for him than you ever will, sir!”

“How do you make that out?”

“I’ve made him as good a shoesmith as ever drove nail! I don’t say he’s up to his grandfather at the anvil yet, but—”

“An accomplishment no doubt, but not exactly necessary to a gentleman!”

“It’s better than dicing or card-playing!” said the blacksmith.

“You’re right there! I hope he has learned neither. I want to teach him those things myself.—He’s not an ill-looking fellow!”

“There’s not a better lad in England, sir! If you had brought him up as he is, you might ha’ been proud o’ your work!”

“He seems proud of somebody’s work!—prouder of himself than his prospects, by Jove!” said sir Wilton, feeling his way. “You should have taught him not to quarrel with his bread and butter!”

“I never saw any call to teach him that. He never quarrelled with anything at my table, sir. A man who has earned his own bread and butter ever since he left school, is not likely to quarrel with it.”

“You don’t say he has done so?”

“I do—and can prove it!—Did you tell him, sir, you were his father?”

“Of course I did!—and before I said another word, there we were quarrelling—just as it was with me and my father!”

“He never told me!” said Simon, half to himself, and ready to feel hurt.

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No, sir.”

“Where is he?”

“Gone to London with your bounty.”

“Now, Simon Armour,” began the baronet with some truculence.

“Now, sir Wilton Lestrange!” interrupted Simon.

“What’s the matter?”

“Please to remember you are in my house!”

“Tut, tut! All I want to say is that you will spoil everything if you encourage the rascal to keep low company!”

“You mean?”

“Those Mansons.”

“Are your children low company, sir?”

“Yes; I am sorry, but I must admit it. Their mother was low company.”

“She was in it at least, when she was in yours!” had all but escaped Simon’s lips, but he caught the bird by the tail.—

“The children are not the mother!” he said. “I know the girl, and she is anything but low company. She lay ill in my house here for six weeks or more. Ask Miss Wylder.—If you want to be on good terms with your son, don’t say a word, sir, against your daughter or her brother.”

“I like that! On good terms with my son! Ha, ha!”

“Remember, sir, he is independent of his father.”

“Independent! A beggarly bookbinder!”

“Excuse me, sir, but an honest trade is the only independence! You are dependent on your money and your land. Where would you be without them? And you made neither! They’re yours only in a way! We, my grandson and I, have means of our own,” said the blacksmith, and held out his two brawny hands. “—The thing that is beggarly,” he resumed, “is to take all and give nothing. If your ancestors got the land by any good they did, you did not get it by any good you did; and having got it, what have you done in return?”

“By Jove! I didn’t know you were such a radical!” returned the baronet, laughing.

“It is such as you, sir, that make what you call radicals. If the landlords had used what was given them to good ends, there would be no radicals—or not many—in the country! The landlords that look to their land and those that are on it, earn their bread as hardly as the man that ploughs it. But when you call it yours, and do nothing for it, I am radical enough to think no wrong would be done if you were deprived of it!”

“What! are you taking to the highway at your age?”

“No, sir; I have a trade I like better, and have no call to lighten you of anything, however ill you may use it. But there are those that think they have a right and a call to take the land from landlords like you, and I would no more leave my work to prevent them than I would to help them.”

“Well, well! I didn’t come to talk politics; I came to ask a favour of you.”

“What I can do for you, sir, I shall be glad to do.”

“It is merely this—that you will, for the present, say nothing about the heir having turned up.”