It was necessary that he should see her on that afternoon, if only that he might bid her adieu, and tell her that she should certainly have the money that had been left her. If it were possible he would say a word also about that other matter.
“You did not hear the will read,” he said to her.
“No,” she answered abruptly.
“But you have been told its contents?”
“I believe so.”
“About the four thousand pounds?”
“There need be no question about the four thousand pounds. There is not a word to be said about it—at any rate between you and me.”
“I have come to tell you,” said he—not understanding her feeling in the least, and evidently showing by the altered tone of his voice that he thought that his communication would be received with favour—“I have come to tell you that the legacy shall be paid in full. I will see to that myself as soon as I am able to raise a penny on the property.”
“Pray do not trouble yourself, Cousin Henry.”
“Oh, certainly I shall.”
“Do not trouble yourself. You may be sure of this, that on no earthly consideration would I take a penny from your hands.”
“Why not?”
“We take presents from those whom we love and esteem, not from those we despise.”
“Why should you despise me?” he asked.
“I will leave that to yourself to judge of; but be sure of this, that though I were starving I would take nothing from your hands.”
Then she got up, and, retiring into the inner room, left him alone. It was clear to him then that he could not divide the property with her in the manner that he had suggested to himself.
IX
Alone at Llanfeare
On the day after the reading of the will, Henry Indefer Jones, Esq., of Llanfeare, as he was now to be called, was left alone in his house, his cousin Isabel having taken her departure from the place in the manner proposed by her. And the lawyer was gone, and the doctor, and the tenants did not come near him, and the butler and the housekeeper kept out of his way, and there was probably no man in all South Wales more lonely and desolate than the new Squire of Llanfeare on that morning.
The cruelty of it, the injustice of it, the unprecedented hardness of it all! Such were the ideas which presented themselves to him as hour after hour he sat in the book-room with his eyes fixed on the volume of Jeremy Taylor’s sermons. He had done nothing wrong—so he told himself—had not even coveted anything that did not belong to him. It was in accordance with his uncle’s expressed desire that he had come to Llanfeare, and been introduced to the tenants as their future landlord, and had taken upon himself the place of the heir. Then the old man had announced to him his change of mind; but had not announced it to others, had not declared his altered purpose to the world at Llanfeare, and had not at once sent him back to his London office. Had he done so, that would have been better. There would have been a gross injustice, but that would have been the end of it, and he would have gone back to his London work unhappy indeed, but with some possibility of life before him. Now it seemed as though any mode of living would be impossible to him. While that fatal paper remained hidden in the fatal volume he could do nothing but sit there and guard it in solitude.
He knew well enough that it behoved him as a man to go out about the estate and the neighbourhood, and to show himself, and to take some part in the life around him, even though he might be miserable and a prey to terror whilst he was doing so. But he could not move from his seat till his mind had been made up as to his future action. He was still in fearful doubt. Through the whole of that first day he declared to himself that his resolution had not yet been made—that he had not yet determined what it would be best that he should do. It was still open to him to say that at any moment he had just found the will. If he could bring himself to do so he might rush off to Carmarthen with the document in his pocket, and still appear before the lawyer as a man triumphant in his own honesty, who at the first moment that it was possible had surrendered all that which was not legally his own, in spite of the foul usage to which he had been subjected. He might still assume the grand air of injured innocence, give back the property to the young woman who had insulted him, and return to his desk in London, leaving behind him in Carmarthenshire a character for magnanimity and honour. Such a line of conduct had charms in his eyes. He was quite alive to the delight of heaping coals of fire on his cousin’s head. She had declared that she would receive nothing at his hands, because she despised him. After that there would be a sweetness, the savour of which was not lost upon his imagination, in forcing her to take all from his hands. And it would become known to all men that it was he who had found the will—he who might have destroyed it without the slightest danger of discovery—he who without peril might thus have made himself owner of Llanfeare. There would be a delight to him in the character which he would thus achieve. But then she had scorned him! No bitterer scorn had ever fallen from the lips or flashed from the eyes of a woman. “We take presents from those we
