Chapter Fifteen.
When death brings other departures besides the one that is greatest, a hundred pangs may be added to its sadness. There is the leaving the old home, the uprooting of old ties,—a shock meets you at every turn. Mrs Miles felt so sharply the fear of these added troubles, that she implored Anthony with a wistful entreaty he could not resist to let her remain at Thorpe, and to move, at least for the present, into a house they called “the cottage,” about half a mile from the Vicarage. He agreed reluctantly, and because it seemed cruelty to his mother to oppose her at such a time. He himself disliked staying in the place, with their home no longer theirs; and his sorrow for his father was so great that he had almost an impatient longing to escape from a neighbourhood which was absolutely made up of associations. The Squire forgot all his little animosities with Anthony Miles, while the awe of standing by his old friends grave was fresh in his mind; but Anthony shrank from his homely attempts at consolation, as a man shrinks from the reopening of a wound. Even Winifred, whose sympathy was at once strong and delicate, found it difficult to show it. The little barrier which had reared itself between them did not fall away at her kind, womanly touch. Anthony was inclined to reject an attempt to share his sorrow,—almost to resent it. He wanted to escape, to try his wings, to make a career, and Mrs Miles promised to go with him to London; but her heart failed her, poor thing, whenever the time came, and he gave way to her wishes, meaning his own to have their way by and by.
So one by one the new things which had seemed so strange subsided into ordinary life. Marmaduke and Marion were living in one of the midland counties. A new vicar came to Thorpe,—a short, bustling man, in all respects a contrast to Mr Miles. But it was a peculiarity of the place that even change seemed to lose its characteristics in the quiet little village; a certain dogged custom was too strong for it, or the climate was too sleepy. Little by little Mr Brent laid down his arms, accepted this anomaly, that habit, and things went on in much the same groove as in Mr Miles’s time, although Mr Brent was red-haired and energetic.
In the winter a visitor came to Hardlands, an old friend of the Squire’s, and no less a person than Mr Pitt, Mr Tregennas’s lawyer. It took Anthony by surprise to meet him one day walking with the Squire, and the young man, who had been chafed by a certain dry, unsympathetic manner in the old lawyer, was not very cordial in his greeting.
“So you knew Anthony Miles before?” said Mr Chester when they had parted. “Oh! ay! to be sure! I forgot you had to do with that queer affair of his uncle, or grandfather, or whoever he was, that died the other day.”
“Who told you it was a queer affair?” said Mr Pitt, stopping short.
“Who? Why, my own common-sense could do so much, I suppose. I always thought the boy a romantic young idiot, and it’s just the sort of thing I should have expected him to do,” replied the Squire with great pride.
“Humph!”
“I’ll say this for him, he hasn’t got any of those low mercantile notions half the young men of the present day bring out of their pockets cut and dried for use. They’ll be the ruin of the country, sir. Don’t talk to me about reductions and rotten administrations, and all the rest of it; the other’s the real evil, take my word.”
“And you consider young Miles free from the prevailing passion?”