“You heard what Sir Walter said. Your son took his fancy very much. He found a resemblance, which I also can see: but Alicia dislikes to hear of it, and so will you, perhaps.”
“A resemblance!” said Edward; and then he thought of Walter Penton, his cousin. If Wat had not been like that unfortunate scapegrace why should he have thought of him now? He said, with energy, “There is no resemblance. They have dwelt so long on the memory of the boys that everything they see seems to have got identified with them. It was not so in their life. My boy Wat is more like—Why, you know, Russell; you remember what a broken-down miserable—”
“Hush!” said Russell Penton, lifting his hand. “Let their memory be respected here. Alicia thinks with you; she sees no resemblance: but she will give effect to her father’s wishes. Everything he desired is sacred in her sight.”
“I hope she will think no more of it,” said Edward Penton, growing red. “Beg of her from me to think no more of it. I could not have—I should not wish—in short, I should prefer nothing more to be said on the subject. He was an old man. His memory had got confused. As I can not be of any use here, can I have something to drive home? My wife will be anxious, she will want to know.”
And then there was a few minutes’ brief conversation about the funeral and all the lugubrious business of such a moment. It was with a sense of relief that Edward Penton quitted for the first time the house that was his own. He looked back upon it with curiously mingled feelings. He was glad to get away. It was an escape to turn out of the avenue into the clear undisturbed air in which there was nothing to remind him of the close still atmosphere, the silence, the associations of this fatal place. But yet when he looked back his heart swelled with a sensation of pride. It was his. He had given up thinking of it, avoided looking at it, weaned his heart in every way from that house of his fathers. Never man had tried more honestly than he to give it up, entirely and from the bottom of his heart—this thing which was not to be for him. And now, without anything that could be called his doing, lo! it had come back into his hands. It was the doing of Providence, he thought: his heart swelled with a sort of solemn pride. As he went silently along, the landscape took another aspect in his sight. It was the country in which he was to spend all the rest of his life. It was his country, in which he was one of the chief people, a man important to many, known wherever he passed. By degrees a strange elation got into his mind. “Drive quickly, I am in haste to get home,” he said to the groom who drove him. “Yes, Sir Edward,” said the man, respectfully. He had changed his very name—everything was changed. Then as the red roof of Penton Hook appeared below at the foot of the hill he thought of the anxious faces looking out for him, the young ones with awe in them, thinking of the first death that had crossed their way; his wife wistful, ready to read in his face what had happened. But none of them knowing what had really happened—that Penton was his after all.
END OF FIRST HALF.
