The Parent's Assistant Part 31

'Oh, in case it's a secret, I've no more to say; for I never meddle with any man's secrets that he does not choose to trust me with. But I wish, neighbour Grant, you would put down that book. You are always poring over some book or another when a man comes to see you, which is not, according to my notions (being a plain, _unlarned_ Englishman bred and born), so civil and neighbourly as might be.'

Mr. Grant hastily shut his book, but remarked, with a shrewd glance at his son, that it was in that book he found his Brobdingnag raspberries.

'You are pleased to be pleasant upon them that have not the luck to be as book-_larned_ as yourself, Mr. Grant; but I take it, being only a plain-spoken Englishman, as I observed afore, that one is to the full as like to find a raspberry in one's garden as in one's book, Mr. Grant.'

Grant, observing that his neighbour spoke rather in a surly tone, did not contradict him; being well versed in the Bible, he knew that 'A soft word turneth away wrath,' and he answered, in a good-humoured voice, 'I hear, neighbour Oakly, you are likely to make a great deal of money of your nursery this year. Here's to the health of you and yours, not forgetting the seedling larches, which I see are coming on finely.'

'Thank ye, neighbour, kindly; the larches are coming on tolerably well, that's certain; and here's to your good health, Mr. Grant--you and yours, not forgetting your, what d'ye call 'em raspberries'--(_drinks_)--and, after a pause, resumes, 'I'm not apt to be a beggar, neighbour, but if you could give me----'

Here Mr. Oakly was interrupted by the entrance of some strangers, and he did not finish making his request--Mr. Oakly was not, as he said of himself, apt to ask favours, and nothing but Grant's cordiality could have conquered his prejudices so far as to tempt him to ask a favour from a Scotchman. He was going to have asked for some of the Brobdingnag raspberry-plants. The next day the thought of the raspberry-plants recurred to his memory, but, being a bashful man, he did not like to go himself on purpose to make his request, and he desired his wife, who was just setting out to market, to call at Grant's gate, and, if he was at work in his garden, to ask him for a few plants of his raspberries.

The answer which Oakly's wife brought to him was that Mr. Grant had not a raspberry-plant in the world to give him, and that if he had ever so many, he would not give one away, except to his own son.

Oakly flew into a pa.s.sion when he received such a message, declared it was just such a mean, shabby trick as might have been expected from a Scotchman--called himself a b.o.o.by, a dupe, and a blockhead, for ever having trusted to the civil speeches of a Scotchman--swore that he would die in the parish workhouse before he would ever ask another favour, be it ever so small, from a Scotchman; related to his wife, for the hundredth time, the way in which he had been taken in by the Scotch peddler ten years ago, and concluded by forswearing all further intercourse with Mr. Grant, and all belonging to him.

'Son Arthur,' said he, addressing himself to the boy, who just then came in from work--'Son Arthur, do you hear me? let me never again see you with Grant's son.' 'With Maurice, father?' 'With Maurice Grant, I say; I forbid you from this day and hour forward to have anything to do with him.' 'Oh, why, dear father?' 'Ask me no questions, but do as I bid you.'

Arthur burst out a-crying, and only said, 'Yes, father, I'll do as you bid me, to be sure.'

'Why now, what does the boy cry for? Is there no other boy, simpleton, think you, to play with, but this Scotchman's son? I'll find out another playfellow for ye, child, if that be all.' 'That's not all, father,'

said Arthur, trying to stop himself from sobbing; 'but the thing is, I shall never have such another playfellow,--I shall never have such another friend as Maurice Grant.'

'Like father like son--you may think yourself well off to have done with him.' 'Done with him! Oh, father, and shall I never go again to work in his garden, and may not he come to mine?' 'No,' replied Oakly st.u.r.dily; 'his father has used me uncivil, and no man shall use me uncivil twice.

I say no. Wife, sweep up this hearth. Boy, don't take on like a fool; but eat thy bacon and greens, and let's hear no more of Maurice Grant.'

Arthur promised to obey his father. He only begged that he might once more speak to Maurice, and tell him that it was by his father's orders he acted. This request was granted; but when Arthur further begged to know what reason he might give for this separation, his father refused to tell his reasons. The two friends took leave of one another very sorrowfully.

