CHAPTER VI:  FURTHER CONVERSATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON—­THE PROFESSORS’ HOARD

It is one thing to desire a conversation to be changed, and another to change it.  After some little silence my father said, “And may I ask what name your mother gave you?”

“My name,” he answered, laughing, “is George, and I wish it were some other, for it is the first name of that arch-impostor Higgs.  I hate it as I hate the man who owned it.”

My father said nothing, but he hid his face in his hands.

“Sir,” said the other, “I fear you are in some distress.”

“You remind me,” replied my father, “of a son who was stolen from me when he was a child.  I searched for him, during many years, and at last fell in with him by accident, to find him all the heart of father could wish.  But alas! he did not take kindly to me as I to him, and after two days he left me; nor shall I ever again see him.”

“Then, sir, had I not better leave you?”

“No, stay with me till your road takes you elsewhere; for though I cannot see my son, you are so like him that I could almost fancy he is with me.  And now—­for I shall show no more weakness—­you say your mother knew the Sunchild, as I am used to call him.  Tell me what kind of a man she found him.”

“She liked him well enough in spite of his being a little silly.  She does not believe he ever called himself child of the sun.  He used to say he had a father in heaven to whom he prayed, and who could hear him; but he said that all of us, my mother as much as he, have this unseen father.  My mother does not believe he meant doing us any harm, but only that he wanted to get himself and Mrs. Nosnibor’s younger daughter out of the country.  As for there having been anything supernatural about the balloon, she will have none of it; she says that it was some machine which he knew how to make, but which we have lost the art of making, as we have of many another.

“This is what she says amongst ourselves, but in public she confirms all that the Musical Bank Managers say about him.  She is afraid of them.  You know, perhaps, that Professor Hanky, whose name I see on your permit, tried to burn her alive?”

“Thank heaven!” thought my father, “that I am Panky;” but aloud he said, “Oh, horrible! horrible!  I cannot believe this even of Hanky.”

“He denies it, and we say we believe him; he was most kind and attentive to my mother during all the rest of her stay in Bridgeford.  He and she parted excellent friends, but I know what she thinks.  I shall be sure to see him while he is in Sunch’ston, I shall have to be civil to him but it makes me sick to think of it.”

“When shall you see him?” said my father, who was alarmed at learning that Hanky and the Ranger were likely to meet.  Who could tell but that he might see Panky too?

“I have been away from home a fortnight, and shall not be back till late on Saturday night.  I do not suppose I shall see him before Sunday.”

“That will do,” thought my father, who at that moment deemed that nothing would matter to him much when Sunday was over.  Then, turning to the Ranger, he said, “I gather, then, that your mother does not think so badly of the Sunchild after all?”

“She laughs at him sometimes, but if any of us boys and girls say a word against him we get snapped up directly.  My mother turns every one round her finger.  Her word is law in Sunch’ston; every one obeys her; she has faced more than one mob, and quelled them when my father could not do so.”

“I can believe all you say of her.  What other children has she besides yourself?”

“We are four sons, of whom the youngest is now fourteen, and three daughters.”

“May all health and happiness attend her and you, and all of you, henceforth and for ever,” and my father involuntarily bared his head as he spoke.

“Sir,” said the youth, impressed by the fervency of my father’s manner, “I thank you, but you do not talk as Bridgeford Professors generally do, so far as I have seen or heard them.  Why do you wish us all well so very heartily?  Is it because you think I am like your son, or is there some other reason?”

“It is not my son alone that you resemble,” said my father tremulously, for he knew he was going too far.  He carried it off by adding, “You resemble all who love truth and hate lies, as I do.”

“Then, sir,” said the youth gravely, “you much belie your reputation.  And now I must leave you for another part of the preserves, where I think it likely that last night’s poachers may now be, and where I shall pass the night in watching for them.  You may want your permit for a few miles further, so I will not take it.  Neither need you give it up at Sunch’ston.  It is dated, and will be useless after this evening.”

With this he strode off into the forest, bowing politely but somewhat coldly, and without encouraging my father’s half proffered hand.

My father turned sad and unsatisfied away.

“It serves me right,” he said to himself; “he ought never to have been my son; and yet, if such men can be brought by hook or by crook into the world, surely the world should not ask questions about the bringing.  How cheerless everything looks now that he has left me.”

* * * * *

By this time it was three o’clock, and in another few minutes my father came upon the ashes of the fire beside which he and the Professors had supped on the preceding evening.  It was only some eighteen hours since they had come upon him, and yet what an age it seemed!  It was well the Ranger had left him, for though my father, of course, would have known nothing about either fire or poachers, it might have led to further falsehood, and by this time he had become exhausted—­not to say, for the time being, sick of lies altogether.

