The Pentons, who were now the lords of all—or rather of as little as was practicable, for all that was unentailed naturally went without question to Sir Walter’s daughter—had not a carriage of their own in which to swell the procession. And though they were now naturally in the chief place, they were perhaps the least known of all the rural potentates, great and small, who shook hands in silence, with looks of sympathy more or less solemn, with Mr. Russell Penton after the ceremony was over. Sir Edward, indeed, the new baronet, had known them all in his day; but Walter looked on with a half-defiant shyness, with scarcely an acquaintance in the multitude. And the sensation was very strange to both father and son when all the train had dispersed and they came back to the great house which was henceforward theirs. Mrs. Russell Penton had not since the moment of her father’s death made any show of her grief. She had been entirely stricken down on that day. A frightful combination and mingling of emotions had prostrated her. Grief for her father; ah, yes! He had been perhaps the one individual in the world upon whose full comprehension she had leaned; but in his dying even this had failed her, and she felt that he comprehended her and she him no longer, and that at the last moment his steps had strayed from hers. A more bitter and terrible discovery could not be; and when with that came the sense that all her hopes had failed—that the plans so nearly brought to some practical possibility had all come to nothing—that everything was too late—that, instead of securing her home for an eternal possession, which was what her eager spirit desired, she had only presented herself to the world in the aspect of a grasping woman, endeavoring to take advantage of a poor man and seize his inheritance—when all this became apparent to her, Alicia covered her face and withdrew from the light of day. The loss of one who had been the chief object in her life for so long, the father whom she had loved, was not much more than a pretense (and she felt this too to the bottom of her heart) for the misery that overwhelmed her; which was not grief only, but disappointment almost more bitter than grief; disenchantment and failure mingled with the sorrow and loss, and made them more keen and poignant than words can tell. And she was ashamed that it should be so—ashamed that, when all around her gave her credit for thus profoundly mourning her father, she was mourning in him her own disappointed hopes, her disgust, her failure, as well as the loss her heart had sustained. This consciousness was in itself one of the bitterest parts of her burden. Her husband came into the room with sympathetic looks, her maid stole about on tiptoe, everything was kept in darkness and quiet to soothe her grief. And yet her grief was but a small part of what her proud spirit was suffering. To feel that this was so was almost more than she could bear.
After the first day she would indeed bear it no longer. She would permit no more of that obsequious tenderness which is given to sorrow, but got up and came forth to take her usual place in the house and fulfill her ordinary duties, refusing as much as she could the praises lavished upon her for her self-control and unselfishness and regard for others. She “bore up” wonderfully, everybody said; but Alicia, to do her justice, would have none of the applause which was murmured about her. “I did not expect my father would live forever,” she said, with a tone of impatience to her husband; “and to lie there and think everything over again, is that to be desired? I would rather feel I had some duty still and claims upon me.”
“Oh, many claims,” he said; “but you must not overtask your strength.”
She had no fear of overtasking her strength, but rather a feeling that if she could get to work—as her maid did, as the house-maids did, to prepare for her departure and the entry of the other family—that would be the thing which would do her good. After the funeral she came out in her deep mourning, out of the library, in which she had been spending that solemn hour, to meet the chief mourners when they returned. It would have pleased her better to have been chief mourner herself; but it had been said on all hands that it would be “too much for her.” So she had spent the time while the slow cortege was winding along the country road and all the gloomy formulas were being fulfilled, by herself in the old man’s favorite room, where everything spoke of him, reading the funeral service over and over, thinking—now they will be there, and there; now arrived at the grave; now leaving him—beside the boys. It was that thought that brought the tears. Beside the boys! They had lain there for twenty years and more, but she could still shed tears for them; for all the rest her eyes were dry. And when the carriages came back she came out quite composed, though so pale, in all the solemnity of her mourning, covered with crape, to the drawing-room to receive them. She had bidden her husband to bring the new proprietor back with him, that everything might at once be said which remained to say. She gave her hand to Edward, who came forward to meet her, he too in deep mourning; but her eye went beyond him to “the boy” who stood behind, and whose slight young figure seemed to hold itself more erect, and with an air of greater self-belief than when she saw him last. What wonder! he was the heir.
“I wanted to see you,” she said. “Gerald will have told you—that everything might be put at once on the footing we wish it to be.”
“I told you, Alicia, that your cousin would not hurry you. He is as anxious as I am that you should have no trouble. We have talked it all over—”
“Why shouldn’t I have trouble?” she said. “There is no reason in the world for sparing me my share of the roughness. I am better so. Edward, if you should wish to get possession soon, you and your wife, you may be sure I will put no obstacles in your way.”
“I wish you would believe that we have no wish, no desire. We want you to act exactly as may suit you best—to consider yourself still in your own house.”
“That is impossible,” she said, quickly; “mine it is not, nor ever was; and now that he is gone who was its natural master—I know perfectly well how considerate you will be. What I am expressing is my own wish—not to be in your way—not to put off your settling down. You have a large family—you will want to settle everything.”
At this Sir Edward began to clear his throat, and it took him some time to get out the next words.