Notwithstandingall the hinderances that envious fate could send, the news so important to the family got itself circulated among them at last, with the result that the strangest excitement, elation, and despondency, a complication of feelings utterly unknown in their healthful history, took possession of the Penton family. They had made up their minds to one thing—they now found themselves and all their projects and plans swallowed up in another. They had adapted themselves, the young ones with the flexibility of youth, to the supposed change in their fortunes. They had now to go back again, to forget all those innumerable consultations, arrangements, conclusions of all kinds, and take up their old plans where they had been abandoned. It had been dreadful to give up Penton. It was scarcely more agreeable to take it back again. And yet an elation, an elevation was in all their minds. Penton was theirs, that palace of the gods. They were no longer nobodies, they were people of importance. The girls found it beyond measure uncomfortable, distracting, insupportable, that on this day of all others, when they had a thousand things to say to each other—questions to ask, suggestions to make, the most amazing revolution to talk over, there should be a stranger always between them, one whom,with that civility which was born with them, and in which they had been trained, they felt themselves constrained to explain everything to, whom they would not leave out of their conversation or permit to feel that she was an intruder. She was an intruder all the same. She was in the way, horribly in the way, at this eventful moment. The family was dissolved by her presence. The father and mother retired together to the book-room to talk there, a thing they never would have done but for the stranger. And Walter strolled off on his side, scarcely saying a word to his sisters, whom he could not approach or communicate his sentiments to in consequence of Mab. It was a heavy task to the two girls to have to entertain her, to go round and round the garden with her, to point out the views of Penton, to explain to her what it was about, when one or another would burst out into some irrestrainable exclamation or remark; but the fate of womankind in general was upon these devoted young women. They had to entertain the visitor, to occupy themselves with the keeping up of appearances, and to put everything that interested them most aside in their hearts.
“We put this seat here because it is the best view of Penton. No, it isn’t very shady in summer, it is a little exposed to the wind, but then Penton—”
“We used to be so much interested in every view. Is this the best, or the one from the top of the hill?”
“Oh, the one on the top of the hill. Oh, I wish Penton was at the bottom of the sea!”
“I don’t,” cried Anne. “After all it is only the confusion with having changed our minds. It is so much better not to change one’s mind, that lets so many new thoughts come in.”
“And most likely the old thoughts were the best,” said Ally, softly, with a little sigh. Then she added, “You must think us so strange: but it is only just to-day, for we are all excited and put out.”
“One would think you did not like coming into your fortune,” said Mab. “Is it because of old Sir Walter? But Aunt Gerald said you scarcely knew him.”
“We never saw him: but it is terrible to think of being better off because some one has died—”
“And it is more than that. It is because we thought we were to give it all up, and now it seems it is all ours—”
“And we were always brought up to think so very much of it,” Ally said. And then she added, “Shouldn’t you like to come round and see where the children have their gardens? it is quite high and dry, it is beyond the highest mark. No flood has ever come up here.”
This was the supreme distinction of the terrace and that part of the garden that lay beyond it. They were quite proud to point out its immunity from the floods: as they passed they had a glimpse through the windows of the book-room of Mr. and Mrs.—nay, of Sir Edward and Lady Penton, sitting together, he with a pencil in his hand jotting down something upon a piece of paper, she apparently reckoning up upon the outstretched fingers of her hand. Ally and Anne looked at each other; they would all have been deep in these calculations together if Mab had not been there.
