None of them knew how long the time was. It was endless, intolerable, an awful pause in their own living, in which everything was arrested, even thought. For what could the thoughts do whirling vainly about a subject on which there could be no enlightenment, beating as it were against a blank wall all round and round? In reality it was not quite an hour when Alicia rose from the bedside and made a sign to her husband. Sir Walter’s voice broke again into the silence, eager, quick, startling, “Eh! eh! What—what is it? What’s to do? What’s to do?”
They hurried in one after another, young Rochford waking up with the air of the last waltz still in his ear, hastening to the table, where all the papers were still laid out. Sir Walter had struggled up upon his bed and sat gazing out upon them, holding his daughter fast, who had hastily drawn one of his arms over her shoulder by way of support. He looked like an old prophet, with his heavy eyelids raised, his white locks streaming. “What is—to do? What am I to do—before I die?—before I—”
Rochford came forward with his deed, with the pen in his hand. “It is only a signature,” he said. “Sir Walter, your signature—here—it is all simple; your name, that is all.”
No one moved to help him. He stood holding out the pen, eager as if his own interests were involved, while the rest stood motionless, saying not a word, gazing at this venerable dying figure in that last blaze in the socket. Probably the old eyes, all veiled in whiteness like the mists of the morning, no longer saw anything, though they seemed to look out with solemn intelligence—for Sir Walter made no response; his question had required no answer; his eyes flickered with a movement of the lids, as though taking one other look round, then a smile came over his face. “Alicia—will do it. Alicia—will think of—everything,” he murmured, and relapsing as it were upon himself, sunk back, to resume the thread of conscious life no more.
The night was over. The gray day dim and calm, benumbed with cold, and veiled with mists, yet full in its own occupations and labors, was in possession of earth and sky. Thus one ends while the others go on. There was no new beginning to those who were chiefly concerned. They stopped for a moment, then went on again, life sweeping back with all its requirements to the very edge of the chamber of death. When it was evident that no interval of consciousness was now to be looked for, the watchers went downstairs and found breakfast, of which indeed they had great need, and talked in subdued tones at first, and on the one sole subject which seemed possible. But presently even this bond was broken, and Russell Penton and Rochford discussed, a little gravely, the weather, the chances of frost, the state of the country.
Edward Penton did not join in this talk, but he eat his breakfast solemnly, as if it had been a serious duty, saying nothing even to Wat, who had ventured to join the grave party. Wat was more worn out than any of them. He had not been able to rest, and he had the additional fatigue of the drive, not to speak of the wearing effect of the mental struggle to which he was so entirely unaccustomed. He wanted more than anything else to go home. Ally, upstairs in her room, crying out of excitement and sympathy, and longing for her mother, had packed up all the pretty things which had served so little purpose, and was waiting very eagerly for the call to return to the Hook, which it would have been, oh! so much better had they never left. But there had been breakfast for everybody all the same, notwithstanding that the troop of servants were all very anxious, wondering what was to come of it, or rather what was to become of them, a more important question. The only evidence of this great overturn of everybody’s habits in the house was that the room in which the dancing had been remained untouched, which was a wonderful departure from the order and regularity of the household. Buteverything is to be excused, the housekeeper herself said, in the confusion of a death in the family, though that was a thing for which, considering Sir Walter’s great age, they should all have been prepared.
Mr. Pentonwaited through all the dreary day. He sent the young ones away peremptorily at the earliest opportunity, without throwing any light to them on the state of affairs. “It would be bad taste, the worst of taste, to have you here at such a time,” he said, but without explaining why. “Tell your mother I will come back when I can—but not before—” He spoke in ellipses, with phrases too full of meaning to be put into mere words.
“Mab is coming with us, father,” said Ally. “We couldn’t leave her here by herself.”
“Mab? Who is Mab?” said Mr. Penton, but he looked for no reply. His mind was too much absorbed to consider what they said to him. There seemed so little in their prattle that could not wait for another time. And his mind was full of a hundred questions. By this time, as was natural, the pathetic impression which had been made on him when he stood by his uncle’s bedside through those solemn moments, and felt that next to Alicia it was he, of all the world, who had the best right to be there, had died away. Common life had come back to him—his own position, the prospects of his family, what he was to do. He wandered about the house, up and down, with very much the air of a man inspecting it before taking possession, which was what he actually was. But no such consciousness was in his mind. He was overflowing with thought as to what he was to do in the new crisis at which he had arrived. It was a crisis which ought to have been long foreseen, and indeed had been fully entered into in detail many a day. But lately it had been put away from his thoughts, and other possibilities had come in. He had thrust Penton away from him, and allowed himself to feel the power of his wife’s arguments, and even to act upon the possible increase of fortune which should be immediate, and bring no responsibility with it. Gradually, and with astruggle, his mind had been brought to that point. But now all this new condition of affairs was gone, and everything restored to the old basis. The change had come in a moment, so far as he was concerned. He had not anticipated it, had not thought of it, until Sir Walter had suddenly lifted up his dying voice and began to talk of the boy. The boy! he did not realize even now, or scarcely ask himself, who was the boy. The crisis was too great for secondary matters. The real thing to think of was that the new deeds had never been signed nor completed, that no change had been made, that Penton was his, as he had always looked forward to it, not a new fortune unencumbered and free, but Penton with all its burdens, with all its honors, with the old family importance, the position of which he had so often heard, and so often said, that it was one of the best in England. Perhaps at any time he would have been startled and alarmed by the first consciousness of entering into this great inheritance. It was not an advancement that could be thought of lightly as mere getting on in the world. It was like ascending a throne. It was entering on a post rather than on a mere possession. The master of Penton had claims made upon him which were different, he thought, from those of a mere country gentleman. At any time there would have been solemnity in the prospect. But now that he had put it all away from him, and made up his mind to the other, to mere money without any position at all, and had calculated even on withdrawing from the smaller claims of Penton Hook, and setting up in perfect freedom, without any responsibilities, any land or burden of the soil, the awe with which he felt his natural importance come back to him, and all his plans brought to nothing, was great. It was as if Providence had refused to accept that sacrifice which he had not indeed been willing to make, which he had done not for his own pleasure but in deference to what seemed best for the children, more practicable for himself. Providence had made light of all those deliberations, of the mother’s arguments, and his own laborious and cloudy attempts to decipher what was best. Whether it was the best or the worst, in a moment God had changed all that, and here he was again at the point from which he had set out—master of Penton, or if not so already, at least in an hour or two to be.
