“On the contrary, if you will allow me to interrupt you; women, I believe, as a rule, are longer-lived than men.”
She drew back with a pained and irritated look. “You make me feel like a lawyer supporting a weak case. It was not in this way that I wanted to talk it over with you, Edward.”
“To talk over the sacrifice of everything I have ever looked to—my birthright, and the prospects of my children. This is rather a large affair to be talked over between you and me after five-o’clock tea, Alicia, over a dying fire.”
“Then,” she said, “it would have been better I had not meddled at all, as my father always said. He thought it should have been made a business proposal only, through a solicitor. But I—I, like a foolish woman—remembering that we had once been dear friends, and feeling that I had been guilty of neglect, and perhaps unkindness—I would not have anything said till I had come myself, till I had made my little overture of reconciliation, till I—”
“If there is to be frankness on one side there should be frankness on both. Till you had put forth the old influence, which once would have made me do anything—give up anything—to please you.”
“You said,” she cried, provoked and humiliated, “not five minutes since, though I did not wish it—never thought of it—that you were my faithful servant still!”
“Yes,” he said; “and do you know what I should like to do now? You have come to ask me for my inheritance as you might ask for a flower out of my garden—if there were any! I should like to fling you your Penton into your apron—into your face—and see you carry it off, and point at you, like—you were always fond of poetry, and you will remember—the fellow that jumped among the lions for a glove—only a glove: only his life, don’t you know!”
It was not often that Edward Penton gave way to passion, and it was brutal, this that he said: but for the moment he had lost all control of himself.
She rose up hurriedly from her chair. “That was no true man!” she cried. “Supposing that the woman was a fool too, she used him only according to his folly to show how false he was.” She paused again, breathless, her heart beating with excitement and indignation. “I am not asking you for your inheritance: I came to ask you—whether an arrangement might be proposed to you which should be for your advantage as well as mine. Let us speak frankly, as you say. I am not a girl, to be driven away by an insult, which comes badly—oh, very badly!—from you, Edward. If I have wounded you, you have stung me, bitterly; so let us be quits.” She looked at him with a smile of pain. “You have hit hardest, after all; you ought to be pleased with that!”
“I beg your pardon, Alicia,” he said.
“Oh, it is not necessary. It was business, and not sentiment, that brought me here. And this is the brutal truth, Edward—like what you have just said to me. You are poor, and I am well off. Penton would be a millstone round your neck; you could not keep it up. Whereas to me it is my home—almost the thing I love best. Will you come to terms with us to set aside the entail and let me have my home? The terms shall be almost what you like. It can be done directly. It will be like realizing a fortune which may not be yours for years. I ask no gift. Do you think I am not as proud as you are? I would not ask you for a flower out of your garden, as you say, much less your property—your inheritance! Ah, your inheritance! which twenty years ago, when we used to be here together, was no more likely to be yours—! If we begin to talk of these things where shall we end, I wonder?” she added, with another pale and angry smile. “You understand now what I mean? And I have nothing more to say.”
“Wait a moment,” he said; “I am not sure that I do understand you now. It is not what I thought, apparently, and I beg your pardon. I thought it was something that would be between you and me. But if I hear right, it is a business transaction you propose—something to be done for an equivalent—a bargain—a sale and barter—a—”
“Yes, that is what I mean; perhaps my father was right, and the solicitors were the people to manage it, not you and me—”
“To manage it—or not to manage it, as may turn out. Yes, I think that would be the better way. These sort of people can say what they like to each other and it never hurts, whereas you and I—Are you really going? I hope you are very well wrapped up, for the night is cold. But for this little squabble, which is a pity, which never ought to have been—”
“I can not think, Edward, that it was my fault.”
“They say that ladies always think that,” he said with a smile, “otherwise this first visit after—how long is it?—went off fairly well, don’t you think? At forty-five, with a wife and children, a man is no longer ready to throw anything away; but otherwise when it comes to business—”
“I was very foolish not to let it be done in the formal way,” she said, with an uneasy blush and intolerable sense of the sarcasm in his tone. But she would not allow herself to remain under this disadvantage. “Shall I tell my father that you will receive his proposal and give it your consideration?”
“My consideration? Surely; my best consideration,” he replied, with still the same look of sarcastic coolness, “which anything Sir Walter Penton suggests would naturally command from his—successor. I can not use a milder word than that. My position,” he added, with gravity, “is not one which I sought or had any hand in bringing about: therefore I can have no responsibility for the changes that have happened in the last twenty years.”
“It is I who must beg your pardon now. You are quite right, of course, and there was no fault of yours. Good-night and good-bye. I hope you will at least think of me charitably if we should not meet again.”
“We shall certainly, I hope, meet again,” he said, opening the door for her. “The girls will not forget your invitation to them. They have never seen Penton, and they take an interest, which you will not wonder at—”
“Oh, I don’t wonder—at that or anything,” she added, in a lower tone; and, as ill-luck would have it, Wat, standing full in the light of the lamp which lighted the hall, tall in his youthful awkwardness, half antagonistic, half anxious to recommend himself, stood straight before her, so that she could not, without rudeness, refuse his attendance to the door where the carriage lamps were shining and the bays pawing impatiently. She gave his father a look of mingled misery and deprecation as she went out of sight. He alone understood why it was she could not bear the sight of his boy. But though her eyes expressed this anguish, her mouth held another meaning. “You will hear from Mr. Rochford in a day or two,” she said, as she drove away.
He sent her back a smile of half-sarcastic acquiescence still; but then Edward Penton went back to his library and shut himself in, and disregarded all the appeals that were made to him during the next hour, to come to tea. First the bell: then Ally tapping softly, “Tea is ready.” Then Anne’s quicker summons, “Mother wants to know if we are to wait for you?” Then the little applicant, whom he was least able to resist, little Mary, drumming very low down upon the lower panels of the door, with a little song of “Fader! fader!” To all this Mr. Penton turned a dullear. He had been angry—he had been cut to the quick; that his poverty should be thus thrown back upon him—that he should be expected to make merchandise of his inheritance, to give up for money the house of his fathers, the only fit residence for the head of the family! All this gave a sharp and keen pang, and roused every instinct of pride and self-assertion. But when the thrill of solitude and reason fell on all that band of suddenly unchained demons, and he thought of the privations round him—the shabbiness of the house; the damp; the poor wife, who could not now at all hold up her head among the county people; the girls, who were little nobodies and saw nothing; Wat, whose young life was spoiled: and Osy—Osy! about whom some determination must be come to. To see a way out of all that and not to accept it: for pride’s sake to shut up, not only himself, that was a small matter, but the children, to poverty! The fire went out; the inquisitive candles blinked and spied ineffectually, making nothing of the man who sat there wrapped up within himself, his face buried in his hands. He was chilled almost to ice when his wife stole in and drew him away to the fire in the drawing-room, from which the young ones withdrew to make place for him, with looks full of wonder and awe. And then it was, when he had warmed himself and the ice had melted, that he drew the family council together, and laid before them, old and young, the proposal which Alicia Penton had come to make.
