In the corridor she met her husband, between whom and her there was, she was conscious, a certain mist, also on account of this boy. Had all been as usual in other ways she would have passed him by with a sense in her heart of acertain separation and injury: but a woman must have some one to claim support from, and after all he was her husband, bound to stand by her, whatever questions might arise between them. She went up to him with an instinctive feeling of having a right to his sympathy in any case, even if he should disapprove, and put her hand within his arm with a hasty appealing movement, quite unusual with her. No man was more easily affected than Russell Penton by such an appeal. He put his hand upon hers, and looked at her tenderly. “What is it, my dear?” he said.
“Nothing, Gerald; except that I want to lean upon you for a moment because I have more than I can bear; though you disapprove of me,” she said.
He held her close to him, full of pity and tenderness. “Lean, Alicia, whether I approve or disapprove;” and he added, “I know that all this is hard upon you.” He sympathized with her at least, if not with the tenor of her thoughts.
She made no further explanation, nor did he ask for it. After a moment she said, “Gerald, do you know whether a sudden change of mind, abandoning one way of thinking for another, is supposed to be a bad sign—of health, I mean?”
He paused a moment and looked at her, with an evident question as to whether it was she who had changed her mind. But that look was enough to show that, though she was suffering she was firm as ever, and a glance she gave toward the closed door of the library enlightened him. “I should not think it was a very good sign—of health,” he said.
“It shows a weakening—it shows a relaxation of the fiber—a—that is what I think. And so complete a change! Gerald, my father shall do nothing he does not wish to do for me.”
“I never supposed you would wish that, my dear. What is it? Don’t form too hasty a judgment. Has he said that he does not want to do anything that has been spoken of between you?”
“No, he has spoken of nothing. He has got Edward Penton’s boy with him, and he is quite affectionate, talking of a resemblance—”
“Alicia, is it Penton you are thinking so much of?”
“No, no,” she cried, leaning upon his shoulder, bursting at last into sudden, long-repressed tears. “No, no! It is my brother, my brother!myWalter! He who should have been, who ought to have been—Gerald, it may be wrong, but I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it. He talks of a resemblance—”
“Alicia, I see it too. I thought it would soften your heart.”
“Oh!” she cried, “how little you know;” and, flinging herself from him, with a cry of mortification and disappointment, she flew into her own room and closed the door.
Russell Penton stood looking after her with a troubled countenance, and then he began to walk slowly up and down the corridor. He did not approve, and perhaps, as she said in her passion, did not understand this strange revulsion of all gentle sentiments. But it went to his heart to leave her to herself in a moment of pain, even though the pain was of her own inflicting. He did not follow or attempt to console her. She was not a girl to be soothed and persuaded out of this outburst of passionate feeling. He respected her individuality, her age, her power to bear her own burdens; but because his heart was very tender, though he did not disturb Alicia, he walked up and down, waiting till she should return to him, outside that closed door.
Therewas a ball at Penton that evening.
Nothing was more unusual than a ball at Penton. The family festivities were usually of the gravest kind. Solemn dinner-parties, duties of society, collections of people who had to be asked, county potentates, with whom Alicia and her husband had dined, and who had to be repaid. Nothing under fifty, unless it might be by chance now and then a newly married couple added in the natural progress of events to the circle of the best people, ever appeared at that luxurious but somewhat heavy table. Mr. Russell Penton chafed, but endured, and talked politics with the squires, and did his best to relieve the ponderous propriety of their wives. He was good at making the best of things; and when he could do nothing more he put on a brave face and supported it. But now, for once in a way, youth wasparamount. The young people from Penton Hook, who had little acquaintance with the other young people of all the county families who were invited, had not so much as heard of what was in store for them; and Ally reflected, when she did hear, that it was something like an inspiration which had induced her mother to provide her with that second evening dress, which was quite suitable for a first ball. It was very simple, very white, fit for her age, her slim figure, and youthful aspect. But it was not for Ally that the ball was given. “I believe it is my ball,” Mab had told her. “It is my first visit to Penton since I was a child, and now that I am out Aunt Alicia thinks that something has to be done for me. Are you ‘out’? but you must be, of course, or you would not have been asked for to-day.”
“I don’t know whether I am out or not,” said Ally, with a blush; “but I don’t think mother, if she knew, would have any objection. I am eighteen. I have never been at a ball before. Perhaps I may not dance in the right way.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Mab, “whatever way you dance you have only to stick to it and say that is the right way.”
The two girls were alone, for Walter had just been mysteriously called out of the room. And though Ally’s thoughts followed her brother with anxiety, wondering what could be wanted with him, yet the novelty of the scene and the companionship of a girl of her own age so warmed her heart, that she forgot the precautions and cares which had been so impressed upon her, and began to talk and to act by natural impulse without thought.
“I should never have the courage to do that,” she said; “I have never even seen people dancing. We had a few lessons when we were children, and sometimes we try with Wat, just to see, if we ever had a chance, how we could get on. Anne plays and I have a turn, or else Anne has a turn and I play.”
“Is Anne your only sister?”
“Oh, no,” cried Ally, with a laugh at the impossibility of such a suggestion; “there are two in the nursery. We are two boys and two girls, grown up; and the little ones are just the same, two and two.”
“How unfair things are in this world,” said Mab; “tothink there should be so many of you and only one of me!”
“It is strange,” said Ally; “but not perhaps unfair: for when there is only one your father and mother must seem so much nearer to you—you must feel that they belong altogether toyou.”
“Perhaps. Mamma died when I was born, so I never knew her at all. Papa is dead too. Don’t let us talk of that. I never think of things that are disagreeable,” said Mab, “what is the use? It can’t do you any good, it only makes you worse thinking. Tell me about to-night. Who will be here? are they nice? are they good dancers? Tell me which is the best dancer about, that I may ask Uncle Gerald to introduce him to me.”
“I know nobody,” said Ally.
“Nobody! though you have lived here all your life! Oh, you little envious thing! You want to keep them all to yourself; you won’t tell me! Very well. I have no doubt your brother dances well; he has the figure for it. I shall dance with him all the night.”
“Oh, no; that would be too much. But I hope youwilldance with him to give him a little confidence. Indeed, what I say is quite true. We don’t know anybody; we have been brought up so—quietly. We never were here before.”
“Oh!” Mab said. She was an inquiring young woman, and she had not believed what she had heard. She had made very light of Mrs. Russell Penton’s description of her relations as “not in our sphere.” As Ally spoke, however, Mab’s eyes opened wider; she began to realize the real position. The misfortunes of the young Pentons had gone further than she had believed; they were poor relations in the conventional sense of the word, people to be thrust into a corner, to be allowed to shift for themselves. But not if they have some one to look after them, Mab said to herself. She took up their cause with heat and fury. “You shall soon know everybody,” she cried; “Uncle Gerald will see to that, and so shall I.” It then occurred to her that Ally might resent this as an offer of patronage, and she added, hastily, “Promise to introduce all your good partners to me, and I will introduce all mine to you. Is that settled? Oh, then between us we shall soon find out which are the best.”