And he looked, to the servants at least, exactly as if hewere taking possession, inspecting his future property. He went from one room to another with eyes that seemed to be investigating everything, though in reality they saw nothing. He walked about the library with his hands in his pockets, looking at all the books, then from the windows over the park, which stretched away down to the river, and in which there was a great deal of wood that might come down. He lingered long over the view; was he marking in his mind the clumps which were thickest, where the trees most wanted cutting—the easiest way to make a little money? Then he went to the dining-room and looked in the same keen way at the plate upon the sideboard, calculating perhaps which were heir-looms and which were not. The butler had his eye upon the probable new master, and drew his own conclusions. And then he went to the drawing-room, where he remained a long time, looking at everything. The butler had a great contempt for the poor relation who was about to come into this great property. “I don’t know what he could find to do away with there,” that functionary said, and suggested that perhaps the painted roof was the thing that had occupied the speculations of the hungry heir. As it happened, poor Edward Penton’s reflections were of the most depressed kind. He asked himself what wouldshedo there—how could she settle herself and her work-basket and the children among those gilded pillars? How were they ever to furnish it? as she had said. His wife after all was a woman of great sense. She knew how difficult it was to adapt one way of living to another, to transpose a household from what was little more than a cottage to what was little less than a palace. But now all her arguments were to come to nothing, and the revolution in his own mind to be set aside. He stood and shivered; for the heating had been neglected on this dismal and exciting day. The heating and everything else had been neglected, and the great room with one feeble fire burning was cold as any deserted place could be. What would she do there with Horry and the rest of the little ones, and her basket with the stockings to darn? Ally had asked herself the same question, but with a sort of awed satisfaction, feeling that this problem would never have to be solved. But now it had come. He strayed at last from the drawing-room through the corridor to the great room sometimes called the music-room, for there was anorgan in it, sometimes called the king’s room, since a sacred majesty had once, as at Lady Margaret Bellendean’s castle of Tillietudlem, broken his fast there—where the dancing had been. And here it was that the disorganization of the household became apparent. Shutters were still closed and curtains drawn in this room. The pale light struggled in by every crevice, by the folds of the shutters, from the large open chimney, which was filled with flowers. The walls were hung with greenery, garlands of ivy and holly, and feathery bunches of the seed-pods of the clematis. They had been beautiful last night; they were ghastly now, looking as if they had hung there for fifty years. There was something in the neglect, in the deserted place, in the contrast of all that faded decoration with the stillness and desolation of the day, that suited Edward Penton’s mood. The rest of the house suggested life and its ordinary occupations, neither sad nor glad, but serious and still. This was the banquet-hall deserted, which is of all human things the most dismal and suggestive. He walked up and down looking at the banks of flowers, half seen in this curious subdued and broken light. Here it was that the children were dancing, timid strangers, half afraid of it, and of all that was going on, last night: and now to-day—
Solemn steps came in at the other end, slowly advancing over the waxed and slippery floor; a solemn figure in black, more grave than ever mourner was, holding its hands folded. “Sir,” the butler said, “my mistress has sent me to tell you all is over, about a quarter of an hour ago.”
“All over! You mean, my uncle is dead?”
“Sir Walter Penton died, sir, about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour ago, at twenty-five minutes past three.”
The butler took out his watch and looked at it with solemnity. “Just twelve minutes since, sir, by the clock, sir.”
It cost the man a great effort not to say Sir Edward. Sir Edward it had been for twelve minutes by his watch; but the decorum and a sense that he was himself on the other side restrained him. He paused a minute, waiting for anything that might be said to him, then went back again, his footsteps sounding solemnly all the way upon the uncarpeted floor. Edward Penton sat down on one of the red chairs against the wall which the dancers had used.A more forlorn picture could not have been made. The day breaking in through the shutters, the drooping decorations, the waxed floor reflecting faintly those lines of pale light, and the man against the wall with his face hidden in his hands. He might have been a ruined spendthrift hearing of the final catastrophe of his fortune, hearing it with metaphorical propriety, amid the relics of feasting and merry-making. But no one would have recognized that picture to represent a man who had just come into his inheritance.
He met Rochford going away as he returned to the inhabited parts of the house. “I suppose I need not hesitate to congratulate you,” the lawyer said. “Sir Edward, it is not as if the poor old gentleman had been a nearer relation.”
“I don’t know what you call near. My uncle was the nearest relation I had of my name; nor why you should call him poor because he has just died.”
“I beg your pardon. I meant nothing; it is the ordinary way of talking,” said the lawyer, somewhat abashed.
“And a very inappropriate one, I think,” Edward Penton said. He had relapsed into his usual manner, in which there was always a little suppressed irritation. “I suppose there never was any possibility of producing—” He looked at the bag which Rochford carried.
“It is all so much waste paper,” said the young man. “I felt it was so as soon as I saw him; even if we could have got him to sign it would have been of no legal value; he was too far gone. It is curious,” he added, “to be so nearly done, and yet not done. I wonder if you are sorry or pleased?”
Edward Penton made no reply. Rochford’s ease and familiarity had seemed natural enough a few days ago, the conceit perhaps of a youngster, nothing more. Now it offended him, he could not tell why. “Do you know,” he said, “if my cousin is still there?” He made a movement of his hand toward the room in which Sir Walter lay.
“She has gone to her own room; they have persuaded her to lie down. Mr. Russell Penton is about, I know, if you want to see him.”
