Mrs. Russell Pentondid not let the grass grow under her feet. In two or three days after the above events, before Mr. Penton had made up his mind to give any answer, good or bad, another emissary appeared at the Hook. He was a messenger less imposing but more practical than the stately lady who had perhaps calculated a little—more than was justified by the effect produced—upon her own oldinfluence over her cousin. No influence, save that of mutual interest and business-like arrangement, was in the thoughts of the present negotiator. He drove up to the door in a delightful dog-cart, with a fine horse and the neatest groom, a perfectly well-appointed equipage altogether, such as it is a pleasure to see. He was as well got-up himself as the rest of the turn-out—a young man with a heavy mustache and an air—Anne, who at the sound of this arrival could not be restrained from moving to the window and looking out behind the curtains, pronounced him to be “A Guardsman, I should think.” “A Guardsman! how should you know what a Guardsman is like? and what could he want here?” Walter had said, contemptuously. But he too had peeped a little, ashamed of himself for doing so. “A bagman, you mean, coming for orders,” he cried; to which his sister retorted with equal justice: “How do you know what a bagman is like? and what orders could he get here?” The two young people were considerably discomfited when the stranger, in all his smartness and freshness, with a flower in his button-hole (in the middle of winter), was suddenly shown in upon them by Martha with the murmur of a name which neither caught, and which, as Anne divined, their handmaiden had mumbled on purpose, not comprehending what it was.
The stranger made his bow and explained that he had come to see Mr. Penton on business; and then he displayed an amiable willingness to enter into conversation with the younger branches of the family. “Your roads are not all that could be desired,” he said, finding upon his coat-sleeve an infinitesimal spot of mud. “I am afraid it must be pretty damp here.’
“No, it is not damp,” said Walter, promptly.
“Oh!” said the other; and then after a moment he hazarded the observation that the house, though pretty, lay rather low.
“It is not lower than we like it to be,” Walter replied. He did not show his natural breeding. He felt somehow antagonistic to this visitor without any reason, divining what his errand was.
“Oh!” said the stranger again; and then he addressed himself to Anne, and said that the weather was very mild for the season, an assertion which the most contradictory could not have denied. Anne had been looking at him withgreat curiosity all the time. She did not know how to classify this spruce personage. She was not at all acquainted with thegenusyoung man, and it was not without interest to her. He was neither a Guardsman nor a bagman, whatever that latter order might be. Who was he? She felt very desirous to inquire. Her reply was, “I am afraid father must be out. Did he expect you to come?” thinking perhaps in this way the stranger might be led into telling who he was.
“I don’t know that he expected me. I came on business. There are certain proposals, I believe; but I need not trouble you with such matters. I hope I may be permitted to wait for Mr. Penton, if he is likely to return soon.”
“The best way,” said Walter, with an air of knowledge which deeply impressed his sister, “is to write beforehand and make an appointment.”
“That is most true,” said the other, with suppressed amusement, “but I was told I was almost sure to find Mr. Penton at home.”
At this moment the door flew open hastily and Ally appeared, not seeing the stranger as she held the door. “Oh, Wat,” she cried, “father has gone out and some one has come to see him. Mamma thinks it is some dreadful person about Penton. She wants you to run out and meet him, and tell him—What are you making signs to me for?”
As she said this she came fully into the room and looked round her, and with a sudden flush of color, which flamed over cheek and brow and chin, perceived the visitor, who made a step forward with a smile and a bow.
“I am the dreadful person,” he said. “I don’t know what I can say to excuse myself. I had no bad intention, at least.”
Ally was so much discomposed that after her blush she grew pale and faint. She sunk into a chair with a murmur of apology. She felt that she would like to sink through the floor; and for once in her gentle life would have willingly taken vengeance upon the brother and sister who had let her commit so great a breach of manners, and of whom one, Anne, showed the greatest possible inclination to laugh. Walter, however, was not of this mind. Hetook everything with a seriousness that was almost solemnity.
“My sister, of course, did not know you were there,” he said. And then, with that desire to escape from an unpleasant situation which is common to his kind, “Since you are in a hurry and your business is serious, I’ll go and see if I can find Mr. Penton,” he said.
And he had the heart to go, leaving the stranger with Ally and Anne! the one overwhelmed with confusion, the other so much tempted to laugh. It was like a boy, they both reflected indignantly to leave them so. Between Ally, who would have liked to cry, and Anne who restrained with difficulty the titter of her age, the young man, however, felt himself quite at an advantage. He asked with quiet modesty whether he might send his horse round to the stables. “I can send him up to the village, but if you think I might take the liberty of putting him up here—” They were so glad to be free of him, even for a moment, that they begged him to do so, in one breath.
“But for goodness’ sake, Ally, don’t look so miserable, there is no harm done,” said Anne, in the moment of his absence; “it will show him how we feel about it.”
“What does it matter how we feel? but to be rude is dreadful; let me go and tell mother—”
“What, and leave me alone with him? You are as bad as Wat. You sha’n’t stir till father comes. Fancy a strange young man, and an enemy—”
“He need not be an enemy, he is only a lawyer,” Ally said, always ready to see things in the most charitable light.
“And what is a lawyer but an enemy? Did you ever hear of a lawyer coming into the midst of a family like this but it was for harm? It was very funny, though, when you bolted in. Wat and I were making conversation; when you suddenly came like a thunder-bolt with your ‘dreadful person.’”
In the absence of the injured, Ally herself did not refuse to laugh in a small way. “He does not look dreadful at all,” she said; “he looks rather—nice, as if he would have some feeling for us.”
“I don’t think his feeling for us could be of much consequence. We are not fallen so low as that, that we should need to care for an attorney’s feeling,” said Anne. But then her attention was distracted by the fine horsewith its shining coat, the dog-cart all gleaming with care and varnish, notwithstanding the traces of the muddy roads. “He must be well off,” she said, “at least,” with a little sigh.
“He is in the law,” said Ally; “that doesn’t mean the same thing as an attorney. An attorney is the lower kind; and I’m sure it may matter a great deal that he should have feeling. Think of poor Wat’s interest. It is Wat that is to be considered; even mother, who is so strong on the other side, and thinks it would be so much better for the rest of us, is sorry for Wat.”
“Hush! he is coming back,” Anne said. There was something strangely familiar in the return of the visitor through the open door without any formalities, as if he were some one staying in the house.
“It is very fortunate that the weather is so fine,” he said, coming back. “The situation is delightful for the summer, but you must find it unpleasant when the floods are out.”
“It is never unpleasant,” said Anne; “for it is our home. We like it better than any other situation. Penton is much grander, but we like this best.”
