‘No; you mistake: your uncle was the elder—Sir David Cumbermede Daryll, of Moldwarp Hall and The Moat,’ said Mr Coningham, evidently bent on making the most of my rights.
‘He never even told me he was the eldest,’ I said. ‘I always thought, from his coming home to manage the farm when my father was ill, that he was the second of the two sons.’
‘On the contrary, he was several years older than your father, but taking more kindly to reading than farming, was sent by his father to Oxford to study for the Church, leaving the farm, as was tacitly understood, to descend to your father at your grandfather’s death. After the idea of the Church was abandoned he took a situation, refusing altogether to subvert the order of things already established at the Moat. So you see you are not to suppose that he kept you back from any of your rights. They were his, not yours, while he lived.’
‘I will not ask,’ I said, ‘why he did not enforce them. That is plain enough from what I know of his character. The more I think of that, the loftier and simpler it seems to grow. He could not bring himself to spend the energies of a soul meant for higher things on the assertion and recovery of earthly rights.’
‘I rather differ from you there; and I do not know,’ returned my companion, whose tone was far more serious than I had ever heard it before, ‘whether the explanation I am going to offer will raise your uncle as much in your estimation as it does in mine. I confess I do not rank such self-denial as you attribute to him so highly as you do. On the contrary I count it a fault. How could the world go on if everybody was like your uncle?’
‘If everybody was like my uncle, he would have been forced to accept the position,’ I said; ‘for there would have been no one to take it from him.’
‘Perhaps. But you must not think Sir Giles knew anything of your uncle’s claim. He knows nothing of it now.’
I had not thought of Sir Giles in connection with the matter—only of Geoffrey; and my heart recoiled from the notion of dispossessing the old man who, however misled with regard to me at last, had up till then shown me uniform kindness. In that moment I had almost resolved on taking no steps till after his death. But Mr Coningham soon made me forget Sir Giles in a fresh revelation of my uncle.
‘Although,’ he resumed, ‘all you say of your uncle’s indifference to this world and its affairs is indubitably correct, I do not believe, had there not been a prospect of your making your appearance, that he would have shirked the duty of occupying the property which was his both by law and by nature. But he knew it might be an expensive suit—for no one can tell by what tricks of the law such may be prolonged—in which case all the money he could command would soon be spent, and nothing left either to provide for your so-called aunt, for whom he had a great regard, or to give you that education, which, whether you were to succeed to the property or not, he counted indispensable. He cared far more, he said, about your having such a property in yourself as was at once personal and real, than for your having any amount of property out of yourself. Expostulation was of no use. I had previously learned—from the old lady herself—the true state of the case, and, upon the death of Sir Geoffrey Daryll, had at once communicated with him—which placed me in a position for urging him, as I did again and again, considerably to his irritation, to assert and prosecute his claim to the title and estates. I offered to take the whole risk upon myself; but he said that would be tantamount to giving up his personal liberty until the matter was settled, which might not be in his lifetime. I may just mention, however, that, besides his religious absorption, I strongly suspect there was another cause of his indifference to worldly affairs: I have grounds for thinking that he was disappointed in a more than ordinary attachment to a lady he met at Oxford—in station considerably above any prospects he had then. To return: he was resolved that, whatever might be your fate, you should not have to meet it without such preparation as he could afford you. As you have divined, he was most anxious that your character should have acquired some degree of firmness before you knew anything of the possibility of your inheriting a large property and historical name; and I may appropriate the credit of a negative share in the carrying out of his plans, for you will bear me witness how often I might have upset them by informing you of the facts of the case.’
‘I am heartily obliged to you,’ I said, ‘for not interfering with my uncle’s wishes, for I am very glad indeed that I have been kept in ignorance of my rights until now. The knowledge would at one time have gone far to render me useless for personal effort in any direction worthy of it. It would have made me conceited, ambitious, boastful: I don’t know how many bad adjectives would have been necessary to describe me.’