How kind she was! To be sure, Cousin Alicia was not very kind; there was nothing effusive about her. No doubt she must mean to be agreeable, or why should she have asked them? though her manner was not very cordial. But as for Mab—who insisted that she was to be called Mab, and not Miss Russell—she was more “nice” than anything that Ally could have imagined possible. She was like a new sister, she was like one of ourselves. So Ally declared with warmth to Wat, who knocked at the door of her room just as she was beginning to dress for dinner, with a face full of importance and gravity. He was quite indifferent as to Mab, but he told her of Sir Walter with a sort of enthusiasm. “He said I must not forget that I was his heir, and that he would like to make a man of me. What do you think he could mean, Ally, by saying that I was his heir, after all?”
Ally could not tell; how was it possible that she should tell, as she had not heard or seen the interview? And besides, she was not the clever one to be able to divine what people meant. She threw, however, a little light on the subject by suggesting that perhaps he meant the title. “For you must be heir to the title, Wat,” she said; “nobody can take that from you.” Wat’s countenance fell at this, for he did not like to think that it was merely the baronetcy Sir Walter meant when he called him his heir. However, there was not very much time to talk. Walter had to hurry to his room to get ready, and Ally to finish dressing her hair and to put on her dress, with a curious feeling of strangeness which took away her pleasure in it. Of course, you really could see yourself better in the long, large glass than in the little ones at the Hook, but an admiring audience of mother and sisters are more exhilarating to dress to than the noblest mirror. And Ally felt sad and excited—not excited as a girl generally does before her first ball, but filled with all manner of indefinite alarms. There was nothing to be alarmed about. Cousin Alicia, however cold she might seem, would not suffer, after all, her own relations to be neglected. And then there was Mab. The girl felt the confused prospect before her of pleasure—which she was not sure would be pleasure, or anything but a disguised pain—to grow brighter and more natural when she thought of Mab. And that compact about the partners. Ally wondered whether she would get any partners,or if they would all overlook her in her corner, a little girl whom nobody knew.
And then came dinner, an agitating but brilliant ceremonial, with a confusing brightness of lights and flowers and ferns, and everything so strange, and the whole disturbed by an underlying dread of doing something wrong. Sir Walter at the head of the table, a strange image of age and tremulous state, looked to Ally like an old sage in a picture, or an old magician, one in whose very look there were strange powers. She scarcely raised her eyes when she was presented to him, but courtesied to the ground as if he had been a king, and did not feel at all sure that the look he gave her might not work some miraculous change in her. But Sir Walter did not take much notice of Ally, his attention was all given to Wat, whom he desired to have near him, and at whom he looked with that pleasure near to tears which betrays the weakness of old age. When dinner was over the old man would not have Russell Penton’s arm, nor would he let his servant help him. He signed to Wat, to the astonishment of all, and shuffled into the ball-room, where half of the county were assembled, leaning on the arm of the youth, who was no less astonished than everybody else. Sir Walter was very tall, taller than Wat, and he was heavy, and leaned his full weight upon the slight boy of twenty, who required all his strength to keep steady and give the necessary support. Mrs. Russell Penton, who was already in the ball-room receiving her guests, grew pale like clay when she saw this group approach. “Father, let me take you to your seat,” she said, hurriedly, neglecting a family newly arrived too, who were waiting for her greeting. “Nothing of the kind, Alicia. I’m well off to-night. I’ve got Wat, you see,” the old gentleman said, and walked up the whole length of the room, smiling and bowing, and pausing to speak to the most honored guests. “This is young Walter,” he said, introducing the boy, “don’t you know? My successor, you know,” with that old tremulous laugh which was half a cough, and brought the tears to his eyes. The people who knew the circumstances—and who did not know the circumstances?—stared and asked each other what could have happened to bring about such a revolution. When Sir Walter had been seated at the upper end of his room he dismissed his young attendant with a caressing tap uponhis arm. “Now go, boy, and find your partner. You must open the ball, you know; nothing can be done till you’ve opened the ball. Go, go, and don’t keep everybody waiting.” Poor Wat could not tell what to do when raised to this giddy height without any preparation, not knowing anybody, very doubtful about his own powers as a dancer, or what was the etiquette of such performances. Russell Penton almost thrust Mab upon him in his pause of bewilderment. And from where she stood at the door, stately and rigid, Alicia looked with a blank gaze upon this boy, this poor relation, whom her eyes had avoided, whom she had included almost perforce in her reluctant invitation to his sister, but who was thus made the principal figure in her entertainment. She had been reluctant to ask Ally, but the brother had been put in quite against her will. His name, his look, the resemblance which she refused to see, but yet could not ignore, were all intolerable to her; but her father’s sudden fancy for the boy, his change of sentiment so inconceivable, so unexplainable, struck chill to her heart.
When she was released from her duties of receiving she found out the doctor among the crowd of more important guests, and begged him to give her his opinions.
“How do you think my father looks?”
“Extremely well—better than he has looked for years—as if he had taken a new lease,” the doctor said.
Mrs. Russell Penton shook her head. She herself was very pale; her eyes shone with a strange, unusual luster. She said to herself that it was superstition. Why should not an old man take a passing fancy? It would pass with the occasion, it might mean nothing. There was no reason to suppose that this wonderful contradiction, this apparent revolution in his mind, was anything but a sudden impression, an effect—though so different from that in herself—of the stirring up of old associations. She sat down beside her father, and did her best to subdue the state of unusual exhilaration in which he was.
“You must not stay longer than you feel disposed,” she said, with her hand upon his arm.
“Oh, don’t fear for me, Alicia. I am wonderfully well; I never felt better. Look at young Wat, with that little partner of his! Isn’t she the little heiress? I shouldn’t wonder if he carried off the prize, the rascal! eh, Gerald?and very convenient too in the low state of the exchequer,” the old gentleman said; and he chuckled and laughed with the water in his eyes, while his daughter by his side felt herself turning to stone. It was not, she said to herself passionately, for fear of his changing his mind. It was that a change so extraordinary looked to her anxious eyes like one of those mental excitements which are said to go before the end.
It was Ally’s own fault that she got behind backs, and escaped the attentions which Mr. Russell Penton, absorbed, he, too, in this curious little drama, had intended to pay her. Ally, in the shade of larger interests, fell out of that importance which ought to belong to adébutante. It was a great consolation to her when young Rochford suddenly appeared, excited and delighted, anxious to know if she had still a dance to give him. Poor Ally had as many dances as she pleased to give, and knew nobody in all this bewildering brilliant assembly so well as himself. She was unspeakably relieved and comforted when he introduced her to his sisters and his mother, who, half out of natural kindness, and half because of the distinction of having a Miss Penton—who was a real Penton, though a poor one, in the great house which bore her name—under her wing, encouraged Ally to take refuge by her side, and talked to her and soothed her out of the frightened state of loneliness and abandonment which is perhaps more miserable to a young creature expecting pleasure in a ball-room than anywhere else. They got her partners among their own set, the guests who were, so to speak, below the salt, the secondary strata in the great assembly—who indeed were quite good enough for Ally—quite as good as any one, though without handles to their names or any prestige in society. Mab, when she met her new friend, stopped indeed to whisper aside, “Where have you picked up that man?” but Mab, too, was fully occupied with her own affairs. And Walter was altogether swept away from his sister. He made more acquaintances in the next hour or two than he had done for all the previous years of his life. If his head was a little turned, if he felt that some wonderful unthought-of merit must suddenly have come out in him, who could wonder? He met Ally now and then, or saw her dancing and happy; and, with a half-guilty gladness, feeling that there was no necessity for him to take herupon his shoulders, abandoned himself to the intoxication of his own success. It was his first; it was totally unexpected, and it was very sweet.