“We need not make any comparison,” said Ally. “Cousin Alicia prefers Penton because she was born there, and in the same way we—”
“I understand,” the stranger said. But the girls were not clever enough to divine what it was he understood, whether he took this profession of faith in the Hook as simply genuine, or perceived the irritation and anxiety which worked even in their less anxious souls. He began to talk about the great entertainment that had taken place lately at Bannister. “It was got up regardless of expense,” he said, “and it was very effective as a show. All that plaster and pretense looks better in the glow of Bengal lights—of course, you were—What am I thinking of? It is not your time yet for gayeties of that kind.”
“We were not there,” said Anne, in a very decisive tone. Disapproval, annoyance, a little wistfulness, a little envy were in her voice. “We don’t go anywhere,” she said.
“Not yet, I understand,” said the stranger again. There was a soothing tone about him generally. He seemed to make nothing of the privations and disabilitiesof which they were so keenly conscious. “I have a sister who is not out,” he went on. “I tell her she has the best of it; for nothing is ever so delightful as the parties you don’t go to, when you are very young.”
They paused over this, a little dazzled by the appearance of depth in the saying. It sounded to them very original, and this is a thing that has so great a charm for girls. He went on pleasantly, “There are to be some entertainments, I hear, at Penton when everything is settled. I hope I may have the pleasure of meeting you there.”
“At Penton! we are never at Penton,” they cried in the same breath; but then Ally gave Anne a look, and Anne, being far the most prompt of the two, made an immediate diversion. “There is father coming through the garden,” she said. It was a principle in the family to maintain a strict reserve in respect to Penton, never permitting any one to remark upon the want of intercourse between the families. It is needless to say that this was a very unnecessary reserve, as everybody knew what were the relations between Sir Walter and his heir. But this is a delusion common to many persons more experienced in the ways of the world than the poor Pentons of the Hook.
Mr. Penton came in making a great noise with his big boots upon the tiles of the hall. He opened the door of the drawing-room and looked in with a nod of recognition which was not very cordial. “Good-morning, Mr. Rochford,” he said; “I am sorry I have kept you waiting. Perhaps you will come with me to my room, where we shall be undisturbed.”
The young man hesitated a little. He made the girls a bow more elaborate than is usual with young Englishmen.
“If I am not so fortunate as to see you again before I go—” he said, with his eyes on Ally—and how could Ally help it? She was not in the habit of meeting people who looked at her so. She blushed, and made an inclination of her head, which took Anne, who gave him an abrupt little nod, quite by surprise. “Why,” the girl cried, almost before the door closed, “Ally, you gave him a sort of dismissal as if you had been a queen.”
“What nonsense!” Ally said, but she blushed once more all over, from the edge of her collar to her hair. “I wonder,” she said, “whether Cousin Alicia can leave us out, if she is going to give entertainments as he says.”
“When everything is settled—what does that mean, when everything is settled?” cried Anne.
“It means, I suppose,” said Walter, gloomily, “when Penton has been given over, when we have fallen down among the lowest gentry, just kept up a little (and that’s not much) by the baronetcy which they can not take away. Father can’t sell that, I believe. Mrs. Russell Penton may be a very great lady, but she can’t succeed to the baronetcy. Leave us out! Do you mean to say that—over my body, as it were, you would go!”
“Oh, Walter, don’t take it like that! If father settles upon doing this, it will be because both together they have decided that it is the best.”
“And no one asks what I think,” cried the lad, “though after all it is I—” He stopped himself with an effort, and without another word swung out again, leaving the door vibrating behind him. And the girls looked at each other with faces suddenly clouded. Fifty looks to twenty so remote an age, so little to be calculated upon. After all, it was Walter, not Mr. Penton, who was the heir. And no one asked what he thought!
The door of the book-room closed upon the negotiations which were of such importance to the family. There came a hush upon the house—even the winterly birds in the trees without, who chirped with sober cheerfulness on ordinary occasions, were silent to-day, as if knowing that something very important was going on. Those who passed the door of the book-room—and everybody passed it, the way of each individual, whatever he or she was doing, leading them curiously enough in that direction—heard murmurs of conversation, now in a higher, now in a lower key, and sometimes a little stir of the chairs, which made their hearts jump, as if the sitting were about to terminate. But these signs were fallacious for a long time, and it was only when dinner was ready, the early dinner, with all its odors, which it was impossible to disguise, that the door opened at last. The three young people were all about the hall-door, Walter hanging moodily outside, the two girls doing all they could to distract his thoughts, when this occurred. They all started as if a shell had fallen amongst them. By the first glimpse of Mr. Penton’s face they were all sure they could tell what had been decided upon. But they were not to have this satisfaction.
“Tell your mother,” he said, keeping in the shade, where no one could read his countenance, “to send in a tray with some luncheon for Mr. Rochford and me.” And then the door closed, and the discussion within and the mystery and anxiety without continued as before.
“Howeverit goes,” said Mr. Russell Penton, “I don’t think you can help taking some notice of the young people. In the first place it is right, but that I allow does not count much in social matters; and next it is becoming and expedient, and what the world will expect of you, which is of course much more important.”
“Gerald,” said his wife, “what have I done to make you speak to me like that?”
“I don’t know that you have done anything, Alicia. It is of course your affair rather than mine. But I think it is hard upon your cousins. It is like that business about the birthright, you know—you have got the mess of pottage, and they—the other thing, half sentimental, half real.”
“I wonder at you, Gerald,” cried Mrs. Penton. “What true sentiment can they have in the matter? They never lived here; their immediate ancestors never lived here. False sentiment, if you like, as much of that as you like, but nothing else; and the real advantage will be immediate, as you know.”
“Yes, I know. I never said it was the sentiment of acquisition; it is the sentiment of personal importance, which perhaps is even more telling. Apart from Penton they will feel themselves nobodies.”
“As they are, as they have always been.”
“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Russell Penton, with a shrug of his shoulders, “I have always said it was your affair and not mine.”
“You never said that you disapproved. You have heard all the conversation that has gone on about it, and yet you have never said a word. How was I to know that you disapproved?”
“I don’t disapprove. It is a question between you andSir Walter and your relations. It would not become me to thrust in my opinion one way or the other.”
Tears came into Mrs. Penton’s eyes. “When you say such things, Gerald, you make me feel as if I were no true wife to you.”
“Yes, you are my true wife, and a very dear one,” he said, after a momentary pause, without effusion, but with serious kindness. “But we knew, Alicia, when we married, that the position was different from that of most husbands and wives. I am a sort of Prince Consort, to advise and stand by you when I can; but it is my best policy, for my own self-respect as well as your comfort, not to interfere.”
“The Prince Consort was not like that,” she said; “he was the inspiration of everything. It was not in the nature of things that anything could be done or thought of without him.”