Mr. Grant, when he heard of all this, endeavoured to discover what could have offended his neighbour; but all explanation was prevented by the obstinate silence of Oakly.

Now, the message which Grant really sent about the Brobdingnag raspberries was somewhat different from that which Mr. Oakly received.

The message was, that the raspberries were not Mr. Grant's; that therefore he had no right to give them away; that they belonged to his son Maurice, and that this was not the right time of year for planting them. This message had been unluckily misunderstood. Grant gave his answer to his wife; she to a Welsh servant-girl, who did not perfectly comprehend her mistress's broad Scotch; and she in her turn could not make herself intelligible to Mrs. Oakly, who hated the Welsh accent, and whose attention, when the servant-girl delivered the message, was princ.i.p.ally engrossed by the management of her own horse. The horse on which Mrs. Oakly rode this day, being ill-broken, would not stand still quietly at the gate, and she was extremely impatient to receive her answer, and to ride on to market.

Oakly, when he had once resolved to dislike his neighbour Grant, could not long remain without finding out fresh causes of complaint. There was in Grant's garden a plum-tree, which was planted close to the loose stone wall that divided the garden from the nursery. The soil in which the plum-tree was planted happened not to be quite so good as that which was on the opposite side of the wall, and the plum-tree had forced its way through the wall, and gradually had taken possession of the ground which it liked best.

Oakly thought the plum-tree, as it belonged to Mr. Grant, had no right to make its appearance on his ground: an attorney told him that he might oblige Grant to cut it down; but Mr. Grant refused to cut down his plum-tree at the attorney's desire, and the attorney persuaded Oakly to go to law about the business, and the lawsuit went on for some months.

The attorney, at the end of this time, came to Oakly with a demand for money to carry on his suit, a.s.suring him that, in a short time, it would be determined in his favour. Oakly paid his attorney ten golden guineas, remarked that it was a great sum for him to pay, and that nothing but the love of justice could make him persevere in this lawsuit about a bit of ground, 'which, after all,' said he, 'is not worth twopence. The plum-tree does me little or no damage, but I don't like to be imposed upon by a Scotchman.'

The attorney saw and took advantage of Oakly's prejudice against the natives of Scotland; and he persuaded him, that to show the _spirit_ of a true-born Englishman it was necessary, whatever it might cost him, to persist in this lawsuit.

It was soon after this conversation with the attorney that Mr. Oakly walked with resolute steps towards the plum-tree, saying to himself, 'If it cost me a hundred pounds I will not let this cunning Scotchman get the better of me.'

Arthur interrupted his father's reverie by pointing to a book and some young plants which lay upon the wall. 'I fancy, father,' said he, 'those things are for you, for there is a little note directed to you in Maurice's handwriting. Shall I bring it to you?' 'Yes, let me read it, child, since I must.' It contained these words:

'DEAR MR. OAKLY--I don't know why you have quarrelled with us; I am very sorry for it. But though you are angry with me, I am not angry with you. I hope you will not refuse some of my Brobdingnag raspberry-plants, which you asked for a great while ago, when we were all good friends. It was not the right time of the year to plant them, which was the reason they were not sent to you; but it is just the right time to plant them now; and I send you the book, in which you will find the reason why we always put seaweed ashes about their roots; and I have got some seaweed ashes for you. You will find the ashes in the flower-pot upon the wall. I have never spoken to Arthur, nor he to me, since you bid us not. So, wis.h.i.+ng your Brobdingnag raspberries may turn out as well as ours, and longing to be all friends again, I am, with love to dear Arthur and self, your affectionate neighbour's son, MAURICE GRANT.

'P.S.--It is now about four months since the quarrel began, and that is a very long while.'

A great part of the effect of this letter was lost upon Oakly, because he was not very expert in reading writing, and it cost him much trouble to spell it and put it together. However, he seemed affected by it, and said, 'I believe this Maurice loves you well enough, Arthur, and he seems a good sort of boy; but as to the raspberries, I believe all that he says about them is but an excuse; and, at any rate, as I could not get 'em when I asked for them, I'll not have 'em now. Do you hear me, I say, Arthur? What are you reading there?'

