The smithy was very small compared with a modern foundry. It was not
large even for a country blacksmith's shop; the cottage close by was
hardly bigger; yet that forge made iron-work which went all over
England. It was on one of the Sussex roads leading into Lewes. Often a
knight would stop to have something done to his own armor or his horse's
gear, for the war-horse also wore armor,--on head and breast at least.
Some of the work of old Adam Smith had gone as far as Jerusalem. Dickon
felt occasionally that if he were a spear-head or a dagger, he would
stand more chance of seeing the world than he did as the son of his
father.
Adam was secretly proud of the lad who at thirteen could do nearly as
much as he himself could. That was saying more than a little, for Adam
Smith had the knack of making every blow count by putting it in exactly
the right place. A man who can do that will double his strength.
Dickon had inherited the knack, but he had something else besides, of
which his father knew nothing. He never did a piece of work that he did
not try to make it look right. He could see that when the bar that
latched a gate was of a certain length, not too small or too large, it
pleased both eye and hand. He did not consider the hinges on the door
better looking for being made into an elaborate pattern, unless the
pattern was a good one. In short, Dickon had what is known as a sense
of beauty. Some have it and some have not. Those who have can invent
beautiful patterns, while those who have not can only copy,--and they
do not always copy accurately.
It may seem strange to speak of beauty in the iron-work of a little
country smithy, but nothing is more beautiful in its way than good
iron-work. There are gates, hinges, locks, keys and other furnishings
which are so well designed that one is never weary of studying them.
Armor has been made beautiful in its time; so have swords, halberds,
daggers, fire-baskets, and fire-dogs.
Because iron is so simple, and there is no chance of getting an effect
by using color or gilding, the task of making it beautiful is unlike
that of painting a picture. The beauty of iron-work is the line, the
curve, the proportion. If these are wrong one sees it at once; and the
same is true when the work is right. Most of the work of Adam Smith,
while strong and well wrought, was only by accident good to look at.
Dickon was not allowed to do anything that his father did not oversee,
and Adam Smith saw to it that no job left his shop which was not well
done. Dickon had found out, little by little, that when a thing is
strong enough for its use, with no unnecessary clumsiness, and the
handles, catches and rivetings are where they ought to be for strength
and convenience, it usually looks very well. That is to say, beautiful
iron-work is useful and economical.
Dickon was hammering away, one golden autumn morning, on the latch for a
gate. The cattle had broken into the Fore Acre again, and Adam, who had
to go to Lewes on business, told Dickon to make that latch and do it
properly, so that it would keep the gate shut. Old Wat had gone into the
forest for some wood, for the great belt of woodland called the Weald
was all around, and the oak from it served for fuel. Dickon had never
seen a coal fire in his life. Forges like this were scattered all
through the Weald, and what with the iron-workers and the ship-builders,
and the people who wainscoted their houses with good Sussex oak, there
is no Weald left nowadays. That part of the country keeps its name, and
there are groves of oak here and there, but that is all.
Dickon could see from the door the acorns dropping from the great oak
that sheltered the smithy and was so huge that a man could not circle
it with his arms. He began to wonder if he could put some sort of
ornamental work on that latch.
No one could have looked less like an artist than the big, muscular
youth in his leathern apron, with his rough tow-head and square-chinned
face; but inside his brain was a thought working itself out. He took an
oak twig and laid it in this position and that, on the iron.
It is not very easy to work out a design in iron. The iron must be
heated, and beaten or bent into shape while it is soft. There is no
making a sketch and taking your time with the brushes. Dickon thought
he would see if he could draw a pattern. He took a bit of coal and a
wooden tile fallen from the roof, and began to combine the lines of the
gate-latch with those of the twig. He had not copied iron utensils and
other patterns without knowing how to draw the lines of an oak leaf,
but he found that somehow or other the leaf, as an ornament to the
latch, did not look right. The cluster of acorns was better, but even
that did not fit. Dickon's feeling, though he did not think it out, was
that iron is strong, and an oak tree is one of the strongest of trees,
and therefore the oak was suitable to decorate Sussex iron. He changed
the lines, rubbing out one and then another, until he had got a set of
curves and little nubbly knot-like ornaments which were not exactly
like the oak twig, but suited the lines of the latch. The leaf-like
side-pieces covered the parts of the latch where the fingers and thumb
would rest in opening the gate, and the projecting handle might be made
into something suggesting an acorn-cluster. He nodded thoughtfully.