Mr. Pentondrew his chair toward the fire, which was not a usual thing for him to do. When he felt chilly he went to the book-room, where in the evening there was always a log burning. In the drawing-room it was the rule that nobody should approach the fire too closely; Mr. Penton said it was not good for the children, it gave them bad habits, and it scorched their cheeks and injured their eyes. The moral of which probably was that, as there were so many of them, they could not all get near it, and therefore all had to hold back.
But this evening everything was out of rule. The littleones had been sent to bed. The basket of stockings was pushed aside on the table. Mrs. Penton indeed, unable to bear that breach of use and wont, had taken a stocking out of it furtively and pulled it up on her arm. It was a gray stocking, with immense healthy holes the size of half a crown. She could not get at her needle and worsted without disturbing the family parliament, but at least she could measure the holes and decide how best to approach them, and from what side. Walter had placed himself on the other side of the fire, opposite his father, feeling instinctively that his interests must be specially in question; the girls filled up the intervals between their mother and Wat on the one side, their father on the other. The fire had been stirred into a blaze and danced cheerfully upon all the young faces. The lamp with its smell of paraffin was put aside too, as if it were being punished and put in the corner, for which vindicative step, considering how it smelled and smoked, there was good cause.
“You will understand,” said Mr. Penton, “that the visit we have just received must have had some special motive.”
“I don’t see why you should be so sure of that, Edward,” said Mrs. Penton, “unless she said something. It might be just civility. Why not?”
“It was not just civility; I knew that from the first.”
“My dear, perhaps you know your own family best: but if it had been one of mine I should have thought it quite natural: to see the children, and hear how we are getting on.”
To this Mr. Penton made no reply; the idea of some one coming to see how he and his family were “getting on” did not gratify him as perhaps it ought to have done.
“I think,” said Ally, softly, “that Aunt Alicia came out of kindness, papa.”
“To herself, I suppose,” he said, quickly; then added, “From her point of view it might appear kindness to us too.”
There was again a pause, and they all waited with growing curiosity to know what it was.
Mr. Penton sat in silence, balancing himself in his chair, knitting his brows as he gazed into the fire. Mrs. Penton pulled the stocking further up upon her arm and made a searching study of the holes.
“You all know,” he said at length, “that Penton has been a long time in our family, and that I am the heir of entail.”
At this Walter moved a little, almost impatiently, in his chair, with a quick start, which he restrained at once, as if he would have interfered. And he did feel disposed to interfere—to say that it was he who was the heir of entail. His father’s priority of course was understood, but it seemed hardly worth while to insist upon it. Nevertheless after the first impulse Walter restrained himself.
“I,” said his father, rather sharply, with a certain comprehension and resentment of the impulse, of which, however, he was not minded to take any notice, “am the heir of entail. It is tied down upon me, and can’t, in the nature of things, go to any one else.”
“Unless the law were to be changed,” interrupted Anne, remembering too well the discussion of the morning.
He waved his hand with an expression of impatience. “We need not take any such hazard into consideration; it is most improbable, and quite out of the question. As things are, I am the heir of entail. That has been, I don’t doubt, a thorn in Sir Walter’s flesh. He can’t alienate an acre, nor, at his time of life, in honor, cut down a tree.”
“I have always said it was hard upon him,” Mrs. Penton observed, in an undertone.
They all gave her a look—the look of partisans, to whom any objection is an offense—all except Anne, who kept up an attitude of impartiality throughout the whole.
“I don’t know why he has put off so long if he had the mind to make such an offer. If it had been further off perhaps I might have been more tempted; but as it is—Alicia wants me to join with her father and break the entail.”
The female part of the committee did not immediately see the weight of this statement. It took some time to make them understand: but Walter saw it in a moment, and sprung to his feet in quick resentment. “Father, of course you will not listen to it for a moment!” he cried.
“To break the entail?” said the mother; “but I thought nothing could do that, Edward.”
“Except,” said Anne, “a change in the law.”
“There is no question of any change in the law,” said Mr. Penton, angrily. “How should there be a change inthe law? None but demagogues or socialists would ever think of it. The law is too strong in England. As for empirics and revolutionaries—” He snapped his fingers with hot contempt. The suggestion made him angry, although he had himself dwelt upon it in the morning. Then he came back to the real matter: “Yes, there is one way in which it can be done; that is what they want me to do. If I joined with Sir Walter in taking certain steps the entail could be broken: and Penton would go to Alicia, which it appears is his desire.”
“Father!” Walter cried. It was such an unspeakable blow to him, striking at the very root of his personal importance, his dreams, his prospects, everything that was his, that the young man was, what did not always happen, the first to seize upon this terrible idea. He could not keep his seat, but stood up tremulous, leaning upon the mantel-piece, looking down with an angry alarm at all their faces, lighted up by the fire. It seemed to Walter that in this slowness to understand there was something of the indifference which those who are not themselves affected so often show in the threatening of a calamity. Their unawakened surprised looks, not grappling with the question, had a half-maddening effect upon him. They did not care! it did not affect them.
“But, Edward, why should you do that—to please Sir Walter—to please—your cousin? Well, I should always like to keep on good terms with my relations, and do what I could for them; but to give up what we have been looking forward to so long—and the only thing we have to look forward to! I am sure,” said Mrs. Penton, tears getting into her voice, “I should be the last person to say anything against relations, or make dispeace, but when you think that it is the only provision we have for the children—the only—and when you remember that there’s Walter—” She stopped, unable to go on any further, bewildered, not knowing what to think.
“Father does not mean that. It is not that, whatever it may mean.”
“Of course I do not mean that. You take up all sorts of absurd ideas and then you think I have said it. Sir Walter and Alicia are my relations, it is true, but they don’t set up a claim on that score, neither am I such a fool. Try and understand me reasonably, Annie. Property is different from everything else; you don’t give up your rights to please anybody. Here’s how it is. When the heir is willing to step in and break the entail, of course he has compensation for it. Sir Walter is a very old man, the property in all human probability will soon be in my hands, therefore my compensation would be at a heavy rate. They are rich enough,” said Mr. Penton, in a sort of smile, “they could afford that.”
“They would give father the money,” said Anne, in a way she had before found effectual in clearing her mother’s ideas; “and he would let them have the land.”
“Edward, is that what it means?”
“Yes, strictly speaking: if you put feelings and pride and everything to one side, and the thought of one’s family, and of all we’ve looked forward to for years.”