“I have not that self-abnegation,” he said; “there is but one like that in a generation; besides, my dear, you are not the queen. You must defer to another’s guidance. What is settled between Sir Walter and you is for me sacred. I make any little observations that occur to me, but not in the way of advice. For example, I permit myself to say that it is hard on your cousin, because I think you don’t quite appreciate the hardship on his side—not to prevent you carrying out your own purpose, which I don’t doubt is good and very likely the best.”
She shook her head doubtfully. “You are very kind and very tolerant, Gerald, but all you say makes me see that you would not have done this had you been in my place.”
He paused a little before he replied.
“It is very difficult for me to imagine myself in your place, Alicia. A man can not realize what it would be to be a woman, I suppose. But I’ll tell you what I should have done had I been in Sir Walter’s place, with one dear daughter and an heir of entail—I should have moved heaven and earth to kick him out or buy him out. There can be no doubt as to what I should have done in that case.”
Alicia took his hand and held it in both hers. She looked gratefully into his face, and said, “Dear Gerald!” but yet she turned away unsatisfied, with a haunting suspicion. Being Sir Walter, that was what he would have done. But he thought the woman who was his wife should not have done it. In no way had Russell Penton intimated this to be the case. He had never said that a woman should have a different standard of duty set up for her. But Alicia had intuitions which were keener than her intelligence, just as she had longings for approval and sympathy which went far beyond her power of communicating the same. He would have liked her better if she had not grasped at Penton. Without any aid of words this was what she divined. The blank of the doubt which was in her made her heart sore. She wanted to carry his sympathy with her, at any cost. She called after him as he was going away,
“As you are so much concerned about those young people, I will ask them. I will ask them, to please you; if you like, next week, when the Bromley Russells are here.”
He looked at her for a moment with something like a stare of surprise; then his countenance relaxed; a smile came over his face.
“Why not?” he said.
“Why not? There can be no reason against it if you wish it.”
This time Russell Penton laughed out.
“No,” he said, “no reason; the other way. Let the young fellow have his chance.”
“What chance?” Alicia stiffened in spite of herself. His laugh offended her, but she would not show her offense, nor inquire what he meant, in case that offense might be increased. “I was not thinking,” she added, “of any young fellow. I was thinking of the girls.”
“If my wish has weight with you, let the boy come, too. The sisters will want a chaperon, don’t you know?”
“The sisters?” said Mrs. Penton. An inexpressible sense of dislike, of displeasure, of repugnance came over her, as if some passing wind had carried it. “Not that sharp girl,” she said, with a look of fastidious dissatisfaction—something that moved the lines of her nostrils as if it offended a sense.
“Not the sharp girl, and not the boy,” said Russell Penton. “But then who is left?”
“My godchild is left, Alicia, the one I like best; or, rather, whom I—”
“Dislike least,” said her husband, with his laugh. “I can not see, now that everything is likely to be settled to your satisfaction, what possible reason there can be for disliking them at all.”
“There is none,” she said, with an effort. “I am the victim of a state of affairs which is over; I can not get my feelings into accordance with the new circumstances. You can not blame me, Gerald, more than I blame myself.”
He said nothing at all in reply to this, but turned away as he had done with the intention of going out, when she called him back. Once more she recalled him, with the same dull sense of his disapproval aching at her heart.
“Gerald, after all, you see I do not even wait till things are settled to ask the children. Give me a little credit for that.”
“You said, Alicia, that it was to please me.”
“And so it is! and so are many things—more, a great many more, than you think.”
He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her face. “You are always very good, very kind, and ready to please me. Is it for that I am to give you credit? or for generosity toward your young cousins? You are not very logical, you see.”
“Women are not supposed to be logical,” she said.
He gave a grave smile as he took his hands away. “Women are more logical than they acknowledge,” he said. “It is a convenient plea.”
And this time there was no recall. He went out without any further hinderance, not much pleased with himself, and perhaps less with her. He was not, as she divined, satisfied at all. Rich Mrs. Penton’s husband had as little devotion to Penton as had poor Mr. Penton’s wife. He felt that he would have been more at his ease in any other house, and a subtle sort of rivalry with Penton, antagonism partly irrational, and disappointment in the thought that Sir Walter’s death, when it came, would bring him no enfranchisement, filled his mind with an irritation which it was not always possible to keep under. He did not want her to do this scanty justice to her young relations, her only relations, in order to please him. They had done no harm; why should it be an offense to her that they had in their veins a certain number of drops of kindred blood? Presently, however, this irritation turned into displeasure withhimself. He had been hard upon Alicia; he had asked that the young Pentons should be invited, vaguely, without any particular meaning; and she had said she would ask them at once, along with the heiress, the great prize for whom so many were contending. It had jarred upon her when he laughed, and it now occurred to him that his laugh had been ill-timed and out of place; yet all alone as he was, when it came back to his mind he laughed again. Why not? he had said—and why not? he repeated with a gleam of humor lighting up thoughts which were not particularly pleasant in themselves. He, a poor scion of the Russells, had carried off the Penton heiress; why should not young Penton, the poor and disinherited, have a try at the other, the Russell heiress? But if Alicia saw the reason of his merriment, no wonder that it had jarred upon her. It was in bad taste, he said to himself. To compare her with the little Russell girl was a thing which even in thought was offensive. He did not wonder that she was offended by his laugh, that it made her stiff and cold. He sighed a little as all inclination to laugh died out of him. It would have suited him better to have had a mate of a lighter nature, one who would have let him laugh, who would have been less easily jarred, less serious, less full of dignity; but this was a thing that Russell Penton was too loyal even to say to himself. It might touch the surface of his thoughts, but only to be banished. It was because of this inevitable jar, this little difference, which was so little yet was fundamental, that he sighed.