Edward Penton went on with another wave of his hand. It was not so much his new position (though as a matter of fact he felt that), but the change in all things, and the confused absorbing sentiment of all that had happened which made his companion disagreeable to him, like a presuming stranger. He himself was as a man in a dream. As he came through those rooms again they too were changed. They were now his. All that foolish idea of having nothing more to do with them was past forever. They were now his. He walked through them with the step of the master, thinking involuntarily how this and that must be changed. The house had become to him a place no longer to be judged on its merits as suitable or unsuitable for the habitation of his family, but one to be adapted, arranged, borne with as being his own. Everything had changed—himself and his surroundings, his future, his place in the world, and the mind with which he approached that place. In the library, to which he returned as the room in which he was most likely to meet some one to whom he could talk, he found Russell Penton, and the two men instinctively shook hands with each other as if they had not met before.
“I hope there was no more suffering,” Edward Penton said.
“None. He never recovered consciousness, but just slept away. No man could have wished a calmer end. He has had a long life, and his dying has been very peaceful. What more could a man desire?”
Edward Penton bowed his head, and they stood together for a moment saying nothing, paying their tribute not only to the life but to the state of affairs that was over. They both felt it, the one as much as the other. To Russell Penton it was, if not actual, at least possible freedom, especially now that the Penton arrangement was over. He grieved for his father-in-law, if not painfully, yet sincerely. He was a venerable figure, a sustaining personality gone out of his life. He had so much less to do and to think of, which was in its way a sorrowful thought. But with that came the secret exhilaration of the consciousness that now perhaps the guidance of his own life would be his own. He would not oppose Alicia nor endeavor to coerce her; that would be the greatest mistake, he felt; but it was likely enough that in her softened state she would of her own accord subdue herself to this. At least, he hoped so, and it spread before him the prospect of a new existence. After they had stood together silent for a minute, Russell Penton spoke.
“I think I ought to say this,” he said. “Whatever Alicia may feel, and I fear she will be disappointed, I am myself much more pleased, Penton, that things should be as they are.”
“I thought that was your feeling all along.”
“Yes, they both knew it was; but I have always abstained from saying anything. My first desire was that she should as much as possible have what she liked best. She has well deserved it at my hands.”
Edward Penton said nothing on this subject. It was not one in which he could deliver his opinion. “It is a great house,” he said, “and a great responsibility for a man with a large family like me.”
“You will find it perhaps easier than you think; everything is in very perfect order. Alicia would like me to tell you, Penton, that though it was too late to be added as a codicil, her father’s wish is sacred to her, and that it shall be as he desired about your boy.”
“My boy! do you mean Wat? What has he to do with it?” Edward Penton cried, half affrighted. He who had so nearly parted with the birthright himself, he was a little jealous of any interference now: and especially of this, that the feelings of his son should be brought into account in the matter.
“You heard what Sir Walter said. Your son took his fancy very much. He found a resemblance, which I also can see: but Alicia dislikes to hear of it, and so will you, perhaps.”
“A resemblance!” said Edward; and then he thought of Walter Penton, his cousin. If Wat had not been like that unfortunate scapegrace why should he have thought of him now? He said, with energy, “There is no resemblance. They have dwelt so long on the memory of the boys that everything they see seems to have got identified with them. It was not so in their life. My boy Wat is more like—Why, you know, Russell; you remember what a broken-down miserable—”
“Hush!” said Russell Penton, lifting his hand. “Let their memory be respected here. Alicia thinks with you; she sees no resemblance: but she will give effect to her father’s wishes. Everything he desired is sacred in her sight.”
“I hope she will think no more of it,” said Edward Penton, growing red. “Beg of her from me to think no more of it. I could not have—I should not wish—in short, I should prefer nothing more to be said on the subject. He was an old man. His memory had got confused. As I can not be of any use here, can I have something to drive home? My wife will be anxious, she will want to know.”
And then there was a few minutes’ brief conversation about the funeral and all the lugubrious business of such a moment. It was with a sense of relief that Edward Penton quitted for the first time the house that was his own. He looked back upon it with curiously mingled feelings. He was glad to get away. It was an escape to turn out of the avenue into the clear undisturbed air in which there was nothing to remind him of the close still atmosphere, the silence, the associations of this fatal place. But yet when he looked back his heart swelled with a sensation of pride. It was his. He had given up thinking of it, avoided looking at it, weaned his heart in every way from that house of his fathers. Never man had tried more honestly than he to give it up, entirely and from the bottom of his heart—this thing which was not to be for him. And now, without anything that could be called his doing, lo! it had come back into his hands. It was the doing of Providence, he thought: his heart swelled with a sort of solemn pride. As he went silently along, the landscape took another aspect in his sight. It was the country in which he was to spend all the rest of his life. It was his country, in which he was one of the chief people, a man important to many, known wherever he passed. By degrees a strange elation got into his mind. “Drive quickly, I am in haste to get home,” he said to the groom who drove him. “Yes, Sir Edward,” said the man, respectfully. He had changed his very name—everything was changed. Then as the red roof of Penton Hook appeared below at the foot of the hill he thought of the anxious faces looking out for him, the young ones with awe in them, thinking of the first death that had crossed their way; his wife wistful, ready to read in his face what had happened. But none of them knowing what had really happened—that Penton was his after all.
END OF FIRST HALF.
ByMRS. OLIPHANTSECOND HALFNEW YORK:GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER,17 to 27Vandewater Street.
Theyoung people drove from Penton to the Hook very silent and overawed, the two girls close together, and Walter opposite to them, looking very heavy and dull, his eyes red with want of sleep and the air of one who has been up all night in every line of him. It is curious what an air of neglect this gives even to the clothes. He felt shabby, out of order, in every way uncomfortable in body and dazed in mind, not feeling that he knew anything about what had happened, nor that he cared to think of that. He almost went to sleep with the closeness and the motion of the carriage, and took no more notice of the presence of the stranger opposite to him than if she had been another sister. It had annoyed him for the first moment, to have her there, but by this time he was quite indifferent to the fact, indifferent to everything, dazed with sleep and agitation and the weakening influence of a struggle past. But there came a moment as they neared home when his senses returned to him with a bound. He was looking vaguely out of the carriage-window seeing nothing, when suddenly, vaguely, there appeared at a distance, going up a road which led away from the main road deep into the quiet of the fields, a solitary figure. It was little more than a speck upon the road, a little shadow almost like that of a child; but it woke Walter fully up in a moment and made his heart beat. He called to the coachman to stop, to the great astonishment of Ally, who thought that something more must have happened in a day so full of fate, and cried out,
“What is it, Wat, what is the matter?” with anxiety in her tone.