“You can’t put them to one side,” cried young Walter, sharply, in the keen, harsh, staccato tones of bitterness and fear. “You can’t! No money would make up for them, nothing could be put in their place. Father, you feel that as well as I?”
“Ifeel that as well as you! To whom are you speaking? What are you in the matter?—a boy that may never—that might never—whereas I’ve thought of it all my life; it has been hanging within reach of my hand, so to speak, for years. I’ve built everything on it. And a bit of a boy asks me if I feel that—like him! Like him! What is he that he should set himself as a model to me?”
“Oh, father!” cried Ally, with her hand upon his arm.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Penton in her quiet voice, quenching this little eddy of passion far more effectually than if she had taken any notice of it, “that makes a great difference. They would give you the money, and you would let them keep the land? There is justice in that, Edward. I do not say it is a thing to be snapped at at once, although we do want the money so much. But still it is quite just, a thing to be calmly considered. I wish you would tell us now exactly what your cousin wants, and what she would give instead of it. It is like selling a property. I am sure I for one should not mind sellingthisproperty if we could get a good price for it: and as we have no associations with Penton and have never lived there, nor—”
“Mother!” Could the old house have been moved by hot human breath as by a wind of indignation, it wouldhave shook from parapet to basement: but Mrs. Penton on her deep foundation of sense and reason was not shaken at all. She took no notice of the outcry.
“No, we can have no associations with it,” she said, calmly. “I have dined there three or four times in my life, and the children have never been there at all. It would not matter much to us if it were to be swallowed up in an earthquake, so long as its value remained.”
The girls did not take their mother’s prosaic view. Each on her side, they consoled and smoothed down the gentlemen—the young heir, hot with the destruction of hopes that were entirely visionary, that had never had any reality in them—and the immediate heir, to whom this one thing was the sole touch of romance or of expectation in life.
“Tell us about it, father,” and “Oh, Wat, be quiet; nothing’s done yet!” was what they said.
“Your mother takes it all very easy. She was not born a Penton,” said the father. “Yes, I’ll tell you about it, though she’s settled it already without any trouble, you see. It is not so simple to me. Women can be more brutal than any one when they take it in that way. Alicia was disposed to see it in the same light. She said she had been born there, and never had lived anywhere else, so that her feeling to it must be quite different from mine. Different from mine! to whom it has been an enchantment all my life.”
“What your cousin said was quite natural, Edward. I should have said the same thing myself.”
“You have just done so, my dear,” he said, with a sarcasm which went quite wide of its mark. “Yes, I’ll tell you all about it, children. Alicia and her father, it appears, have been thinking it over. They think—they know, to be sure, for who can have any doubt on the subject?—that I am poor. I am a poor man, with a number of children. A man in my position can not do what he likes, but what he must. I need money to bring you all up, to set you out in the world. Eight of you, you know; that’s enough to crush any man,” he said.
The girls looked at each other with a look which was half indignant yet half guilty. They felt that somehow they were to blame for being there, for crushing their father. Walter had no such sensation, but yet he recognized the truth of the complaint. He was the eldest, a legitimate, even a necessary party to this question; since but for his existence, in his own opinion, his father’s heirship would have been unimportant. But the others were, he allowed to himself, so much ballast on the other side, complicating the question, making a difficulty where there should be none.
“I should have thought,” he said, indignantly, “that Sir Walter would have seen how mean it was to take advantage—what a poor sort of thing it was to trade upon a man’s disabilities—upon his burdens—upon what he can not throw off, nor get rid of.”
Mrs. Penton’s mind had been traveling meanwhile upon its own tranquil yet anxious way.
“Was there any offer made you, Edward? Did she say how much they thought?—wouldn’t that be one of the first things to think of? We might be troubling ourselves all for nothing, if they were intending to take advantage, Walter says. But, then, how should Walter know? They would never take him into their confidence. Was any sum mentioned? for that would show whether they meant to take advantage. I never heard they were that sort of people. Your cousin Alicia has the name of being proud, but as for taking advantage—”
“Can’t you see,” he cried, with irritation, “that you are driving me distracted, going over and over one set of words? Walter’s a fool. Do you suppose the Pentons are cheats? To make such an offer at all was taking an—If we had been as well off as they are they never would have ventured. That’s all about it. I never supposed they would try to outwit me in a bargain.” After this little blaze of energy he sunk into his more usual depression. “If it hadn’t been for you and the children of course I shouldn’t have listened, not for a moment.”
“Why should you do it for us, father? We don’t cost so much. We could go away and be governesses, rather than be such a burden!”
Mrs. Penton put down the hand upon which she had drawn the stocking to give Anne a warning touch, while her father took no notice except with a passing glance.
“A man can do himself no justice when he’s weighted down on every side. It has always been my luck. I wonder, for my part, now that they have had the assurance to propose it at all, why they didn’t propose it years and years ago.”
“What a thing it would have been!” said Mrs. Penton; “many an anxiety it would have saved us, Edward. Why, it would make you a rich man! We have always looked forward so to Penton, and nobody ever supposed Sir Walter would live till eighty-five; but I have never thought of it as such a paradise. For, in the first place, it would want a great deal of money to keep it up.”
“Yes, it would take money to keep it up.”
“Everybody says it is kept up beautifully. You never could reconcile yourself to neglecting anything, and hearing people say how different it was in Sir Walter’s time. Then the house is such a grand house, and it would come to us empty or nearly empty. Oh, I’ve thought it all over so often. Gentlemen don’t go into these matters as a woman does. Of course, your cousin Alicia would take away all the beautiful furniture that suits the house. Her father would leave it to her, forthat’snot entailed, you know. We should go into it empty, or with only a few old sticks: what should we do with the things we’ve got in Penton?” She looked round with an affectionate contempt at the well-worn chairs, the table in the middle, the old dingy curtains with no color left in them. “The first thing we should have to do would be to furnish from top to bottom, and where should we find the money to do that?”
Mr. Penton did not say anything. He made a little impatient wave of his hand, but he did not contradict or even attempt to stop her soft, slow, gentle voice as she went on.
“And then the gardeners! they are a kind of army in themselves. To pay them all their wages every week, the men that are in the houses, and the men that are outside, and the people at the lodges, and the carpenters, and the men that roll the lawns; where should we find the money? If we could have the rents and go on livinghere, of course I don’t say anything against it, we should be rich. But to live at Penton we should just be as poor as we are now—as poor but much grander—obliged to give parties and keep horses—and dress—If I ever had ventured to tell you my opinion, Edward, I should have told you, instead of looking forward to Penton it has been my terror night and day. I always thought,” she continued, after a pause, “that Ishould try and persuade you to let it, until, at least, we had a little money to the good.”