Arthur was reading the page that was doubled down in the book which Maurice had left along with the raspberry-plants upon the wall. Arthur read aloud as follows:--

(_Monthly Magazine_, Dec. '98, p. 421.)

'There is a sort of strawberry cultivated at Jersey which is almost covered with seaweed in the winter, in like manner as many plants in England are with litter from the stable. These strawberries are usually of the largeness of a middle-sized apricot, and the flavour is particularly grateful. In Jersey and Guernsey, situate scarcely one degree farther south than Cornwall, all kinds of fruit, pulse, and vegetables are produced in their seasons a fortnight or three weeks sooner than in England, even on the southern sh.o.r.es; and snow will scarcely remain twenty-four hours on the earth. Although this may be attributed to these islands being surrounded with a salt, and consequently a moist atmosphere, yet the ashes (seaweed ashes) made use of as manure may also have their portion of influence.'[12]

[12] It is necessary to observe that this experiment has never been actually tried upon raspberry-plants.

'And here,' continued Arthur, 'is something written with a pencil, on a slip of paper, and it is Maurice's writing. I will read it to you.

'When I read in this book what is said about the strawberries growing as large as apricots, after they had been covered over with seaweed, I thought that perhaps seaweed ashes might be good for my father's raspberries; and I asked him if he would give me leave to try them. He gave me leave, and I went directly and gathered together some seaweed that had been cast on sh.o.r.e; and I dried it, and burned it, and then I manured the raspberries with it, and the year afterwards the raspberries grew to the size that you have seen. Now, the reason I tell you this is, first, that you may know how to manage your raspberries, and next, because I remember you looked very grave, as if you were not pleased with my father, Mr. Grant, when he told you that the way by which he came by his Brobdingnag raspberries was a secret. Perhaps this was the thing that has made you so angry with us all; for you never have come to see father since that evening. Now I have told you all I know; and so I hope you will not be angry with us any longer.'

Mr. Oakly was much pleased by this openness, and said, 'Why now, Arthur, this is something like, this is telling one the thing one wants to know, without fine speeches. This is like an Englishman more than a Scotchman. Pray, Arthur, do you know whether your friend Maurice was born in England or in Scotland?'

'No, indeed, sir, I don't know--I never asked--I did not think it signified. All I know is that, wherever he was born, he is _very_ good.

Look, papa, my tulip is blowing.' 'Upon my word,' said his father, 'this will be a beautiful tulip!' 'It was given to me by Maurice.' 'And did you give him nothing for it?' was the father's inquiry. 'Nothing in the world; and he gave it to me just at the time when he had good cause to be angry with me, just when I had broken his bell-gla.s.s.'

'I have a great mind to let you play together again,' said Arthur's father. 'Oh, if you would,' cried Arthur, clapping his hands, 'how happy we should be! Do you know, father, I have often sat for an hour at a time up in that crab-tree, looking at Maurice at work in his garden, and wis.h.i.+ng that I was at work with him.'

Here Arthur was interrupted by the attorney, who came to ask Mr. Oakly some question about the lawsuit concerning the plum-tree. Oakly showed him Maurice's letter; and to Arthur's extreme astonishment, the attorney had no sooner read it than he exclaimed, 'What an artful little gentleman this is! I never, in the course of all my practice, met with anything better. Why, this is the most cunning letter I ever read.'

'Where's the cunning?' said Oakly, and he put on his spectacles. 'My good sir, don't you see that all this stuff about Brobdingnag raspberries is to ward off your suit about the plum-tree? They know--that is, Mr. Grant, who is sharp enough, knows--that he will be worsted in that suit; that he must, in short, pay you a good round sum for damages, if it goes on----'

'Damages!' said Oakly, staring round him at the plum-tree; 'but I don't know what you mean. I mean nothing but what's honest. I don't mean to ask for any good round sum; for the plum-tree has done me no great harm by coming into my garden; but only I don't choose it should come there without my leave.'

