I saw that all reason was in vain. Lord Melladew had got hold of my good father, and tip-top prices upon West-end counters had been quoted for orchard average. It was useless to say another word. But who ever ceased on that account?
"If the wheat crop is precarious, I should like to know what the fruit crop is. Two years in three give a fair crop of grain; scarcely one in three of fruit. If we turned every field into a broom of trees, would even the present low prices hold, in the years when there was anything on them? The fruit might roll on the ground and rot, whenever the season was plentiful. Englishmen cannot live on apples; and jam is only fit for children. But do as you like, sir. Do as you like."
"George, I am guided too much sometimes by the way in which you look at things. You have formed very strong opinions, and there may be something in them. Nothing is more wonderful to me than the difference in character betwixt you and Harold. Harold looks at a thing all round, and is never quite sure about it. But you make up your mind without looking at all, and I defy anybody to move you."
"I have made up my mind, sir, about another matter, which I came to put before you. And though I am not to be moved from it, I do hope that you will take my view. But is Bandilow to have his way?"
"Certainly," my father answered with a pleasant smile, for he had formed the most erroneous opinions about me; "is no one to have his way, but my son George? It is only fair to let a tenant crop his land as he thinks best, unless he injures it permanently; and especially such a man as Bandilow, who has stuck to us, when all the others dropped off. And there is another reason. Many of the newspapers, loving, as some of them seem to do, to stir up ill-will among Englishmen, keep on declaring that the landlords form the chief obstacle to the improvement of land. The thing is absurd. You might just as well say that if you borrow a hundred pounds of me, I must long for your bankruptcy, lest you should repay me. What landlord would not be delighted if his tenant could make £50 an acre, as these people say? I only wish this fruit-craze could last."
"Father, you are right. What a blessing it would be, if they could only fetch it round! Let us hope for the best, as they do. And now for the other question, all about myself; and I hope you will take the same liberal views. But it is a long story. Have your easy chair, and your little glass of mead that stops the cough. Well, Harold did some good in recommending that. You never get the cough as you used to have it."
"Harold is a very clever fellow," my father said, after a sip or two; "if that boy would only stick to something—or if I could make a blend of you two—well, well, we can't have everything."
"That is a righteous law for us; but it ought not to apply to you, sir, whose wishes are so moderate. For instance, I want a thing that I shall never get. May I call Mother in, to hear what it is?"
In this there was wisdom, gracious wisdom, such as we are inspired with sometimes, however foolish we may generally be. For whatever opinion my father might form, he would have my mother looking at him, and then she would be sure to give a glance at me, and the experience of years would be belied unless she gave utterance to a conclusion not directly counter, but sub-contrary, hypenantious—if such a word is pardonable—to the view which her husband had ventured to form without waiting for her suggestion. For they had grown so much alike, that both of them doubted about the joint-stock wisdom; as we all despise home-produce.
Seeing myself in the right way thus, while indulging in all due deference, I did my very best to let them know that I had striven after things above me. My father was ready to concede that point; but my mother could not conceive it; and was eager to branch out into a long discourse, about all the great people akin to us in body, but in mind not as yet awake to it. My father joined me in abbreviating that—though at such a time it was hard measure—but he heard the old Grandfather Clock strike one; and if mother got wound up on that chain, the hour-hand might go round the dial before he got any luncheon! Therefore he spoke decisively.