“Nothing,” he said, opening the door as the horses drew up; “but I should prefer to walk if you don’t mind; I think I shall go to sleep altogether if I stay here.”
“Shall I come too?” said Ally; but a glance at her companion, showed her that this was impracticable.
“Oh, Wat, don’t be long! Mother will want to ask you—she will want to know—”
“You can tell her as much as I can,” he said, taking off his hat in honor of Mab, who looked out with much surprise at this sudden interruption of the drive, which was so dreary and yet so full of novelty and interest. And then the carriage went on.
Ally looking out of the window saw with great perplexity and distress that he turned back along the road. Was he going back to Penton? where was he going? Mab by her side immediately interposed with a reason.
“Men don’t like close carriages,” she said; “they always prefer walking coming home from places. I don’t wonder; I should walk if I might.”
“We might if we were to go together,” said Ally; “we always walk with Walter, Anne and I. He likes it too. Let us—” But then she remembered that Wat had given no sort of invitation. And when she looked out again he had vanished from the road. Where had he gone? This was very startling, not to be explained by anything that occurred to Ally. She added quickly, “But it is very cold, and mother will be anxious.” And the carriage rolled on without any further interruption through the village and down the steep and stony way.
Walter could not have restrained himself even had the occasion of his leaving them been now apparent. He felt as if all his life were involved in getting speech of her, in receiving her sympathy and hearing her voice. He had never had such an opportunity before, never met her, scarcely in daylight seen her face, and to see her pursuing the loneliest road, where nobody ever appeared, which led nowhere in particular, where he could have her all to himself without the possibility of being sent away! He hurried along after her, striking across a field and dropping over a low wall, which brought him immediately in front of her as she strolled along. She gave a little cry at sight of him, or rather at the suddenness of the apparition, not distinguishing at first who it was. She was dressed in very dark stuff with some rough fur about her throat and a thick gauze veil shrouding the upper part of her face. The little outline was so slim and pretty that any imperfectionin costume or appearance was lost in the daintiness of the trim form. Indeed, how should Walter have seen any imperfection? She was not like anybody he had ever known. What was different could not but be an added grace.
“You didn’t expect to see me,” he said, coming up to her with his hat in his hand.
“How should I? I thought no one knew this path but I. It is so quiet. And I saw no one on the road, nothing but a carriage. Ah, I know! You jumped out of the carriage. It was hot and stifling, and there were ladies in it who made you do propriety. I know.”
“There was my sister,” said Walter, “but I saw you. That was my reason, and the best one a man could have.”
“You are only a boy,” she said, shaking her head with a smile. Only her chin and lips were clear of that envious thick veil. The rest of her face was as if behind a mask, but how sweet the mouth was, and the smile that curved it! “And how could you tell it was I? Everybody wears the same sort of thing, tweed frock, and jacket, and—”
“There is nobody like you; it is cruel to ask me how I knew. If you would only understand—”
“I have heard that sort of thing before, Mr. Penton.”
“Yes, I don’t doubt every fellow would say it, of course; but nobody could mean it so much as I.”
“That’s what you all say; but I don’t believe it a bit; only I suppose it amuses you to say it, and it does, a little, amuse me. There are so few things,” she said, with a sigh, “to amuse one here.”
“That is what I feel,” cried the lad; “nothing—we have nothing to keep you here. It is all so humdrum and paltry—a little country place. There is nothing in it good enough for you.”
She laughed with an air of keen amusement, which in his present condition slightly jarred upon Walter.
“It is a great deal too good for me,” she said, “old Crockford’s niece. If anybody speaks to me I courtesy and say, ‘Yes, ma’am, it’s doing me good, it is indeed, this fine fresh air.’”
“I wish,” said the boy, “you would drop this, and tell me once for all who you really are. I’m not happy to-day. We are all in great trouble. I wish you would not laugh, but just be serious once.”
“Oh, no, sir, I’ll not laugh if you don’t like it—nornothing else as you don’t like. I knows my place and how to behave to my betters. I’m Emmy, old Crockford’s niece.” And she paused in the middle of the road to make him a courtesy. “I’ve never said nothing else, now ’ave I, sir?”
He looked at her with irritation beyond expression. Could not she see that he was in no humor for jest to-day? And yet he could not but feel that the tone of her imitation was perfect, and that as she said these latter words it was certainly in the voice and with the manner which old Crockford’s niece would have employed.
“You don’t know,” he said, “how you fret me with all that. I thought when I saw you that I’d fly to you and get comforted a little. I don’t want to have jokes put upon me just now. All this is very amusing—it’s so well done—and it’s so droll to think that it’s you; but I have been through a great fight this morning,” said Walter, with that self-pity which is so warm at his age. He felt his eyes moisten, something was in his throat—he was so sorry for himself; and he almost thought it would be best, after all, to hurry home to his mother, who always understood a man, instead of lingering out here in the cold, even with the most delightful, the most enthralling of women, who would do nothing but laugh. He was in this mood, with his eyes cast down, his head bent, standing still, yet with a sort of movement in his figure as if he would have gone away again, when suddenly a shock, a thrill of sweeter consciousness went through him—and his whole being seemed rapt in delicious softness, comprehension, consolation. She had put her hand suddenly on his arm with a quick, impulsive movement.
“Poor boy!” she said. “You have been in a great fight? Tell me all about it.”
Her voice had changed to the tenderest, coaxing tone.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, in sudden ecstasy, holding close to his side the hand that had stolen within his arm—and for some time could say no more.