“To let Penton!” The cry burst from them all in every variation of tone, indignant, angry, astonished. To let—Penton! Penton, which had been the golden dream of fancy, the paradise of hope, the one thing which consoled everybody, from Mr. Penton down to Horry, for all that went amiss in life.
“Well?” said the mother, lifting her mild eyes, looking at them for a moment. “I have always thought so, but I would not say it, for what was the use? You all worship Penton, both you and the children. But I never was taken in by it. I have always seen that, however pleasant it might be, and beautiful and all that—and everybody’s prejudices in its favor—we never could keep it up.”
She turned round, having delivered her soul, and drew her basket toward her, in which were her needles and the worsted for her darning. She had settled exactly how these big holes were to be attacked, how the threads of the stocking went, and that it must be done in an oblique line to keep the shape. Without a little consideration beforehand, neither stockings can be mended nor anything else done. She had said her say, and no doubt, however it was settled, she would do her best, as well for Penton as for the stocking. And the others watched her without knowing they were watching her. She settled to her work with a little sigh of relief, glad to escape into a region where there could be no two opinions, where everything was straightforward. There was something in this which had a great effect upon the young ones, especially upon Walter, who was the most resistant, the most deeply and cruelly disappointed. There came upon him a great, a horrible consciousness that in all likelihood she was right.
Mr. Penton, as was natural, was not so much impressed. “All that,” he said, with a little wave of his hand, “is a truism.” He paused, then repeated it again with a sense that he had got hold of a new and impressive word. “It is a truism,” he said. “Everybody was aware from the beginning that to keep up Penton as it has been kept up would be impossible. My uncle and Alicia have made a toy of Penton. It would be really better, it would look more like the old house it is, if it were not cleaned up like that, shaven and shorn like a cockney villa. If I were a millionaire Ishould not choose to do it. So I don’t think very much of that argument.” Walter’s spirits rose as he followed eagerly his father’s utterance. But after a moment Mr. Penton continued, “There is no doubt, on the other side, that living would cost a great deal more than—more than perhaps we—have ever contemplated. There would be the furnishing, as your mother says—I had not thought of that.”
He made the children a sort of jury, before whom theproand theconwere to be set forth.
“It is beautifully furnished at present—every one says so, at least; that would be a great charge to begin with. And we might have a good deal to put up with in the confusion that would be made between the poor family and the rich. Your mother is quite right so far as that is concerned; what she doesn’t take into consideration is the family feeling—the traditions, the sense that it is ours, and that nobody can have any right to it except ourselves. Alicia, to be sure, is a Penton too, and, as she says, she has been born there, and never has known any other home. But still, as a matter of fact, she has entered another family. It would be an alienation. It has always gone in the male line. To give it up would be—would be—”
“Father,” said Walter, “you couldn’t think of it. It would be like tearing body and soul asunder. Give up Penton! I think I would rather die.”
“What has dying to do with it?” cried the father, impatiently. And then he sat silent for a moment, staring into the fire and twiddling his thumbs, unconscious of what he was doing. The young ones watched him anxiously, feeling with a certain awe that their fate was being decided, but that this question was too immense for their interference. At length he got up slowly and pushed back his chair. “We’ll sleep upon it,” he said.
ButWalter, for his part, could not sleep upon it. He followed his father out of the room, he scarcely knew with what intention; perhaps with a hope of further discussion, of being able to open his own mind, of convincing thewavering mind of Mr. Penton. It seemed to him that he could set it all forth so clearly if only the permission were given him. But Mr. Penton gave his son no invitation to accompany him. He asked where Walter was going, what he meant to do moving about at that hour of the night.
“I think I will take—a little turn, sir,” the young man said.
“You are always taking turns!” said Mr. Penton, with irritation. “Why can’t you do something? Why can’t you be going on with your Greek?”
There had been nothing said about Greek for some time. What could he mean by alluding to it now? Walter’s foreboding mind at once attached significance to this. He thought that his father meant to suggest a return to his abandoned studies by way of preparing for something serious to come of them. But his dismay at the suggestion was not so ungenerous as the looker-on might have supposed. It was not that he was afraid of being made to work. What he was afraid of was that this was but another sign of the abandonment of Penton—of turning aside to other purposes and other views than those which had been in some sort the religion of his life.
It need scarcely be said that no such idea was in Mr. Penton’s mind. He took up the Greek, a missile lying ready to his hand, and tossed it at Walter as he would have flung a stone at a dog which had come in his way in the present perturbed state of his spirits. Having done this, he thought no more of it, but went into his book-room and shut the door with a little emphasis, which meant that he was not to be troubled, but which to Walter seemed to mean that he declined further argument and had made up his mind. The boy stood for a moment groping for his hat, following his father with his eyes, and then rushed out into the night in a turmoil of feeling—indignation, misery, surprise. He had been taken so entirely at unawares. Such a thought as that of being called upon to relinquish Penton had never entered into his mind; it had never occurred to him as a possibility. He knew well enough, whatever any one might say, that to abolish entail was not a thing to be done in a minute. Revolutions in law take time. It was not likely that a man of eighty-five would live long enough to see a change like this accomplished. He had dismissed that idea with scorn; and from whatother quarter could any attack come? Walter had felt himself invulnerable—unassailable in his own right. No son could be more dutiful, more affectionate, less likely to calculate upon his father’s death; yet, oddly enough, his father had appeared to him only as a secondary person in this matter—a man with a temporary interest; it was he who was the heir. And—without any fault of his, in complete independence of him, without asking his opinion any more than as one of the children, any more than that of Ally or Anne—his birthright was about to be given away!
A dim evening, soft and damp, and with little light in it, had succeeded the brilliant watery sunset. There was a moon somewhere about, but she was visible only by intervals from among the milky clouds. A sort of pale suffusion of light was in the atmosphere, in which all the chief features of the landscape were visible, but more clearly the house, with all its matted-work of creepers, the lights in the windows, the bare branches rising overhead, with a little sighing wind in them, a wind that moaned and murmured of rain. More rain!—rain that would fill up higher the link of darkly shining water which all but surrounded Penton Hook. The sky was full of it, the atmosphere was full of it; the branches glistened with damp; the very gravel, where you had made an indentation with your heel, filled up with the oozing water, of which the soil was full: and the wind kept sighing with its little lugubrious tone among the branches, saying, “More rain! more rain!” There was a certain moral chill in the air by reason of this, but it was not cold; it was what is called “muggy” on Thames-side. Walter was so well used to it that he made no remark to himself on the damp, nor did he feel the chill. He went crunching along the gravel in his boots, which made a great many indentations, and left a general running of little stray water-gleams behind him, to a certain bench which he had himself made under the tall poplar close to the river bank. It had not been put there because there was shade to be had in the season when shade was wanted, and when it is pleasant to sit out and see the river at one’s feet. It was put there for quite a different reason, because when you knew exactly where to look, there was one small corner, the angle of a chimney at Penton, visible among the trees. And there he seated himself to think.
