“I don’t think he’ll take less than ten,” said Honyman, “because his share is really worth as much as that.”
This was very provoking; and who can wonder that Tappitt was not pleasant company in his own house?
On the day after Mrs. Ray’s visit to Exeter, Tappitt, as was now his almost daily practice, made his way into Mr. Honyman’s little back room, and sat there with his hat on, discussing his affairs.
“I find that Mr. Rowan has bought those cottages of the widow Ray’s,” said Honyman.
“Nonsense!” shouted Tappitt, as though such a purchase on Rowan’s part was a new injury done to himself.
“Oh, but he has,” said Honyman. “There’s not a doubt in life about it. If he does mean to build a new brewery, it wouldn’t be a bad place. You see it’s out of the thoroughfare of the town, and yet, as one may say, within a stone’s throw of the High Street.”
I will not repeat Mr. Tappitt’s exclamation as he listened to these suggestions of his lawyer, but it was of a nature to show that he had not heard the news with indifference.
“You see he’s such a fellow that you don’t know where to have him,” continued Honyman. “It’s not only that he don’t mind ruining you, but he don’t mind ruining himself either.”
“I don’t believe he’s got anything to lose.”
“Ah! that’s where you’re wrong. He has paid ready money for this bit of land to begin with, or Goodall would never have let him have it. Goodall knows what he’s about as well as any man.”
“And do you mean to tell me that he’s going to put up buildings there at once?” And Tappitt’s face as he asked the question would have softened the heart of any ordinary lawyer. But Honyman was one whom nothing could harden and nothing soften.
“I don’t know what he’s going to put up, Mr. Tappitt, and I don’t know when. But I know this well enough; that when a man buys little bits of property about a place it shows that he means to do something there.”
“If he had twenty thousand pounds, he’d lose it all.”
“That’s very likely; but the question is, how would you fare in the meantime? If he hadn’t this claim upon you, of course you’d let him build what he liked, and only laugh at him.” Then Mr. Tappitt uttered another exclamation, and pulling his hat tighter on to his head, walked out of the lawyer’s office and returned to the brewery.
They dined at three o’clock at the brewery, and during dinner on this day the father of the family made himself very disagreeable. He scolded the maidservant till the poor girl didn’t know the spoons from the forks. He abused the cook’s performances till that valuable old retainer declared that if “master got so rampageous he might suit hisself, the sooner the better; she didn’t care how soon; she’d cooked victuals for his betters and would again.” He snarled at his daughters till they perked up their faces and came silently to a mutual agreement that they would not condescend to notice him further while he held on in his present mood. And he replied to his wife’s questions—questions intended to be soothing and kindly conjugal—in such a tone that she determined to have it out with him before she allowed him to go to bed. “She knew her duty,” she said to herself, “and she could stand a good deal. But there were some things she couldn’t stand and some things that weren’t her duty.” After dinner Tappitt took himself out at once to his office in the brewery, and then, for the first time, saw the Baslehurst Gazette and Totnes Chronicle for that week. The Baslehurst Gazette and Totnes Chronicle was an enterprising weekly newspaper, which had been originally intended to convey on Sunday mornings to the inhabitants of South Devonshire the news of the past week, and the paper still bore the dates of successive Sundays. But it had gradually pushed itself out into the light of its own world before its own date, gaining first a night and then a day, till now, at the period of which I am speaking, it was published on the Friday morning.
“You ought just to look at this,” a burly old foreman had said, handing him the paper in question, with his broad thumb placed upon a certain column. This foreman had known Bungall, and though he respected Tappitt, he did not fear him. “You should just look at this. Of course it don’t amount to nothing; but it’s as well to see what folks say.” And he handed the paper to his master, almost making a hole in it by screwing his thumb on to the spot he wished to indicate.
Tappitt read the article, and his spirit was very bitter within him. It was a criticism on his own beer written in no friendly tone. “There is no reason,” said the article, “why Baslehurst should be flooded with a liquor which no Christian ought to be asked to drink. Baslehurst is as capable of judging good beer from bad as any town in the British empire. Let Mr. Tappitt look to it, or some young rival will spring up beneath his feet and seize from his brow the hop-leaf wreath which Bungall won and wore.” This attack was the more cruel because the paper had originally been established by Bungall’s money, and had, in old days, been altogether devoted to the Bungall interest. That this paper should turn against him was very hard. But what else had he a right to expect? It was known that he had promised his vote to the Jew candidate, and the paper in question supported the Cornbury interest. A man that lives in a glass house should throw no stones. The brewer who brews bad beer should vote for nobody.
But Tappitt would