And she sighed, too, she who did so many things to please him—more, far more than he had any idea of. She was ready to do almost anything to please him; almost, yet with a great reserve. Instinctively she was aware that Penton stood between them—that the bondage of the great house which was not his, and the burden of representing a family of which he was only, so to speak, an accidental member, lay very heavy upon the easy mind and cheerful, humorous nature of her husband. He was not born to be the head of a house. What he liked was the case of a life without responsibilities, without any representative character. A cheerful little place with all its windows open to the sun, where he could do what he liked, where no man could demand more of him than to be friendly and agreeable which he could leave when he chose andcome back to as he pleased; that would have been his ideal home. She said to herself that the wife whom he had taken to such a little house would have been very happy, and sometimes, in the days when she still indulged in dreams (which women do in the strangest way, long after the legitimate age for it), she had seen that tiny place in a vision with children about it and no cares (as if that were possible!) and Gerald’s countenance always beaming with genial content. But the woman who was so happy, who was at her ease, whom no troubles touched, who was Gerald’s other self, was not Alicia. She had to sigh and turn away, feeling that this could never be. Her life had been already settled when she married. There was no change or escape for her; indeed, what was stranger still, though she perceived the happier possibilities in the other lot, she knew that it had never been possible to her. The ease would have wearied, perhaps even disgusted her. Attending that vision of happiness would come revelations of the slipshod, glimpses of what ease and happiness so often come to when they grow to overluxuriance. No, the difference was very slight, but it was fundamental. And in this, as in so many other contradictions of life, the woman had the worst of it. Russell Penton was tolerant by nature, and he had trained himself to still greater tolerance. He made an observation, as he said, now and then, but it was possible to him to stand by and look on, without worrying himself about that which he could not change. He would say to himself that it was no business of his; he could even refrain from criticism except in so far as we have seen, when he made a good-natured protest in defense of some one wronged, or avenged another’s injury by a laugh. But Alicia, on her side, was not so easily satisfied. She wanted him to approve; his acquiescence, his plea that it was not his affair, his declaration that he would not interfere, were to her gall and bitterness. She could not adopt his light ways, nor take things easily as he did. Following her own course, acting upon her own principles, his concurrence, his approval, were the things she longed for before all others. When he said “You are quite right” she was happy, though even then never without a sense that he must have added within himself, “right from your own point of view.” The curious thing, however, and one which she was also aware of with a strange double consciousness, was that she never thought of adopting his point of view, or attempting even any compromise between his and hers. She had placed herself so completely in her own groove that she could not get out of it, and had no wish to get out of it. But yet she wanted his approval, all the same. She wanted it passionately, with an insistence which even her own complete enlightenment as to the difference between them never affected. Having her own way, even in the supreme question which now at the last had been opened only to promise the most satisfactory solution, she yet would have no real pleasure in it unless he approved. And his mode of passing it over, his assent which meant no approval, took the pleasure out of everything. What could she do to please him more than she was doing? But she never had it, that satisfaction of the heart.
Mr. Penton’slong interview with the young solicitor had ended in this:—and though it did not seem exactly a settlement of the question, it had been taken for granted by both families as such—that he consented to treat with Sir Walter Penton. The terms might take a longer time to arrange, and there were conditions—some of a rather peculiar character, as his opponents thought—which Mr. Penton insisted upon. But upon the general question he was supposed to have yielded. It had taken him a great deal of thought, and he was not happy about it. He went about the house and his few fields with a moody countenance, avoiding every turn or point of view which revealed Penton—those points of view which had once been his happiness. This fact alone took a great deal of the pleasure out of his life. It had been his relief in former days to mount the road to that corner where the view was, or to go out and sit on the bench under the poplar-tree; but now he turned his back upon these favorite places. When he was low he had no longer this way of escaping from himself. Of all points of the compass, that on which Penton lay had become the most distasteful to him. He would have liked to have had it blotted out from the landscape altogether: there was nothing but pain in the sight of it, in the mereknowledge that it was there. And winter is cruel in this particular. It spares you nothing—not even a chimney. The weather-cock, glowing through the bare trees, seemed to catch every ray of light and blazon it over the whole country; the windows that faced the south were in a perpetual scintillation. The great house would not be hidden; it made no account of the feelings of those who were in the act of parting with it forever; though its aspect was now a reproach and humiliation to them instead of a pride, it seemed to force itself more and more on their eyes. Walter felt this almost more strongly than his father, if that were possible. He, too, went about moody, with the air of a man injured, turning his back on the once favorite quarter where the sunset was. He said in his haste that he never wanted to see a sunset again, and when the girls called his attention to all the stormy gorgeous colors of the winter afternoon, would turn his back upon them and declare that the reflection in the river, the secondary tints in the cold gray of the east, were enough for him. He said this with a vehemence which his father did not display. But Walter had solaces and alleviations of which his father was incapable; and Mr. Penton was the one who felt it most deeply after all. In his middle-aged bosom the tide of life was not running high. He had few pleasures; even few wishes. It no longer moved him in his habitual self-restraint that he had no horses, no means of keeping his place among his peers. All that had dropped away from him in the chill of custom—in that acceptance of the inevitable which is the lowest form of content. But there had always been Penton in which his imagination could take refuge. Penton was still an earthly paradise into which one day or other he should find entrance, which nobody could close from him. And now that too was closed, and his fancy could no longer go in and dwell there. He said very little about it, but he felt it to the bottom of his heart. It was the sort of thing of which he might have died had the floods been out or the atmosphere as deleterious as it sometimes was; but happily it was not an exceptionally wet season, and the river had not as yet been “out” that year.
The ladies from the first had taken it better, and they continued to do so. Mrs. Penton began to make calculations with bated breath and many a “hush!” when either father or son were nigh—of what she would now be able todo. She thought it would be well for them all, as soon as matters were settled, to go away; for though the waters were not out yet, it was scarcely to be hoped for that they should not after Christmas, in rainy February at the latest, have their way; and a separation from the scene of their disappointment would, she thought, be good both for Mr. Penton and Wat. Mrs. Penton said this with a sigh, feeling already all that was involved in a removal in the middle of winter; but it would be good, she felt, for Horry and the rest to be out of the damp, and it would be very good for Wat. The thing for Wat would be to go to Oxford without delay; fortunately he was not too old, and that would take him off thinking about Penton if anything would. As for the father, there was no such panacea for him. What can be done to distract or divert a man who has outlived the ordinary pleasures, and can not have his mouth stopped or his heart occupied with any new toy? A horse or two such as he would now be able to afford would have done a great deal for him once; but now he had got out of the habit of riding, and might not care to take it up again. It was easier to think of the young ones whose life lay all before them, and who would enter the world now under so much better conditions, though not those they had calculated upon. Mrs. Penton made up her mind that if all was settled on the terms proposed she would be able to give the girls “every advantage.” They should be taken to see a great many things, they should have clothes and surroundings that suited their condition; they might even “see a little of the season” when the proper time came round. All these things were pondered and decided upon in the many hours when the feminine portion of the household sat together, which were more than had ever been before. For Wat did not care to have his sisters constantly with him as he once had done; they set it down to his disappointment about Penton, and the disturbance of his temper and of his life which had ensued—which when they accused him of it he agreed in with a sort of satisfaction. But when Anne said, without thought, “One would think Wat had found somebody else to go with him,” he was very angry, and grew very red, and demanded to know who else? who was he likely to have else? with an indignation which the provocation did not justify.