Walter went upon his own way. Perhaps had the visitor been a man he might have had the same confinement, the same embarrassment: but probably he would have undertaken nothing of the sort. Probably he would have thrown over his guest upon the girls. What were girls good for but to undertake this sort of thing, and set more important persons free? For himself he did not feel able for anything but to realize the new position; to turn everything over in his mind, to hurry away to the neighborhood, at least, of the one creature in the world who (he thought) might look at it from his point of view and care what he felt. Could he still think, after the reception she had given him that morning, after the blank which he had found in her, the incapacity to understand him—could he believe still that his tumultuous feelings now and all the ferment in his mind would awaken in her that ideal sympathy and understanding of which he had dreamed? Alas, poor Walter! he knew so little in reality ofher: what he knew was his own imagination of her—a perfect thing, incapable of failure, sure to sympathize and console. What he had learned from the failure of the morning was only this, that it must have been his fault, who had not known how to explain—how to make his story clear. It was not she who was to blame. He rushed up the hill with his heart a-flame, thinking of everything. He was now no disinherited knight, no neglected youth whose fate his elders decided without consulting him. Oh, no; very different. He was the heir of Penton! He had attained what he had lookedfor all his life. He stood trembling upon the verge of a new existence, full of the tumultuous projects, the unformed resolves that surge upward and boil in the mind of a youth emancipated, whose life has come to such promotion, whose career lies all before him. And to what creature in the world after himself could this be of the same importance as to her who might—oh, wonderful thought!—share it with him? He had been far from having this thought in the morning. Then he was but a boy, without any definite plan, with only education before him and vague beginnings, and no certainty of anything. Now he was Walter Penton of Penton, with a position which no man could take from him—not his father even! Nobody could touch him in his rights. Not an acre could be alienated without his consent; nothing could be taken away. And then there was that story about “providing for the boy” which his father had touched on very lightly, but which came back in the strongest sense to the mind of the boy who was to be provided for. He felt the wildest impatience to tell her all this. She would understand him now. She did not know what he meant in the morning, which was, no doubt, his fault. How could she be expected to understand the fantastic discontent that was in his mind? But she would understand now. He had a certainty of this, which was beyond all possibility of mistake, and though he knew that it was very unlikely he should see her at this hour, yet the impulse of his heart was such that nothing else was possible to him but to hurry to the spot where she was—to be near her, to put himself in the way if perchance she should pass by. The painful impression with which in the morning he had seen her in a moment change herself and her aspect, and step down from the position on which she met him to that of Crockford’s niece, passed altogether from his mind—or rather it remained as a keen stimulant forcing him to a solution of the mystery which intertwined the harmony with a discord as is the wont of musicians. There could not be any such jarring note. He must account for the jarring note; it was a tone of enchantment the more, a charm disguised.
These were the things he said to himself—or rather he said nothing to himself, but such were the gleams that flew across his mind like glimmers of light out of the sky. He went quickly up the steep hill, breasting it as if his fortunelay at the top, and a moment’s delay might risk it all—until he came within sight of Crockford’s cottage, its upper windows twinkling over the rugged bit of hedge that fenced off the little grass-plot in front. Then his pace slackened—the goal was in sight; there was no need for haste—in short, even had she been visible, Walter would have dallied, with that fantastic instinct of the lover which prolongs by deferring the moment of enjoyment. And then at a little distance he could examine the windows, he could watch for some sign or token of her, as he could not do near at hand. He lingered, he stood still on a pretense of looking at the hedge-rows, of examining a piece of lichen on a tree, his eyes all the time furtively turning toward that rude little temple of his soul. What a place to be called by such a name! And yet the place was not so much to be found fault with. The hedge was irregular and broken, raised a little above the path, with a rough little bit of wall, all ferns and mosses, supporting the bank of earth from which it grew; above it, glistening in the low red rays of the afternoon sun, were the lattice windows of the upper story, with the eaves of an uneven roof—old tiles covered with every kind of growth—overshadowing them; a cottage as unlike as possible to those dreadful dwellings of the poor which are the result of sanitary science and economy combined; a little human habitation harmonized by age and use with all its surroundings, and which no one need be ashamed to call home. So Walter said to himself as he stood and looked at it in the light of romance and the afternoon sun. It was as venerable as Penton itself, and had many features in common with the great house. It was more respectable and more lovely than the damp gentility of Penton Hook, which was old-new, with plaster peeling off, and a shabby modernism in its vulgar walls. Crockford’s cottage pretended to nothing, it was all it meant to be. It was in its way a beautiful place, being so harmonized by nature, so well adapted to its uses. Walter’s estimate of it increased as the moments went on. He felt at last that to bring his bride from such an abode was next door to bringing her from an ideal palace of romance; perhaps better even than that, seeing that there would be all the pleasure of setting her in the sphere which she would adorn; for would not she adorn—it was an old-fashioned phrase, yet one that suited the occasion—any sphere?
