There came with the day to Gertrude a sense of change. She realised her womanhood now--she realised her position, and it appeared to her a very solemn and responsible one. Her uncle had told her, in answer to her request, that he would continue to exercise the functions from which the attainment of her majority formally discharged him--that he would do so provided she would take an active part in the conduct of the estate, urging the necessity which existed for her duly qualifying herself for the independent administration of her affairs in the future. He reminded her that she could only hold the property in trust for her children, if she were destined to become a wife and mother, and must therefore learn how to save from her large income.
"You see, my dear," Haldane had said to her, "everything not included in the entail is left absolutely to Nelly, and in this respect she is better off than you are. She is not indeed so rich, but she can dispose of her property, by settlement and by will, just as she pleases, whereas you cannot dispose of a shilling. Your eldest son, or your eldest daughter, if you have no son, must inherit all. The estate is chargeable for the benefit of younger children to a very small extent. I will show you how and how much presently. The fortune your grandfather gave to to your aunt, Lady Davyntry, and which Eleanor inherits from her, was almost entirely derived from accumulations and other extraneous property. So, you see, Nelly's money is more absolutely hers than yours is yours; but though you have not so much freedom, there is one advantage in your position. If you fall into bad hands, which God forbid, and we will take all possible care to prevent--yes, Gerty, don't look so horrified, my child, all the men in the world are not good, as your poor mother could have told you--your money will be safe; no man can beggar _you_; whereas Eleanor would be quite helpless in such a case. There is nothing to protect her; her husband, if he could only persuade her to marry without a strict settlement, could make ducks and drakes of her money, if he chose."
"But surely she never would be persuaded to do anything so foolish and so unprincipled," said Gertrude, with a pretty air of dignity, woman-of-the-worldishness, and landed proprietor combined, and feeling already as if she had the deepest appreciation of the rights, privileges, and duties of property.
"I don't know that, my dear," said Haldane; "women are easily persuaded to folly, and there are men who have a knack of persuading you that imprudence is generosity, and self-sacrifice proved by endangering other people's peace and prosperity--as your poor mother could also have told you. However, we need not make ourselves prematurely uncomfortable about Nelly. Let us hope her choice may be wise and happy, and that she may use the freedom her father and her aunt left her with discretion."
The discussion then turned upon other matters of business, and this part of the subject was abandoned.
It returned to Gertrude Baldwin's thoughts as she looked pensively abroad on her wide domains in the early morning, and it troubled her.
"We were both so little when he left us," she thought, "that I don't think my father could have preferred Nelly very much to me, and my mother only saw her for a minute before she died. Rose told me she had scarcely strength to hold the baby to her breast, and not strength enough to speak a word to it, so she cannot have loved her more than me; I was with her for a little time--it is very strange. What care has been taken to give her all he could give; and nothing left to me for my own self, on account of my own self! And how strange uncle James looked when I said so! I am sure he understands that I feel it and wonder at it.
"How little I know of my mother, and I so like her, he says! Perhaps I am old enough now for them to tell me more about her and that first marriage of hers, which I am sure must have been something dreadful. I will ask uncle James some day when he is very well. Aunt Lucy has never told us anything but that she and mamma were great friends, and mamma was 'a dear thing.' Somehow I don t like to hear our dear dead mother spoken of as 'a dear thing'--absurd, I daresay, but I do not; and dear aunt Eleanor never talked of her as anything but papa's wife--his idolised wife.
"How well I remember when I first began to understand that he died of her loss in reality, though it took time to kill him, because he was good and patient and tried to be resigned! But he could not live longer without her, and God knew it and did not ask him. I remember so well when aunt Eleanor told me that, and seemed to know it so well, that she could better bear to know that he was dead than to know that he was still wandering about, because there was no home for him here. I wonder was he very fond of us--or perhaps he was not able to be. I am sure he tried. Ah, well! this we can never, never know until we are orphan children no longer; and any doubt dishonours him.
"To think that I am so important a personage, the owner of a great estate, the employer of so many of my fellow-creatures,--with so much power in my weak woman's hands for good or for evil,--and that I am all this solely because of great misfortune--solely because I am an orphan! If they were living, there might indeed have been rejoicing here to-day, for our pleasure and our parents' pride: but no more. It is wonderful to think of that,--wonderful to think of what might have been. Shall I be a good woman, I wonder? Shall I be a faithful steward? I don't know--I am so ignorant: but for uncle James, I am so lonely. At least I will try--for my father's sake, and mamma's, and his, and for my own sake and for God's; but O, I wish, I wish I could have found in my father's will anything, however trifling, which he desired to come to me from him, for my own sake."