No one has a right to go about the world as Niobe, damping all joys with selfish tears.What did she not owe to her father, who had warned her so often against the evil she had contemplated, and had then, from the first moment after the fault was done, forgiven her the doing of it? She had at any rate learned from her misfortunes the infinite tenderness of his heart, which in the days of the unalloyed prosperity he had never felt the necessity of expressing to her.So she struggled and did do something.She pressed Lady Wharton's hand, and kissed her cousin Mary, and throwing herself in her father's arms when they were alone, whispered to him that she would try.'What you told me, Everett, was quite right,' she said afterwards to her brother.
'I didn't mean to be savage,' he answered with a smile.
'It was quite right, and I have thought of it, and I will do my best.I will keep it to myself if I can.It is not quite, perhaps, what you think it is, but I will keep it to myself.'
She fancied that they did not understand her, and perhaps she was right.It was not only that he had died and left her a young widow;--nor even that his end had been so harsh a tragedy and so foul a disgrace! It was not only that her love had been misbestowed,--not only that she had made so grievous an error in the one great act of her life which she had chosen to perform on her own judgement.Perhaps the most crushing memory of all was that which told her that she, who had through all her youth been regarded as a bright star in the family, had been the one person to bring reproach upon the name of all these people who were so good to her.How shall a person conscious of disgrace, with a mind capable of feeling the crushing weight of personal disgrace, move and look and speak as though the disgrace had been washed away? But she made the struggle, and did not altogether fail.
As regarded Sir Alured, in spite of the poor widow's crape, he was very happy at this time, and his joy did in some degree communicate itself to the old barrister.Everett was taken round to every tenant and introduced as the heir.Mr Wharton had already declared his purpose of abdicating any possible possession of the property.Should he outlive Sir Alured he must be the baronet; but when that sad event should take place, whether Mr Wharton should then be alive or no, Everett should at once be the possessor of Wharton Hall.Sir Alured, under these circumstances, discussed his own death with extreme satisfaction, and insisted on having it discussed by the others.That he should have gone and left everything at the mercy of the spendthrift had been terrible to his old heart;--but now, the man coming to the property would have 60,000 pounds with which to support and foster Wharton, with which to mend, as it were, the crevices, and stop the holes of the estate.He seemed to be almost impatient for Everett's ownership, giving many hints as to what should be done when he himself was gone.He must surely have thought that he would return to Wharton a spirit, and take a ghostly share in the prosperity of the farm.'You will find John Griffith a very good man,' said the baronet.John Griffith had been a tenant on the estate for the last half-century, and was an older man than his landlord; but the baronet spoke of all this as though he himself were about to leave Wharton for ever in the course of the next week.'John Griffith has been a good man, and if not always quite ready with his rent, has never been much behind.You won't be hard on John Griffith?'
'I hope I mayn't have the opportunity, sir.'
'Well;--well;--well; that's as may be.But I don't quite know what to say about young John.The farm has gone from father to son, and there's never been any word of a lease.'
'Is there anything wrong about the young man?'
'He's a little given to poaching.'
'Oh dear!'
'I've always got him off for his father's sake.They say he's going to marry Sally Jones.That may take it out of him.I do like the farms to go from father to son, Everett.It's the way that everything should go.Of course there's no right.'
'Nothing of that kind, I suppose,' said Everett, who was in his way a reformer, and had radical notions with which he would not for worlds have disturbed the baronet at present.
'No;--nothing of that kind.God in his mercy forbid that a landlord in England should ever be robbed after that fashion.'
Sir Alured, when he was uttering this prayer, was thinking of what he had heard of in an Irish land bill, the details of which, however, had been altogether incomprehensible to him.'But Ihave a feeling about it, Everett; and I hope you will share it.
It is good that things should go from father to son.I never make a promise; but the tenants know what I think about it, and then the father works on the son.Why should he work for a stranger? Sally Jones is a very good young woman, and perhaps John will do better.' There was not field or fence that he did not show to his heir;--hardly a tree which he left without a word.'That bit of woodland coming in there,--they call it Barnton Spinnies,--doesn't belong to the estate at all.'
'Doesn't it really?'
'And it comes right in between Lane's farm and Paddock's.
They've always let me have the shooting as a compliment.Not that there's anything in it.It's only seven acres.But I like the civility.'
'Who does it belong to?'
'It belongs to Benet.'
'What: Corpus Christi?'
'Yes, yes;--they've changed the name.It used to be Benet in my days.Walker and the College would certainly sell, but you'd have to pay for the land and the wood separately.I don't know that you'd get much out of it; but it's unsightly;--on the survey map, I mean.'
'We'll buy it by all means,' said Everett, who was already jingling his 60,000 pounds in his pocket.
'I never had the money, but I think it should be bought.' And Sir Alured rejoiced in the idea that when his ghost should look at the survey map, that hiatus of Barnton Spinnies would not trouble his spectral eyes.