FATHER AND SON.

Barbara was mistaken. Jasper had gone to Buckfastleigh, gone openly to his father’s house, in the belief that his father was dying. He knocked at the blotched and scaled door under the dilapidated portico, but received no answer. He tried the door. It was locked and barred. Then he went round to the back, noting how untidy the garden was, how out of repair was the house; and in the yard of the kitchen he found the deaf housekeeper. His first question, shouted into her ear, naturally was an inquiry after his father. He learned to his surprise that the old man was not ill, but was then in the factory. Thinking that his question had been misunderstood, he entered the house, went into his father’s study, then up to his bedroom, and through the dirty window-panes saw the old man leaving the mill on his way back to the house.

What, then, had Watt meant by sending him to the old home on false tidings? The boy was indeed mischievous, but this was more than common mischief. He must have sent him on a fool’s errand for some purpose of his own. That the boy wanted to hear news of his father was possible, but not probable. The only other alternative Jasper could suggest to explain Watt’s conduct was the disquieting one that he wanted to be rid of Jasper from Morwell for some purpose of his own. What could that purpose be?

Jasper’s blood coursed hot through his veins. He was angry. He was a forbearing man, ready always to find an excuse for a transgressor, but this was a transgression too malicious to be easily forgiven. Jasper determined, now that he was at home, to see his father, and then to return to the Jordans as quickly as he could. He had ridden his own horse, that horse must have a night’s rest, but to-morrow he would return.

He was thus musing when Mr. Babb came in.

‘You here!’ said the old man. ‘What has brought you to Buckfastleigh again? Want money, of course.’ Then snappishly, ‘You shan’t get it.’

‘I am come,’ said his son, ‘because I had received information that you were ill. Have you been unwell, father?’

‘I—no! I’m never ill. No such luck for you. If I were ill and helpless, you might take the management, you think. If I were dead, that would be nuts to you.’

‘My father, you wrong me. I left you because I would no longer live this wretched life, and because I hate your unforgiving temper.’

‘Unforgiving!’ sneered the old manufacturer. ‘Martin was a thief, and he deserved his fate. Is not Brutus applauded because he condemned his own son? Is not David held to be weak because he bade Joab spare Absalom?’

‘We will not squeeze old crushed apples. No juice will run from them,’ replied Jasper. ‘The thing was done, and might have been forgiven. I would not have returned now had I not been told that you were dying.’

‘Who told you that lie?’

‘Walter.’

‘He! He was ever a liar, a mocker, a blasphemer! How was he to know? I thank heaven he has not shown his jackanapes visage here since he left. I dying! I never was sounder. I am better in health and spirits since I am quit of my sons. They vexed my righteous soul every day with their ungodly deeds. So you supposed I was dying, and came here to see what meat could be picked off your father’s bones?’

Jasper remembered Watt’s sneer. It was clear whence the boy had gathered his mean views of men’s motives.

‘I’ll trouble you to return whence you came,’ said Ezekiel Babb. ‘No blessing has rested on me since I brought the strange blood into the house. Now that all of you are gone—you, Eve number one, and Eve number two, Martin and Walter—I am well. The Son of Peace has returned to this house; I can read my Bible and do my accounts in quiet, without fears of what new bit of mischief or devilry my children have been up to, without any more squeaking of fiddles and singing of profane songs all over the house. Come now!’—the old man raised his bushy brows and flashed a cunning, menacing glance at his son—’come now! if you had found me dead—in Abraham’s bosom—what would you have done? I know what Walter would have done: he would have capered up and down all over the house, fiddling like a devil, like a devil as he is.’ He looked at Jasper again, inquisitively. ‘Well, what would you have done?—fiddled too?’

‘My father, as you desire to know, I will tell you. I would at once have realised what I could, and have cleared off the debt to Mr. Jordan.’

‘Well, you may do that when the day comes,’ said the old manufacturer, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It is nothing to me what you do with the mill and the house and the land after I am’—he turned up his eyes to the dirty ceiling—’where the wicked cease from fiddling and no thieves break in and steal. I am not going to pay the money twice over. My obligation ended when the money went out of this house. I did more than I was required. I chastised my own son for taking it. What was seven years on Dartmoor? A flea-bite. Under the old law the rebellious son was stoned till he died. I suppose, now, you are hungry. Call the old crab; kick her, pinch her, till she understands, and let her give you something to eat. There are some scraps, I know, of veal-pie and cold potatoes. I think, by the way, the veal-pie is done. Don’t forget to ask a blessing before you fall-to on the cold potatoes.’ Then he rubbed his forehead and said, ‘Stay, I’ll go and rouse the old toad myself; you stay here. You are the best of my children. All the rest were a bad lot—too much of the strange blood in them.’

Whilst Mr. Babb is rousing his old housekeeper to produce some food, we will say a few words of the past history of the Babb family.

Eve the first, Mr. Babb’s wife, had led a miserable life. She did not run away from him: she remained and poured forth the fiery love of her heart upon her children, especially on her eldest, a daughter, Eve, to whom she talked of her old life—its freedom, its happiness, its attractions. She died of a broken spirit on the birth of her third son, Walter. Then Eve, the eldest, a beautiful girl, unable to endure the bad temper of her father, the depressing atmosphere of the house, and the cares of housekeeping imposed on her, ran away after a travelling band of actors.

