As Mr. Neuchamp uttered the concluding words of this vindication of his faith with a kindling eye and slightly raised tone, he held his head erect and looked with a fixed and rather stern regard at Mr. Levison, as if defying all the Paynim hosts of selfishness and monopoly.
Mr. Levison met his gaze with a moment’s searching glance, and then, with a relapse into his ordinary expression of judicial calculation, thus answered—
‘I ain’t going to say that you are acting altogether wrong in trying to right things in a general way in life. There’s more than you has noticed a lot of wrong turns and breakdowns for want of a finger-post or two. And I like to see a man back his opinion right through, whether it’s right or wrong. But if you lose your team, and break your pole, and spoil your loading when you’re on a long overland trip, how are you to help your mates or any other chap that’s bogged when they want you to double-bank? That’s what I look at. You’ve got to stand and look on, just like a broke loafer or a coach passenger. What I say, and what I stick to, is that a man should make sure, and double sure, of his own footing, and then he can wire in and haul out any man, woman, or child as he takes a fancy to put on firm ground. But, if you go too fast, and your agent drops you, and you want to help a fellow, why, you’re bust, and he’s bust, and what can either of ye do but sit on your stern fixings and look at each other?’
Mr. Levison’s illustrations were homely, but they had a force and application which Ernest fully recognised.
‘You have the truth on your side,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I see it now—very plainly, too. I wonder why I could not see it before.’
‘There’s a deal of studying required, it seems to me,’ propounded his eccentric mentor, ‘and a deal of experience, and knocking about, and loss of time and money, too, before a man comes to see the right thing at the right time. That’s where the hardship all lies. If the thing’s right and the time’s wrong, that’s no good. And the right time and the wrong thing is worse again. What you’ve been a-doin’ of ain’t so much wrong in itself—only the time’s wrong, that’s where your mistake is,—except things take a great start soon; and I don’t say they won’t, mind you.‘
Here Mr. Levison looked at Ernest with an expression half humorous, half prophetic, so extremely unusual that the latter began to wonder whether there was any case on record of half a dozen cups of tea having produced temporary insanity. But the unaccustomed gleam departed suddenly from the dark, steadfast gray eyes, and the countenance resumed its wonted cast of calm investigation and unalterable decision.
‘Does old Frankston ever give you a dressing down in the advice line?’ inquired Mr. Levison, without continuing the development of the idea he had last started. ‘Because if he does, you’d have a bad time of it between us. But I’ve done all the preaching part of the story for this time, and I’m a-going on to the second chapter. Do you know the friend’s name as I bought these Freeman chaps out for?’
‘No,’ said Ernest. ‘I shall be happy to afford him all the assistance I can—that is, if I’m here, you know,’ he added, with sudden reflection.
‘That’s all right; but he’s a youngish chap, and easy had. Will you promise to advise him to live economically, mind his business till times improve, and not waste his money, above all things? Tell him I said so.’