"That's rather good," said a voice over his shoulder. "Where did you
learn to draw?"
Dickon jumped; he had been so busy that he had not heard the sound of a
horse's hoofs on the turf. The stranger who stood there, bridle over
arm, was a rather slender man, five or six years older than Dickon, with
deep-set hazel eyes, fair hair, and muddy boots that looked as if he had
come a long journey.
"Nobody never taught me," said Dickon soberly. "I was trying to find out
how to do it."
"You found out then. It is good--don't touch it. Is it for that
gate-latch? Go on and finish the job; I won't hinder you. I'm a Sussex
man, but I never came through the Weald this way. I lost my road, and
they told me this would take me to Lewes. The nag and I shall both be
the better for an hour's rest."
Dickon blew up the fire and went to work, with strong, deft strokes.
He was not a shy lad, particularly when he was doing what he could do
well. He was used to working with people watching him. Not seldom they
were making themselves disagreeable because the work was not done more
quickly, but iron cannot be hurried. If a smith does not mean to spoil
the temper of his work, he must keep his own temper well in hand.
The young man led his horse into the shade, and came to watch Dickon.
As the leaf-curves began to stand out and the nubs of the acorn-cluster
took shape he seemed more and more interested. Once he began to ask a
question, but stopped himself, as if he knew that when a man has his
whole mind on a task he cannot spare any part of it for talk. Dickon
almost forgot that he was there. He was intent upon putting exactly the
right hollows and veins in the leaf, and giving exactly the right twist
to the handle.
At last it was done. Dickon straightened his back and looked at it, as
the sunlight wavered upon it through the branches. The stranger clapped
him on the shoulder.
"It is better than the sketch," he cried heartily. "It is good indeed.
I have been in London, lad, in the Low Countries and in France, and I
never saw a sweeter bit of work. How didst know the true line for that
handle?"
[Illustration: "'IT IS BETTER THAN THE SKETCH,' HE CRIED HEARTILY"]
"That's to make it open properly," Dickon explained, "fits the hand,
like."
The other nodded approvingly. "I see. I learned that same lesson in my
pottery. 'Wilfrid,' my old master used to tell me, 'never thee make too
small an ear to thy jugs if thou lik'st the maids to love 'ee.' There's
a knack, you see, in making a handle with a good grip to it, that will
neither spill the milk nor hinder pouring. My wife she helped me there.
She loves good work as well as I do."
Adam Smith, coming up the Lewes road next day, could not think what had
happened when he saw Dickon in eager talk with a stranger. The boy had
never been given to words. He was more taken aback when Master Wilfrid
told him that his son had the making of a rare workman. He answered
gruffly, stroking his big beard:
"Aye, the lad's well enow. Latch done, Dickon? Go and fit it to yon
gate."
Wilfrid had come back to England full of new ideas, and ambitious above
all for the honor of English craftsmen. When he found this youth working
out, without any model at all, a thing so good as the oak-leaved
gate-latch, he was surer than ever that the land he loved could raise
her own smiths. It was his ambition to make his own house beautiful
within and without, as were some of the merchants' houses he had seen
in cities. He further astonished the old smith by telling him that if
Dickon would put some time on work along his own lines, he would pay
him double or treble what he would earn at common labor.
"You see," explained the potter, as he showed the design he had drafted
for a carved oaken chest, "there's much to be thought of in iron-work.
You have to make it strong as well as handsome, and what's more, nine
times out of ten you have to fit it to the work of some other man. It'd
never do for the hinges and handles on this coffer to spoil the looks
o' the carving, and that's to be done in London, d' ye see? Belike I'll
have you make those first, Dickon, and let Quentin suit his pattern to
yours. He can."
"How does he make his design?" queried Dickon. "Work it out as he goes
along--like iron-work?"
"Not always," Wilfrid answered. "He's got a many patterns drawn out on
parchment besides what he carries in his head. But they're only for
show--to give an idea of the style. When he gets the size and shape and
the wood he's to use settled, he changes the pattern according to his
own judgment. If a wood-carver doesn't know his trade the design can be
made by an artist, and all he need do is to follow it. But that's not my
idea of good work. Unless you've made such a thing yourself you don't
know how the lines are going to look. I'd never try to make a design
for a fire-dog, and I doubt you'd make a poor job at shaping an earthen
bowl. Then, if you want to suit yourself and your customer, you'll be
changing your pattern with every job. The work ought to grow--like a
plant."