He was interrupted in these thoughts by the sound of steps approaching. All was silent, alas! in the cottage. The door was shut, for it was very cold weather, and no one appeared at a window; there was not a movement of life about. Walter knew that the room in which they lived (i. e.the kitchen) looked to the back. The approaching passenger, therefore, did not convey any hopes to his mind, but only annoyed him, making him leave off that silent contemplation of the shrine of his love, which he had elaborately concealed, by a pretended examination of the lichens on the tree. If any one was coming, that pretense, he felt, was not enough, and he accordingly continued his walk very slowly up the hill in order to meet the new-comer whoever he might be. When he came in sight he was not, as Walter had expected, a recognizable figure, but unmistakably a stranger—a man whose dress and appearance were as unlike as possible to anything which belonged to the village. He was a young man, rather undersized, in a coat with a fur collar, a tall hat, a muffler of a bright color, a large cigar, and a stick of the newest fashion. He was indeed all of the newest fashion, fit for Bond Street, and much more like that locality than a village street. Walter was not very learned in Bond Street, but he laughed to himself as he made this conclusion, feeling that Bond Street would not acknowledge such a glass of fashion. The stranger was looking at Crockford’s cottage with a glass stuck in his eye, and a sort of contemptuous examination, which proved that he made a very different estimate of it from that which Walter had just done. When he in his turn heard Walter’s step upon the road, he seemed to wake up to the consciousness of being looked at, in a way which aroused the contempt of the young native. He gave himself various little pulls together, took his cigar from his mouth with an energetic puff, put up his disengaged hand to his cravat with an involuntary movement to arrange something, and settled his shoulders into his coat—gestures corresponding to the little shake and shuffle with which some women prepare themselves to be seen, however elaborate their toilet may have been before. Then he quickened his steps a little to meet Walter, who came toward him slowly, with a quite uncalled-for sentiment of contempt. Why should a youth in knickerbockers, in the rough roads of his native parish, feel himself superior to agentleman visitor in the apparel of the higher orders, coming (presumably) out of Bond Street? Who can explain this mystery? No doubt it was balanced by a still stronger feeling of the same kind on the other side. The stranger came forward evidently with the intention of asking information. He was a sandy-haired and rather florid young man, with a badly grown mustache and little tufts of colorless beard. His hat was a little on one side, and the hair upon which it was poised glistened and shone. The level sun came in his eyes and made him blink; it threw a light which was not flattering over all his imperfections of color and form.
“Beg your pardon,” he said, with a slight stammer as they approached each other, “you couldn’t tell me, could you, where one—Crockton or Croaker, or some such name, lives about here?”
“Croaker?” said Walter. With Crockford’s cottage before his eyes, what could be more simple? The suggestion was too evident to be mistaken, as was also the other suggestion, which came like a flash of lightning, and made his eyes shine with angry fire. “I know nobody of the name,” he said, quietly, making a rapid step forward; and then it occurred to him that the information thus sought might be supplied easily by any uninterested passer-by, and he paused, feeling that it was necessary to plant himself there on the defense. “What sort of a man do you want? What is he?” he asked.
“Ah, no sort of a man at all—it’s—it’s a cottage, I believe. He may be a cobbler or a plow-boy, or a—anything you please. Am I the sort of person to know such people’s trades? It’s a—it’s a—Look here, I’ll make it worth your while if you’ll help me. It’s a lady I want.”
“Oh, a lady!” said Walter. He felt the blood flush to his face; but this the inquirer, occupied with his own business, did not remark. He came close, turning off the smoke of his cigar with his hand.
“Look here,” he said, in a loud whisper, “I’ll make it worth your while. It’ll be as good as a suv—, well, I may say if you’ll really find out what I want, as good as a fiver in your pocket. Oh, I say, what’s the matter: I don’t mean no harm.”
“I wonder who you take me for,” cried Walter, whosesudden move forward had thrown the other back in mingled astonishment and alarm.
The stranger eyed him from head to foot with a puzzled look, which finally awoke a little amusement in Walter’s angry soul. “Don’t know you from Adam,” he said, “and I ain’t used to fellows in knickerbockers. Swells wear them, and gamekeepers wear them. If you’re a swell I beg your pardon, that’s all I can say.”