The time came, however, as the time always comes, when all this fascination and delight came to an end. Sir Walter had retired hours before; and now the last lingering guest had departed, the last carriage had rolled away, the lights were extinguished, the great house had fallen into silence and slumber after the fatigue of excitement and enjoyment. Walter did not know how late, or rather how early it was, deep in the heart of the wintery darkness toward morning, when he was roused from his first sleep by sudden sounds in the corridor, and voices outside his door. A sound of other doors opening and shutting, of confused cries and footsteps, made it evident to him that something unusual had occurred, as he sprung up startled and uneasy. The first thought that springs to the mind of every inexperienced adventurer in this world, that the something which has happened must specially affect himself, made him think of some catastrophe at home, and made him clutch at his clothes and dress himself hurriedly, with a certainty that he was about to be summoned. There flashed through Walter’s mind with an extraordinary rapidity, as if flung across his consciousness from without, the possibility that it might be his father—the thought that in that case it would actually be he, as old Sir Walter had said, who would be—The thought was guilty, barbarous, unnatural. It did not originate in the young man’s own confused, half-awakened mind. What is there outside of us that flings such horrible realizations across our consciousness without any will of ours? He had not time to feel how horrible it was when he recognized Mrs. Russell Penton’s voice outside in hurried tones, sharp with some urgent necessity. “Some one must go for Edward Penton and Rochford—Rochford and the papers. Who can we send, who will understand? Oh, Gerald, not you, not you. Don’t let me be alone at this moment—let all go rather than that.”
“If it must be done, I am the only man to do it, Alicia—if his last hours are to be disturbed for this.”
“His last hours! they are disturbed already; he can not rest; he calls for Rochford, Rochford! It is no doing of mine—that you should think so of me at this moment!How am I to quiet my father? But, Gerald, don’t leave me—don’t you leave me?” she cried.
Walter threw his door open in the excitement of his sudden waking. The light flooded in his eyes, dazzling him. “I’ll go,” he said, unable to see anything except a white figure and a dark one standing together in the flicker of the light which was blown about by the air from some open window. Presently Alicia Penton’s face became visible to him, pale, with a lace handkerchief tied over her head, which changed her aspect strangely, and her eyes full of agitation and nervous unrest. She fell back when she saw him, crying, with a sharp tone of pain, “You!”
“I’m wide awake,” said the young man. “I thought something must have happened at home. If there’s a horse or a dog-cart I’ll go.”
“Sir Walter is very ill,” said Russell Penton. “I hope not dying, but very ill. And you know what they want, to settle the matter with your father and get that deed executed at once.”
“I’ll go,” said Wat, half sullen in the repetition, in the sudden perception that burst upon him once again from outside with all its train of ready-made thoughts—that if he lingered, if he delayed, it might be too late, and Penton would still be his—that there was no duty laid upon him to go at all, contrary to his interests, contrary to all his desires that—that—He gave a little stamp with his foot and repeated, doggedly, “I said I’d go. I’m ready. To bring Rochford and the papers, to bring my father; that’s what I’ve got to do.”
“That is what Mrs. Penton does not venture to ask of you.”
“Oh, boy,” cried Alicia, lifting up her hands, “go, go! It is not for me, it is for my father. I don’t know what he means to do, but he can not rest till it is done. He can’t die, do you know what I mean? It is on his mind, and he can’t get free—for the love of Heaven go!”
“This moment,” Walter said.
Walter Pentonfound himself facing the penetrating wind of the December morning which was in its stillnessand blackness the dead of night, before he had fully realized what was happening. A number of keen perceptions indeed had flashed across his mind, yet it felt like nothing so much as the continuation of a dream when, enveloped in an atmosphere of sound, the horse’s hoofs clanging upon the frosty road, the wheels grinding, the harness jingling, all doubled in clamor by the surrounding stillness, he was carried along between black, half-visible hedge-rows, under dark bare trees, swaying in the wind, through shut-up silent villages, and the death-like slumber of the wide country, bound hard in frost and sleep. A groom less awake than himself, shivering and excited, but speechless, and affording him no sense of human companionship, was by his side, driving mechanically, but at the highest speed, along a road which to unaccustomed eyes was invisible. The scene was a very strange one after the intoxicating dream of the evening, with all its phantasmagoria of light and praise, and confused delight and pride. The blackness before him was as heavy as the preliminary vision had been dazzling; the air blew keen, cutting the very breath which rose in white wreaths like smoke from his lips. Where was he rushing? carried along by a movement which was not his own, an unwilling agent, acting in spite of himself. Sir Walter’s old head, crowned with white locks, looking upon him with so much genial approbation, Mrs. Russell Penton’s drawn and rigid countenance, the disturbed face of her husband, the plump simplicity of little Mab, a sort of floating rosy cherub among all these older countenances, seemed to flit before him in the mists; the music echoed, the lights glowed; and then came the darkness, the ring of the hoofs and wheels, the stinging freshness of the cold air, and all dark, motionless, silent around. He was in a vision still. The German poem in which the lady is carried off behind the black horseman, tramp, tramp across the land, splash, splash across the sea, seemed to ring in his ears through his dream. He was preternaturally awake and aware of everything, yet his eyes were in a mist of semi-consciousness, and all the half-visible veiled sights about him seemed like the vague and flying landscape of uneasy fever-journeys. The cold, which half stupefied him, by some strange process only intensified these sensations; his companion and he never exchanged a word. He was not acquainted even with the lie of the roads, the ascentsand descents, or of what houses those were which looked through the darkness from time to time surrounded by spectral trees. After awhile an overwhelming desire for sleep seized him. He had visions of the bed, all white and in order, which he had left behind; of the chair by the fire which he had been roused out of; of his own room at home, all silent, cold, waiting for him. If only he could make a spring out of this moving, jingling thing, out of the stinging of the air, and get into the quiet and warmth and sleep!
When the groom spoke Walter woke up again, broad awake from what must have been a doze. “Shall we go to the Hook or to Mr. Rochford’s first, sir?” the man asked. Walter started bolt upright, and came to himself. They were clashing through his own village, and a moment later he would have passed without seeing the white blinds at the windows of Crockford’s cottage which shone through the gloom. He waved his hand in the direction of his home, thinking that to give his father the benefit of a warning was worth the trouble before he went on. He took the reins into his own hands, knowing the steep descent toward the house, which was ticklish even in daylight, and this touch of practical necessity brought him to his full senses, and for the first time dispersed the mists. He perceived now fully what he was doing. As the horse’s steps sunk half stumbling down the invisible abyss of the way, Walter felt, with a tingling of his ears and a sinking of his heart, that he also was dropping from the brilliant mount of possibility which he had been ascending with delighted feet. It had seemed as if all the decisions of fate might be reversed, as if he were to be the arbiter of his own fortune, as if—And now it was his hand that was to seal his own fate. Such thoughts and questionings, such rebellions against a duty which is not to be escaped, may go on while one is executing that very duty without any practical effect. Walter pushed on all the time as well as the difficulties of the path would allow. He dashed into the little domain at the Hook with an energy that made the still air tingle, feeling as if he were himself inside, and starting to the shock of the sudden awakening in the midst of the darkness. The groom, who had opened the gate, ran on and gave peal after peal to the bell, and presently the house, which had stood so dead and dark in the midst of thespectral trees, awoke with a start. One or two windows were opened simultaneously. “Who is there?” cried Mr. Penton, in a bass tone, while a sudden wavering treble with terror in it shrieked out, “Oh, it’s Wat, it’s Wat!” and “Something has happened to Ally!” with a cry that penetrated the night.