Thus it will be seen that the circumstances of the household were much changed. They had not been in a very flourishing condition when they first discussed the law of entail and the possibility that it might be attacked by a reforming parliament and their birthright taken from them; but somehow that simple time of expectation and depression, which now looked as if it might be years ago, had been, with all its straitenedness, a happier time than now. A certain agitation had got into all their veins; the girls and their mother sat mostly alone in the evenings. There was no reading aloud. Wat was out almost always, taking a walk, he said; or when he was not out he was in the book-room, grinding, as he told them, at his Greek, which was quite necessary if he was going up to Oxford in the beginning of the year. The girls would have thought this state of affairs insupportable a little while ago, but in the commotion of the approaching change they found so much to talk of that they were partially reconciled to making pinafores all the evening in the light of the paraffin lamp, though it smelled badly, and there was no one to read to them. They had a great deal to talk about. As for Mrs. Penton, her mouth was opened as it had never been in her life before. She talked of balls, and theaters, and of the “things” they must get as soon as ever matters were settled. She recounted to them her own experiences—the dances she had gone to before her marriage, and all the competition there had been to secure her for a partner. “They said I was as light as a feather,” she said, with her eyes fixed upon the stocking she was darning, and without raising her head; “and so they will say of Ally, for Ally is just the same figure I was. But you must have some lessons when we go to town.” She was pleased thus to talk, recalling old recollections, to which the girls listened with astonishment; for they had never supposed that their mother knew anything of those gayeties, which to themselves were like the fables of golden isles unknown to men; but they were not displeased to listen, weaving into the simple story as it flowed the imaginations, the anticipations which filled that unknown world upon the threshold of which they stood. It was even more absorbing than the stories of the good and fair heroines (for Mrs. Penton was very particular in her choice of the books which were read by them) to which they had been in the habit of listening. But they missed Wat, to whom, however, they allowed thenarration of mother’s tales might have seemed a little flat had he been there. Wat up to the present moment had shown very little interest in anything of the kind; but it was a little strange now that he should so often be “taking a turn” even when the moon was not shining, and when the country roads were so dark.
Mr. Rochford, the solicitor, came on several occasions during this time of transition. He came often enough to make the children quite familiar with that trim and shining dog-cart, and the horse which was so sleek and shining, too. Horry had been driven round and round in it, nay, had been allowed to drive himself, making believe, before it was put up: and he and his smaller brother assisted at the harnessing and unharnessing of this famous animal with the greatest enthusiasm every time he came. Young rustic lads attending at a monarch’s levee could not have been more interested than were these babes. And Mr. Rochford made himself more or less agreeable in other ways to the whole family, except Wat, who did not take to him, but kept him at a distance with an amount of unfriendly temper which he showed to no one else. There was no idea now of a tray carried into the book-room when this visitor came. He was introduced to the early dinner where all the children sat in their high chairs, and where the food was more wholesome than delicate—a meal which was too plainly dinner to be disguised under the name of luncheon. Mr. Rochford made himself quite at home at this family dinner. He praised everything, and declared that he was always most hungry at this hour, and eat so heartily that Mrs. Penton took it as a personal compliment; for though Mrs. Penton sometimes made a little moan about the appetites of the children, she yet was much complimented when visitors (who were so few at the Hook) eat well and seemed to relish the simple food. “Roast mutton may be very simple,” she said, “but there is roast mutton and roast mutton—a big, white, fat leg half cooked is a very different thing from what is set on our table, for I must say that Jane, if she is not much to look at, is an excellent cook.” She liked to see people eat; not Horry getting three helps and gorging himself; that was a different matter altogether; but a visitor who could appreciate how good it really was.
And after dinner was over Mr. Rochford would ask whether he might not to be taken round the garden to see,not the flowers, for there were none, but the flood-marks of different years, and how high the river had come on the last occasion when the waters were “out.” He had a great interest in the floods—more than Mr. Penton, who got weary of his guest’s enthusiasm, and stole back to the book-room, leaving him with the girls; and more than Anne, who heard her mother calling her, or found she had something to do in the poultry-yard, every time this little incident occurred. Ally was the most civil, the most long-suffering, and it soon became evident that there was only one who had patience to conduct Mr. Rochford to see the flood-marks.
“I have been used to them all my life,” the young lawyer said. “I have an old aunt who lives as close to the river as this, and who has the water in her garden every year. I used to be sent on visits there when I was a child, and oh! the transports of the inundation and the old punt in which we used to float about. To come up under the windows in that punt was bliss.”
“You could not do that here,” said Ally, with that pride in the Hook which was part of the family character. “The water never comes above the garden. I showed you the highest flood-mark was on a level with the terrace round the house.”
“Yes,” said the visitor, with an implicit faith which was not universal among those who heard this tale. “What a piece of good fortune that is! You must feel as if you were in an oasis in the midst of the desert.”
Ally felt that the metaphor was not very appropriate, but of course she knew what he meant. She said, “The little boys are as fond of seeing the floods as you were when you were a boy.”
“It would be difficult work if at any time the house was cut off—I beg your pardon,” said Rochford, “that is nonsense, of course; but do you know I dreamed the other night that the river was higher than ever had been known, and was sweeping all round the Hook, and that the family were in danger? I got out in my boat on the wildest whirling stream, and steered as well as I could for your window. Which is your window, Miss Penton? I knew quite well which it was in my dream, and steered for it. That one! why then I was right, for that was where I steered.”
“You frighten me,” said Ally, “but the water has never come near the house.”
“It did on this occasion. There were people at all the windows, but I steered for yours. I heard myself calling Miss Penton, and you wouldn’t let me save you. You kept putting the children into my arms, and I could not refuse the children—but I shall never forget the horror with which I woke up, finding that you always delayed and delayed and would not come.”
“How kind of you,” said Ally, laughing, but with a little blush, “to take so much trouble even in your dream.”
“Trouble!” he cried, “but yet it was great trouble, for you would not come. I heard myself calling, trying every kind of argument, but you always pushed some one in front of you to be saved first, and would not come yourself. I awoke in a dreadful state of mind, crying out that it was my fault, that it was because of me, that if it had been any one else you would have come.”
“How ungrateful you must have thought me,” said Ally, blushing more and more, “but of course I should have put the children first. You may be sure that is what I shall do if it should ever come true.”
“I am forewarned,” he said, laughing. “I shall know how to beguile you now that I am informed.”
“I hope you may never have the occasion,” she said.
“Of helping you? Do you think that is a kind wish, Miss Penton? for it is a thing which would be more delightful than anything else that could happen to me.”
Ally, being a little confused by this continuance of the subject, led him round by the edge of the river to the poplar-tree and the bench underneath. “We used all to be very fond of this seat,” she said, “because of the view. If Penton is going now to be nothing to us we must take the bench away.”
“Can it ever cease to be something to you? It is the home of your ancestors.”
