'I rather think I am.'
'It's wrong, Mr. John. Though maybe I'm making over-free to talk of what don't concern me. Yet I say it's wrong. Sons should come arter fathers, specially where there's land. We don't none of us like it;—none of us! It's worse nor going, any one of ourselves. For what's a lease? But when a man has a freehold he should stick to it for ever and aye. It's just as though the old place was a-tumbling about all our ears.' Caldigate was good-natured with the man, trying to make him understand that everything was being done for the best. And at last he bade him good-bye affectionately, shaking hands with him, and going into the farmhouse to perform the same ceremony with his wife and daughters. But to the last Ralph Holt was uncomfortable and dismal, foretelling miseries. It was clear that, to his thinking, the stability of this world was undermined and destroyed by the very contemplation of such a proceeding as this.
Caldigate pursued his walk, and in the course of it bade farewell to more than one old friend. None of them were so expressive as Holt, but he could perceive that he was regarded by all of them as a person who, by his conduct, was bringing misfortune, not only on himself, but on the whole parishes of Utterden and Netherden.
At dinner the Squire conversed upon various subjects if not easily to himself, at least with affected ease. Had he applied himself to subjects altogether indifferent,—to the state of politics, or the Game Laws, or the absurdities of a State Church, the unfitness of such matters for the occasion would have been too apparent. Both he and his son would have broken down in the attempt. But he could talk about Babington,—abusing the old family,—and even about himself, and about New South Wales, and gold, and the coming voyage, without touching points which had been, and would be, specially painful. Not a word had ever been spoken between them as to Davis. There had, of course, been letters, very angry letters; but the usurer's name had never been mentioned. Nor was there any need that it should be mentioned now. It was John's affair,—not in any way his. So he asked and listened to much about Richard Shand, and the mode of gold-finding practised among the diggings in New South Wales.
When the old butler had gone he was even more free, speaking of things that were past, not only without anger, but, as far as possible, without chagrin,—treating his son as a person altogether free from any control of his. 'I dare say it is all for the best,' he said.
'It is well at any rate to try to think so, sir,' replied John, conscience-stricken as to his own faults.
'I doubt whether there would have been anything for you to do here,—or at least anything that you would have done. You would have had too much ambition to manage this little estate under me, and not enough of industry, I fear, to carry you to the front in any of the professions. I used to think of the bar.'
'And so did I.'
'But when I found that the Babingtons had got hold of you, and that you liked horses and guns, better than words and arguments—'
'I never did, sir.'