The mother had been right when she said that they hadworshiped Penton. The children had all been brought up in that devotion. It was a sort of earthly paradise, in which they took refuge from all the immediate humiliations and vexations of their lot. To be poor, yet to belong to the class which is rich, is not a comfortable position. Those who in his own estimation were Walter’s equals were in every external circumstance more separated from him than were the young farmers about; and yet the farmers would have been put out by his presence among them, and he would have found himself entirely out of his element. He was thus a young solitary belonging to nobody, at home with none of his compeers, without companions or friends of his age. The farmers, had he taken to them or they to him, were better off than he; they had horses to ride, they followed the hunt, they kept dogs that ran in coursing matches. Wat had nothing except, if he pleased, a share now and then of the solid, sturdy little pony-of-all-work, and Elfie, the shaggy little terrier. What youth of twenty could live in the country and see Fred Milton, who had been in his division at Eton, and little Bannister, go by in pink and not feel it? He felt it, and so did Ally feel it when she read Eva Milton’s name among the list of the young ladies who were presented and who had been at the court ball. Do you suppose Ally did not wish to see what a ball was like as well as the rest? The farmers’ daughters had their dances too, and got beautiful white tulle dresses for them as well as their superiors in rank. But Ally got nothing; neither the one nor the other. They were shut out of everything, these poor young people, and felt it, being made but of ordinary flesh and blood.
But Penton had been amid all this the refuge of their imaginations. They had been told indeed that even when they were in Penton they would be poor. But poverty in such circumstances would be transformed. They would no longer be shut out of everything, they would come within the range of the people who were “like themselves.” Walter seated himself at the foot of the poplar-tree, with the river running far too close to his feet, for it was very high, sweeping round with an ominous hurry and murmur, preparing floods to come, and the bare branches overhead rustling and whispering in the wind—and directed his eyes to the high wooded bank, the belt of trees, the Penton chimney corner. He could not see it with his bodily eyes,but in his soul he saw it dominating the landscape, and saw as in a panorama everything it involved. Sir Walter Penton of Penton was a power in the county, he was not a mere squire like Fred Milton’s father, or a lordling of yesterday like Bannister’s ennobled papa. Sir Walter Penton of Penton—not the old man who lived shut up in his library, who was taken out for a drive on fine days. Young Walter meant no harm to the old man, but he was himself the Sir Walter Penton whom he had seen in his dreams. What was it he had looked for? Was it only the vulgar improvement, more money to spend, better dinners, horses, travels, all that a young man wants? He had wanted these things, but something more. He had wanted first of all to find himself in his place; to be somebody, not nobody; to recover the importance which was his right, to have all the evils of fortune made up to him. Is not that what the young dream everywhere, whatever their circumstances may be?—to have everything set right, to do away with all the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes. Those who spurn you may not be unworthy, and your own merit may not be patent, or even you may be conscious that you are not meritorious at all. But still we dream, even without such a tangible occasion for dreaming as Walter, of everything being set right.
And now in a moment this hope was all to be cut away. Penton was to be made nothing—nothing to him, no more than any house about, no more than Bannister’s fictitious abbey with its new Strawberry Hill cloister, which was founded upon nothing but wealth, whereas there had been Pentons of Penton since the thirteenth century, and most likely long before. And he was the representative of them all! In his veins was concentrated the essence of theirs: and yet he was to be cut off; he was to stand stupid and look on, without even a right to say no, though it was his inheritance. Walter felt the very possibility of thought taken from him in this dreadful catastrophe. He had nothing to do with it! that was what everybody would say. He was not one-and-twenty, but even if he had reached that age he had nothing to do with it, though it meant his very life.
The tumult of these thoughts overwhelmed the poor young fellow. They carried him away as the river carries everything away when it is in flood, and turned him overand over and dashed him against stones and muddy projections, and poured waves of bitterness over his head. He sat and bit his nails, and gnawed his under lip, and thought and thought, if there was any way to get out of it, if he could say anything, make any protest to his father, declare his own readiness to go anywhere, do anything, rather than suffer this sacrifice. He might go to Australia—in Australia people make fortunes quickly. He might soon be able to make money, to send home something for the children; or to India, or to the gold fields somewhere where nuggets were still to be had. These thoughts can scarcely be called disinterested, for it was how to save what was more to him than nuggets or fortune that Walter was thinking of; but at all events it was not for himself in the first place that he meant to labor. It was for an ambition altogether visionary after all—for Penton, which meant to him the something better, the something loftier, the ideal of life. As he sat musing, the clouds cleared away a little; there began to be a clear place in the sky; it grew lighter, but he did not remark it—until all at once, without a word of warning, the moon suddenly struck out, and made an outburst of radiant reflection upon the river at his feet which called his attention in spite of himself. He looked up instinctively, by the instinct of long habit, and lo! everything was clear over Penton; the moon shining full, the clouds all floating away in masses of fleecy whiteness, and a weather-cock somewhere blazing out, as if it were made of gold and silver, to the right.
This sudden revelation was too much for the boy. He gave a cry of insupportable indignation, a loud protest and utterance of despair, and then hid his face, as if the white light had blinded him, in his hands.
“Stay, Martha, look! there’s some one on the bank. If it’s one of the family what shall I do? or if it’s a tramp? Look! either he’s gone to sleep and he’ll catch his death of cold, or else he’s blinded with the moonlight, as people say.”
It was a pretty voice that spoke, with a little catch in it as of mingled fright and audacity: and then followed a slight stir on the gravel as though the speaker had started back at sight of the unlooked-for figure under the tree. “Oh, Martha! what shall I do? I’ve no business to be here at this time of the night.”
“You’re doing no harm,” said Martha. “The missis will think I was showing a friend round the grounds to look at the moon, and she’ll never say a word. It’s Master Walter. Hush! Don’t you take no notice, and he’ll take none. He’s often here of nights.”
“But he’s gone to sleep, and he’ll catch his death of cold,” the stranger said. “Oh, Martha, you that know him, go and wake him up!”
“Hush, then, come along. It’s not cold, only a bit damp, and we’re used to that in this house. Come along,” Martha said.
Walter heard with an acuteness of hearing which perhaps, had it been only Martha, would not have been his; but the other voice was not like Martha’s—he thought it sounded like a lady’s voice. And he was pleased by the solicitude about himself. And he was very young, and in great need of some new interest that might call him out of himself. He rose up suddenly, and took a long step after the two startled figures, which flew before him as soon as he was seen to move.