“Oh, yes; but one’s father is more near one than one’s ancestors, and if he is to have nothing to do with Penton—”
“You regret Penton,” said the lawyer, fixing his eyes upon her; “then I wish my hand had been burned off before I had anything to do with the business.”
“Oh, what could that matter?” cried Ally. “I am nobody; and besides,” she added, with gravity, “I do not suppose it could have been stopped by anything that either you or I could do.”
This made the young man pause; but whatever was disagreeable in it was modified by the conjunction “you and I.” Was it only civility, or had she unconsciously fallen into the trap and associated herself with him by some real bond of sympathy? He resumed after a pause, “Perhaps we might not be able to cope with such grandees as your father and Mrs. Russell Penton, but there is nothing so strong as—as an association—as mutual help, don’t you know?”
Ally did not know, neither did he, what he meant. She replied only, “Oh!” in a startled tone, and hurriedly changed the subject. “Will it take a long time to draw out all the papers, Mr. Rochford? Why should it take so long? It seems so simple.”
“Nothing is simple that has to do with the law. Should you like it to be hurried on or to be delayed? Either thing could be done according as it pleasedyou.”
There was the slightest little emphasis upon the pronoun, so little that Ally perceived it first, then the next moment blushed with shame at having for a moment allowed herself to suppose that it could be meant.
“Oh, we could not wish for either one thing or another,” she said. “I shall be sorry when it is altered, and I shall be glad. Naturally it is Walter that feels it most.”
“Ah, he is the heir.”
“Hewasthe heir, Mr. Rochford. I feel for him. He has to change all his ways of thinking, all that he was looking forward to. But why should we talk of this? I ought not to talk of it to any stranger. It is because you have so much to do with it, because you—”
“Because I am mixed up with it from the beginning,” he said, regretfully. “How kind you are to receive me at all, when it was I whose fate it was to introduce so painful a subject. But one never knows,” he went on, in a lower tone, “when one drives up to a door that has never been opened to one’s steps before, what one may find there; perhaps the most commonplace, perhaps”—he turned his head away a little, but not enough to make the last two words, uttered in a lowered but distinct voice, inaudible to Ally—“perhaps one’s fate.”
The girl heard them, wondered at them, felt herself grow pale, then red. There is something in words that mean so much, which convey a sort of secondary thrill of comprehension without revealing their meaning all out. Ally, who was unprepared for the real revelation, felt that there was something here which was not usual to be said, which concerned her somehow, which made it impossible for her to continue the conversation calmly. She turned away to examine some moss on the trunk of the nearest tree. Did he mean her to hear that? Did he mean her not to hear? And what did it mean? His fate—that must mean something, something more than people generally said to each other while taking a turn round the garden, whether it might be to see the roses or to examine the flood-marks.
At this moment the most fortunate thing occurred—a thing which ended the interview without embarrassment, without any appearance of running away upon Ally’s part. Mrs. Penton suddenly appeared in the porch, which was within sight, holding a letter in one hand and beckoning with the other. She called, not Ally, but “Alice!” which in itself was enough to mark that something had occurred out of the common. Her voice thrilled through the still damp air almost with impatience; its usual calm was gone; it was full of life, and haste, and impetuosity—more like the quick voice of Anne than that of the mother. And then little Horry came running out, delighted to escape out-of-doors in his pinafore, without cap or great-coat, or any wrap, his red stockings making a broken line of color as he ran along the damp path, his curls of fair hair blowing back from his forehead.
“Ally! Anne!—Ally! Anne!” he cried, “mother wants you! Ally-Anne! mother wants you!—she wants you bovth She’s got news for you bovth. Ally-Anne! Ally-Anne!” shouted the small boy.
“I’m coming, Horry,” cried the girl; and from the other side of the house came the same cry from her sister. Ally entirely forgot Mr. Rochford and his fate. She ran home, leaving him without another thought, encountering midway Anne, who was flying from the poultry-yard, in which she had taken refuge. What was it? At their age, and in such simplicity as theirs, a letter suddenly arrived with news might mean anything. What might it not mean? It might mean that the queen had sent for them to Windsor Castle. It might mean that some very great lady unheard of before had invited them on the score of some old unknown friendship. It might mean that somebody had left them a fortune. The only thing it could not mean was something unimportant. Of that only they were assured.
Mrs. Penton stood at the door in her excitement, with the letter in her hands. Her tall figure was more erect, her head borne higher than usual. When she saw the girls running from different directions she turned and went in-doors, and presently Walter appeared in answer to another summons, walking quickly up to the door. Young Rochford, standing under the poplar looking at them, felt ridiculously “out of it,” as he said. It would have pleased him to feel that he had something to do with the family, that their consultations were not entirely closed to him. He had been so much mixed up with it—all the details of their future means, every bit of land which they relinquished, every penny of that which they got as compensation, would pass through his hands. He had been feeling of late as if he really had a great deal to do with the Pentons. But here arose at once a matter with which he had nothing to do, upon which he could not intrude himself, to which he was left as much a stranger as though he did not know exactly what their income would be next year. He went slowly into the book-room, with feelings that were utterly unreasonable, though not without the excuse of being natural. The book-room, that was his place, and Mr. Penton and the formal business. But he must not even ask what was the other business which was so much more interesting, the letter which had been sent to Mrs. Penton, which the young ones had been called in such excitement to hear, and no doubt to give their opinions on. He had certainly no right to have an opinion on the subject, whatever it might be. He was only the solicitor managing an external piece of business—and treated with great civility and kindness—but nothing more. How could he be anything more?
Mrs. Pentonwas in a condition of excitement such as had never been seen in her before. She could not lay down the letter. She could not speak. She went at length andseated herself in the high chair—in the chair which her husband occupied at any great domestic crisis, when a council of the whole family was called. As her usual seat was a low one, and her usual aspect anything but judicial, there was no change which could have marked the emergency like this. It was apparent that in Mrs. Penton’s mind a moment had arrived at which some important decision had to be come to, and for which she herself and not her husband was the natural president of the family council. The young ones were a little awed by this unusual proceeding. There was not a stocking, nor a needle, nor even a reel of cotton within reach of her. She had given herself up to the question in hand. It might be supposed that the decision about Penton, which she took her share in powerfully, while considering all the time how to do that darning, was as important a matter as could come within her ken; but in her own opinion the present issue was more exciting. She had taken that calmly enough, though with decision; but about this she was excited and anxious, scarcely able to restrain herself. The girls ran in, saying, “What is it, mother?” but she only motioned to them to sit down and wait; and it was not till Walter had followed with the same question that Mrs. Penton cleared her throat and spoke.
“It is a letter I have just had,” she said—“I have not even talked it over with your father. You were the first to be consulted, for it concerns you.”