“Well?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Walter, “I’ll tell you presently. I don’t know that I want to tell you at all. I want you to take an interest in me.”
“Oh, if that is all!” she said; then, after a moment, drew her arm away. “If we should meet any one, Mr. Walter Penton, it would not look at all pretty to see youwalking arm in arm with a—girl who lives in the village; a girl whom nobody knows, and, of course, whom everybody thinks ill of; but I can hear you quite well without that. Come, tell me what it is. Did you say a fright or a fight?”
“Both,” said Walter. He made various attempts to recover the hand again, but they were all fruitless. The mere touch, however, had somehow—how he could not tell—made things more natural, harmonized all the contrarieties in life, brought back a better state of affairs. The fumes of sleep and fatigue seemed to die away from his brain: the atmosphere grew lighter. It did not occur to him that to disclose the most private affairs of his family to this little stranger was anything extraordinary. He told her all about the bargain between his father and his cousin, and how he himself had been left out, and his consent never asked, though he was the heir; and what had happened this morning—how he had been sent to fetch the parties to this bargain, and the papers, and how he had been tempted to delay or not to go.
“If I had not answered from my room when I heard them, if I had pretended not to hear, if I had only held back, which would have been no sin! Should I have done it? Shouldn’t I have done it?” cried Walter, quite unaware of the absurdity of his appeal.
The girl listened to all this with her head raised to him in an attitude of attention, but in reality with the most divided interest and a mind full of perplexed impatience. What did she care about his doubts—doubts and difficulties which she could not understand—which did not concern her? Her attention even flagged, though her looks did not. She wanted none of this grave talk: it was only the lighter kind of intercourse which she fully understood.
“Then it was you,” she said, seizing the only tangible point in all this outburst, “that I heard thundering past the cottage just before daylight? I couldn’t think what it could be!”
“Did you hear me? I looked up at the windows, but they were all closed and shut up. I wish,” cried the young man, “I had known you were awake, I should not have felt so desolate.”
“Oh!” she cried, with a little toss of her head, “what good could that have done you?” Then, seeing the cloudcome over his face again which had lifted for a moment, “And how has it all ended?” she asked.
“Ended?” He looked at her with surprise. He had not even asked himself that question, or realized that there was a question at all. “How could it end but in one way?”
“It is so good of you to tell me,” she resumed, “when I am only a stranger and know nothing; but I hope they won’t succeed in cheating you out of your money.”
“My money? oh, there is nothing about money. Money is not the question.”
“I know,” she said, with a pretty air of confusion—“your property I mean; but they couldn’t really take it from you, could they? Tell me what you will do when you come into your own. I should like to know.”
Walter’s heart stood still for the moment. He felt as if he had suddenly come up against a blank world. Was this all she understood or would take notice of, of the struggle he had gone through? Had she no feeling for his moral difficulties or sympathy; or was it perhaps that she thought that struggle too private to be discussed, and thus rebuked him by turning the conversation aside from that too delicate channel? In the shock of feeling himself misunderstood he paused, bewildered, and seized upon the idea that she understood him too clearly, and checked him with a more exquisite perception of her own. “You think I should not speak of it?” he said. “You think I should not blame—you think—Oh, I understand. A delicate mind would not say a word. But I would not, except to you. It is only to you.”
“Now I wonder,” said the girl, “why it should be to me? for I don’t understand anything about it. And all that you’ve been telling me about wanting one thing and doing another, I can’t tell what you mean—except that I hope it will end very well, and that you will get what you want and be able to live very happy at the end. That’s how all the stories end, don’t you know. And tell me, when you came into all that fine property, what will you do?”
She wanted nothing but to bring him back to the badinage which she understood and could play her part in. All this grave talk and discussion of what he ought or ought not to have done embarrassed her. She did not understand it, and yet she knew by instinct that to show howlittle she understood would be to lose something of her attraction; for though she was scarcely capable of comprehending the ideal woman whom the youth supposed he had found in her, yet she divined that it was not herself but an imaginary being who was so sweet in Walter’s eyes. Perhaps it was even with a dull pang and sense of her inferiority that she discovered this; but she could not make herself other than she was. At any risk she had to regain that lighter tone which was alone possible to her. She put up her veil a little and looked at him with a sort of laughing provocation in her eyes. It was a vulgar version of the “Come, woo me,” of the most delightful of heroines. She could understand him or any man on that ground. She knew how to reply, to elude, or to lead on; but in other regions she was not so well prepared; she preferred to lead the conversation back to herself and him.
“I do not suppose,” he said, in a subdued tone, “that there will be any property to come in to.”
“Oh, that is nonsense,” she said, putting this denial lightly away; “of course there will be property some time or other. And when you come into your fortune, tell me, what shall you do?”
Walter gave up with a sigh his hope of receiving support and consolation; but even now he was not able to follow her lead. “I suppose,” he said, very uncheerfully, “I shall have to go to Oxford. That’s the only thing I shall be allowed to do.”
“Oh, to Oxford!” she cried, with disdain.
“I don’t know that I wish it, only it’s the right thing to do, I suppose,” said Walter, with another sigh. “Don’t you think so?”
“Ithink so? No, indeed! If I were you—oh, if I were you! That’s what I should like to be, a young gentleman with plenty of money and able to do whatever I pleased.”
“Oh,” he said, with a shudder, “don’t say so; you who are so much finer a thing—so much—don’t you know—it is a sort of sacrilege to talk so.”
At this she laughed with frank contempt. “That’s nonsense,” she said; “but I should not go to Oxford. I’d go into the Guards. It is they that have the best of it: almost always in London, and going everywhere. I should not marry, not for years and years!”
“Marry!” cried Walter, and blushed, which it did not occur to his companion to do.
“No, I should not marry,” said the girl; “I should have my fun, that is, if I were a gentleman. I should make the money go; I should go in for horses and all sorts of things. I should just go to the other extremity and do everything the reverse of what I have to do now. That’s because I can do so little now. Come, tell me, Mr. Penton, what should you do?”
