There was no disputing the change in the face, the authority of the voice. Gently they gathered around him, and Elizabeth laid the sleeping child on a pillow by his side. Richard saw him glance at the chubby little hand stretched out, and he lifted it to the squire’s face. The dying man kissed it, and smilingly looked at Elizabeth. Then he let his eyes wander to Richard and his daughter-in-law.
“Good-bye, all!” he whispered, faintly, and almost with the pleasant words upon his lips he went away.
In a few hours the Christmas waits came singing through the park, and the Christmas bells filled the air with jubilant music; but Squire Henry Hallam had passed far beyond the happy clamor. He had gone home to spend the Christmas feast with the beloved who were waiting for him; with the just made perfect; with the great multitude which no man can number.
CHAPTER VIII.
“We are here to fight the battle of life, not to shirk it.”
“The last days of my life until to-day,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell. Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food, but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?”
“The only way to look bravely and prosperously forward is never to
look back.”
Antony arrived at Hallam about an hour after the squire’s death. He was not a man of quick affections, but he loved his father. He was grieved at his loss, and he was very anxious as to the disposition of the estate. It is true that he had sold his birthright, but yet he half expected that both his father and sister would at the last be opposed to his dispossession. The most practical of men on every other subject, he yet associated with his claim upon Hallam all kinds of romantic generosities. He felt almost sure that, when the will came to be read, he would find Hallam left to him, under conditions which he could either fulfill or set aside. It seemed, after all, a preposterous thing to leave a woman in control of such a property when there were already two male heirs. And Hallam had lately grown steadily upon his desires. He had not found money-making either the pleasant or easy process he had imagined it would be; in fact, he had had more than one great disappointment to contend against.
As the squire had foreseen, his marriage with Lady Evelyn had not turned out well for him in a financial way. Lord Eltham, within a year after it, found a lucrative position in the colonies for his son George, and advised his withdrawal from the firm of “Hallam & Eltham.” The loss of so much capital was a great blow to the young house, and he did not find in the Darragh connection any equivalent. No one could deny that Antony’s plans were prudent, and dictated by a far-seeing policy; but perhaps he looked too far ahead to rightly estimate the contingencies in the interval. At any rate, after the withdrawal of George Eltham, it had been, in the main with him, a desperate struggle, and undoubtedly, Lord Eltham, by the very negation of his manner, by the raising of an eye-lash, or the movement of a shoulder, had made the struggle frequently harder than it ought to have been.
Yet Antony was making a brave fight for his position; if he could hold on, he might compel success. People in this age have not the time to be persistently hostile. Lord Eltham might get into power; a score of favorable contingencies might arise; the chances for him were at least equal to those against him. Just at this time his succession to the Hallam estate might save him. He was fully determined if it did come into his power never to put an acre of it in danger; but it would represent so much capital in the eyes of the men with whom he had to count sovereigns.