“Father,” said Wat, “nothing is the matter with either of us. Sir Walter’s very ill. I’m going to fetch Rochford and the papers. You have to come too, to sign. Be ready when I come back.”
“Rochford and the papers! To sign! What do you mean: In the middle of the night!”
And here there came a white figure to the window, crying “Ally—are you sure, are you sure, Wat, all’s right with Ally?” through the midst of the question and reply.
“I tell you, father, Sir Walter’s dying. Be ready, be at the cross-roads if you can in half an hour. It’s three miles further, but this horse goes like the wind. Don’t stop for anything. In half an hour. It’s true; it’s not a dream,” he shouted, turning round to go away.
“Wat! dying, did you say? And a ball in the house! Wat! had they got the doctor? what was it? Wat!”
“I can’t stay. He may be dead before we get there. In half an hour at the cross-roads,” cried the youth, turning the horse with dangerous abruptness: and in a minute or two all was still again. The darkness and silence closed round, and the astonished family, terrified, startled out of the profound quiet of their repose, blinked, dazzled at the newly lit candles, and said to each other wildly, “Dying! perhaps before they can get there. But Ally—Ally and Wat are all right, thank God!” And soon there was a twinkle of lights from window to window. The servants got up last, being less easily awakened; but Mrs. Penton had already some tea ready for her husband, and Anne, in a little dressing-gown, was collecting the warmest coats and wrappers which the family possessed, before Mr. Penton himself, very grave, almost tremulous, in the sudden emergency, could get ready. His fingers trembled over his buttons. Sir Walter, whom he had not seen for years; the old man who had been as one who would never die; the kind uncle of old; the causeless antagonist of later years. It was strange beyond measure to Edward Penton to be thus sent for with such startling and tragic suddenness in themiddle of the night. “What shall I do?” he said, wringing his hands, “if he should die before—” “Oh, Edward, make haste; lose no time; a minute may do it,” cried his wife in her anxiety. They almost pushed him out, Anne running before to see that the gate was open, with a lantern to show him the way. There was no one else to carry the lantern, and she went with him up the steep ascent with the flicker of the light flaring unsteadily about the dark road. She was very thinly clad, with an ulster over her dressing-gown, and her poor little feet thrust into her boots, and shivered as she ran, and stumbled with the lantern, which was too big for her, her father being too much absorbed in his thoughts to perceive what a burden it was. Anne shivered, but not altogether from cold. Her heart was beating high, the quick pulsations vibrating to her lively brain, and alarm, awe, the indefinite melancholy and horror of death mingling with that keen exhilaration of quickened living which any tremendous event brings with it to the young. It was a wonderful thing to be happening, to be mixed up in, to realize so much more vividly than even her father did. Her very lantern and course along this steep and dark road in the middle of the night gave a thrilling consciousness to Anne of having a great deal to do with it, of being really an actor in the drama. She would not leave him till the lights of the dog-cart showed far off, coming on swiftly, silently, through the dark, before any sound could be heard. It was all wonderful; the portentous darkness, without a star; the cold, the silence, the consciousness of what was going on; the sense, which took her breath away, that perhaps after all the lawyer, with his papers, and her father, who had to sign them, might be too late; that even now, when she turned to make her way, trembling a little with cold and fright and nervous excitement, Sir Walter might be dead, and Penton be “ours!” Mother would be my lady in any case; the servants would have to be taught to call her so. And all this might be determined in an hour or two, perhaps before daylight! Anne shivered more and more, and was afraid of the darkness under the hedge-rows as she went home alone with the heavy lantern. She had a great mind to leave it under the hedge and run all the way home, without minding the dark; but such darkness as that was not a thing which a girl could make up her resolution not to mind.
Walter had gone on from the Hook with this issue plainer and plainer in his mind—if he but delayed a little, did not press the horse, took it more easily, he might, without reproach, without harm, be late, and so after all preserve his birthright. He said to himself that if the papers were but there Mrs. Russell Penton would have them signed whatever might happen, if her father was in the act of dying she would have them signed. There was nothing she would not do to secure her end. Had she not secured himself, even himself, who was so much against her, whose life was more in question than any one’s, to do her will and serve her purpose? And whenhecould not resist her who could? She would get her way. She would make the old man’s melting, his sudden partiality, come to nothing; and again Walter, whose head had been turned a little, who had begun to feel more than ever what it would be to be the heir of Penton, would be replaced in the original obscurity of his poor relationship. And all this might be changed if he but delayed a little, went softly, spared the horse! All the time, while these thoughts were going through his mind, he was pressing on with vehemence, making the animal fly through the darkness. He did not hesitate a moment practically, though he said all this to himself. What he did and what he thought seemed to run on in two parallel lines without deflection, without any effect upon each other. It was all in his hands to do as he pleased: no one could blame him or say anything to him if he ceased to press on, if he let the reins drop loosely. But it never occurred to him to do so. Then there was the possibility that Rochford might not be ready at once, that he might not be able to find the papers over which he had so dawdled, that he might not be ready to jump up as Walter had done. What need was there to press him, to make the same startling summons at his door that had been made at the Hook, to insist on an answer? There seemed no need to take any active steps in order to upset the family arrangement, to turn everything the other way. All that it was necessary to do was only to let the reins fall on the horse’s neck, to urge him forward no more.
They arrived thus flying at the gates of the Rochfords’ house, a big red-brick mansion just outside the town. There was a light in the coachman’s cottage which answered the purpose of a lodge, and the coachman himselfcame out, half scared, half awake, to open to the pair of lamps that gleamed through the darkness, and the fiery horse from whose nostrils went up what seemed puffs of smoke into the frosty air. “At ’ome? He’ve just got home, and scarce a-bed yet,” said the man. “Whatever can you want of master so early in the morning?” Walter had considered it to be night up to this moment; he recognized it as morning with a sigh of excitement. “Mr. Rochford must be called immediately,” he said, his thoughts tugging at him all the time, saying, Why? Why can’t you let him alone? Is it your business to force him to get up, to produce his papers, to drive half a dozen miles in the chill of the morning? But Walter, though he heard all this, took no notice. “Let him know that I am waiting. Sir Walter Penton is very ill. He must come at once,” he said. He jumped down from the cart, and began to pace rapidly up and down to restore the circulation to his half-frozen limbs, while the groom covered the horse with a cloth and eased the harness. There was no time to put the animal up, to go in-doors and wait. As Walter took his sharp walk up and down, the opposing force in his mind had a time to itself of inaction and silence, and heaped argument upon argument before him. What! hurry like this, drag every one that was wanted from their rest, disturb the whole sleeping world with the clamor of his appeal in order to undo himself! Was this his duty, anyhow that it could be considered? Was it his duty to undo himself? More than ever, now he had seen it, Penton had become the hope of his life, the object of all his wishes; and was it in order to divest himself of the last possibility of being heir of Penton, though this was what Sir Walter had called him, that he was here?