This prayer it pleased Walter graciously to grant. He began to enter into the humor of the situation. And then, to save her from some vulgar persecutor, was not that worth a little trouble? “Never mind,” he said, “who I am. I know all the ladies that live here. Which of them is it that you want?”
“Well, she don’t live here,” said the other. “Yes, to be sure, she’s here for the moment, with one Croaker, or something like that. But she’s not one of the ladies of the place; she’s not, perhaps, exactly what you would call a—Yes, she is though—she’s awfully well educated. She talks—oh, a great deal better than most of the swellest people you meet about. I’ve met a good few in my day,” he said, with an air, caressing his mustache. “I don’t know nobody that comes up to her, for my part.”
He was a little beast—he was a cad—he was a vulgar little beggar: he was not a gentleman, nor anything like it. But still he seemed to have a certain comprehension. Walter’s heart softened to him in spite of all provocations. “I don’t think,” he said, but more gently than he could have thought possible, “that you will meet any one of that sort here.”
“No? you don’t think so. But they’d keep her very close, don’t you see. Fact is, she was sent off to keep her out of a young fellar’s way. A young swell you know, a—a friend of mine, with a good bit of money coming to him, and his people didn’t think her good enough. Oh, I don’t think so—not a bit. I’m all on the true love side. But where there’s money, don’t you know, there’s always difficulties made.”
“I suppose so,” said Walter, with momentary gravity. And there came before him for a moment a horrible realization—something he had never thought of before. “But I don’t think,” he added, “that you will find any such lady here.” He was so young and simple that it was a certainease to his conscience to put it in this way. He said to himself that he was telling no lie. He was not saying that there was no such lady here, only that he didn’t think the other would find her—which he shouldn’t, at least so long as Walter could help it. This little equivocation gave great comfort and ease to his mind.
“Don’t you, though?” said the stranger, discouraged. “But I’m almost sure this was the village, near the river, and not far from—it answers to all the directions—if only I could find Croaker—or Crockton, or a name like that. I’m a dreadful fellow for muddling names.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Walter, “it may be Endsleigh, about two miles further on; that’s near the river, and not far from Reading, which I suppose is what you mean—a pretty little village where people go in summer. And, to be sure, there’s some people named Croaker there; I remember the name—over a shop—with lodgings to let—that’s the place,” he cried, with a little excitement. For all this was quite true, and yet elaborately false in intention, a combination to delight any such young deceiver. “Come along,” he cried, “I’ll show you the way. It lies straight before you, and Croaker’s is just as you go into the village. You can’t miss it. I’ve earned that fiver,” he said, with a laugh, “but you’re welcome to the information—for love.”
“For love!” cried the other; and he gave the young fellow a very doubtful look, then threw a suspicious glance around as if he might possibly find some reasons lying about on the road why this young stranger should attempt to deceive him. But after all, why should a young swell in knickerbockers desire to deceive the man of Bond Street? There could be no reason. He took out his cigar-case, and offered a large and solid article of that description to Walter’s acceptance, who took it with great gravity. “I can’t thank you any way else—they’re prime ones I can tell you,” he said, and with a flourish of his stick, by way of farewell, took the way pointed out to him. Walter stood and watched him with a curious mingling of satisfaction and mischief. He threw the cigar into the ditch. It was a bad one, he had no doubt, which, perhaps, made it less a sacrifice to throw away this reward of guile.
