"After five-and-twenty years? I suppose it is." Parson Jack blushed
like a schoolboy; but he laughed, nevertheless, for he held news, and it
bubbled within him.
"Preparing a lecture?"
"No; the fact is"--he straightened his face--"I've just learnt of my
brother Lionel's death in India. I've never seen him since we were
boys," he added apologetically.
"H'm, h'm." The Rector paid his respect to Death in a serious little
cough. "Still, I don't quite understand--"
"He has left me five thousand pounds."
"Ah? A very tidy sum--my dear Flood, I congratulate you; with all my
heart I do. You have the prospect now of many happy days." He shook
his friend's hand warmly. "But--excuse me--what has this to do with
reading ecclesiastical history, of Langona or any other place?"
"Well," Parson Jack answered shyly, sitting down and filling his pipe,
"I thought of restoring the church."
"My dear fellow, don't be a fool--if I may speak profanely.
Five thousand pounds is a tidy sum, no doubt, in Langona especially.
But you'll be leaving Langona. You can buy yourself a decent little
living, or retire and set up comfortably as a bachelor on two hundred
and fifty pounds a year, with a cob, and a gig as you grow older."
Parson Jack shook his head. "I've been paying debts all my life, with
the help of Langona," said he, puffing slowly. "And now I see that I
owe the place repayment. But it isn't _that_ exactly," he went on with
a quickening voice and another of his shy blushes, "and I don't want you
to mistake that for the real reason. The fact is, I'm attached to the
place--to the church especially. It seems a silly thing to say, when I
haven't troubled to learn ten words of its history, and don't know
Norman work from--well, from any but my own." He laughed grimly, biting
on his pipe-stem. "But that can be mended, I suppose--and the old barn
has become a sort of companion--and that's about the long and short of
it."
The Rector leaned forward and tapped the bowl of his pipe reflectively
on the fender-bars.
"You are the residuary legatee, I take it. Your brother was unmarried?"
"Oh dear, no! Lionel was married, and had three children--two girls and
a boy: 'has,' I should say, for I imagine they're all alive--the widow,
too. I don't know where they are. The lawyers merely speak of my five
thousand as a legacy; they say nothing of the rest of the will."
"That's queer." The Rector reached for his tobacco-jar.
"Eh? You mean my not knowing the whereabouts of the family? Between
ourselves, I believe there was a screw loose in Lionel's domestic
affairs. I know nothing definite--positively. We corresponded now and
then," continued Parson Jack--"say twice a year--and of late years he
dropped all mention of them, and I gathered that questions were not
wanted. But the wife and children are provided for, you may depend; and
there's the pension."
"You are not an executor even?"
"No; it seems there were two; but one died. The survivor, a Major
Bromham, lives in Plymouth--retired, apparently, and I suppose an old
friend of Lionel's. It's through his solicitors that I had the news."
"And with it the first announcement of your brother's death. It seems
queer to me that this Major Bromham didn't send you a line of his own.
How do the lawyers put it?"
"Oh, the barest announcement. Here it is; you can read for yourself:
'On the instruction of our client, Major Bromham, late 16th Bengal
Lancers, we have to inform you of the death, by syncope, at Calcutta, on
the 5th of July last, of your brother, Lionel Flood, Esq., late of the
Indian Civil Service, Assistant-Commissioner; and also that by the terms
of his will, executed'--so-and-so--'of which our client is the surviving
executor,' etc.--all precious formal and cold-blooded. No doubt his
death was telegraphed home to the newspapers, and they take it for
granted that I heard or read of it."
"Perhaps." The Rector rose. "Shall we have a stroll through the
stables? Afterwards you shall have a book or two to carry off."
"But look here, Kendall; I came to you as a friend, you know. It seems
to me all plain sailing enough. But you seem to imply--"
"Do I? Then I am doubtless an ass."
"You think this Major Bromham should have written to me direct--I see
that you do. Well, he lives no farther away than Plymouth. I might run
up and call on him. Why, to be sure"--Parson Jack's brow cleared--"and
he can give me the address of the wife and children."