‘We need not argue the point,’ said Heathcote, amused. ‘I am as sorry as you can be that the ladies will not retain possession. What is it to me? I am not rich enough to do all I would, and I don’t know the people as they did. They will never look up to me as they did to my predecessors. I hope my cousins will return at all events in summer. All the same,’ he added, laughing, ‘I am quite illogical’—like you, he would have said, but forbore. ‘I want them to come back, and yet I feel this infection of duty that you speak of. It seems to me that it must be my business to live here henceforward—though I confess to you I think it will be very dismal, and I don’t know what I shall do.’
‘It will be dismal,’ said the Curate; his face had lighted up for a moment, then rapidly clouded over again. ‘I don’t know what you will do. You that have been always used to a luxurious town life——’
‘Not so luxurious—and not so exclusively town,’ Heathcote ventured to interpose, feeling a whimsical annoyance at this repetition of his own thoughts.
‘—— And who don’t know the people, nor understand what to do, and what not to do—it takes a long apprenticeship,’ said Charley, very gravely. ‘You see, an injudicious liberality would be very bad for them—it would pauperise instead of elevating. It is not everybody that knows what is good and what is bad in help. People unaccustomed to the kind of life do more harm than good.’
‘You don’t give me very much encouragement to settle down on my property and learn how to be a patriarch in my turn,’ said Mountford, with a laugh.
‘No, I don’t,’ said the Curate, his face growing longer and longer. The presence of Heathcote Mountford at Mount had smiled upon him for a moment. It would be better than nothing; it would imply some companionship, sympathy more or less, someone to take a walk with occasionally, or to have a talk with, not exclusively parochial; but when the Curate reflected that Heathcote at Mount would altogether do away with the likelihood of ‘the family’ coming back—that they could not rent the house for the summer, which was a hope he had clung to, if the present owner of it was in possession—Charley at once perceived that the immediate pleasure of a neighbour would be a fatal advantage, and with honest simplicity applied himself to the task of subduing his visitor’s new-born enthusiasm. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘it’s quite different making a new beginning, knowing nothing about it, from having been born here, and acquainted with the people all your life.’
‘Everybody must have known, however,’ said Heathcote, slightly piqued, ‘that the property would change hands some time or other, and that great alterations must be made.’
‘Oh yes, everybody knew that,’ said the Curate, with deadly seriousness; ‘but, you see, when you say a thing must happen some time, you never know when it will happen, and it is always a shock when it comes. The old Squire was a hearty man, not at all old for his years. He was not so old as my father, and I hope he has a great deal of work left in him yet. And then it was all so sudden; none of us had been able to familiarise ourselves even with the idea that you were going to succeed, when in a moment it was all over, and you had succeeded. I don’t mean to say that we are not very glad to have you,’ said Charley, with a dubious smile, suddenly perceiving the equivocal civility of all he had been saying; ‘it is a great deal better than we could have expected. Knowing them and liking them, you can have so much more sympathy with us about them. And as you wish them to come back, if that is possible——’
‘Certainly, I do wish them to come back—if it is possible,’ said Heathcote, but his countenance, too, grew somewhat long. He would have liked for himself a warmer reception, perhaps. And when he went to see Mr. Ashley, though his welcome was very warm, and though the Rector was absolutely gleeful over his arrival, and confided to him instantly half a dozen matters in which it would be well that he should interest himself at once, still it was not very long before ‘they’ recurred also to the old man’s mind as the chief object of interest. ‘Why are they going abroad? it would be far better if they would come home,’ said the Rector, who afterwards apologised, however, with anxious humility. ‘I beg your pardon—I beg your pardon with all my heart. I forgot actually that Mount had changed hands. Of course, of course, it is quite natural that they should go abroad. They have no home, so to speak, till they have made up their mind to choose one, and I always think that is one of the hardest things in the world to do. It is a blessing we do not appreciate, Mr. Mountford, to have our home chosen for us and settled beyond our power to change——’
‘I don’t think Mrs. Mountford dislikes the power of choice,’ said Heathcote; ‘but so far as I am concerned, you know I should be very thankful if they would continue to occupy their old home.’