“He meant to do his duty, Mr. Apjohn.”
“Certainly; but he mistook it. He did not understand the root of that idea of a male heir. The object has been to keep the old family, and the old adherences, and the old acres together. England owes much to the manner in which this has been done, and the custom as to a male heir has availed much in the doing of it. But in this case, in sticking to the custom, he would have lost the spirit, and, as far as he was concerned, would have gone against the practice which he wished to perpetuate. There, my dear, is a sermon for you, of which, I dare say, you do not understand a word.”
“I understand every syllable of it, Mr. Apjohn,” she answered.
They soon arrived at the house, and there they found not only Mrs. Griffith and the old cook, who had never left the premises, but the old butler also, who had taken himself off in disgust at Cousin Henry’s character, but had now returned as though there had been no break in his continuous service. They received her with triumphant clamours of welcome. To them the coming of Cousin Henry, and the death of the old Squire, and then the departure of their young mistress, had been as though the whole world had come to an end for them. To serve was their only ambition—to serve and to be made comfortable while they were serving; but to serve Cousin Henry was to them altogether ignominious. The old Squire had done something which, though they acknowledged it to be no worse on his part than a mistake, had to them been cruelly severe. Suddenly to be told that they were servants to such a one as Cousin Henry—servants to such a man without any contract or agreement on their part;—to be handed over like the chairs and tables to a disreputable clerk from London, whom in their hearts they regarded as very much inferior to themselves! And they, too, like Mr. Griffith and the tenants, had been taught to look for the future reign of Queen Isabel as a thing of course. In that there would have been an implied contract—an understanding on their part that they had been consulted and had agreed to this destination of themselves. But Cousin Henry! Now this gross evil to themselves and to all around them had been remedied, and justice was done. They had all been strongly convinced that the Squire had made and had left behind him another will. The butler had been quite certain that this had been destroyed by Cousin Henry, and had sworn that he would not stand behind the chair of a felon. The gardener had been equally violent, and had declined even to cut a cabbage for Cousin Henry’s use. The women in the house had only suspected. They had felt sure that something was wrong, but had doubted between various theories. But now everything was right; now the proper owner had come; now the great troubles had been vanquished, and Llanfeare would once again be a fitting home for them.
“Oh, Miss Isabel! oh, Miss Isabel!” said Mrs. Griffith, absolutely sobbing at her young mistress’s feet up in her bedroom; “I did say that it could never go on like that. I did use to think that the Lord Almighty would never let it go on like that! It couldn’t be that Mr. Henry Jones was to remain always landlord of Llanfeare.”
When she came downstairs and took her seat, as she did by chance, in the old armchair which her uncle had been used to occupy, Mr. Apjohn preached to her another sermon, or rather sang a loud paean of irrepressible delight.
“Now, my dear, I must go and leave you—happily in your own house. You can hardly realise how great a joy this has been to me—how great a joy it is.”
“I know well how much we owe you.”
“From the first moment in which he intimated to me his wish to make a change in his will, I became so unhappy about it as almost to lose my rest. I knew that I went beyond what I ought to have done in the things that I said to him, and he bore it kindly.”
“He was always kind.”
“But I couldn’t turn him. I told him what I told you today on the road, but it had no effect on him. Well, I had nothing to do but to obey his orders. This I did most grudgingly. It was a heartbreak to me, not only because of you, my dear, but for the sake of the property, and because I had heard something of your cousin. Then came the rumour of this last will. He must have set about it as soon as you had left the house.”
“He never told me that he was going to do it.”
“He never told anyone; that is quite certain. But it shows how his mind must have been at work. Perhaps what I said may have had some effect at last. Then I heard from the Cantors what they had been asked to do. I need not tell you all that I felt then. It would have been better for him to send for me.”
“Oh, yes.”
“So much better for that poor young man’s sake.” The poor young man was of course Cousin Henry. “But I could not interfere. I could only hear what I did hear—and wait. Then the dear old man died!”
“I knew then that he had