Jasper, the eldest son, grew up to be grave and resigned. He was of use in the house, managing it as far as he was allowed, and helping his father in many ways. But the old man, who had grumbled at and insulted his wife whilst she was alive, could not keep his tongue from the subject that still rankled in his heart. This occasioned quarrels; the boy took his mother’s side, and refused to bear his father’s gibes at her memory. He was passionately attached to his next brother Martin. The mother had brought a warm, loving spirit into the family, and Jasper had inherited much of it. He stood as a screen between his brother and father, warding off from the former many a blow and angry reprimand. He did Martin’s school tasks for him; he excused his faults; he admired him for his beauty, his spirit, his bearing, his lively talk. There was no lad, in his opinion, who could equal Martin; Watt was right when he said that Jasper had contributed to his ruin by humouring him, but Jasper humoured him because he loved him, and pitied him for the uncongeniality of his home. Martin displayed a talent for music, and there was an old musician at Ashburton, the organist of the parish church, who developed and cultivated his talent, and taught him both to play and sing. Jasper had also an instinctive love of music, and he also learned the violin and surpassed his brother, who had not the patience to master the first difficulties, and who preferred to sing.

The father, perhaps, saw in Martin a recrudescence of the old proclivities of his mother; he tried hard to interfere with his visits to the musician, and only made Martin more set on his studies with him. But the most implacable, incessant state of war was that which raged between the old father and his youngest son, Walter, or Watt as his brothers called him. This boy had no reverence in him. He scouted the authority of his father and of Jasper. He scoffed at everything the old man held sacred. He absolutely refused to go to the Baptist Chapel frequented by his father, he stopped his ears and made grimaces at his brothers and the servants during family worship, and the devotions were not unfrequently concluded with a rush of the old man at his youngest son and the administration of resounding clouts on the ears.

At last a quarrel broke out between them of so fierce a nature that Watt was expelled the house. Then Martin left to follow Watt, who had joined a travelling dramatic company. After a year, however, Martin returned, very thin and woe-begone, and tried to accommodate himself to home-life once more. But it was not possible; he had tasted of the sort of life that suited him—one rambling, desultory, artistic. He robbed his father’s bureau and ran away.

Then it was that he was taken, and in the same week sent to the assizes, and condemned to seven years’ penal labour in the convict establishment at Prince’s Town. Thence he had escaped, assisted by Jasper and Watt, whilst the former was on his way to Morwell with the remnant of the money recovered from Martin.

The rest is known to the reader.

Whilst Jasper ate the mean meal provided for him, his father watched him.

‘So,’ said the old man, and the twinkle was in his cunning eyes, ‘so you have hired yourself to Mr. Ignatius Jordan at Morwell as his steward?’

‘Yes, father. I remain there as pledge to him that he shall be repaid, and I am doing there all I can to put the estate into good order. It has been shockingly neglected.’

‘Who for?’ asked Mr. Babb.

‘I do not understand.’

‘For whom are you thus working?’

‘For Mr. Jordan, as you said!’

The manufacturer chuckled.

‘Jasper,’ said he, ‘some men look on a pool and see nothing but water. I put my head in, open my eyes, and see what is at the bottom. That girl did not come here for nothing. I put my head under water and opened my eyes.’

‘Well?’ said Jasper, with an effort controlling his irritation.

‘Well! I saw it all under the surface. I saw you. She came here because she was curious to see the factory and the house, and to know if all was as good as you had bragged about. I gave her a curt dismissal; I do not want a daughter-in-law thrusting her feet into my shoes till I cast them off for ever.’

Jasper started to his feet and upset his chair. He was very angry. ‘You utterly wrong her,’ he said. ‘You open your eyes in mud, and see only dirt. Miss Jordan came here out of kindness towards me, whom she dislikes and despises in her heart.’

Mr. Babb chuckled.

‘Well, I won’t say that you have not acted wisely. Morwell will go to that girl, and it is a pretty property.’

‘I beg your pardon, you are wrong. It is left to the second—Eve.’

‘So, so! It goes to Eve! That is why the elder girl came here, to see if she could fit herself into Owlacombe.’

Jasper’s face burnt, and the muscles of his head and neck quivered, but he said nothing. He dared not trust himself to speak. He had all his life practised self-control, but he never needed it more than at this moment.

‘I see it all,’ pursued the old man, his crafty face contracting with a grin; ‘Mr. Jordan thought to provide for both his daughters. Buckfast mill and Owlacombe for the elder, Morwell for the younger—ha, ha! The elder to take you so as to get this pretty place. And she came to look at it and see if it suited her. Well! It is a pretty place—only,’ he giggled, ‘it ain’t vacant and to be had just yet.’

Jasper took his hat; his face was red as blood, and his dark eyes flashed.

‘Don’t go,’ said the old manufacturer; ‘you did not see their little trap and walked into it, eh? One word of warning I must give you. Don’t run after the younger; Eve is your niece.’

‘Father!’

‘Ah! that surprises you, does it? It is true. Eve’s mother was your sister. Did Mr. Jordan never tell you that?’

‘Never!’

‘It is true. Sit down again to the cold potatoes. You shall know all, but first ask a blessing.’