Walter was much discomposed by this inquiry. He was disturbed altogether by the turn the conversation had taken. It was not at all what he had intended. He felt baffled and put aside out of the way; but yet there was an attraction in it, and in the arch look which was in her eyes. He felt the challenge and it moved him, notwithstanding that in his heart he was deeply disappointed that she had thrown back his confidences and not allowed herself to be drawn into his thoughts. He half understood, too, whither she wanted to lead him—into those encounters of wit in which she had so easily the mastery, in which he was so serious, pleading for her grace, and she so capricious, so full of mystery, holding him at bay. But he could not all at once, after all the experiences of the morning, begin to laugh again.
“I am stupid to-day,” he said. “I can’t think of fortune or anything else. I dare say I should do just the reverse of what you say.”
“What! marry?” she said. “Oh, silly! You should not think of that for years.”
“I should do more than think of it,” cried Walter, “if I—if you—if there was any chance—” The boy blushed again, half with the shy emotion of his years, the sudden leaping of his blood toward future wonders unknown. And then he stopped short, breathing hard. “You tempt me to say things only to mock me,” he said. “You think it is all fun; but I am in earnest, deep in earnest, and I mean what I—”
He stopped suddenly, the words cut short on his lips. They had turned a corner of the road, and close to them, so close that Walter stumbled over the stones on which he was seated, slowly chipping away with his hammer, was old Crockford, with ruddy old face, and white hair, and his red comforter twisted about his neck.
“Is that you, baggage?” said the old man, who saw the girl first as they came round the corner. “What mischief are ye after now? I never see one like you for mischief. Why can’t ye let the lads alone? Why, Master Walter!” he cried, in consternation, letting the hammer fall out of his hand.
“Yes, Crockford. What’s the matter? Do you think I am a ghost?” said Walter, in some confusion. It was cowardly, it was miserable, it was the smallest thing in the world. Was he ashamed to be seen with her, she who was (he said to himself) the most perfect creature, the sweetest and fairest? No, it could not be that; it was only what every young man feels when a vulgar eye spies upon his most sacred feelings. But he grew very red, looking the old stone-breaker, the road-mender, humblest of all functionaries, in the face as he spoke.
“Ghost!” said old Crockford, “a deal worse than that. A ghost could do me no harm. I don’t believe in ’em. But the likes ofhur, that’s another pair o’ shoes. I know’d as she’d get me into trouble the moment I set eyes on her. Be off with you home, and let the young gentleman alone. You’ve made him think you’re a lady, I shouldn’t wonder. And if Mr. Penton found out he’d put me out of my cottage. Don’t give me none of your sauce, but run home.”
“I have done no harm,” said the girl. “Mr. Penton couldn’t put you out of your cottage because I took a walk. And you can send me away when you please. You know I’m not afraid of that.”
“I know you’re always up to mischief,” said the old man, “and that if it isn’t one it’s another. I’ve had enough of you. There’s good and there’s bad of women just like other creatures, but for making mischief there’s naught like them, neither beasts nor man. Be off with you home.”
“Crockford, you forget yourself. That’s not a way to speak to a—to a young lady,” cried Walter, wavering between boyish shame and boyish passion. “And as for my father—”
“A young lady; that’s all you know! Do you know who she is, Mr. Walter?” cried the old man.
“I am old Crockford’s niece,” said the girl, “and I know my place. I’ve never given myself out for any morethan I am; now have I, sir? Thank you for walking up the hill with me, and talking so kind. But it’s time I was going home. He’s quite right, is the old man; and my duty to you, sir, and good-day; and I hope you will come into your fortune all the same.”
How was it that she turned, standing before him there in the road in all her prettiness and cleverness, into Crockford’s niece, with the diction and the air proper to her “place,” was what Walter could not tell. She cast him a glance as she turned round which transfixed him in the midst of his wonder and trouble, then turned and took the short cut across the field, running, getting over the stile like a bird. Which was she, one or the other? Walter stood and gazed stupidly after her, not knowing what to think or say.
WhenMr. Penton in the dog-cart was heard coming down the steep path to the open gates there was a universal rush to door and window to receive him. The delay in his coming had held the household in a high state of tension, which the arrival of the carriage with Ally and the young visitor increased. The girls could give no information except that Sir Walter was very ill, and that Mr. Russell Penton himself had put them into the carriage and sanctioned their coming away. Ally took her mother anxiously aside to explain.
“I didn’t know what to do. She is Mr. Russell Penton’s niece; she has no father or mother. She wanted to come, and he seemed to want her to come. Oh, I hope I haven’t done wrong! I couldn’t tell what to do.”
“Of course, there is the spare room,” said Mrs. Penton, but she was not delighted by the appearance of the stranger. “Tell Martha to light a fire in the spare room. But you must amuse her yourselves, you and Anne; your father must not be troubled with a visitor in the house.”
“Oh, she will not be like a visitor, she will be like one of ourselves,” said Ally.
The father, however, observed the little fair curled headat the drawing-room window as he drove up, and it annoyed him. A stranger among them was like a spy at such a moment. The girls were at the window, and Walter, newly returned, had been standing at the gate, and Mrs. Penton was at the door. He jumped down, scarcely noticing the anxious look of inquiry with which she met him, and stopped on the step to take a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket, which he handed to the groom who had driven him.
“Thank you, Sir Edward,” said the man, touching his hat with great obsequiousness.
“Sir Edward!” and a sovereign! The two things together set Mrs. Penton’s heart beating as it scarcely ever had beat before. She did not understand it for the moment. “Sir Edward:” and a sovereign! This perhaps was the most impressive incident of all.
Then he took her by the arm without a word of explanation. “Come with me into the book-room, Anne.” He had not a word even for little Molly, who came fluttering like a little bird across the hall and embraced his leg, and cried, “Fader, fader!” in that little sweet twitter of a voice which was generally music to his ears.
