Uncle Phineas received the news without comment; and three weeks later, with a final gathering-up of his patriarchal feet, died in the beginning of his eighty-seventh year just about tea-time.
Mr. Trimblerigg ran for the woman who was to lay him out (since in that matter old age requires extra haste when the legs have died bent), then walked on to give instructions to the undertaker. Returning presently to a house where the womenfolk were busy at their obsequious duties, he sought and found a key which he knew by sight, and got out the will. Under it lay a sealed letter addressed to Davidina. This puzzled and slightly startled him; but for the present he laid it by as an item of comparative unimportance. What startled him much more, however, were the provisions which he found in the surviving will. His own share of it was indeed larger. He found himself owner not only of the house, the books and the furniture, but of the chapel also, with an accompanying income of a hundred and fifty pounds, to be his so long as he remained the local minister of the True Believers. This stipend was in the hands of Trustees. All the rest of the estate, amounting to an annual value of five hundred pounds went to Davidina.
Mr. Trimblerigg lost his temper; for a moment it almost seemed that his uncle had made him destroy the wrong will. But there, for himself, though tied by conditions, was the larger bequest; he could not but admit that here a modest livelihood was provided for him: enough in that retired district where all lived simply to enable him to marry and have a family. On the other hand, it bound him to the place, and bound him still more stiffly to the tenets of True Belief. There was the further bewilderment that Davidina got all the rest, the bulk of the estate; and that Caroline got nothing.
And now, of course, the letter to Davidina became important. He went upstairs, got it from the drawer, and brought it down. The seal was a purely conventional precaution, easy to get through and to replace; while as for the adhesive flap there are ways also of dealing with that which every one knows. Adopting one of them he became cognizant of the contents. It appeared then that, after all, his Uncle Phineas had not trusted him; and that, in spite of their apparent estrangement of late years, he did trust Davidina absolutely. The letter informed Davidina that while her benefit under the will was without legal condition, it was the testator’s wish and request that if fifteen years after his death her brother Jonathan was still an active minister of the True Believers she should surrender to him one-half of the estate now bequeathed to her; and that, as a necessary precaution, she should make a will securing him the same advantage under the same conditions. And following on this came a statement more startling than all: ‘I have made no special provision for Caroline, as I intend that she shall marry Jonathan.’ And with that the communication ended.
Mr. Trimblerigg looked up from it into a changed world. Just as he thought to be starting on his forward career, he had become a cypher in the hands of others. The word ‘Tarry’ stared him in the face; in italics, as his uncle had remarked. Here and now he had been left to Caroline, in order to provide her with a home; and in the future to the tender mercies of Davidina—who was not even legally bound, when the time came, to act on her instructions.
Fifteen years! The time was fatal to his prospects; it mattered nothing to his career that now, in his twenty-first year, he happened to be a member of the antiquated sect of True Believers; it would matter everything if he were bound to it for another fifteen years. He would then be nearing forty; how could he become the leader of the Free Evangelicals, foremost figure of the Free Church Union in its march toward liberal Theology, if in fifteen years’ time he was still saddled with the tenets of True Belief to the extent of having to preach them? He saw the meaning of it. His uncle had not trusted him; and was as far from trusting him as ever, at the moment when he had placed in his hands the other will to have it destroyed. It stung him to the quick that a simple and rather stupid old man should thus have got the better of him—to the extent at least of controlling the offer or withdrawal of a prospective income of four hundred a year. A hundred and fifty of it depended on his remaining in the local ministry; that did not so much matter; but the rest depended on his remaining in the connection at the very height of his powers; and that he did not for a moment intend. No; even in the shock of disappointment and all the callowness of untried youth, he knew that he was worth more. And in a moment he had decided: henceforth his career was to be a tussle between him and old Uncle Trimblerigg; they would see which would come out first.
While thus he straightened out his problem below, Uncle Phineas was being straightened out upstairs. It was the easier job of the two and would soon be over; Jonathan had no time to lose. And so collectedly, with presence of mind, he restored the letter to its envelope, licked and sealed it, and returned letter and will to the drawer from which he had taken them, leaving them to be found by others.
Three days later he prayed and preached at the funeral with great success. People flocked to hear him, for it was already known in the surrounding district, which had sampled his early efforts, that he was going to become a great orator. Within a year he was due to enter the ministry: and the True Believers swelled with a sense of triumph that once more they were going to have among them a shining light.
In the domestic privacy of the Trimblerigg family, when the funeral was over, the will was ceremonially opened and read; and Jonathan received with Christian resignation the announcement that Davidina was her uncle’s chief beneficiary.
A few days later he gave Davidina a chance to speak of the thing he knew, by inquiring: