“You shall hear from me.” (Aside, as Levy strolled away)—“D—-d tarnation rascal!”
Dick Avenel then linked his arm in his nephew’s, and strove for some minutes to forget his own troubles, in the indulgence of that curiosity in the affairs of another, which was natural to him, and in this instance increased by the real affection which he had felt for Leonard. But still his curiosity remained unsatisfied; for long before Leonard could overcome his habitual reluctance to speak of his success in literature, Dick’s mind wandered back to his rival at Screwstown, and the curse of “over-competition,”—to the bills which Levy had discounted, in order to enable Dick to meet the crushing force of a capitalist larger than himself, and the “tarnation rascal” who now wished to obtain two seats at Lansmere, one for Randal Leslie, one for a rich Nabob whom Levy had just caught as a client, and Dick, though willing to aid Leslie, had a mind to the other seat for himself. Therefore Dick soon broke in upon the hesitating confessions of Leonard, with exclamations far from pertinent to the subject, and rather for the sake of venting his own griefs and resentment than with any idea that the sympathy or advice of his nephew could serve him.
“Well, well,” said Dick, “another time for your history. I see you have thrived, and that is enough for the present. Very odd; but just now I can only think of myself. I’m in a regular fix, sir. Screwstown is not the respectable Screwstown that you remember it—all demoralized and turned topsy-turvy by a demoniacal monster capitalist, with steam-engines that might bring the falls of Niagara into your back parlour, sir! And as if that was not enough to destroy and drive into almighty shivers a decent fair-play Britisher like myself, I hear he is just in treaty for some patent infernal invention that will make his engines do twice as much work with half as many hands! That’s the way those unfeeling ruffians increase our poor-rates! But I ‘ll get up a riot against him, I will! Don’t talk to me of the law! What the devil is the good of the law if it don’t protect a man’s industry,—a liberal man, too, like me!” Here Dick burst into a storm of vituperation against the rotten old country in general, and Mr. Dyce, the monster capitalist of Screwstown, in particular.
Leonard started; for Dick now named, in that monster capitalist, the very person who was in treaty for Leonard’s own mechanical improvement on the steam-engine.
“Stop, uncle, stop! Why, then, if this man were to buy the contrivance you speak of, it would injure you?”
“Injure me, sir! I should be a bankrupt,—that is, if it succeeded; but I dare say it is all a humbug.”
“No, it will succeed,—I ‘ll answer for that!”
“You! You have seen it?”
“Why, I invented it!”
Dick hastily withdrew his arm from Leonard’s.