“Take her away,” was all he said, with a hasty pat of her little shining head. His face was as grave as if the profoundest trouble had come upon him, and wore that vague air of resentment which was natural to him. Fate or Fortune or Providence, however you like to call it, had been doing something to Edward Penton again. As a matter of course, it was always doing something to him—crossing his plans, setting them all wrong, paying no attention to his feelings. There was no conscious profanity in this thought, nor did the good man even suppose that he was arraigning the Supreme Disposer of all events. He felt this sincerely, with a sense of injury which was half comic, half tragic. Mrs. Penton was used to it, and used to being upbraided for it, as if she had somehow a secret influence, and if she pleased might have arrested the decisions of fate.
“Well, Edward?” she said, breathless, as he closed the book-room door.
“Well,” he replied. The fire was low, and he took up the poker violently in the first place and poked and raked till he made an end of it altogether. “I think,” he said, “after being out all the morning, I might at least find a decent fire.”
“I’ll make it up in a moment, Edward. A little wood will make it all right.”
“A little wood! and you’ll have to ring the bell for it, and have half a dozen people running and the whole house disturbed, just when I have so much to say to you! No, better freeze than that.” He turned his back to the fire, which, after all, was not quite without warmth, and added, after a moment, not looking at her, contracting his brows, and with a sort of belligerent shiver to let her see that he was cold, and that it was her fault. “My uncle is dead.”
“Is it all over, Edward? I fancied that it must be soon;” and then she added, with a little timidity, “were you in time?
“In time! I was there for hours.” He knew very well what she meant, but it was a sort of pleasure to him to prolong the suspense. “Of course,” he said, slowly, “he could not be expected to recover at his age. Alicia should have known better than to have had—dances and things at his age.”
“Dances! I have had no time to speak to Ally. I didn’t know; oh, how dreadful, Edward, and the old man dying!”
“The old man wasn’t dying then,” he said, pettishly. “How were they to suppose he was going to die? He has often been a great deal worse. He was an old man who looked as if he might have lived forever.”
After this his wife made no remark, but furtively—her housewifely instincts not permitting her to see it go out before her eyes—stooped to the coal-box standing by to put something on the fire.
“Let it alone!” he said, angrily. “At such a moment to be poking among the coals! Do you know what has happened? Can’t you realize it a little? Here we have Penton on our hands—Penton!Thatplace to be furnished, fitted out, and lived in! How are we to do it? I am in such a perplexity I think as never man was. And instead of helping me, all your thoughts are taken up with mending the fire!”
Mrs. Penton sat down suddenly in the first chair. She put her hand upon her heart, which had begun to jump. “Then you were not in time? Oh, I thought so from the first. To go on wasting day after day, and he such an old man!”
And in the extreme excitement of the moment she began to cry a little, holding her hand upon her fluttering heart: “It was what I always feared: when there is a thing that is troublesome and difficult, that is always the thing that happens,” she cried.
Her husband did not make any immediate reply. He wheeled round in his turn and took up the poker, but presently threw it down again. “It is no use making a fuss over that now. It’s that fellow Rochford’s fault. By the way,” he said, turning round again sharply, “mind, Annie, I won’t have that young fellow coming here so much. It might not have mattered before, but now it’s out of character—entirely out of character. Mind what I say.”
Mrs. Penton took no notice of this. She went on with a little murmur of her own: “No, it is of no use making a fuss. We can’t undo it now. To think it might have been settled yesterday, or any day! and now it never can be settled whatever we may do.”
“I don’t know what you mean by settled,” he said, hastily; “nothing can be more settled; it is as clear as daylight: not that there could be any doubt at any time. The thing we’ve got to think of is what we are to do.”
“With all the children,” said Mrs. Penton, “and that great empty house, and no ready money or anything. Oh, Edward, how can I tell what we are to do? It has been before me for years. And then I thought when your cousin spoke that all was going to be right.”
“There’s no use speaking of that now.”
“No, I don’t suppose there’s any use. Still, when one thinks—which of course I can’t help doing; when your cousin came I thought it was all right. Though you never would listen to me, I knew that you would listen to her. And now here it is again just as if that had never been!”
It was, perhaps, not generous of Mrs. Penton to indulge in these regrets, but it was expecting from her something more than humanity is capable of, to suppose that she would instantly turn into a consoler, and forget that she had ever prophesied woe. That is very well for an ideal heroine, a sweet young wife who is of the order of the embodied angel. But Mrs. Penton was the mother of a large family, and she had other things to think of than merely keeping her husband in a tranquillity which perhaps he didnot desire. When there are so many interests involved, it is not easy for a woman to behave in this angelic way. Perhaps her husband did not expect it from her. He stood leaning his back upon the mantel-piece with a countenance which had relapsed into its usual half-resentful quiet. He was not angry nor surprised, nor did he look as if he were paying much attention. It gave him a little time to collect his own thoughts while she got her little plaint and irrestrainable reflections over. Sympathy is in this as much as in other more demonstrative ways. If she had got over it in a moment without any expression of feeling, he would probably have been shocked, and felt that nothing mattered to her; but he got calm, while she, too, had her little grumble and complaint against fate.
“The thing,” he said, “now, is to think what we must do. I sha’n’t hurry the Russell Pentons; they can take their time; and in the meantime we must look about us. The thing is there will be no rents coming in till Lady-day, and it’s only Christmas. I never thought I should have seen it in this light. To succeed to Penton seemed always the thing to look forward to. It is you that have put it in this light.”
“What other light could I put it in, Edward? Penton is very different from this, and we have never been much at our ease here. I was always frightened for what would happen when you began to realize—But, dear me,” she added, “what is the use of talking? We must just make the best of it. Nothing is quite so bad as it seems likely to be. With prudence and taking care, perhaps, after all, we may do—”
“Do!” he said, “to go to Penton, the great house of the family, and to be the head of the family, and to have nothing better before one than a hope that we shall be able todo—” And then there was a pause between this careful and troubled pair; and of all things in the world, any stranger who had seen them, would have imagined last of all that they had succeeded to a great inheritance, and that the man at least had attained to what had been his hope and dream for years.
