“It’ll take a deal of bad management to upset Palmer Brothers,” said old Mr Matthew; “and like enough it’ll all come to Godfrey.”
By this arrangement Godfrey had to abide. He had tied a clog round his neck, and it was heavy to carry. He set himself with dogged resolution to master the details of business, and in the long evenings the two brothers looked over their aunt’s letters and papers, together with the relics handed over to the Stauntons by old Miss Maxwell, and which Cuthbert had given to Guy.
Godfrey, who had been at first reluctant, grew more and more interested in what he found, and Guy abstained entirely from comment on any of the facts brought to light, though these explained many things to him. He saw that his aunt had had good reason for her anger and alarm, when she had seen the brandy-bottle in his cupboard, for there were bitter letters of reproach and warning, the sort of letters that start up indeed like spectres from the other side of the grave, and in one, addressed to his father, there was an indication that his own enemy had been at work, for it consisted of a sharp and angry rebuke to the unsatisfactory nephew for “excusing his own faults by untruths and fancies like others before him.” Margaret’s own letter had evidently come back into her hands, but the corresponding one had been destroyed.
They found a few little relics of their mother and grandmother, who had belonged to the same family, small North-country gentry. They had been almost the last of their race, and there were no near cousins left. The lads had to make the most of a few bits of needlework, a stiff little note or two, and a photograph of their mother, of so much weaker a type that it had left but little impress on their strong Waynflete features. There were old likenesses, too, of father and grandfather, at which Guy looked earnestly, and then cast a stealthy glance across the room.
“The same old face,” he said, under his breath; while the hand that held the photograph shook a little.
They also pieced out the family history during its period of eclipse, realising with something of a shock, at least to Godfrey, how entirely it had sunk to the working-farmer level. They learned to know “the rock from which they were hewn,” and their sense of their old great-aunt’s energy and courage increased accordingly. Godfrey had escaped these more degrading temptations, and Guy, perhaps, was quitte pour la peur.
Godfrey went over to Waynflete, more willingly after these discoveries, to see what could be done for it, but came back late in the evening in very low spirits.
He hated the place, he said; the vicar had walked him about, and so had the bailiff. The church was tumbling down, and the farms were just worthless.
“I never saw such a God-forsaken hole,” he said. “I declare, as I came over that rickety old bridge, through that crooked old plantation, and those miserable weedy fields, pasture that wouldn’t feed a donkey, and beastly old hay so rotten that nobody had ever thought it worth leading, I—I wished Aunt Waynflete had let it alone. I never noticed it much in the summer. I didn’t notice anything much then, and I suppose it’s pretty; but it took all the heart out of me.”
“I dare say it did,” said Guy.