The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's mind
the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from
her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two
Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of
South's death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about
in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more,
what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village
people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But having
naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done
his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his
father's negligence in not insuring South's life.
After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs,
turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between
the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had
remained there unopened ever since his father's death. It was the
usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents.
Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were
ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family,
some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the
manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration
of having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come
into his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who was a
South.
Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which
Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the
handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature
the landholder's. It was to the effect that at any time before the
last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or
his representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his
son's life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum;
the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent
to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at
an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way.
The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles's father had
not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son's
lives it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone
had hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, the
elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing
with house property in his small way.