'Well, well,' said the attorney, 'I understand all that; but what I want to make you, Mr. Oakly, understand is, that this Grant and his son only want to make up matters with you, and prevent the thing's coming to a fair trial, by sending you, in this underhand sort of way, a bribe of a few raspberries.'

'A bribe!' exclaimed Oakly, 'I never took a bribe, and I never will'; and, with sudden indignation, he pulled the raspberry plants from the ground in which Arthur was planting them; and he threw them over the wall into Grant's garden.

Maurice had put his tulip, which was beginning to blow, in a flower-pot, on the top of the wall, in hopes that his friend Arthur would see it from day to day. Alas! he knew not in what a dangerous situation he had placed it. One of his own Brobdingnag raspberry-plants, swung by the angry arm of Oakly, struck off the head of his precious tulip! Arthur, who was full of the thought of convincing his father that the attorney was mistaken in his judgment of poor Maurice, did not observe the fall of the tulip.

The next day, when Maurice saw his raspberry-plants scattered upon the ground, and his favourite tulip broken, he was in much astonishment, and, for some moments, angry; but anger, with him, never lasted long. He was convinced that all this must be owing to some accident or mistake.

He could not believe that any one could be so malicious as to injure him on purpose--'And even if they did all this on purpose to vex me,' said he to himself, 'the best thing I can do is not to let it vex me. Forgive and forget.' This temper of mind Maurice was more happy in enjoying than he could have been made, without it, by the possession of all the tulips in Holland.

Tulips were, at this time, things of great consequence in the estimation of the country several miles round where Maurice and Arthur lived. There was a florist's feast to be held at the neighbouring town, at which a prize of a handsome set of gardening tools was to be given to the person who could produce the finest flower of its kind. A tulip was the flower which was thought the finest the preceding year, and consequently numbers of people afterwards endeavoured to procure tulip-roots, in hopes of obtaining the prize this year. Arthur's tulip was beautiful. As he examined it from day to day, and every day thought it improving, he longed to thank his friend Maurice for it; and he often mounted into his crab-tree, to look into Maurice's garden, in hopes of seeing his tulip also in full bloom and beauty. He never could see it.

The day of the florist's feast arrived, and Oakly went with his son and the fine tulip to the place of meeting. It was on a s.p.a.cious bowling-green. All the flowers of various sorts were ranged upon a terrace at the upper end of the bowling-green; and, amongst all this gay variety, the tulip which Maurice had given to Arthur appeared conspicuously beautiful. To the owner of this tulip the prize was adjudged; and, as the handsome garden-tools were delivered to Arthur, he heard a well-known voice wish him joy. He turned, looked about him, and saw his friend Maurice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _When Maurice saw his raspberry-plants scattered upon the ground, and his favourite tulip broken, he was in much astonishment._]

'But, Maurice, where is your own tulip?' said Mr. Oakly; 'I thought, Arthur, you told me that he kept one for himself.' 'So I did,' said Maurice; 'but somebody (I suppose by accident) broke it.' 'Somebody!

who?' cried Arthur and Mr. Oakly at once. 'Somebody who threw the raspberry-plants back again over the wall,' replied Maurice. 'That was me--that somebody was me,' said Oakly. 'I scorn to deny it; but I did not intend to break your tulip, Maurice.'

'Dear Maurice,' said Arthur--'you know I may call him dear Maurice--now you are by, papa; here are all the garden-tools; take them, and welcome.' 'Not one of them,' said Maurice, drawing back. 'Offer them to the father--offer them to Mr. Grant,' whispered Oakly; 'he'll take them, I'll answer for it.'

Mr. Oakly was mistaken: the father would not accept of the tools. Mr.

Oakly stood surprised--'Certainly,' said he to himself, 'this cannot be such a miser as I took him for'; and he walked immediately up to Grant, and bluntly said to him, 'Mr. Grant, your son has behaved very handsomely to my son, and you seem to be glad of it.' 'To be sure I am,'

said Grant. 'Which,' continued Oakly, 'gives me a better opinion of you than ever I had before--I mean, than ever I had since the day you sent me the shabby answer about those foolish, what d'ye call 'em, cursed raspberries.'