The chill became keener than ever; a sharp air, blighting everything it touched, blew in his face and chilled him to the bone. It was the first breath of the dreary dawning, the dismal rising of a dull day. A faint stir became perceptible in the house, very faint, a light flashed at a window, there was a far-off sound of a voice, the movement of some one coming down-stairs. Then a voice called out, “What is it, Penton? Is it possible I’m wanted? I can’t believe the man. What do you want with me?” And Rochford, shivering, half dressed, with a candle in his hand, appeared at a side door, close to which Walter wasperforming his march. “You can’t have come all this way for nothing,” he cried, “but it’s not an hour since I came home. It doesn’t seem possible. Am I wanted certainly?”
Now was the time. The reasonings within tore Walter as if they had got hold of his heart-strings. Why should he be so obstinate, forcing on what would be his own ruin? It would be all his doing, the hurry-scurry through the night, the insistance, calling up this man, who yawned and gazed at him with a speechless entreaty to be let off, and his father, who probably now was waiting for him by the cross-roads in the dark, chilled too to the heart. It would be all his own officiousness, offering himself to go, forcing the others. These harpies were tearing at him all the time he was saying aloud, his own voice sounding strange and far off in his ears, “Sir Walter has been taken very ill; he wants you at once. Mrs. Russell Penton sent me. You are to bring all the papers, and we are to pick up my father on the way.” He said all this as steadily as if there was not another sentiment in his mind. “What,” said Rochford, “the papers, and your father! Come in, at least; it will take me some time to find them. Come in, though I fear there’s no fire anywhere.”
“I want no fire, only make haste,” said Walter, “we may be too late.” Too late! yes, it was possible even now to be too late, but no longer likely. Now be still, oh, reasoning soul, keep silence, for there is no remedy—the thing is done, and yet it was still possible that it might not be done in time.
Rochford was a long time getting himself and his papers together; so long that the blackness became faintly gray, and objects grew slowly visible, rising noiselessly out of the night. The young man went up and down, up and down mechanically. He had jumped down to recover himself of the numbness of his long drive, but numbness seemed to have taken possession of him body and soul. His mind had fallen into a sort of sullen calm. He asked himself whether he should take the trouble to accompany them back at all. Rochford and his father were all that were necessary. He was not wanted. He thought he would walk home, getting a little warmth into him, following the clamor of the cart, but so far behind that all the echoes would die out, and leave him in the silence, making his way home. Not toPenton, where for a moment he had dreamed a glorious dream, and heard himself called old Sir Walter’s heir, but home to the Hook, where he had been born, where to all appearance he would die, where he could steal to his own bed in the morning gray, and sleep and sleep, and forget it all. But now again another revolution took place in him; he no longer wanted to sleep, all his faculties were wide awake, and life ablaze in him as if he never could sleep again. When Rochford at last came out with his bag, Walter acted as if there had never been a question in his mind, as he had acted all along; he sprung up to his place without a word, gathered the reins out of the groom’s hand, and took the road again, reckless, at the hottest pace. The horse was still fresh, rested yet fretted by the delay, and easily urged to speed. Walter did not know how to drive, he had no experience of anything more spirited than the pony-of-all-work at home, and it was solely by the light of nature, and a determination to get forward, that he was guided. The groom had not ventured to say anything, but Rochford was afraid, and remonstrated seriously. “You can’t go downhill at this pace, you will bring the horse down, or perhaps break our necks,” he said. “I’ll not be too late,” said Walter, “that is the only thing; we must be there in time.” At the cross-roads Mr. Penton, shivering, was pulled up on the cart almost without stopping, and they dashed on once more. The landscape revealed itself little by little, rising on all sides in gray mist, in vague ghostly clearness—the skeleton trees, the solid mass of the houses, the long clear ribbon of the river lighting the plain. And then Penton—Penton rising dark and square with its irregular outline against the clouds. There were lights in many of the windows, though every moment the light grew clearer. Dawn had come, the darkness was fleeing away; had life gone with it? as it is said happens so often. Walter, dashing in at the open gates, urging the horse up the avenue, did not ask himself this question. He felt a conviction, which was bitter at his heart, that he had completed his mission successfully, and that they had come in time.
Sir Walterlay in his luxurious bed, where everything was arranged with the perfection of comfort, warmth, softness, lightness, all that wealth could procure to smooth the downward path. He was not in pain. Even the restlessness which is worse than pain, which so often makes the last hours of life miserable, an agony to the watchers, perhaps less so to the sufferer, had not come to this old man. He lay quite still, with eyes shining unnaturally bright from amid the curves and puckers of his heavy old eyelids, with a half smile on his face, and the air of deliverance from all care which some dying people have. He was dying not of illness, but because suddenly the supplies of life had failed, the golden cord had broken, its strands were dropping asunder. The wheels were soon to stand still, but for the moment that condition of suspense did not seem to be painful. There was fever in his eyes which threw a certain glamour over everything about. He had asked that the candles might be lighted, that the room should be made bright, and had called his daughter to his side. Perhaps it was only her own anxiety which had made her suppose that he had asked for Rochford and the papers. At all events, if he had done so, he did so no more. He held her hand, or rather she held his as she stood by him, and he lightly patted it with the other of his large, soft, feeble hands.
“You are looking beautiful to-night—as I used to see you—not as you have been of late. Alicia, you are looking like a queen to-night.”
“Oh, father, dear father, my beauty is all in your eyes.”
“Perhaps, more or less,” he said; “I have fever in my eyes, and that gives a glory. The lights are all like stars, and my child’s eyes more than all. You were a beautiful girl, Alicia. I was very proud of you. Nobody but your father ever knew how sweet you were. You were a little proud outside, perhaps a little proud. And then we had so much trouble—together, you and I—”
She said nothing. She had not attained even now to the contemplative calm which could look back upon that troublemildly. It brought hard heart-beats, convulsive throbs of pain to her bosom still. She had silenced him often by some cry of unsoftened anguish when he had begun so to speak. But as he lay waiting there, as it were in the vestibule of death, saying his last words, she could silence him no more.
“Something has occurred to-night,” he said, “that has brought it all back. What was it, Alicia? Perhaps your ball; the dancing—we’ve not danced here for long enough—or the music. Music is a thing that is full of associations; it brings things back. Was there anything more? Yes, I think there must have been something more.”
She stood looking at him with dumb inexpressive eyes. She could not, would not say what it was besides, not even now at the last moment, at the supreme moment. All the opposition of her nature was in this. Love and pride and sorrow and the bitter sense of disappointment and loss, all joined together. She met his searching glance, though it was pathetic in its inquiry, with blank unresponsive eyes. And after awhile in his feebleness he gave up the inquiry.
“We have gone through a great deal together, you and I—ah, that is so—only sometimes I think there was a great deal of pride in it, my dear. My two poor boys—poor boys! I might be hard on them sometimes. There was the disappointment and the humiliation. God would be kinder to them. He’s the real father, you know. I feel it by myself. Many and many a time in these long years my heart has yearned over them. Oh, poor boys, poor silly boys! had they but known, at least in this their day—Alicia! how could you and I standing outside know what was passing between God and them when they lay—as I am lying now?’