“Hi, Martha! where are you off to? Come back, I tell you. Do you think I’ll do you any harm, that you run from me?”
“Oh, no, sir, please, sir; it’s only me and a friend taking a turn by the river afore she goes up to the village. It’s a friend, please, sir, as is staying with us at ’ome.”
“There’s no harm done,” said Walter. “You need not run because of me. I’m going in.” The two young women had come to a pause in a spot where the moon was shining clearly, showing in a little opening, amid all the tracery of interlacing boughs, of which she was making a shadow pattern everywhere, the square figure of Martha, standing firm, with another lighter, shrinking shadow, slim and youthful, beside her. There was something romantic to Walter’s imagination in this unknown, who had shown so much interest in himself. “Going to the village at this hour!” he added. “I hope she is not going by herself.”
“Oh, it’s of no consequence, sir,” said Martha, pulling rather imperatively her companion by the gown.
“Is it a bad road, or are there tramps, or—anything? Oh, Martha!” the other said, in a voice which sounded very clear, though subdued.
“Oh, nonsense, Emmy! It’s just like any other road.It’s a bit dark and steep to begin with. But there’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“Oh, why did I stay so late!” said the other. “How silly of me not to think! No lamps, nor—nor shops, nor people. I never was out on a country road in the dark. Oh, why didn’t I think—”
“Don’t be silly! It’s as safe as safe; there’s never no accidents here.”
“You had better keep your friend with you all night, Martha; my mother will not mind.”
“Oh!—butmymother, sir! she would go out of her senses wondering what had come to me.”
“Emmy, don’t be a silly. I tell you it’s as safe—”
“I have nothing particular to do,” said Walter, good-humoredly. “Since she is so frightened I will walk with her as far as the turnpike. You can see the lights of the village from there.”
“Oh, Mr. Walter, I couldn’t let you take that trouble. I’d rather go with her myself. I’ll run and get Jarvis. I’ll—”
“You need not do anything. It’s turned out a lovely night,” said Walter, “and I shall be all the better for the walk.”
It was all settled in a moment, before he himself knew what was being done, with the carelessness, the suddenness which sometimes decides an all-important event. Walter was seized just at the moment when his own evil fortune seemed overwhelming, when fate seemed to be laying hold on him, with a force which nothing could resist. He was seized by a kind impulse, a good-natured wish to be of use to somebody, to escape from himself in this most legitimate, most virtuous way, by doing something for another. He was pleased with himself for thinking of it. A sense of being good came into his mind, with a little surprise and even amusement such as only an hour ago would have seemed impossible to him. It was like what his mother or one of the girls might have done, but such impulses did not occur readily to himself. He walked round toward the gate by which Martha and her friend stood and whispered together. Martha he could see did not like it; she was shocked to think of her young master having the trouble. The trouble! that was the thing that made it pleasant. He felt for the moment delivered from himself.
“If I am walking too fast for you, tell me,” he said, when he found himself upon the road with the small, timid figure keeping a respectful distance at his side.
“Oh, no, sir,” but with a little pant of breathlessness, she said.
“Iamgoing too fast—how thoughtless of me! Is that better? And so you are not used to country roads?”
“I am only a little cockney, sir. I have never been out of London before. It’s a bad time to come to the country in the winter: for one forgets how short the days are, and it’s silly to be frightened. I am silly, I suppose.”
“Let us hope not about other things,” said Walter. “The road is very dark, to be sure.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, with a little shiver, drawing closer. They were still in the hollow and the hedges were high on either side, and the darkness was complete upon their path, though a little way above the moon penetrated, and made the ascent as white as silver and as light almost as day.
“Should you like,” he said, with a little laugh of embarrassment, yet an impulse which gave him a curious pleasure, such as he was quite unfamiliar with, “to hold on by me?—would you like to take my arm?”
“Oh, no, sir!”
The suggestion seemed to fill her with alarm, and she shrunk away after coming so close. Walter was, on the whole, relieved that she did not take his offer, but he was pleased with himself for having made it, and immensely interested in this little modest unknown, who was unseen as well—this little mysterious being by his side in the dark.
“The wood is very pretty,” he said, “although you can’t see it, and there are no lamps.”
“You are laughing at me, sir; but if you consider that I never was out of the reach of the lamps before. Hampstead is the furthest I have been, and there are lamps there even on the heath. The darkness is one of the things that strikes me most. It is so dark you can feel it. It’s black.” She gave another little shiver, and said, after a moment, “I do so love the light.”
Her tone, her words, the ease with which she spoke, filled Walter with surprise—a surprise which he expressed without thinking, with a frankness which perhaps he would not have displayed had his companion not been Martha’s friend.
“And what,” he said, “can you be doing in our village, and at old Crockford’s? I can’t understand it. You are a—you’re not a—”
He began to recollect himself when he came this length. To say “you’re a lady” seemed quite simple when he began to speak; but as he went on it did not prove so easy. If she was a lady how could he venture to make any such remark?
She gave a little soft laugh which was very pretty to hear. “Old Crockford is—a sort of an uncle of mine,” she said.
“Your uncle!”
“Well, no—not quite my uncle, but something a little like it. When I am humble-minded I call him so; when I am not humble-minded—”
“What happens then?”
“I say as little about it as I can; I think as little about it as I can. No,” she said, with a little vehemence, “I’m not a lady, and yet I’m not a—Martha Crockford. I am a poor little London cockney girl. You shouldn’t be walking with me, sir; you oughtn’t to see me home, you, a gentleman’s son. People might talk. As soon as we get into the moonlight there, where it is so bright, I will release you and run home.”
“Home!” said Walter, incredulous; “it is not possible. Whoever you are—and of course I have no right to ask—I am sure you are a lady. You are as little like the Crockfords as any one could be. No doubt you must have some reason—”
“Oh, yes,” she said, with a laugh, clasping her hands, “a mysterious reason; how can you doubt it? I am a heroine, and I have got a story. I am in hiding from Prince Charming, who wants to run away with me and make me his queen; but I won’t have him, for I am too high-toned. I could not have him shock his court and break the queen mother’s heart. Every word I say makes you more certain what sort of person I am. Now doesn’t it?” she cried, with another laugh.
“I can’t tell what sort of a person you are,” said Walter, “for I am sure I never talked to any one like you before.”
“Well,” she said, with a quick breath which might have been a sigh, “I hope that is a compliment. I have been talking to Martha all night, dropping my h’s and makinghavoc with my grammar. It is nice to do the other thing for a little and bewilder some one else. Yes; I am sure this is a pretty road when there is light to see it. One can’t see it in the moonlight, one can see nothing for the moon.”
“That is true,” said Walter; “just as in summer you can’t see the grass for flowers.”
