But for this I should
have felt the will keenly, as having been placed by it in the position
which of all others I had been most anxious to avoid, and as having
saddled me with a very heavy responsibility. Still it was impossible for
me to escape, and I could only let things take their course.
Miss Pontifex had expressed a wish to be buried at Paleham; in the course
of the next few days I therefore took the body thither. I had not been
to Paleham since the death of my father some six years earlier. I had
often wished to go there, but had shrunk from doing so though my sister
had been two or three times. I could not bear to see the house which had
been my home for so many years of my life in the hands of strangers; to
ring ceremoniously at a bell which I had never yet pulled except as a boy
in jest; to feel that I had nothing to do with a garden in which I had in
childhood gathered so many a nosegay, and which had seemed my own for
many years after I had reached man's estate; to see the rooms bereft of
every familiar feature, and made so unfamiliar in spite of their
familiarity. Had there been any sufficient reason, I should have taken
these things as a matter of course, and should no doubt have found them
much worse in anticipation than in reality, but as there had been no
special reason why I should go to Paleham I had hitherto avoided doing
so.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269