“Oh, father, father!” she cried, with an anguish in her voice.
“It is you that are standing outside now, Alicia, alone, poor girl; and you don’t know what’s passing between God and me. A great deal that I never could have thought of—like friends, like friends! I feel easy about the boys, not anxious any longer. After all, you know, they belong to God, too, although they are foolish and weak. Very likely they are doing better—well, now—”
“Oh, father!” she cried, with a keen pang of pain atwhat she thought the wandering of his mind. “You forget, you forget that they are dead.”
“Dead!” he repeated, slowly. “I don’t forget; but do you know what that means? We never understand anything till we come to it in this life. I’m coming very close, but I don’t see—yet—except that it’s very different—very different—not at all what we thought.”
“Father,” she cried, in the tumult of her thoughts: “oh, tell me something about yourself! Are you happy—do you feel—do you remember—”
Alicia Penton had said the prayers and received the faith of Christians all her life, and she wanted, if she could, to recall to the dying man those formulas which seemed fit for his state, to hear him say that he was supported in that dread passage by the consolations of the Gospel. But her lips, unapt to speak upon such subjects, seemed closed, and she could not find a word to say.
“Happy!” he said, with that mild reflectiveness which seemed to have come with the approaching end. “It is a long, long time since I’ve been asked that question. If you mean, am I afraid? No, no; I’m not afraid. I’m—among friends. I feel—quite pleased about it all. It will be all right, whatever happens. I don’t seem to have anything to do with it. In my life I have always felt that I had everything to do with it, Alicia; and so have you, my dear; it’s your fault, too. We were always setting God right. But it’s far better this way. I’m an old fellow—an old, old fellow—and I wonder if this is what is called second childhood, Alicia; for I could feel,” he said, with the touching laugh of weakness, “as if I were being carried away—in some one’s arms.”
His heavy eyes, that were still bright with fever, closed with a sort of smiling peacefulness, then opened again with a little start. “But it seemed to me just now as if there was something to do—what was there to do?—before I give myself over. I don’t want to be disturbed, but if there is something to do—Ah, Gerald, my good fellow, you are here, too.”
Russell Penton had come in to say that the men who had been sent for so hurriedly, they whose coming was so important, a matter almost of life and death, had arrived. He had entered the room while Sir Walter was speaking, but the hush of peace about the bed had stopped on his lipsthe words he had been about to say. He came forward and took the other hand, which his father-in-law, scarcely able to raise it, stretched out toward him faintly with a smile. “I hope you are better, sir,” he said, mechanically, bending over the soft helpless hand, and under his breath to his wife, “They are come,” he said.
She gave him a look of helplessness and dismay, with an appeal in it. What could be done? Could anything be said of mortal business now? Could they come in with their papers, with their conflict of human interests and passion, to this sanctuary of fading life? And yet again, could Alicia Penton make up her mind to be balked, disappointed, triumphed over in the end?
“Better—is not the word.” Sir Walter spoke very slowly, pausing constantly between his broken phrases, his voice very low, but still clear. “I am well—floating away, you know—carried very softly—in some one’s arms. You will laugh—at an old fellow. But I don’t feel quite clear if I am an old fellow, or perhaps—a child.” Then came that fluttering laugh of weakness, full of pathetic pleasure and weeping and well-being. “But,” he added, with a deeper drawn, more difficult breath, “you come in quickly. Tell me—before it’s late. There is something on my mind—like a shadow—something to do.”
Alicia held his hand fast; she did not move, nor look up; her eyes blank, introspective, without any light in them, making no reply to him, fixed on her father’s face; but her whole being quivering with a conflict beyond describing, good and evil, the noble and the small, contending over her, in a struggle which felt like death.
A similar struggle, but slighter and fainter was in her husband’s mind; but in him it was not a mortal conflict, only a question which was best. Was it right to permit the old man to float away, as he said, without executing a project which seemed so near to his heart? Because it was not one which pleased Russell Penton, because he would rather that it should fail, he felt himself the more bound to his wife that it should not fail through him.
“It seems almost wicked to disturb you, sir,” he said, “but I heard that you wanted Rochford; if so, he is here.”
Alicia caught her husband by the arm, pressing it almost fiercely with her hand, leaning her trembling weight uponhim. “But not to disturb you, father,” she cried, with a gasp.
“Ah!” said Sir Walter, “I remember. What was it? I don’t seem to see anything—except those lights like stars shining; and Alicia, Alicia! How beautiful she is looking—like a girl—to-night.”
Her husband gave her a strange glance. She was gripping his arm as if for salvation, clutching it, her breath coming quick; her cheeks with two red spots of anxiety and excitement; her eyes dull, with no expression in the intensity of their passion, fixed on her father’s face. The white dressing-gown which she had thrown on when she was called to him was open a little at the throat, and showed the gleam of the diamonds which she had not had time to take off. It was not wonderful that in the old man’s eyes, with love and fever together in them, Alicia, in her unusual white, should seem for a moment to have gone back to the dazzle and splendor of youth.
Sir Walter resumed after a moment, as though this little outbreak of tender admiration were an indulgence which he had permitted himself. “My mind’s getting very hazy, Gerald—all quite pleasant, the right thing, no trouble in it, but hazy. I remember, and yet I don’t remember. If I had but the clew—Rochford?—the young one, not the father. He’s gone, like all the rest, and now the young one—reigns in his stead. Bring him, and perhaps I’ll remember. You could tell me, you two, but you’re afraid to disturb me. What does it matter about disturbing me? a moment—and then—Send for him; perhaps I’ll remember.”
Alicia would scarcely let her husband go. She looked at him with terror in her eyes. What was she afraid of? When he withdrew his arm from her she dropped down suddenly on her knees by her father’s bedside with a low shuddering cry, and hid her face, pressing her cheek upon the old man’s hand. The excitement had risen too high. She could bear it no longer. Complicated with all the aching and trouble of the moment, the bursting of this last tie of nature, the dearest and longest companionship of her life, to have that other anxiety, the miserable question of the inheritance, the triumph or sacrifice of her pride, which yet, even amid the solemnity of death, moved her more than any other question oh earth—was something intolerable. It was more than she could bear. She sunk down,partly out of incapacity to support herself, partly that she could not, dared not, meet her father’s eyes with their vague and wistful question. “You could tell me, you two.” He had seen it, then, in her face, though she had made efforts so determined to banish all sign of comprehension, all answer out of her eyes. And now, if he insisted, how could she refuse to answer him? and if Gerald perceived that the old man had found the necessary clew through her, what would he think of her? That she had preferred her own aggrandizement to her father’s peace, that she had prompted him on the very edge of the grave to enrich herself. She could not sustain Sir Walter’s look, nor face the emergency without at least that passive protection of her husband’s presence, which for the moment was withdrawn. And Alicia trembled for the moment when the strangers would come into this sacred room; the lawyer, and Edward Penton behind him, hesitating, not without feeling (she knew), looking sadly at the death-bed where lay one whom in his early days he had looked up to with familiar kindness. Nobody in the world, not even Gerald, could be so near to him in that moment as Edward Penton. She felt this even while she trembled at the anticipation of his coming. He was nearer than any one living. He would bring in with him the shadows of those two helpless ones disappeared so long out of life. She bethought her in that moment how it had been usual to say “the three boys.” Was her mind wandering, too? All these thoughts surged up into her brain in a wild confusion—the old tenderness, the irritation, the bitter jealous grudge at him who had outlived the others, the natural longing toward one who could understand.
