No one moved to help him. He stood holding out the pen, eager as if his own interests were involved, while the rest stood motionless, saying not a word, gazing at this venerable dying figure in that last blaze in the socket. Probably the old eyes, all veiled in whiteness like the mists of the morning, no longer saw anything, though they seemed to look out with solemn intelligence—for Sir Walter made no response; his question had required no answer; his eyes flickered with a movement of the lids, as though taking one other look round, then a smile came over his face. “Alicia—will do it. Alicia—will think of—everything,” he murmured, and relapsing as it were upon himself, sunk back, to resume the thread of conscious life no more.
The night was over. The gray day dim and calm, benumbed with cold, and veiled with mists, yet full in its own occupations and labors, was in possession of earth and sky. Thus one ends while the others go on. There was no new beginning to those who were chiefly concerned. They stopped for a moment, then went on again, life sweeping back with all its requirements to the very edge of the chamber of death. When it was evident that no interval of consciousness was now to be looked for, the watchers went downstairs and found breakfast, of which indeed they had great need, and talked in subdued tones at first, and on the one sole subject which seemed possible. But presently even this bond was broken, and Russell Penton and Rochford discussed, a little gravely, the weather, the chances of frost, the state of the country.
Edward Penton did not join in this talk, but he eat his breakfast solemnly, as if it had been a serious duty, saying nothing even to Wat, who had ventured to join the grave party. Wat was more worn out than any of them. He had not been able to rest, and he had the additional fatigue of the drive, not to speak of the wearing effect of the mental struggle to which he was so entirely unaccustomed. He wanted more than anything else to go home. Ally, upstairs in her room, crying out of excitement and sympathy, and longing for her mother, had packed up all the pretty things which had served so little purpose, and was waiting very eagerly for the call to return to the Hook, which it would have been, oh! so much better had they never left. But there had been breakfast for everybody all the same, notwithstanding that the troop of servants were all very anxious, wondering what was to come of it, or rather what was to become of them, a more important question. The only evidence of this great overturn of everybody’s habits in the house was that the room in which the dancing had been remained untouched, which was a wonderful departure from the order and regularity of the household. But everything is to be excused, the housekeeper herself said, in the confusion of a death in the family, though that was a thing for which, considering Sir Walter’s great age, they should all have been prepared.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MASTER OF PENTON.
Mr. Penton waited through all the dreary day. He sent the young ones away peremptorily at the earliest opportunity, without throwing any light to them on the state of affairs. “It would be bad taste, the worst of taste, to have you here at such a time,” he said, but without explaining why. “Tell your mother I will come back when I can—but not before—” He spoke in ellipses, with phrases too full of meaning to be put into mere words.
“Mab is coming with us, father,” said Ally. “We couldn’t leave her here by herself.”
“Mab? Who is Mab?” said Mr. Penton, but he looked for no reply. His mind was too much absorbed to consider what they said to him. There seemed so little in their prattle that could not wait for another time. And his mind was full of a hundred questions. By this time, as was natural, the pathetic impression which had been made on him when he stood by his uncle’s bedside through those solemn moments, and felt that next to Alicia it was he, of all the world, who had the best right to be there, had died away. Common life had come back to him—his own position, the prospects of his family, what he was to do. He wandered about the house, up and down, with very much the air of a man inspecting it before taking possession, which was what he actually was. But no such consciousness was in his mind. He was overflowing with thought as to what he was to do in the new crisis at which he had arrived. It was a crisis which ought to have been long foreseen, and indeed had been fully entered into in detail many a day. But lately it had been put away from his thoughts, and other possibilities had come in. He had thrust Penton away from him, and allowed himself to feel the power of his wife’s arguments, and even to act upon the possible increase of fortune which should be immediate, and bring no responsibility with it. Gradually, and with a struggle, his mind had been brought to that point. But now all this new condition of affairs was gone, and everything restored to the old basis. The change had come in a moment, so far as he was concerned. He had not anticipated it, had not thought of it, until Sir Walter had suddenly lifted up his dying voice and began to talk of the boy. The boy! he did not realize even now, or scarcely ask himself, who was the boy. The crisis was too great for secondary matters. The real thing to think of was that the new deeds had never been signed nor completed, that no change had been made, that Penton was his, as he had always looked forward to it, not a new fortune unencumbered and free, but Penton with all its burdens, with all its honors, with the old family importance, the position of which he had so often heard, and so often said, that it was one of the best in England. Perhaps at any time he would have been startled and alarmed by the first consciousness of entering into this great inheritance. It was not an advancement that could be thought of lightly as mere getting on in the world. It was like ascending a throne. It was entering on a post rather than on a mere possession. The master of Penton had claims made upon him which were different, he thought, from those of a mere country gentleman. At any time there would have been solemnity in the prospect. But now that he had put it all away from him, and made up his mind to the other, to mere money without any position at all, and had calculated even on withdrawing from the smaller claims of Penton Hook, and setting up in perfect freedom, without any responsibilities, any land or burden of the soil, the awe with which he felt his natural importance come back to him, and all his plans brought to nothing, was great. It was as if Providence had refused to accept that sacrifice which he had not indeed been willing to make, which he had done not for his own pleasure but in deference to what seemed best for the children, more practicable for himself. Providence had made light of all those deliberations, of the mother’s arguments, and his own laborious and cloudy attempts to decipher what was best. Whether it was the best or the worst, in a moment God had changed all that, and here he was again at the point from which he had set out—master of Penton, or if not so already, at least in an hour or two to be.
