And he meanwhile found himself hungry to throw aside these tamed and trite forms of existence, and to penetrate to the harsh, true, simple things behind.  His imagination and his heart turned towards the primitive, indispensable labors on which society rests—­the life of the husbandman, the laborer, the smith, the woodman, the builder; he dreamed the old, enchanted dream of living with nature; of becoming the brother not of the few, but of the many.  He was still reading in chambers, however, when his first cousin, the Duke, a melancholy semi-invalid, a widower, with an only son tuberculous almost from his birth, arrived from abroad.  Jacob was brought into new contact with him.  The Duke liked him, and offered him the agency of his Essex property.  Jacob accepted, partly that he might be quit of the law, partly that he might be in the country and among the poor, partly for reasons, or ghosts of reasons, unavowed even to himself.  The one terror that haunted his life was the terror of the dukedom.  This poor, sickly lad, the heir, with whom he soon made warm friends, and the silent, morbid Duke, with the face of Charles V. at St. Just—­he became, in a short time, profoundly and pitifully attached to them.  It pleased him to serve them; above all did it please him to do all he could, and to incite others to do all they could, to keep these two frail persons cheered and alive.  His own passionate dread lest he should suddenly find himself in their place, gave a particular poignancy to the service he was always ready to render them of his best.

The Duke’s confidence in him had increased rapidly.  Delafield was now about to take over the charge of another of the Duke’s estates, in the Midlands, and much of the business connected with some important London property was also coming into his hands.  He had made himself a good man of business where another’s interests were concerned, and his dreams did no harm to the Duke’s revenues.  He gave, indeed, a liberal direction to the whole policy of the estate, and, as he had said to Julie, the Duke did not forbid experiments.

As to his own money, he gave it away as wisely as he could, which is, perhaps, not saying very much for the schemes and Quixotisms of a young man of eight-and-twenty.  At any rate, he gave it away—­to his mother and sister first, then to a variety of persons and causes.  Why should he save a penny of it?  He had some money of his own, besides his income from the Duke.  It was disgusting that he should have so much, and that it should be, apparently, so very easy for him to have indefinitely more if he wanted it.

He lived in a small cottage, in the simplest, plainest way compatible with his work and with the maintenance of two decently furnished rooms for any friend who might chance to visit him.  He read much and thought much.  But he was not a man of any commanding speculative or analytic ability.  It would have been hard for him to give any very clear or logical account of himself and his deepest beliefs.  Nevertheless, with every year that passed he became a more remarkable character—­his will stronger, his heart gentler.  In the village where he lived they wondered at him a good deal, and often laughed at him.  But if he had left them, certainly the children and the old people would have felt as though the sun had gone out.