“I don’t exactly catch the resemblance. What is that lying under the hedge? The shadow is so black, so black now we have got into the light. Look, please; I feel a little frightened. What is that under the hedge?”
“Nothing,” said Walter; “only a heap of stones. If you will look back now we have got up here you will see the river and all the valley. The view is very pretty from here.”
He hoped to see her face when she should turn round, for, though the moonlight is deceiving, it is still better than darkness. Even though she had her back turned to the light he could now see something—the round of what was a pretty cheek.
“I am sure there is something there under the hedge, something that moved.”
“I will look to satisfy you,” said Walter; “but I know there is nothing. Ah—”
A quick rush, a little patter of steps flying along the white road, were the first indications he had of what had happened. Then, before he could recover himself, a laughing “Good-bye, good-bye, sir. Thank you; I see the village lights,” came to him down the road. He made a few steps in pursuit, but then stopped, for the little flying figure was already out of sight. And then he stood looking after herplanté la, as the French say. Why, it was an adventure!—such a break as had never happened before in his tranquil life.
Thegirls in the drawing-room not only met with no adventure, but they did not even know that the damp atmosphere had cleared up and the moon come out. They did not know what had become of Walter. They were as unaware of his despair as of the sudden amusement which hadcome to him to console him in the midst of it. They thought—hoped rather—that he had gone to the book-room with Mr. Penton and was there talking it over, and perhaps undoing the effect of what their mother had said. It did not, indeed, seem very likely that Walter should be able to do this, but yet they were so much on the side of Penton in their hearts that a vague hope that it might be so, moved them in spite of themselves. Walter against mother seemed a forlorn hope; and yet when all your wishes are in the scale it is difficult to believe that these will not somehow help and give force to the advocate. Ally and Anne had taken their places at the table when the gentlemen went away. They were making little pinafores for the children: there were always pinafores to be made for the children. Anne, who was not fond of needle-work, evaded the duty (which to her mother appeared one of the chief things for which women were made) as much and as long as she could, but, being beguiled by promises of reading aloud, did submit in the evening. The little ones used so many pinafores! Ally was always busy at them, except when she was helping in the more responsible work of making little frocks. This evening there was no one to read aloud, but no one blamed Walter for going out; no one even thought of the book, though they were at the beginning of the third volume. Penton for the moment was a more interesting subject than any novel. The girls had not thought so much of it as Walter had done, but still it had been a prominent feature in their dreams also. The idea of being Pentons of Penton could not be indifferent; of taking their place among the aristocracy of the county; of going everywhere, having invitations to all the parties, to tennis in summer, to the dances, all the gayeties, of which now they only heard. Secretly in their souls they had consoled themselves with the thought of this when they heard of the great doings at Milton and all that was done when little Lord Bannister came of age. Anne, indeed, had exclaimed, “If they don’t think proper to ask us now they may let us alone afterward, for I sha’n’t go!” But Ally, more tolerant, had taken the other side. “They don’t know anything about us; it would be going out of their way to ask us. If they knew we were nice, and didn’t ask us because we were poor, that would be horrid of them; but how can they tell whether we are nice or not?”; Anne would havenone of this indulgent argument; she had made up her mind when they came to advancement to revenge all these wrongs of their poverty, so that it was equally hard upon her to have to consent to do without that advancement after all.
Thus they had plenty to talk about as they made their little pinafores. These were made of colored print, which looked cheerful and clean (when it was clean), and wore well, Mrs. Penton thought. Brown holland, no doubt, is the best on the whole, and there is most wear in it, but it is apt to look dingy when it is not quite fresh, and when it is once washed gets such a blanched, sodden look; even red braid fails to make it cheerful. So that Mrs. Penton preferred pink print and blue, which are cheaper than brown holland. The table looked quite bright with those contrasting hues upon it; and the young faces of the girls bending over their work, though they looked more grave and anxious than usual, were pleasant in their fresh tints. Mrs. Penton herself went on with her darning. She had filled up all those great holes, doing them all the more quickly because she had studied the “lie” of them, and how the threads went, before.
“I have never said anything about it,” said Mrs. Penton, “for what was the use? I saw no way to be clear of Penton; but I’ve had this in my mind for years and years. You don’t know what an expense it would be; even the removal would cost a great deal: and though we should have a larger income we should have no ready money—not a farthing. And then you know your father, he would never be content to live in a small way, as we can do here, at Penton; he would want to keep up everything as it was in Sir Walter’s time. He would want a carriage, and horses to ride. He might even think of going into Parliament—that was one of his ideas once. Indeed, I see no end to the expense if we were once launched upon Penton. We should be finer, and we should see more company, but I don’t think we should be a bit better after awhile than if we had never come into any fortune at all.”
“But it would always be something to be fine, and to see more company, and to have a carriage, and horses to ride,” said Anne.
“At the cost of getting into debt and leaving off worse than we were before!” said the mother, shaking her head.
Ally let her work drop on the table and looked up with soft eyes. There was a light unusual in them, which shone even in the smoky rays of that inodorous lamp. “Oh,” she said, with a long-drawn breath, “mother! it’s wicked, I know; and if it made things worse afterward—”
“She thinks just as I do!” cried Anne—“that to have a little fun and see the world, and everything you say, would be worth it, if it were only for a little while!”
“Oh, girls!” said Mrs. Penton—a mild exasperation was in her tone—“if you only knew what I know—”
“We can’t do that, mother, unless we had experience like you; and how are we to get experience unless we risk something? What can we ever know here?—the hours the post goes out, though we have so few letters, the times they have parties at the abbey, though we’re never asked. The only thing we can really get to know is how high the river rises when it’s in flood, and how many days’ rain it takes to make it level with our garden. Oh, how uncomfortable that is, and how chill and clammy! What else can we ever know at Penton Hook?”
“Oh, girls!” said Mrs. Penton again.
Si jeunesse savait!But this is what will never be till the end of the world. And at the same time there was something in her maternal soul that took their part. That they should have their pleasure like the other girls; that they should have their balls, their triumphs like the rest; that to dress them beautifully and admire their bright looks might be hers, a little reflected glory and pleasure for once in her dim, laborious life—her heart went out with a sigh to this which was so pleasant, so sweet. But then afterward? To give it up was hard—hard upon those who had not discounted it all as she had done, taking the glory to pieces and deciding that there was no satisfaction in it. She felt for her husband and the children, though for them more than for him—but her feeling was pity for a pleasant delusion which could not last, rather than sympathy. Penton itself was to her nothing; she disliked it rather than otherwise as something which had been opposed to her all her life.
