“I should have liked,” said the old man, “to see Edward too; when one has advanced so far as I have on the path of life, Alicia, likes and dislikes die away--and prejudices. I may have been too subject to prejudice. Edward never was very much to calculate upon. He had no character; he never could hold his own; but there was very little harm in him, as little harm as good you will perhaps say. Bring me the boy. He will be the same as I, Sir Walter Penton, when his turn comes, and it will not be long before his turn comes. Edward will never last to be an old man like me. He hasn’t got it in him; he hasn’t stuff enough. The young one will be Sir Walter--Sir Walter Penton, the old name. The tenth, isn’t it--Walter the tenth--if we were to count as some of the foreign houses do?’
“Oh, father, don’t!” cried Alicia. To think he could talk, almost jest, about another Walter!
He looked up at her quickly, as if out of a little gathering confusion, seeing for the moment what she meant.
“Eh! well, we must not always dwell on one subject--must not dwell upon it. Let me see the boy.”
Mrs. Russell Penton rang the bell and gave a message, out of which it was almost impossible to keep an angry ring of impatience. “Tell the young gentleman who is in the drawing-room, he who arrived half an hour ago--you understand--that Sir Walter would like to see him. Show him the way.”
“Why don’t you speak of him by his name, Alicia? Young Mr. Penton, Mr. Walter Penton, my successor, you know, Bowker, that is to be. Say I seldom leave my room, and that I should be pleased to see him here. My dear,” he went on, “the servants always act upon the cue you give them, and they ought to be very respectful to the rising sun, you know. It is bad policy to set them out of favor with the rising sun.”
Alicia’s heart was too full for speech. She kept behind her father’s chair, arranging one or two little things which required no arrangement, keeping command over herself by a strong effort. A little more, she felt, and she would no longer be able to do this. That even the servants should have such a suggestion made to them, that Edward’s boy was the heir! Had her father departed from the resolution which was, she declared to herself passionately, his own resolution, not suggested by her? Had he forgotten? Was this some wavering of the mind which might invalidate all future acts of his? She felt on the edge of an outbreak of feeling such as had rarely occurred in her reserved and dignified life, and at the same time she felt herself turned to stone. The old man went on talking, more than usual, more cheerfully than usual, as if something exhilarating and pleasant was about to happen, but she paid little attention to what he said. She stood behind, full of a new and anxious interest, when the door opened and Wat, timid, but on his guard, not knowing what might be wanted with him, half defiant, and yet more impressed and awed than he liked to show, came into the room. Mrs. Russell Penton gave him no aid. She said, “This is Edward’s son, father.” It annoyed her to name him by his name, though there was no doubt that he had a right to it, as good a right as any one. She could not form her lips to say Walter Penton. But what she failed in Sir Walter made up. He half rose from his chair, which was a thing he rarely did, and held out both his hands. “Ah, Walter! I’m glad to see you, very glad to see you,” he said. He took the youth’s hands in those large, soft, aged ones of his, and drew him close and looked at him, as he might have looked at a grandson: and there was enough resemblance between them to justify the suggestion. “So this is Walter,” he went on, “I’m very glad to see you, my boy. You’re the last of the old stock--no, not the last either, for I hear there’s plenty of you, boys and girls, Alicia”--the old man’s voice trembled a little, tears came into his eyes, as they do so easily at his age--“Alicia, don’t you think he has a look of--of--another Walter? About the eyes--and his mouth? He is a true Penton. My dear, I’m very sorry if I’ve vexed you. I--I like to see it. I could think he had lived and done well and left us a son to come after him, my poor boy!”