Sir Walter was unaffected by any of these thoughts; he felt it all natural—that the grief of his child should overwhelm her, that the sense of parting and loss should be profounder on her side than on his. After various efforts he raised his hand, which was so heavy, which would not obey his will, and laid it tenderly upon her bowed head. “Alicia, my dear, child, don’t let it overwhelm you. Who can tell even how small the separation is—as long as it lasts, and it can not last very long. You must not, you must not, my dear, be sorry for me. I tell you—it is all pleasant—sweet. I am not—not at all—sorry for myself. God bless you, my dear. He is so close that when I say‘God bless you’ it is as if, my love. He Himself was putting out His hand.”
“Oh, father! oh, father!” she repeated, and could say no more.
And he lay with his face turned to her, and his hand feebly smoothing, stroking her bowed head, as if she had been a child. She was a child to him, his young Alicia, looking so beautiful after her ball, in which he had seen her—had he not seen her?—admired of everybody, the fairest, the most stately, with the Penton diamonds glittering at her white throat as they were now. He had her in his mind’s eye so distinct, as he had seen her—was it an hour, was it a life-time ago? His breathing began to be disturbed, becoming more difficult, and his thoughts to grow more confused. He talked on, in broken gasps of utterance, more difficult, always more difficult. The fog in his throat—he began to feel it now; but always in flashes saw the lights gleaming, and Alicia in full beauty, with her eyes like the stars, and those other stars, less precious, yet full of luster at her throat. He took no note of outward things, being more and more absorbed—yet with a dullness which softened everything, even the difficulty of the breath—in his own sensations, and in the sweep of the hurrying movement that seemed to be carrying him away, away, into halcyon seas beyond, into repose and smiling peace. But the woman kneeling under his hand was as much alive to every sound and incident as he was dull to them. Nothing muffled her keen sense, or stilled the flood of thoughts that were pouring through her mind. She heard, her heart leaping to the sound, steps approaching softly, on tiptoe, every noise restrained. She heard a low murmur of voices, then the opening of the door; but she was afraid to lift her head, to startle her father. She dared not look up to see who was there, or how he took the entrance of the new-comers. As for Sir Walter, he was almost beyond disturbance. His hand moved heavily from time to time over her head; sometimes there was a faint tremble when a breath came harder, nothing more. Would he die so? she asked herself, making no sign; was it all sealed up forever, the source of life that had made the light or the darkness of so many other lives. Her own wildly beating heart seemed to stand still, to stop in the tremendous suspense.
“Can you hear me?” said her husband’s voice, low and full of emotion. “Rochford is here, sir; do you want him?”
He shook his head as he spoke to the two awe-stricken men behind.
“Eh!” Sir Walter gave a start as if half awakened. “Who did you say?—I think—I must have been asleep. Some one who wants me? They’ll excuse a—a sick old man. Some one—who?—Gerald—whom did you say?”
“Rochford, sir, whom you wanted to see.”
“Rochford! What should I want with Rochford? He’s the—lawyer—the lawyer. We have had plenty to do with lawyers in our day. Yes—I think there was something if I could remember. Alicia, where is Alicia?”
She rose up quickly, all those wild sensations in her stilled by this supreme call. “I am here, father,” she said. Her countenance was perfectly colorless, except for two spots of red, of excitement and misery, on her cheeks. Her lips were parched, it was with difficulty she spoke.
“Yes, my love; stand by me till the last. What was it? I feel stronger. I can attend—to business. Tell me, my child, what it was.”
She stood for a moment speechless, turning her face toward them all with a look which was awful in its internal struggle. How was she to say it? How not to say it? Her fate, and the fate of the others, seemed to lie in her hands. It was not too late. His strength fluctuated from moment to moment, yet he could do what was needed still.
“Father,” she began, moistening her dry lips, trying to get the words out of her parched throat.
Sir Walter had opened his heavy eyes. He looked round with a bewildered, half-smiling look. Suddenly he caught sight of Edward Penton, who stood lingering, hesitating, half in sympathy, half in resistance, behind. The dying man gave a little cry of pleasure. “Ah! I remember,” he said.
Theyall came round, gathering about his bed, Rochford stooping, drawing the papers out of his bag, Edward Penton approaching closer, looking with a revival in his bosomof all the forgotten feelings of his youth upon the severed friend, the old protector, the fatherly patron of those days that were no more. To be sundered for years, and then to come again and see the object of the filial, friendly affection of the past, the man round whom your dearest recollections center, lying, whatever chasm may in the meantime have opened between, upon his death-bed—what heart can resist that? Scarcely the most obdurate, the most prejudiced; and Edward Penton was neither one nor the other. He came slowly forward and stood by the bedside, forgetting all about the motive which brought him thither, impatient, so far as he noticed them at all, of the presence of the strangers. He came close, placing himself before Russell Penton, who had no such claim to be there as he. He did not attempt to say anything, but claimed the place, he who was the last one left of the three boys; he whom they had hated rather than loved because he was the survivor, yet who forgot that entirely now, and everything involved in it. He stood by the side of Alicia as he had stood so often. He forgot that there was any question between them. He had been brought, indeed, to sign and settle, but all that floated from him now. Russell Penton stood aside to let him pass, and the lawyer placed himself at the writing-table, which had been brought nearer, within reach of the bed, and where all the papers had been laid out. “Do you think he will be able to understand if I read them?” Rochford said, aside, to Russell Penton; “or shall we try for his signature at once?” Russell Penton made no reply, except by a slight wave of his hand toward the bed. It seemed a profanity that any one should speak or occupy the attention of the group save he who was the center of it. Sir Walter’s eyes were open, his interest fully awakened. He watched while the writing-table was drawn forward and put in order. He gave one glance of recognition to Edward Penton at his bedside, but had not time, it seemed, for greetings, his whole mind being fixed on this thing which he had to do.
“I had almost lost sight of it,” he said. “Now, thank God, I remember—while I have the time. It will be—what you call a codicil. Alicia, you always were generous; you won’t grudge it, Alicia?”
“Father!” she cried, bewildered by this preamble; then, in the rapid process of thought trying to believe that it wassome further compensation to Edward which was in her father’s mind. “You know,” she said, fervently, “that I will grudge nothing that is your pleasure—nothing; you know that!”
“Yes, my love—I know; it is not money she would ever grudge. Alicia—no, no; but perhaps honor—or love. Rochford, what I want is about the boy.”
“The boy!” Mrs. Russell Penton turned quickly a searching glance on her father, to which his dim eyes made no response; then looked round with one rapid demand for explanation. She seemed to ask Heaven and earth what he meant. “Could it be this? Could this be all?”
“The boy!” Rochford echoed, with amazement; “what boy, sir?” faltering. “There was nothing about any boy;” and he too gave Russell Penton a significant look, meaning that Sir Walter’s mind was wandering, and that no settlements could be possible now.
“Gerald, you understand, tell them.”