"I know," Dickon commented. "You make an iron pot for a woman, and
another for her neighbor, and ten to one the second must be a bit bigger
or narrower or somehow different. You've got to go by your eye."
"They say," Wilfrid went on musingly, "that there's like to be
mechanical ways to help the work--turn it out quicker--do the planing
and gouging with some kind of engine and finish by hand. It seemed to me
that would take the life out o' the carving. I said so to Quentin, and
he laughed. He said a man could use any tool to advantage if he had the
head, but without thought you couldn't make a shovel go right. I reckon
that's so."
Adam Smith nodded. "Half the smiths don't know the way to use a hammer,"
he said, "and well-nigh all the rest don't know what they're making.
You stick to the old forge a while yet, lad. There's a bit to learn
afore you'll be master o' the trade."
"Your father's right," Master Wilfrid admitted. "You'll not waste your
time by learning all that he can teach you. As I was saying to you
yesterday, you've been doing good plain work and learned judgment. You
know how to bend a rod so that it'll be strong, and that will make it
look strong. And I'll warrant when you come to make a grille for a pair
of iron gates you'll know where to put your cross-bars."
For all that, Master Wilfrid did not mean to lose sight of Dickon. He
knew how much a youth could learn by talking with men of other crafts,
and he intended that Dickon should have his chance. He himself had lost
no opportunity, while on his travels, of becoming acquainted with men
who were doing good work in England, and now and then one of these men
would turn off the main road to see him at his pottery or his home.
When the time came to forge a pair of iron gates to the parish church,
he saw to it that Dickon got the refusal of the work. With his favorite
tools and his father's gruff "God speed ye, lad!" Dickon rode forth to
his first work for himself, and it was done to the satisfaction of
every one.
"I knew that Sussex brains could handle that job," Wilfrid exulted, as
they looked at the finished task. In days when churches and cathedrals
were open all day long, it was desirable to have some sort of open-work
railing to keep stray beasts out of the chancel. In a more splendid
building this railing might have been of silver, but the homely
farmer-folk thought the iron of the Weald was good enough for them.
Up along the grassy track past the south door of the church rode a
company of travelers, middle-class folk by their dress. As they came
abreast of the gate the foremost called out, "Ho, Wilfrid, is there
any tavern hereabouts? We be lost sheep in the wilderness. The Abbey
guest-house is already full and they will not take us in."
"Faith, it's good to see thee here, Robert Edrupt," the potter answered.
"I could house three or four of you, but it's harvest time, that's a
fact. No, there's no tavern in the village. You see, most of the folk
that travel this way go to the Abbey for a lodging."
"We'll stick together, I reckon," answered Edrupt, "if you can give us
some kind o' shelter, and the makings of a meal. A barn would serve."
"I'll do better than that," Wilfrid assured them. "I'll take ye to Cold
Harbor. It's part of a Roman house that we uncovered near the pottery.
The walls were used in the old farmer's time for a granary. It's
weather-proof, and there's a stone hearth, and Dickon here will help
swing a crane for the kettles. We've plenty stores if there's a cook
among ye."
"We can make shift," laughed Edrupt. "I'll come to the house to-morrow
and gossip a bit. Quentin here has your carved coffer for ye."
"And here's the lad that made the hinges and the handles," Wilfrid
added, with a hand on the big youth's shoulder. "Sithee here, Dickon,
you show them their way to their lodging, and I'll e'en ride home and
tell Edwitha to spare some pots and kettles for the cooking."
Thus Dickon was shoved all in a moment, in the edge of an autumn
evening, into the company of merchants and craftsmen such as he had
never met. The North-countryman, Alan of York, was a glazier; David
Saumond, a Scotch stone-mason coming up from Canterbury to do some work
for an Abbey; Guy of Limoges was a goldsmith; Crispin Eyre, a shoemaker
of London; there were two or three merchants, some weavers newly arrived
from overseas, various servants and horse-boys, and two peddlers of dark
foreign aspect. The talk was mostly in a mixture of French and English,
but Dickon understood this better than he could speak it, and several
of the men were as English as himself. In the merry company at supper
he saw what Wilfrid had meant when he said that hand-skill without
head-wisdom was walking blind-fold, and work done alone was limping
labor. It was the England of the guilds breaking bread by that fire.