“Well,” she said at last, “I can’t do you any good, Edward, and the bell for dinner will be ringing directly. You must have had an agitating morning, and I dare sayeat no breakfast, and you will be the better for your dinner. I suppose we ought to draw down all the blinds.”
“Why should you draw down the blinds? There is not too much light.”
“I should not like,” said Mrs. Penton, “to be wanting in any mark of respect. And after all, Sir Walter was your nearest relation, and you are his successor, so that it is really a death in the family.”
She walked to the window as she spoke, and began to draw down the blind. He followed her hastily, and stopped her with an impatient hand.
“My windows look into the garden. Who is coming into the garden to see whether we pay respect or not? I won’t have it anywhere. On the funeral day if you please, but no more. I won’t have it!” It did him a little good to have an object for his irritation. She turned round upon him with some surprise, feeling the imperative grasp of his hand upon her arm. Perhaps that close encounter and her startled look affected him; perhaps only the disturbed state in which he was, with all emotions close to the surface. He put his other hand upon her further shoulder, and held her for a moment, looking at her. “My dear,” he said, “do you know you’re Lady Penton now?”
She gave him another look, full of surprise and almost consternation.
“I never thought of that,” she said.
“No, I never supposed you did—but so it is. There has not been a Lady Penton for thirty years. There couldn’t be a better one,” he said, with a little emotion, kissing her on the forehead. The look, the caress, the little solemnity of the announcement overcame her. Lady Penton! How could she ever accustom herself to that name, or think it was she who was meant by it? It drove other matters for the moment out of her head. And then the bell rang for dinner—the solid family meal in the middle of the day, which had suited all the habits of the family at Penton Hook. Already it seemed to be out of place. She dried her eyes with a tremulous, half-apologetic hand, and said,
“You know, Edward, the children—must always have their dinner at this hour.”
“To be sure,” he replied. “I never supposed there could be any change in that respect.”
“And you must want some food,” she said, “and a little comfort”—then as she went before him to the door, she paused with a little hesitation, “you know they brought a little girl with them, a niece of Russell Penton’s? It is a pity to have a stranger to-day, but they could not help it.”
“No, I don’t suppose they could help it,” said Sir Edward. Neither he nor she knew anything more of their visitor than that she was a little girl, Russell Penton’s niece.
They all met round the table in the usual way, but yet in a way which was not at all usual. The father and mother came in arm-in-arm, after the children had gathered in the dining-room—that is to say, he had taken her arm, placing his hand within it, and pushing her in a little before him into the room. The little children had clambered into their high chairs, and little Molly sat at the lower end, which was her usual place, close to her father’s chair, flourishing a spoon in the air, and singing her little song of “Fader, fader!” Molly was always the one that called him to dinner when he was busy, and thus the cry of “fader!” had become associated with dinner in her small mind. The elder ones stood about waiting for their parents, Mab between Ally and Anne, looking curiously on at all the manners and customs of this new country in which she found herself—the unknown habits of a large family, who were not rich—all of which particulars were wonderful in her eyes. Walter, as his mother at once saw, bore a strange aspect—abstracted and far-away—as if his mind were full of anything in the world except the scene around him. Perhaps it was fatigue, for the poor boy had been up all night; perhaps the crisis, which was so extraordinary, and which contradicted everything they had been planning and thinking of. The elder children were all grave, disturbed, a little overawed by all that was coming to pass. And for some time there was scarcely any thing said. The little bustle of carving, of serving the children, of keeping them all in order, soon absorbed the mother as if it had been an ordinary day; but at the other end of the table, neither Ally, looking at him with anxious eyes on the one side, nor Molly on the other, got much attention from their father, who was occupied by such different thoughts. Mab was the only one who was free of allarrière pensée. She had scarcely known Sir Walter; how could she be overwhelmed by his death? and it made no difference to her: whereas this plunge into novelty and the undiscovered, was more wonderful to her than anything she had ever known. She watched the children and all their ways—the little clamor of one, the steady perseverance of another, the watchful way in which Horry devoured and kept the lead, observing lest any of the brotherhood should get before him as he worked through his meal—with delighted interest.
“Are they always like that?” she whispered to Anne. “Do you remember all their names? Do they all always eat as much? Oh, the little pigs, what darlings they are!” cried Mab under her breath.
Anne did not like to hear the children called little pigs, even though the other word was added.
“They don’t eat any more than other children,” she said. And Anne, too, if she was not anxious, was at least very curious and eager to hear all that had happened, which only father knew. And father’s brow was full of care. They all turned it over in their minds in their different fashions, and asked each other what could possibly have happened worse than had been expected; for already experience had made even these young creatures feel that something worse happening was the most likely, a great deal more probable, than that there was something better. The mother was the most fortunate, who divided and arranged everything, and had to make allowances for Horry’s third help when she first put a spoon into the pudding, a matter of severe and abstruse calculation which left little space in the thoughts for lesser things.
When dinner was over, the children all rushed out with that superfluity of spirits which is naturally produced by a full meal—but also a little quarrelsome as well, making a great noise in the hall, and requiring a great deal of management before they could be diverted into the natural channels in which human energy between the ages of twelve and two has to dissipate itself in the difficult moment of the afternoon. When the weather was good they all scampered out into the garden, where indeed Horry and his brothers rushed now with the shouts of the well-fed and self-satisfied. To recover these rebels on one hand, and to get the little tumult of smaller children dancing about in all the passages dispersed and quiet, was a piece of work which employed all the energies of the ladies.Mab Russell looked on admiring in the midst of that little rabble. She would have liked, above all things, to head an insurrection and besiege the mother and sisters in their own stronghold. She went so far as to hold out her skirts over Horry, who took refuge behind her, seeing the face of an ally where he expected it least. They were all anxious to get the riot over, but Mab, who knew no better, interrupted the course of justice. Oh, how awkward it is to have a stranger in the house when the family affairs are trembling in the balance, and no one knows what is going to happen! This was what Ally and Anne said to each other, almost weeping over that contrariety of fortune, when they were compelled, instead of hearing all about it, to go round the grounds with Mab and show how high the water had come up last year.