And then she stopped to take breath, and slowly unfolded her letter.
“This,” she said, “is from Mrs. Russell Penton. It is an—invitation; for two of you: to go to Penton upon a visit—for three days.”
There was a joint exclamation—joint in the sense that the sound came all together, like a piece of concerted music, but each voice was individual. “An invitation—to Penton!” cried Anne. “From Cousin Alicia?” said Ally; and “Not if I know it!” Walter cried; from which it will be seen that the one quite impartial, and ready to consider the matter on its merits, was Anne alone.
“Don’t come to any hasty decision,” said Mrs. Penton, hurriedly; “don’t let it be settled by impulse, children, which is what you are so ready to do.”
“Surely,” said Walter, “when it’s a mere matter ofamusement, impulse is as good a way of deciding as another. I say ‘Not if I know it,’ and that is all I mean to say.”
“And, unless you say I’m to go, mother, I think like Wat,” said Ally, with unusual courage.
“Children, children! In the first place it’s not amusement, and your cousin has never asked you before. She is a great deal richer, a great deal better off than we are. Stop a little, Ally and Wat. I don’t say that as if being rich was everything; but it is a great deal. You will meet better society there than anywhere else. And even though your father is going to part with Penton, you never can separate yourselves from it. We shall be called Pentons of Penton always, even though we never enter the house.”
“Mother,” said Wat, “you don’t feel perhaps as I do; that is the best of reasons why I should never enter the house. So long as I was the heir, if they had chosen to ask me it might have been my duty; butnow—” cried Wat, his voice rising as if into a salvo of artillery. Unutterable things were included in that “now.”
“Now,” said his mother, “because we are giving up, because we are leaving the place, so to speak, it is now much more necessary than ever it was. Your cousins have done nothing that is wrong. They don’t mean to injure you; they are doing a very natural and a very sensible thing. Oh, I am not going to argue the question all over again; but unless you wish to insult them, to show that you care nothing for them, that their advances are disagreeable to you, and that you don’t want their kindness—”
“Mother,” said Walter, “not to interrupt you, that is exactly what I want to do.”
And Ally had her soft face set. It did not seem that the little face, all movable and impressionable, could have taken so fixed a form, as if it never would change again.
“You want to insult the people, Walter, who are, to begin with, your own flesh and blood.”
“Cousins—and not full cousins—are scarcely so near as that,” said Anne, with an air of impartial calm.
“To insult anybody is bad enough, if they were strangers to you—if they were your enemies. What can be nearer than cousins except brothers and sisters? I say Mrs. Russell Penton is your own flesh and blood, and I don’t think it is very nice of you, on a subject which I must know better than you do, to contradict me. Your father calls Sir Walter uncle. How much nearer could you be? And if you live long enough, Wat, you will be Sir Walter after him. In one sense it is like being grandson to the old gentleman, who lost his own sons, as you know well enough. And is it he you would like to insult, Wat?”
This made an obvious and profound impression. The audience were awed; their mutinous spirit was subdued. The domestic orator pursued her advantage without more than a pause for breath.
“I never knew the boys: but when I saw the Pentons first everybody was talking of it. Your father had never expected to succeed, oh, never! It was a tragedy that opened the way for him. They had no reason to expect that a young cousin, a distant cousin” (this admission was no doubt contradictory of what she had just said, but it came in with her present argument, and she did not pause upon that), “should ever come in. If they had hated the very sight of those who were to take the place of their own, who could wonder? I should if—oh, Wat, if it were possible that—Osy and you”—she paused a little—“I feel as if I should hate Horry even in such a case.”
The impression deepened, especially as she stopped with a low cry, to wring her hands, as if realizing that impossible catastrophe. Walter was entirely overawed. He saw the unspeakable pathos of the situation in a moment. Supposing Horry—Horry! should come in to be the heir, something having happened to Oswald and to himself!
“Don’t agitate yourself, mother,” he said, soothingly; “I see what you mean.”
“And yet you would like to insult these poor people, to refuse to see how hard it was for them, and what they have had to bear, oh, for so many years!”
Having thus broken down all opposition, Mrs. Penton made a pause, but presently resumed.
“And then from our side, children, there’s something to be said. I wish you to accept the invitation. I wish it because after all it’s your own county, and you’re of an age to be seen, and you ought to be seen first there. When all this is settled your father will be in a position to take you into society a little. We shall be able to see our friends. If I have never gone out, it has been for that—that I could not invite people back again. Now I may have it in mypower more or less to do this. And I want you to be known—I want you to be seen and known. It is of great importance where young people are seen first. I can’t take you to court, Ally, which is the right thing, for we never were in circumstances to do that ourselves. And the next best thing is that you should be seen first in the house of the head of your family. Now all that is very important, and it has got sense in it, and you must now allow an impulse, a hasty little feeling, to get the better of what is sensible and reasonable—you must not indeed. It would be very unkind to me, very foolish for yourselves, very harsh and unsympathetic to the Pentons. And you have a duty to all these. To them? oh, yes, to them too, for they are your relations, and they are old, and though they are prosperous now, things went very badly with them. Besides, it would be as if you disapproved of what your father was doing and envied them Penton: which I suppose is the last thing in the world you would have them to see.”
“Disapproving father is one thing,” said Wat, “but all the rest I do, and I don’t care if they know it or not. Penton ought to be mine. You and my father don’t think so—at least you think there are other things more important.”
Mrs. Penton looked at her boy from her husband’s judicial chair with a mild dignity with which Wat was unacquainted.
“Penton would not be yours,” she said, “if Sir Walter were dead now. Would you like to step into what is your father’s, Wat? Would you like to say he is only to live five years or ten years because the inheritance is yours? Your father will probably live as long as Sir Walter. I hope so, I am sure. He is fifty now, and that would be thirty-five years hence. Would Penton be yours, or would you be impatient for your father to die?”
“Mother!” they all cried in one indignant outcry, the three together.
“It looks as if you meant that. You don’t, I know—but it looks like it. Sir Walter may just as well live ten years longer, and your father thirty years after that, so that you would be sixty before you succeeded to Penton. Is it so much worth waiting for? Is it worth while showing yourself envious, dissatisfied with what your father is doing,unkind to your relations, because, forty or fifty years hence, perhaps—”
Walter got up from his chair, as a man is apt to do when the argument becomes intolerable. “Mother,” he said, “you know very well that not one of those intentions was in my mind. I don’t want to become bosom friends with people who are injuring us for their own advantage; but as to wishing my father a single hour, a single moment less—or even Sir Walter—” the youth cried, with a break in his voice.
“Oh,” cried Anne, with impatience, “as if mother did not know that! Mother, the others are dreadfully unreasonable. I’ll go.”
