“He was a great man, was William,” she said again; and then her mind wandered away to the green wet pastures of Kilrathy, and she thought she was a dairy-girl again with bare feet and kilted skirt, and she called the cows to the milking: “Come, my pretties, come—Blossom and Bell and Buttercup. Come; ’tis time.” Then her hands moved feebly, as though they pulled the udders, and she smiled a little and would have laughed, but she had no strength. “I’m home again,” she murmured; and then life left her.
CHAPTER XLVII.
It was a gusty, wild, and cloudy morning at Faldon some days later, and Hurstmanceaux sat in his library reading a communication which he had received from the head of the Government. The epistle, which was written by the premier himself, offered him the governorship of a very important colony. The letter was extremely complimentary, and there was no possible reason to doubt its sincerity. It urged upon him the sacrifice of his independence to the welfare of his country, and hinted that as years passed on it became time to abandon certain eccentricities of opinion and habits of isolation. Hurstmanceaux read it with the attention which the position of its writer demanded; but he did not waste many minutes in its consideration. It was not the first time that such offers had been pressed on him. The independence of his character was so well known, and his principles so much respected by all men, that his accession to the governing ranks would have been an increase of strength to those who were in office. But they had never been able to tempt him to forsake private for public life. He now wrote a very courteous but most decided refusal, expressing his sense of the compliment paid to him, sealed it with his signet ring, and sat still awhile at his writing-table thinking.
“I have never yet been in the scramble for the loaves and fishes,” he said to himself, “and I shall not begin now. He will find men enough and to spare who have outrun the constable, or who want handles to their names, and who will be delighted to go to the nether world and play at pseudo-sovereignty. Faldon and my other poor places are kingdoms enough for me, small ones though they be; and Jack’s active mind is colony enough to cultivate.”
Whatever else Jack might be, he was half a Courcy, and must be brought up to be a man and a gentleman.
At that moment Jack came in followed by his dogs of all sizes, on whom Ossian, lying in a reading-chair, opened a contemptuous eye; Jack had permission to run free of the library as he liked. He had now a morning paper in his hand which he held out to his uncle.
“Mr. Adeane wishes me to ask you, please, if this is true,” he said, pointing to a paragraph marked by his tutor.
Hurstmanceaux glanced at it. It announced his acceptance of the Australian governorship. His brows contracted in displeasure. “Nothing could be less true,” he answered. “It is true that the appointment has been offered to me. But tell Adeane I decline it. Leave the paper here, dear. I will send a contradiction.”
Jack went out by one of the windows opening on a terrace as he had entered, his canine courtiers leaping about him, and Hurstmanceaux took up the journal to see the date of the paragraph.
It was a journal of fashion and politics; the statement which concerned him was in a column containing other items of news; the name in one of these caught his eye; he read that the wife of William Massarene was dead at her villa at Bournemouth.