He trudged slowly on, without meeting a soul, until he came upon some stones that evidently marked the limits of the preserves.  When he had got a mile or so beyond these, he struck a narrow and not much frequented path, which he was sure would lead him towards Sunch’ston, and soon afterwards, seeing a huge old chestnut tree some thirty or forty yards from the path itself, he made towards it and flung himself on the ground beneath its branches.  There were abundant signs that he was nearing farm lands and homesteads, but there was no one about, and if any one saw him there was nothing in his appearance to arouse suspicion.

He determined, therefore, to rest here till hunger should wake him, and drive him into Sunch’ston, which, however, he did not wish to reach till dusk if he could help it.  He meant to buy a valise and a few toilette necessaries before the shops should close, and then engage a bedroom at the least frequented inn he could find that looked fairly clean and comfortable.

He slept till nearly six, and on waking gathered his thoughts together.  He could not shake his newly found son from out of them, but there was no good in dwelling upon him now, and he turned his thoughts to the Professors.  How, he wondered, were they getting on, and what had they done with the things they had bought from him?

“How delightful it would be,” he said to himself, “if I could find where they have hidden their hoard, and hide it somewhere else.”

He tried to project his mind into those of the Professors, as though they were a team of straying bullocks whose probable action he must determine before he set out to look for them.

On reflection, he concluded that the hidden property was not likely to be far from the spot on which he now was.  The Professors would wait till they had got some way down towards Sunch’ston, so as to have readier access to their property when they wanted to remove it; but when they came upon a path and other signs that inhabited dwellings could not be far distant, they would begin to look out for a hiding-place.  And they would take pretty well the first that came.  “Why, bless my heart,” he exclaimed, “this tree is hollow; I wonder whether—­” and on looking up he saw an innocent little strip of the very tough fibrous leaf commonly used while green as string, or even rope, by the Erewhonians.  The plant that makes this leaf is so like the ubiquitous New Zealand Phormium tenax, or flax, as it is there called, that I shall speak of it as flax in future, as indeed I have already done without explanation on an earlier page; for this plant grows on both sides of the great range.  The piece of flax, then, which my father caught sight of was fastened, at no great height from the ground, round the branch of a strong sucker that had grown from the roots of the chestnut tree, and going thence for a couple of feet or so towards the place where the parent tree became hollow, it disappeared into the cavity below.  My father had little difficulty in swarming the sucker till he reached the bough on to which the flax was tied, and soon found himself hauling up something from the bottom of the tree.  In less time than it takes to tell the tale he saw his own familiar red blanket begin to show above the broken edge of the hollow, and in another second there was a clinkum-clankum as the bundle fell upon the ground.  This was caused by the billy and the pannikin, which were wrapped inside the blanket.  As for the blanket, it had been tied tightly at both ends, as well as at several points between, and my father inwardly complimented the Professors on the neatness with which they had packed and hidden their purchase.  “But,” he said to himself with a laugh, “I think one of them must have got on the other’s back to reach that bough.”

“Of course,” thought he, “they will have taken the nuggets with them.”  And yet he had seemed to hear a dumping as well as a clinkum-clankum.  He undid the blanket, carefully untying every knot and keeping the flax.  When he had unrolled it, he found to his very pleasurable surprise that the pannikin was inside the billy, and the nuggets with the receipt inside the pannikin.  The paper containing the tea having been torn, was wrapped up in a handkerchief marked with Hanky’s name.

“Down, conscience, down!” he exclaimed as he transferred the nuggets, receipt, and handkerchief to his own pocket.  “Eye of my soul that you are! if you offend me I must pluck you out.”  His conscience feared him and said nothing.  As for the tea, he left it in its torn paper.

He then put the billy, pannikin, and tea, back again inside the blanket, which he tied neatly up, tie for tie with the Professor’s own flax, leaving no sign of any disturbance.  He again swarmed the sucker, till he reached the bough to which the blanket and its contents had been made fast, and having attached the bundle, he dropped it back into the hollow of the tree.  He did everything quite leisurely, for the Professors would be sure to wait till nightfall before coming to fetch their property away.

“If I take nothing but the nuggets,” he argued, “each of the Professors will suspect the other of having conjured them into his own pocket while the bundle was being made up.  As for the handkerchief, they must think what they like; but it will puzzle Hanky to know why Panky should have been so anxious for a receipt, if he meant stealing the nuggets.  Let them muddle it out their own way.”

Reflecting further, he concluded, perhaps rightly, that they had left the nuggets where he had found them, because neither could trust the other not to filch a few, if he had them in his own possession, and they could not make a nice division without a pair of scales.  “At any rate,” he said to himself, “there will be a pretty quarrel when they find them gone.”

Thus charitably did he brood over things that were not to happen.  The discovery of the Professors’ hoard had refreshed him almost as much as his sleep had done, and it being now past seven, he lit his pipe—­which, however, he smoked as furtively as he had done when he was a boy at school, for he knew not whether smoking had yet become an Erewhonian virtue or no—­and walked briskly on towards Sunch’ston.