But after long months of a very wretched life it was stiff work to keep his feelings well within bounds.
Chapter Seven
“Now, Tom, cloak-room; come along. I’ve got some tackle to take down with us. Only ten minutes before we start. Here, porter, luggage – quick!”
A man came forward with a barrow, and after taking the luggage from the cab, followed to the cloak-room, from whence sundry heavy, peculiar-looking packages and a box were handed out and trundled to the train; and in a few minutes, with his heart beating wildly, and a feeling of excitement making him long to jump up and shout aloud, Tom sat there watching the houses and trees seem to glide more and more swiftly past the windows as the speed increased. For to him it was like being suddenly freed from prison; and instead of the black cloud which had been hanging before his eyes – the blank curtain of the future which he had vainly tried to penetrate – he was now gazing mentally ahead along a vista full of bright sunshine and joy.
There were two other passengers in the carriage, who, like his uncle, were soon absorbed in their papers, and not a word was spoken until these two got out at the first stopping-place, twenty miles from town; and as soon as the porter had given the door that tremendous unnecessary bang so popular with his fraternity, and the train was speeding on again, Uncle Richard threw down his paper with a loud “Hah!” and turned to his nephew.
“Well, Tom,” he said, “I don’t know what I am to do with you now I have got you. You don’t want to go on with the law?”
“Oh no, sir, I am too stupid,” said Tom quickly.
“Why do you say ‘sir,’ my boy? Will not uncle do for your mother’s brother?”
“Uncle James told me always to say ‘sir,’ sir – uncle I mean.”
“Ah, but I’m not your Uncle James, and I like the old-fashioned way. Well, as you are too stupid for the law, I suppose I must try you with something easier – say mathematics.”
Tom looked at him aghast.
“A nice pleasant subject, full of calculations. But we shall see. I suppose you will not mind helping me?”
“I shall be glad to, uncle.”
“That’s right; but you don’t know yet what I want you to do. You will have to take your coat off sometimes, work hard, put on an apron, and often get dirty.”
“Gardening, uncle? Oh, I shall like that.”
“Yes; gardening sometimes, but in other ways too. I do a deal of tinkering now and then.” Tom stared.
“Yes, I mean it: with tin and solder, and then I try brass and turning. I have a regular workshop, you know, with a small forge and anvil. Can you blow bellows?”
Tom stared a little harder as he gazed in the clear grey eyes and the calm unruffled countenance, in which there was not the dawn of a smile.
“I never tried,” said Tom, “but I feel sure I could.”
“And I feel sure you cannot without learning; some of the easiest-looking things are the hardest, you know. Of course any one can blow forge bellows after a fashion, but it requires some pains to manage the blast aright, and not send the small coal and sparks flying over the place, while the iron is being burned up.”
“Iron burned up?” said Tom.
“To be sure. If I put a piece in the forge, I could manage the supply of oxygen so as to bring it from a cherry heat right up to a white, while possibly at your first trial you would burn a good deal of the iron away.”
“I did not know that,” said Sam.
“And I suppose there are a few other little things you do not know, my boy. There’s a deal to learn, Tom, and the worst or best of it is, that the more you find out the more you realise that there is no end to discovery. But so much for the blacksmith’s work.”
“But you are not a blacksmith, uncle.”
“Oh yes, I am, Tom, and a carpenter too. A bad workman I know, but I manage what I want. Then there is my new business too at the mill.”
“Steam mill, uncle?”
“Oh no, nor yet water. It’s a regular old-fashioned flour-mill with five sails. How shall you like that business?”
Tom looked harder at his uncle.
“Well, boy, do I seem a little queer? People down at Furzebrough say I am.”
“No, sir,” said Tom, colouring; “but all this does sound a little strange. Do you really mean that you have a windmill?”
“Yes, Tom, now. My very own, my boy. It was about that I came up yesterday – to pay the rest of the purchase-money, and get the deeds. Now we can set to work and do what we like.”
Tom tried hard, but he could not help looking wonderingly at his uncle, of whom he had previously hardly seen anything. He knew that he had been in India till about a year before, and that his mother had once spoken of him as being eccentric. Now it appeared that he was to learn what this eccentricity meant.
“Did you learn any chemistry when you were at school, Tom?” said his uncle, after a pause.
“Very little, uncle. There were some lectures and experiments.”
“All useful, boy. You know something about physics, of course?”
“Physics, uncle?” faltered Tom, as he began to think what an empty-headed fellow he was.
“Yes, physics; not physic – salts and senna, rhubarb and magnesia, and that sort of thing; but natural science, heat and light, and the wonders of optics.”
Tom shook his head.
“Very little, uncle.”
“Ah, well, you’ll soon pick them up if you are interested, and not quite such a fool as your uncle made out. Do you know, Tom, that windmill has made me think that I never could have been a lawyer.”
Tom was silent. Things seemed to be getting worse.
“Four times have I had to come up to town and see my lawyer, who had to see the seller’s lawyer over and over again – the vendor I ought to have said. Now I suppose you wouldn’t have thought that I was a vendee, would you?”
“Oh yes, I know that,” said Sam. “You would be if you bought an estate.”
“Come, then, you do know something, my lad. But it has been a tiresome business, with its investigation of titles and rights of usance, and court copyhold fines, and – Bother the business, it has taken up no end of time. But there, it’s all over, and you and I can go and make the dust fly and set the millstones spinning as much as we like. Thumpers they are, Tom, three feet in diameter. I wish to goodness they had been discs of glass instead of stone.”
“Do you, uncle?” said Tom, for his companion was evidently waiting for an answer.
“Yes; we could have tried some fine experiments with them, whereas they will be useless and unsalable I expect.”
To Tom’s great relief the conversation reverted to his life at Gray’s Inn and Mornington Crescent, for the impression would keep growing upon him that what people said about his uncle’s queerness might have some basis. But this opinion was soon shaken as they went on, for he was questioned very shrewdly about his cousin and all that had passed between them, till all at once his companion held out his hand.
“Shake hands, Tom, my boy. We are just entering Furzebrough parish, and I want to say this: – You came to me with an execrable character – ”
“Yes, uncle; I’m very sorry.”
“Then I’m not, my lad. For look here: I have been questioning you for the last hour, and I have observed one thing – in all your statements about your cousin, who is an abominably ill-behaved young whelp, you have never once spoken ill-naturedly about