Christmas Classics: Charles Dickens Collection (With Original Illustrations). Charles Dickens
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with a man, a friend as I may say, who is really a first-rate fellow, knowing everybody, from the Lord Chancellor downwards; and he has offered me a share in his business—a partnership in short.” He hesitated a little.
“I’m sure that’s uncommon kind of the gentleman, said Nathan. “I should like for to thank him mysen; for it’s not many as would pick up a young chap out o’ th’ dirt as it were, and say, Here’s hauf my good fortune for you, sir, and your very good health. Most on ’em, when they’re gettin’ a bit o’ luck, run off wi’ it to keep it a’ to themselves, and gobble it down in a corner. What may be his name, for I should like for to know it?”
“You don’t quite apprehend me, father. A great deal of what you’ve said is true to the letter. People don’t like to share their good luck, as you say.”
“The more credit to them as does,” broke in Nathan.
“Ay, but you see even such a fine fellow as my friend Cavendish does not like to give away half his good practice for nothing. He expects an equivalent.”
“An equivalent,” said Nathan: his voice had dropped down an octave. “And what may that be? There’s always some meaning in grand words, I take it, though I’m not book-larned enough to find it out.”
“Why, in this case the equivalent he demands for taking me into partnership, and afterwards relinquishing the whole business to me, is three hundred pounds down.”
Benjamin looked sideways from under his eyes to see how his father took the proposition. His father struck his stick deep down in the ground, and leaning one hand upon it, faced round at him.
“Then thy fine friend may go and be hanged. Three hunder pound! I’ll be darned an’ danged too, if I know where to get ’em, e’en if I’d be making a fool o’ thee an’ mysen too.”
He was out of breath by this time. His son took his father’s first words in dogged silence; it was but the burst of surprise he had led himself to expect, and did not daunt him for long.
“I should think, sir—”
“‘Sir’—whatten for dost thou ‘sir’ me? Is them’s your manners? I’m plain Nathan Huntroyd; who never took on to be a gentleman; but I have paid my way up to this time, which I shannot do much longer, if I’m to have a son coming an’ asking me for threehunder pounds, just as if I were a cow, and had nothing to do but let down my milk to the first person as strokes me.”
“Well, father,” said Benjamin, with an affectation of frankness, “then there’s nothing for me but to do as I have often planned before; go and emigrate.”
“And what?” said his father, looking sharply and steadily at him.
“Emigrate. Go to America, or India, or some colony where there would be an opening for a young man of spirit.”
Benjamin had reserved this proposition for his trump card, expecting by means of it to carry all before him. But to his surprise his father plucked his stick out of the hole he had made when he so vehemently thrust it into the ground, and walked on four or five steps in advance; there he stood still again, and there was a dead silence for a few minutes.
“It ‘ud, mebby, be th’ best thing thou couldst do,” the father began. Benjamin set his teeth hard to keep in curses. It was well for poor Nathan he did not look round then, and see the look his son gave him. “But it would come hard like upon us, upon Hester and me, for, whether thou’rt a good ’un or not, thou’rt our flesh and blood, our only bairn, and if thou’rt not all as a man could wish it’s mebby been the fault on our pride i’ thee. It ‘ud kill the missus if he went off to Amerikay, and: too, the lass as thinks so much on him.” The speech originally addressed to his son, had wandered off into a monologue as keenly listened to by Benjamin, however, as if it had all been spoken to him. After a pause of consideration his father turned round. “Yon man—I wunnot call him a friend o’ yourn, to think of asking you for such a mint o’ money is not th’ only one, I’ll be bound, as could give ye a start i’ th’ law? Other folks ‘ud, mebby, do it for less?”
“Not one of ’em; to give me equal advantages,” said Benjamin, thinking he perceived signs of relenting.
“Well, then, thou mayst tell him that it’s neither he nor thee as ’ll see th’ sight o’ three hunder pound o’ my money. I’ll not deny as I’ve a bit laid up again a rainy day; it’s not so much as thatten though, and a part on it is for Bessy, as has been like a daughter to us.”
“But Bessy is to be your real daughter some day, when I’ve a home to take her to,” said Benjamin; for he played very fast and loose, even in his own mind, with his engagement with Bessy. Present with her, when she was looking her brightest and best, he behaved to her as if they were engaged lovers: absent from her, he looked upon her rather as a good wedge, to be driven into his parent’s favour on his behalf. Now, however, he was not exactly untrue in speaking as if he meant to make her his wife; for the thought was in his mind, though he made use of it to work upon his father.
“It will be a dree day for us, then,” said the old man. “But God ’ll have us in his keeping, and ’ll mebby be taking more care on us i’ heaven by that time than Bess, good lass as she is, has had on us at Nab-end. Her heart is set on thee, too. But, lad, I hanna gotten the three hunder; I keeps my cash i’ th’ stocking, thou knowst, till it reaches fifty pound, and then I takes it to Ripon Bank. Now the last scratch they’re gi’en me, made it just two hunder, and I hanna but on to fifteen pound yet i’ the stockin’, and I meant one hunder an’ the red cow’s calf to be for Bess, she’s ta’en such pleasure like i’ rearing it.”
Benjamin gave a sharp glance at his father to see if he was telling the truth; and, that a suspicion of the old man, his father, had entered into the son’s head, tells enough of his own character.
“I canna do it—I canna do it, for sure although I shall like to think as I had helped on the wedding. There’s the black heifer to be sold yet, and she’ll fetch a matter of ten pound; but a deal on’t will be needed for seed-corn, for the arable did but bad last year, and I thought I would try—I’ll tell thee what, lad! I’ll make it as though Bess lent thee her hunder, only thou must give her a writ of hand for it, and thou shalt have a’ the money i’ Ripon Bank, and see if the lawyer wunnot let thee have a share of what he offered thee for three hunder, for two. I dunnot mean for to wrong him, but thou must get a fair share for the money. At times I think thou’rt done by folk; now, I wadna have you cheat a bairn of a brass farthing: same time I wadna have thee so soft as to be cheated.”
To explain this, it should be told that some of the bills which Benjamin had received money from his father to pay, had been altered so as to include other and less creditable expenses which the young man had incurred; and the simple old farmer, who had still much faith left in him for his boy, was acute enough to perceive that he had paid above the usual price for the articles he had purchased.
After some hesitation, Benjamin agreed to receive this two hundred, and promised to employ it to the best advantage in setting himself up in business. He had, nevertheless, a strange hankering after the additional fifteen pounds that was left to accumulate in the stocking. It was his, he thought, as heir to his father, and he soon lost some of his usual complaisance for Bessy that evening, as he dwelt on the idea that there was money being laid by for her, and grudged it to her even in imagination. He thought more of this fifteen pound that he was not to have, than of all the hardly-earned and humbly-saved two hundred that he was to come into possession of. Meanwhile Nathan was in unusual spirits that evening. He was so generous and affectionate at heart that he had an unconscious satisfaction in having helped two people on the road to happiness by the sacrifice of the greater part of his property. The very fact of having trusted his son so largely, seemed to make Benjamin more worthy of trust in his father’s estimation. The sole idea he tried to banish was, that, if all came to pass as he hoped, both Benjamin and Bessy would be settled far away from Nab-end; but then he had a child-like reliance that “God would take care of him and his missus, somehow or anodder. It wur o’ no use looking too far ahead.”
Bessy