There & Back Part 4

"For my part," said Arthur, "I feel like a book that needs to be fresh printed, not to say fresh bound! I don't feel why I am what I am. I would part with it all, except just being the same man!"

While the youths were having their talk, Alice was in Jane's bedroom, undergoing an examination, the end and object of which it was impossible she should suspect. Caught by a certain look in her sweet face, reminding her of a look that was anything but sweet, Jane had set herself to learn from her what she might as to her people and history.

"Is your father alive, my dear?" she asked, with her keen black eyes on Alice's face.

That grew red, and for a moment the girl did not answer. Jane pursued her catechizing.

"What was his trade or profession?" she inquired.

The girl said nothing, and the merciless questioner went on.

"Tell me something about him, dear. Do you remember him? Or did he die when you were quite a child?"

"I do not remember him," answered Alice. "I do not know if I ever saw him."

"Did your mother never tell you what he was like?"

"She told me once he was very handsome--the handsomest man she ever saw--but cruel--so cruel! she said.--I don't want to talk about him, please, ma'am!" concluded Alice, the tears running down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, my dear, to hurt you, but I'm not doing it from curiosity.

You have a look so like a man I once knew,--and your brother has something of the same!--that in fact I am bound to learn what I can about you."

"What sort was the man we put you in mind of?" asked Alice, with a feeble attempt at a smile. "Not a _very_ bad man, I hope!"

"Well, not very good--as you ask me.--He was what people call a gentleman!"

"Was that all?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought he was a n.o.bleman!"

"Oh!--well, he wasn't that; he was a baronet."

Alice gave a little cry.

"Do tell me something about him," she said. "What do you know about him?"

"More than I choose to tell. We will forget him now, if you please!"

There was in her voice a tone of displeasure, which Alice took to be with herself. She was in consequence both troubled and perplexed.

Neither made any more inquiries. Jane took her guest back to the sitting-room.

The moment her brother came from the workshop, Alice said to him--

"Are you ready, Arthur? We had better be moving!"

Arthur was a gentle creature, and seldom opposed her; he seemed only surprised a little, and asked if she was ill. But Richard, who had all the week been looking forward to a talk with Alice, and wanted to show her his little library, was much disappointed, and begged her to change her mind. She insisted, however, and he put on his hat to walk with them.

But his aunt called him, and whispered that she would be particularly obliged to him if he would go to church with her that evening. He expostulated, saying he did not care to go to church; but as she insisted, he yielded, though not with the best grace.

Before another Sunday, there came, doubtless by his aunt's management, an invitation to spend a few weeks with his grandfather, the blacksmith.

Richard was not altogether pleased, for he did not like leaving his work; but his aunt again prevailed with him, and he agreed to go. In this, as in most things, he showed her a deference such as few young men show their mothers. Her influence came, I presume, through the strong impression of purpose she had made on him.

His uncle objected to his going, and grumbled a good deal. As the brewer looks down on the baker, so the bookbinder looked down on the blacksmith.

He said the people Richard would see about his grandfather, were not fit company for the heir of Mortgrange! But he knew the necessity of his going somewhere for a while, and gave in.

CHAPTER VI. _SIMON ARMOUR_.

Simon Armour was past only the agility, not the strength of his youth, and in his feats of might and skill he cherished pride. Without being offensively conceited, he regarded himself--and well might--as the superior of any baronet such as his daughter's husband, and desired of him no recognition of the relations.h.i.+p. All he looked for from any man, whether he stood above or beneath his own plane, was proper pay for good work, and natural human respect. Some of the surrounding gentry, possibly not uninfluenced, in sentiment at least, by the growing radicalism of the age, enjoyed the free, jolly, but unpresuming carriage of the stalwart old man, to whom, if indeed on his head the almond-tree was already in blossom, the gra.s.shopper was certainly not yet a burden: he could still ply a sledge-hammer in each hand. "My lord," came from his lips in a clear, ringing tone of good-fellows.h.i.+p, which the n.o.bleman who occasionally stopped at his forge to give him some direction about the shoeing of this or that horse, liked well to hear, and felt the friendlier for--though I doubt if he would have welcomed it from a younger man.

Besides his daughter Jane and her husband, he alone was aware of the real parentage of the lad who pa.s.sed as their son; and he knew that, if he lived long enough, an hour would call him to stand up for the rights of his grandson. Perhaps it was partly in view of this, that he had for years been an abstainer from strong drink; but I am inclined to attribute the fact chiefly to his having found the love of it gaining upon him. "d.a.m.n the drink!" he had been more than once overheard to say, "it shall know which of us is master!" And when Simon had made up his mind to a thing, the thing was--not indeed as good, but almost as sure as done. The smallest of small beer was now his strongest drink.

He was a hard-featured, good-looking, white-haired man of sixty, with piercing eyes of quite cerulean blue, and a rough voice with an undertone of music in it. There was music, indeed, all through him.

In the roughest part of his history it was his habit to go to church--mainly, I may say entirely, for the organ, but his behaviour was never other than reverent. How much he understood, may be left a question somewhat dependent on how much there may have been to understand; but he had a few ideas in religion which were very much his own, and which, especially some with regard to certain of the lessons from the Old Testament, would have considerably astonished some parsons, and considerably pleased others. He was a big, broad-shouldered man, with the brawniest arms, and eyes so bright and scintillant that one might fancy they caught and kept for their own use the sparks that flew from his hammer. His face was red, with a great but short white beard, suggesting the sun in a clean morning-fog.

A rickety omnibus carried Richard from the railway-station some five miles to the smithy. When the old man heard it stop, he threw down his hammer, strode hastily to the door, met his grandson with a gripe that left a black mark and an ache, and catching up his portmanteau, set it down inside.

"I'll go with you in a moment, lad!" he said, and seizing with a long pair of pincers the horse-shoe that lay in process on the anvil, he thrust it into the fire, blew a great roaring blast from the bellows, plucked out the shoe glowing white, and fell upon it as if it were a devil. Having thus cowed it a bit, he grew calm, and more deliberately shaped it to an invisible idea. His grandson was delighted with the mingling of determination, intent, and power, with certainty of result, manifest in every blow. In two minutes he had the shoe on the end of a long hooked rod, and was hanging it beside others on a row of nails in a beam. Then he turned and said--

"There, lad! that's off the anvil--and off my mind! Now I'm for you!"

"Grandfather," said Richard, "I shouldn't like to have you for an enemy!"

"Why not, you rascal! Do you think I would take unfair advantage of you?"

"No, that I don't! But you've got awful arms and hands!"

"They've done a job or two in their day, lad!" he answered; "but I'm getting old now! I can't do what I thought nothing of once. Well, no man was made to last for ever--no more than a horse-shoe! There'd be no work for the Maker if he did!"

"I'm glad to see we're of one mind, grandfather!" said Richard.

"Well, why shouldn't we--if so be we're in the right mind!--Yes; we must be o' one mind if we're o' the right mind! The year or two I may be ahead o' you in gettin' at it, goes for nothing: I started sooner!--But what may be the mind you speak of, sonny?"

The look of keen question the old man threw on him, woke a doubt in Richard whether he might not have misunderstood his grandfather.

"I think," he answered, "if a man was made to last for ever, the world would get tired of him. When a horse or a dog has done his work, he's content--and so is his master."

"Nay, but I bean't! I bean't content to lose the old horse as I've shod mayhap for twenty years--no, not if I bean't his master!"

"There's no help for it, though!"

"None as I knows on. I'd be main glad to hear any news on the subjec' as you can supply!--No, I ain't content; I'm sorry!"