“Not always,” replied Jack knocking him down. “Take that for your insolence, pack up your traps, and walk out of the house to-morrow morning.”
Mesty in the meantime, had seized the other by the throat.
“What I do with this fellow, Massa Easy?”
“Leave him now, Mesty; we’ll settle their account to-morrow morning. I presume I shall find my father in the library.”
“His father!” said one of the men to the other; “he’s not exactly a chip of the old block.”
“We shall have a change, I expect,” replied the other, as they walked away.
“Mesty,” cried Jack, in an authoritative tone, “bring those two rascals back to take the luggage out of the chaise; pay the postilion, and tell the housekeeper to show you my room and yours. Come to me for orders as soon as you have done this.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Mesty. “Now come here, you damn blackguard, and take tings out of chaise, or by de holy poker I choke your luff, both of you.”
The filed teeth, the savage look, and determination of Mesty, had the due effect. The men sullenly returned and unloaded the chaise. In the meantime, Jack walked into his father’s study; his father was there—the study was lighted up with argand lamps, and Jack looked with astonishment. Mr Easy was busy with a plaster cast of a human head, which he pored over, so that he did not perceive the entrance of his son. The cast of the skull was divided into many compartments, with writing on each; but what most astonished our hero was the alteration in the apartment. The book-cases and books had all been removed, and in the centre, suspended from the ceiling, was an apparatus which would have puzzled any one, composed of rods in every direction, with screws at the end of them, and also tubes in equal number, one of which communicated with a large air-pump, which stood on a table. Jack took a short survey, and then walked up to his father and accosted him.
“What!” exclaimed Mr Easy, “is it possible?—yes, it is my son John! I’m glad to see you, John—very glad indeed,” continued the old gentleman, shaking him by both hands—“very glad that you have come home: I wanted you—wanted your assistance in my great and glorious project, which, I thank Heaven, is now advancing rapidly. Very soon shall equality and the rights of man be proclaimed everywhere. The pressure from without is enormous, and the bulwarks of our ridiculous and tyrannical constitution must give way. King, lords, and aristocrats; landholders, tithe-collectors, church and state, thank God, will soon be overthrown, and the golden age revived—the millennium, the true millennium—not what your poor mother talked about. I am at the head of twenty-nine societies, and if my health lasts, you will see what I will accomplish now that I have your assistance, Jack;” and Mr Easy’s eyes sparkled and flashed in all the brilliancy of incipient insanity.