“The breaks,
Which humour interposed, too often makes,”
never came between these two, and her judgment guided him, and her conscience restrained him, oftener than either of them knew.
Long ago he had spoken to her about some change that he wished to make in his will, and some words of hers spoken at the time, hindered him from obeying his own impulse in the matter. He knew that it was not wise to delay the right settlement of his affairs, and now the arrangements necessary in regard to his daughter’s marriage portion brought the matter up again, and made some decision inevitable.
That his son was dead, or worse than dead, he could not but believe, now that another year had gone bringing no word from him. In his silent broodings, he had in a sense got accustomed to the misery of the thought. He was dead, or, if he lived, he was lost to him forever. Even if he were living, his long silence proved to his father that he never meant to come home while his father lived.
He might come afterwards; and then his coming might bring trouble upon his sisters, unless all things were settled beyond the power of change. And so it must be settled. But, oh! the misery of it!
To think that his only son might come when he was dead, and stand where they had stood together at his mother’s grave, and have only hard thoughts of his father! How could it ever have come to such a pass between them! The memory of those first days of their estrangement, seemed to him now like a strange and terrible dream. Had he been hard on his son? He was but a lad,—he repeated many a time,—he was but a lad, and he had loved him so dearly.
Nothing could be changed now. In the silence of the night, often amid the business of the day, his heart grew soft towards his son, and he repented of his anger and his hardness toward him. But nothing could be changed now, and the future of his daughters must be made safe against possible trouble when he should be no more.
He had nothing that was new to say to his sister, except that the year that had gone by bringing no word of him, made it less likely that they would ever hear from him again; and she could only listen sadly and acknowledge that it was even so.
But though there was not much that was new to be said, they were rarely left alone together that their talk did not turn on this matter. Mr Dawson’s mind was so full of all that must be gone into and arranged in view of what he had to do, that he was sure to speak of it, and to dwell upon it, more sometimes than was wise. And so it happened that Jean, coming in from a solitary walk in the gloaming to the parlour, where there was no light, was startled by hearing her father say,—
“I think that will be a just division. I will make it up to her aster, but it is Jean who must have the land. I will not divide, and I will not burden the land.”