“If your father accept this offer,” she said after a time, “we need not stay in Penton Hook. We might let it; or at least we might leave it in the winter and go to some other place. We might go to London, or we might evengo abroad; then you would really see the world. If your father had to give up Penton without any advantage that would be a real misfortune. But of course they would give him a just equivalent. Our income would be doubled and more than doubled. Oswald could stay at Marlborough; Walter might go to Oxford. We should be better off at once without waiting for it, and we should be free, not compelled to keep up a large place or spend our money foolishly. You might have your fun, as you call it. Why shouldn’t you? We would be a great deal better off than at Penton, and directly—at once. You know what everybody says about waiting for dead men’s shoes. Sir Walter may live for ten years yet. When a man has lived to eighty-five he may just as well live to ninety-five. And I am sure if we only could get a little more money to live on, none of us wishes him to die.”
“Oh, no,” said the girls, one after another. “If it is any pleasure to him to live,” Anne added reflectively, after a pause.
“Pleasure to live? It is always a pleasure to live, at least it seems so. No one wishes to die as long as he can help it. I wonder why myself; for when you are feeble and languid and everything is a trouble, it seems strange to wish to go on. They do, though,” said the middle-aged mother with a sigh. She thought of Sir Walter as they thought of her, with a mixture of awe and impatience. They felt that their own eager state, looking forward to life, must be so far beyond anything that was possible to her; just as she felt her own weary yet life-full being to be so far in the range of vitality above him. She drew the stocking off her arm as she spoke, and smoothed it out, and matched it with its fellow, and rolled them both up into that tidy ball which is the proper condition of a pair of stockings when they are clean and mended, and ready to be put on. “I think I will go up to the nursery and take a look at the children,” she said. “Horry had a cold; I should like to see that there is no feverishness about him now he is in bed.”
Ally and Anne dropped their work with one accord as their mother went away, not because her departure freed them, but because their excitement, their doubt, their sense of the family crisis all intensified when restraint was withdrawn, and they felt themselves free to discuss theproblem between themselves. “What do you think?” they both said instinctively, the two questions meeting as it were in mid career and striking against each other. “I think,” said Anne, quickly, not pausing a moment, “that there is a great deal in what mother says.”
“Oh, do you?” said Ally, with an answering look of disappointment; then she added, “Of course there must be, or mother would not say it. But would you ever be so happy anywhere as you would be in Penton? Would you think anywhere else as good—London, or even abroad—oh, Anne, Penton!”
And now it was that Anne showed that skeptical, not to say cynical spirit, that superiority to tradition which had never appeared before in any of her family.
“After all,” she said, “what is Penton? Only a house like another. I never heard that it was particularly convenient or even beautiful more than quantities of other houses. It is very large—a great deal too large for us—and without furniture, as mother says. Fancy walking into a great empty, echoing place, without a carpet or a chair, and pretending to be comfortable. It makes me shudder to think of, whatever you may say.”
Ally was chilled much more by Anne’s saying it than by the vision thus presented to her. She began hurriedly, “But Penton—” and then stopped, not knowing apparently what to say.
“I begin to be dreadfully tired of Penton,” said Anne, giving herself an air of superiority and elderly calmness. “Everybody romances so about that big, vulgar house. Well, anything’s vulgar that pretends to be more than it is. One would suppose it was the House Beautiful or else a royal palace at the very least, to hear you all speak. And then poor old Sir Walter, to grudge him his little bit of life! I feel like a vampire,” cried Anne, “every day wishing that he may die.”
“I am sure,” cried Ally, moved almost to tears, “I don’t wish him to die.”
“You wish to be at Penton, and you can’t be at Penton till he dies,” said Anne, triumphantly. “Poor old gentleman! his nice warm rooms that he has taken so much trouble with, and all his pretty things! And to think that a lot of children who will pull everything to pieces should he let in upon them, and his own daughter, who is likehimself, and who would keep everything just as he liked to see it, should be driven away!”
“I never thought of it in that light before,” said Ally, in a troubled voice.
“Nor I,” said Anne; “but it is fair to put yourself in another person’s place and think how you would feel if—Mrs. Russell Penton must hate us, naturally. I should if I were she. Fancy if there was some one whose interest it was that father should die!”
“Oh, Anne!”
“It is just the very same only that father is not so old as Sir Walter. Suppose there were no boys, but only you and me, and some other horrible people were the heirs of the entail. How I should hate them! I think I should try to kill them!”
Anne loved an effect, and Ally’s softer spirit was the instrument upon which she played. Ally cried “No, no, no!” with a horrified protest against these abominable sentiments. A cloud of trouble gathered over her face; her eyes filled with tears. She put up her hands to stop those dreadful words as they flowed from her sister’s mouth.
“To hate any one would be terrible. I could not do that, nor you either, Anne.”
“Not if they wished that father might die?”
This awful supposition overwhelmed Ally altogether. She melted into tears.
“Well, then, come along out into the garden, and don’t let’s think of it any more. I want a little air—the lamp is so nasty to-night—and I’ll finish my pinafore to-morrow. It is very nearly done, all but the button-holes. Do come out and see if the river is rising. That is one good thing about Penton, it is out of reach of the floods. But look, what a change! It is almost as clear as day, and the moon so beautiful. If I had known I should not have stayed in-doors in the light of that horrid lamp.”
“Wemustdo our work some time,” said Ally, faintly, allowing herself to be persuaded. It was rather cold, and very damp; but the moon had come out quite clear, dispersing, or rather driving back into distance the masses of milky clouds which had lost their angry aspect, and no longer seemed to foretell immediate rain. Rain is disagreeable to everybody (except occasionally to the farmers), but it is more than disagreeable to people who live half surrounded by a river; it made their hearts rise to see that the rain-clouds seemed dispersing and the heavens getting clear. And then it takes so very little to lighten hearts of seventeen and eighteen! The merest trifle will do—the touch of the fresh air, even the little nip of the cold which stirred their blood. As they came out Walter appeared, coming back from the gate, a dark figure against the light.
“Oh, Wat, where have you been? Have you been up to the village without telling us? And I did so want a run? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Don’t, Anne,” said Ally; “he is not in spirits for your nonsense. Poor Wat! he can not throw it off like you.”
“Ah,” said Walter, reflectively; but it seemed to the girls that he had to think what it was he could not throw off. “I have not been up to the village,” he said; “only round the dark corner. Martha was there with a little girl who was in a terrible funk. She thought there were lions and tigers under the hedge. I just saw her round the corner.”
“How kind of you, Wat! A little girl! But who could she be?”
“I don’t know a bit,” said Walter, demurely. “It was too dark to see her face.”
He thought his own voice sounded a little strange, but they did not perceive it. They came to either side of him, linking each an arm in his.
“Come and look at Penton in the moonlight,” said Anne, she who was so indifferent to Penton. But somehow to all of them the sting was taken out of it, and there was no pain for them in the sight.