And he looked, to the servants at least, exactly as if he were taking possession, inspecting his future property. He went from one room to another with eyes that seemed to be investigating everything, though in reality they saw nothing. He walked about the library with his hands in his pockets, looking at all the books, then from the windows over the park, which stretched away down to the river, and in which there was a great deal of wood that might come down. He lingered long over the view; was he marking in his mind the clumps which were thickest, where the trees most wanted cutting—the easiest way to make a little money? Then he went to the dining-room and looked in the same keen way at the plate upon the sideboard, calculating perhaps which were heir-looms and which were not. The butler had his eye upon the probable new master, and drew his own conclusions. And then he went to the drawing-room, where he remained a long time, looking at everything. The butler had a great contempt for the poor relation who was about to come into this great property. “I don’t know what he could find to do away with there,” that functionary said, and suggested that perhaps the painted roof was the thing that had occupied the speculations of the hungry heir. As it happened, poor Edward Penton’s reflections were of the most depressed kind. He asked himself what would she do there—how could she settle herself and her work-basket and the children among those gilded pillars? How were they ever to furnish it? as she had said. His wife after all was a woman of great sense. She knew how difficult it was to adapt one way of living to another, to transpose a household from what was little more than a cottage to what was little less than a palace. But now all her arguments were to come to nothing, and the revolution in his own mind to be set aside. He stood and shivered; for the heating had been neglected on this dismal and exciting day. The heating and everything else had been neglected, and the great room with one feeble fire burning was cold as any deserted place could be. What would she do there with Horry and the rest of the little ones, and her basket with the stockings to darn? Ally had asked herself the same question, but with a sort of awed satisfaction, feeling that this problem would never have to be solved. But now it had come. He strayed at last from the drawing-room through the corridor to the great room sometimes called the music-room, for there was an organ in it, sometimes called the king’s room, since a sacred majesty had once, as at Lady Margaret Bellendean’s castle of Tillietudlem, broken his fast there—where the dancing had been. And here it was that the disorganization of the household became apparent. Shutters were still closed and curtains drawn in this room. The pale light struggled in by every crevice, by the folds of the shutters, from the large open chimney, which was filled with flowers. The walls were hung with greenery, garlands of ivy and holly, and feathery bunches of the seed-pods of the clematis. They had been beautiful last night; they were ghastly now, looking as if they had hung there for fifty years. There was something in the neglect, in the deserted place, in the contrast of all that faded decoration with the stillness and desolation of the day, that suited Edward Penton’s mood. The rest of the house suggested life and its ordinary occupations, neither sad nor glad, but serious and still. This was the banquet-hall deserted, which is of all human things the most dismal and suggestive. He walked up and down looking at the banks of flowers, half seen in this curious subdued and broken light. Here it was that the children were dancing, timid strangers, half afraid of it, and of all that was going on, last night: and now to-day—
Solemn steps came in at the other end, slowly advancing over the waxed and slippery floor; a solemn figure in black, more grave than ever mourner was, holding its hands folded. “Sir,” the butler said, “my mistress has sent me to tell you all is over, about a quarter of an hour ago.”
“All over! You mean, my uncle is dead?”