Mrs. Penton paused a little and cleared her throat. “I am afraid you are just the one that is not asked. I dare say your cousin thinks that you are not out, Anne: and no more you are, my dear.”
“She is as much out as I am, and we have always said when we went anywhere we should go together. Mother, if you wish it, of course I’ll go.”
“And equally of course I will go too,” said Walter, somewhat indignant to be left out, “when my mother puts it like that.”
“Well, children dear,” said Mrs. Penton, sinking at once into an easier tone, “how could I put it otherwise? As long as you will go pleasantly and friendly, and make no reflections. It is such a natural thing, so right, so exactly what should be, both for them to ask and for you to accept. Well now,” she added, briskly, coming down from her high chair, drawing forward her own natural seat, putting out an accustomed hand for her work-basket—“now that this is all settled there are the preparations to think of. Walter, you must go up at once to your father’s tailor—to his grand tailor, you know, whom he only goes to now and then—and order yourself some new suits.”
“Some new suits!” they all cried, with widely opened eyes.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Penton, who never had been known to enter into any such schemes of extravagance before. “Indeed, we may all go to town together, for I must look after Ally’s things, and there is no time to be lost.”
“My—things, mother!” The plural in both cases waswhat petrified the young people, who had been used to get only what could not be done without.
“You must have a nice tweed suit for the morning, Wat, and some dress clothes, and your father will tell you whether you should get any other things for Oxford, for of course I am not an authority as to what young men require. And it is so long since I have seen anything that is fashionable,” said Mrs. Penton, “that I don’t really know even what girls wear. Girls are really more troublesome than boys, so far as dress is concerned. You can trust a good tailor, but as to what is exactly suitable to a girl’s complexion and style, and the details, you know—the shoes, and the gloves, and the fans, and all that—”
“Mother!” cried Ally. The girl was awe-stricken: pleasure had scarcely had time to spring up in her. She was overwhelmed with the glories which she had never realized before.
“Yes, my dear; there are a great many things involved in a girl’s toilet which you would never think of; the dress is not all, nor nearly all. I have been so long out of the world, I have not even seen what people are wearing; but it will be easy to get a few hints. And what if we make a day of it, and go to town all together? Anne shall come too, though Anne is not going to Penton. I don’t often allow myself a holiday,” said Mrs. Penton, with her hands full of pinafores, “but I think I must just do so for once in a way.”
The idea of this wonderful outing, which was much more comprehensible, besides being far more agreeable, than the visit to Penton, filled them all with pleasure. “For we know that will be fun!” said Anne. “Penton, I wish you joy of it, you two! You will have to be on your best behavior, and never do one thing you wish to do. I shall have the best of it—the day in town, and the shopping, which must be amusing, and to see everything; and then when you are setting out for Penton, and feeling very uncomfortable, I shall stay at home, and be the eldest, and be very much looked up to. Mother, when shall we go?”
“And oh, mother! how, how—”
“Is it to be paid for, do you want to know, Ally? My dear, we are going to have four times as much income as we ever had before. Think of that! And can you wonder I am glad? for I shall be able to do things for all of youthat I never dared think of, and, instead of only having what you couldn’t do without—enough to keep you decent—I can now give you what is right for you and best for you. Oh, my dears, you can’t tell what a difference it makes! What is a place like Penton (which I never cared for at all) in comparison to being able to get whatever you want for your children? There is no comparison. It has not come yet, it is true, for the papers are not ready, but still it is quite certain. And I can venture to take you to town for a day, and we can all venture to enjoy ourselves a little. And I’m sure I am very much obliged to Mrs. Russell Penton for taking such a thing into her head.”
To this even the grumblers had nothing to say; even Wat himself, who perhaps was less impressed by the idea of two new suits from the tailor’s than his sisters were about their new frocks. A new suit of evening clothes can scarcely be so exciting to a boy as the thought of a ball-dress with all its ribbons and flowers and decorations, and those delightful adjuncts of shoes and gloves and fan all in harmony, is to a girl. Ally’s imagination was so startled by it that she could scarcely realize the thought in any practical way, and her enjoyment was nothing to Anne’s, who mapped it all out in her mind, and already began to suggest to her sister what she should have, with a perception which must have been instinct: since Anne had not even that knowledge of an evening party which any one of the maids who had assisted at such ceremonials might possess, though in a humble way. Martha, for instance, in her last place had helped to dress the young ladies when they were going out, and had got a glimpse of Paradise in the cloak-room when her former mistress had a ball. But alas! such possibilities had never come to Ally and Anne. They knew nothing about the fineries in which girls indulged. Anne, however, by intuition, whatever the philosophers may say, knew, never having learned. Perhaps she had got a little information to guide her out of novels, of which, in a gentle way, Mrs. Penton herself was fond, and which had opened vistas of society to the two girls.
“You must have a white, of course,” she said to her sister, “blues and pinks, and that sort of thing, may go out of fashion, but white never. Mother thinks you must have two.”
“We are only asked for three days,” cried Ally, “andthat only means two evenings. Why should I have more than one dress for only two evenings?”
“Why, just for that reason, you silly!” cried Anne.
“Do you think mother would like to send you to Penton with just what was necessary, to make them think you had only one frock? Oh, no! If you were staying for a fortnight of course you would not want something different every night; but for two days—”
“I should much rather you had the second one, Anne.”
“I dare say! as if there was any question about me. I shall have what I require when my time comes. Don’t you know we are going to be well off now?”
“Oh, Anne! it is rather poor to think of being well off only as a way of getting new frocks.”
“It is a great deal more than that, of course, but still it is that too. It is nice to have new frocks when one wants them, instead of waiting and waiting till one can have the cheapest possible thing that will do. We have always had things that would do. Now we are to have what we require—what we like. I wish Wat and you, Ally, would see it as mother and I do. Perhaps it may be nice to be the chief people of one’s name, and be able to snub all the rest, even Cousin Alicia, but—”
“I never wished to snub any one, much less Cousin Alicia,” cried Ally, with indignation.
“That is really what it comes to. We wanted to be the grandest of the family, to be able to say to Mrs. Russell Penton, ‘Stand aside, you’re only a woman, and let Sir Edward walk in.’ And why should she be disinherited because she’s a woman? I am going in for women, for the woman’s side. I don’t believe father is as clever as she is. Oh, to be sure I like father a great deal better. How could you ask such a question? But he rather looks up to her; he is not so clever; he couldn’t set one down as she does, only by a look out of her eyes. No, no, no; a new frock when one wants it, and to go to town for the day, and even to the theater, or to have a dance at home—all that is far, far better than snubbing Cousin Alicia. But,” added Anne, with sudden gravity, “for you that have got to go and stay there, it is rather dreadful after all.”