For Constancy was there, having finished her trip, and having assured herself that Godfrey was pretty well tied to Ingleby. The world was going well. The old incapable tenant of Upper Flete, the only farm on the estate of any value, died, and was succeeded by a nephew, with more education and capital, who came to terms with Godfrey as to needful improvements, and rented some more land. A purchaser was found for the copse-wood, which had not been cut for many years, who bought it standing, and undertook all the expenses of cutting and carriage. A great change would therefore soon be seen in the whole aspect of the valley, and, as for the house, Mrs John Palmer’s fancy for it continued, and she thought of taking it, as she could well afford to do, for a summer residence; in which case, she would, no doubt, prove a good friend to the village.
Godfrey came forward and made all the arrangements without any apparent reluctance; but a queer little smile, not unlike his brother’s, came over his face when he was questioned by the neighbouring squires on his views on preserving or politics, and he would not commit himself as to the future.
All this was satisfactory to Guy, and so, in another way, was his “reconciliation” with the last of the Maxwells of Ouseley. Matters seemed to be drawing towards a point of success, of which the coming gathering was a kind of symbol. As he was returning from a ride in the broad, spreading sunlight of an August afternoon, he thought of all that the past year had brought to him. It was but a year since he had shown Florella the picture in the octagon-room, and her words had roused him to make a fight for his freedom. Till she touched his spirit, he had been tossed and driven in helpless and hopeless bondage to fear, his one notion of fortitude, concealment, his one refuge, a remedy worse than the disease. That danger he recognised with critical self-knowledge, had, in his case, been born of fear, and was itself something of a spectre of his fancy. Apart from maddening terror, he would never “take to drink.” And, after this year of stern and steady conflict, it did not seem to him that any bewilderment of the senses could ever again terrify him beyond the power of self-control. While, as for that inward sense of possession, that presence, which for him lay behind all else, if that should spring into consciousness again, after its long sleep, he was prepared to face it. There was another force, deeper and stronger still, which, in dim and awful glory, had made itself felt within him.
Guy believed that his soul was saved. There are no other words for it, though these may convey a hundred other meanings. But there was “more to come.” Whether this conviction was well-founded, or whether, as Cuthbert would have told him, it sprang from the depression of exhausted nerves and spirits; from the melancholy too often associated with trials such as his, it equally proved that he was not free as other men were for the sweetness of life and love.
As other men? Were other men free? “The drink” might have been a bugbear to him, but it was an awful fact to thousands of those others. How many devils had possessed his rough ancestors, whose clutch had not closed on him, because the one great gain of old Margaret’s courage had been that he and his brother began life on a higher level? How did this poor Jem Outhwaite, who burlesqued and caricatured his own grim experiences, come to be what he was? As this thought occurred to him, Jem himself started out of a gateway beside him, and, after a grin and nod of greeting, picked up Rawdie, and carried him over a muddy piece of ground, through which he himself humbly shambled beside Guy’s horse. The royal favourite should not needlessly wet his feet.
Jem was a conversational person, and fired off short remarks at intervals.
“Owd Cowperthwaite says Waynfletes’ll tak’ t’ bread out o’s mouth.”
“Old Cowperthwaite’s a scoundrel,” said Guy.
“Ay, sir,” said Jem, cheerfully. Then, after a pause, “I see twa rabbits over Flete Edge. Mr Godfrey can shoot ’em.”
“Ay, I dare say he will.”