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.
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