Sir Walter turned his eyes instinctively to the one impartial. “The boy—Edward’s boy. Alicia would not see how like he was; but it was very plain to me—and a nice boy. He has the name as well, and he will have Penton. Eh, Penton? What was there about Penton?” The old man paused a moment, trying to raise his heavy brow, his drooping eyelids—and there was a great silence in the room; they all looked at each other, conscious, with something like a sense of guilt, and no one ventured to be the first to speak. It was Alicia, perhaps, who should have done it, but she felt as if her laboring bosom was bound by icy chains, and could not; or the lawyer, who gazed at her mutely, demanding whether he should say anything—what he should say. It was but a moment, breathless, precipitate. Then, as if there had been nothing in it but the break of his difficult breathing, Sir Walter resumed, “He will have Penton, in the course of nature. But we’re long-lived, it may be a long time first. Alicia,” he groped for her with the feeble hand which he could scarcely raise, moving the heavy fingers like a blind man. “Alicia, I want, as long as I can, to do something for the boy.”
She had turned half away, her hands had fallen by her side, a blank of something like despair had come over her. Not for Penton! oh, not for Penton; but because he had glided away from her into the valley of darkness, and hismind had gone beyond the reach, beyond the sphere of hers. To feel that as he did so the mind of her father, so long united to hers, as she had believed, in every thought, took another turning, and disclosed other wishes, other sentiments, overwhelmed Alicia with a wild surprise. Death was nothing to that. It made heaven and earth reel to her with the greatness of the astonishment. But that too was but for a moment. She turned round, it seemed to the spectators instantly, though to herself after a pause which was tragical in its passion, and answered the feeble groping of the blind hand by clasping it in both of hers. Then she had to summon her voice from the depths, to break the chains of ice. “Whatever,” she said, “father, whatever you wish.”
There was something like reviving life; there was reconciliation, reunion, in the way his dull fingers closed upon hers. Had a shadow of doubt come over the dying mind? He breathed a long sobbing sigh, which was half satisfaction and half the prolonged effort of dying. “To do something,” he murmured, “for the boy.”
Here Rochford broke in, becoming accustomed to the solemnity of the scene, and recovering the instinct of business and a sense of the necessity of completing what he had in hand. “But,” he said, “this is not the business for which I was summoned. Everything is ready; there are only the deeds to sign; there is only the signature—”
Alicia gave him a warning look to stop him, and Russell Penton put forth his hand with an impressive “hush!” Perhaps it was the new voice that caught the attention of Sir Walter. He opened his eyes again, but half, showing only a sightless whiteness under the heavy lids. “Eh?” he said, “was some one speaking? I can’t hear any more. Alicia—what? what?—was it—about the boy—”
“It was—our own business, father: but not to trouble you. It shall trouble you,” she said firmly, but with an indescribable tone that said much, “no more, no more.”
A faint grateful smile came upon his face, the faintest, almost imperceptible, pressure of her hands. And then in a moment sleep came over the aged pilgrim so near the end of his career. They all stood in the silence of awe about the bed, watching, unable to believe that it was only sleep and not death. The one was almost more awful than the other would have been. That the common repose whichrefreshes all living things should come in the middle of dying seemed almost an unnatural break. Even love itself in such circumstances can not endure delays, and would fain push the bark of the soul out into the eternal sea. Mrs. Russell Penton sat down by the bed, holding her father’s hand still in hers. And for some time her cousin stood beside her, silent, absorbed, standing mechanically with his eyes fixed upon the still face on the pillow. Edward Penton was scarcely sensible of what was passing round him. It seemed all to be going on in a dream, in which he saw and heard plainly enough, yet attached little meaning to anything that occurred. He had come to conclude his bargain, touched, deeply touched by the condition of his old relation, his former protector and friend, but yet more occupied by the importance of the event to himself and to his wife and children, who were nearer to him still. But when he had entered the sick-room he had stepped into a dream—everything had changed. His business had sunk away, as it were, into the chaos of abortive projects. Nothing was required of him except to stand and look on reverently while the shadows of death gathered. His heart was deeply touched; it had seemed to him natural, only natural and fitting that he should stand by Alicia at this solemn moment. He was the nearest of her kin; he was the oldest of her friends; he had loved her in his time; even now there were no two people in the world who had the same hold upon his imagination and his memories as these two, the father and daughter. It was his right to be here more than Russell Penton’s; nearer than anyone else living he had a right to stand by her, to give her the support of an affection as old and almost as natural as her own. Though he had not seen Sir Walter for years, there was no one so nearly Sir Walter’s son as he. What was said about the boy perplexed him, almost made him impatient. The boy—what boy? He did not understand. He himself was the last of the three boys, the survivor, whose surviving had seemed a wound and injury, but which yet gave him rights which no one in the world, no one else could ever have as he.
The entrance of the doctor, who came in softly, and looked, with the gravity which dying commands from all, upon the sleeper, disturbed the group. The gentlemen withdrew to leave him free for his examination, and for thewhispered directions which were necessary, carrying away the writing-table with all its useless arrangements. When he left the bedside they surrounded him with questions. Was it possible that there might be a period of revived strength? was it likely that he could attend to business still? Important business remained to be settled. The doctor shook his head. He gave them certain low-toned explanations which for the moment seemed to make everything clear, but in reality left them as little informed as ever; and, on the other hand, gave them a little lecture upon the folly of postponing business to such a moment. “A man of Sir Walter’s age, and in his state of health, could never be calculated upon,” he said. “I hope the business is not vital. To leave wills or settlements to the last is the greatest folly.” A statement of this kind, superfluous and absolute, is at all times so much easier to give than a little enlightment upon the immediate case. But how could the doctor tell any more than any spectator whether the old man would wake from that sleep to an interval of clearness and consciousness, or whether he would dream away the few remaining moments that lay between him and the end of his career?
And then stillness fell upon them all, a period of utter quiet, of that waiting for death which is intolerable to the living. Alicia sat by her father’s bedside alone, still holding his hand, watching his sleep, feeling nothing but the arrest of all things, the suspension of thought itself. The three men had withdrawn to the anteroom, where they waited for any movement or call. Rochford, who had no reason for any profounder feeling than that of respectful sympathy, drew near the fire in the shivering chill of the gray winter morning, and after awhile dozed and dreamed of the ball, with all its music and lights. Russell Penton seated himself close to the door, where he could see his wife at her father’s bedside. Her head was turned from him, but yet it was giving her the support of his presence to be there. Edward Penton was the only one who could not rest. He went to the window and gazed out blankly upon the cold misty morning light, now as full day as it was likely to be. All was whiteness upon the wide stretch of the landscape, the river milky and turbid under the featureless whitish vapor that covered the sky, mist hanging about the ghostly trees, cold, damp, and penetrating, stealing to the heart; within, the fire burned dimly, the lights had been put out, though from the door of Sir Walter’s room still came a stream of candle-light shining unnaturally in the gray pale suffusion of the day. Mr. Penton wandered from the window to the fire, then stood behind Russell Penton’s chair, and gazed into the hushed room where one lay dying and the other watching. He thought nothing about his business which was so strange; he had not yet awakened to the sense of those wandering injunctions about the boy. He was troubled, sad, confused in his soul, only conscious of the close neighborhood of death, and that all somehow had fallen back into a kind of chaos out of which there seemed no apparent way.