Butwhen this little adventure was over, it made no difference to the longing and eagerness in the boy’s heart. Indeed, he wanted to see her more than ever, to find out from her who this fellow was, what he had to do with her, why he was seeking her. Could it be possible that she felt any interest in such a creature? that she—might have married him, perhaps. Could this be? He had spoken as if it was he who had been the prize. She had been sent away in order not to be a danger for him. Walter snapped the branch of a tree he had seized hold of as if it had been a twig, as the thought passed through his mind. And then he was seized with a half-hysterical fit of laughter. Him, that fellow! that little beast! that cad! that—There were no words that could express his contempt and scorn and merriment, but it was not merriment of a comfortable kind. When his laugh was over, he went round and round the house without seeing any one—all was closed, the doors shut, nobody at the windows, nothing at all stirring. One or two people passed, and looked wondering to see him wander about, up and down like a ghost; but he neither saw her nor any trace of her. The red glitter went out of the windows, the sun sunk lower and lower, and then went out, leaving nothing but the winter gray which so soon settled toward night. And by and by Walter found himself compelled by the force of circumstances to turn his back upon the cottage, and go down the steep road again toward home. The force of circumstances at this particular moment meant the family tea—and the strange, tragical, foolish complication of his own high romance and enthusiasm of love, for which he was ready to defy anything—and the youthfulness and childishness of his position, which made it criminal for him not to be in for tea—was one of those things which confuse with ridicule all that is most serious in the world. He saw with an acute pang how absurd it was; but he could not emancipate himself. The thought of the family consternation, the question on all sides, Where is Wat? his father’s irritation, and his mother’s wonder, and the apologies of the girls, and the suggestions of accident, of some catastrophe, something terrible to account for his non-appearance, were all quite visible and apparent to him; and the grotesque incompatibility of these bonds, with the passionate indulgence of his own will and wish upon which his mind was fixed. He saw all these circumstances also with a curious faculty, half of sympathy, half of repulsion, through the eyes of the little visitor, the little intruder, the girl who had suddenly become a member of the household, and who was there observing everything. She would remark the unwillingness with which he appeared, and she would remark, he felt certain, his absence both before and after, and would ask herself where he went, a question which, so far as Walter was aware, not even his mother had begun to ask as yet. He had an instinctive conviction that Mab would ask it, that she would see through him, that she would divine what was in heart. And when they all met about the homely table once more,—the children intent upon their bread-and-butter, the mother apportioning all the cups of tea, the milk-and-water to some, the portions of cake,—Walter seemed to himself to be taking part in some scene of a comedy curiously interposed between the acts of an exciting drama.
A cold world, out of doors, spreading all around, with the strangest encounters in it, with understandings and misunderstandings which made the blood run cold, and sent the heart up bounding into high passion and excitement, into feverish resolve and wild daring, and the madness of desperation—and in the very midst a sudden pause, the opening of a door, and then the confused chatter of the children, the sound of the teacups, the lamp which smelled of paraffin, the bread-and-butter,—how laughable it was, how ridiculous, what a contrast, what a slavery, how petty in the midst of all the passions and agitations that lay around!
Presently, Walter, in his boyish ingenuousness, began to feel a little proud that he, so simple as he sat there in the fumes of the household tea, was in reality a distracted yet well-nigh triumphant lover, meaning to put his fortune to the touch that very night, to pledge his new life and all it might bring. They thought him nothing more than a lad to be sent to school again, to be guided at their will, when he was a man and on the eve of an all-important decision, about to dispose of his existence.
He caught Mab’s eyes asthis thought swelled in his mind. They were not penetrating or keen eyes; they were blue, very soft, smiling, child-like, lighted up with amused observation, noticing everything. But Walter felt them go through him as none of the other accustomed familiar eyes did.Shesaw there was something more than usual about him. She would divine when he disappeared that his going away meant something. The family took no heed of his absence—he had gone out to take a turn, they would say; perhaps his father would grumble that he ought to be at his books. But only that little stranger would divine that Walter’s absence meant a great deal more—that it meant a romance, a poem, a drama, and that it consumed his entire life.
The dispersing of the children, the game of play permitted to Horry and the small brothers, the going to bed of the rest, made a moment of tumult and agitation. And in the midst of this Walter stole out unperceived into the clear air of the night. It was clear as a crystal, the sky shining, almost crackling with a sudden frost, the stars twinkling out of their profound blue, with such a sharp and icy brilliancy as occurs only now and then in the hardest winter. The air was so clear and exhilarating that Walter did not find it cold; indeed he was too much excited to be sensible of anything save the refreshment and keen restorative pinch of that nipping and eager atmosphere.
As he hurried up the hill the blood ran riot in his veins, his heart seemed to bound and leap forward as if it had an independent life. He found himself under the hedge of Crockford’s cottage in a few minutes, with the feeling that he had flown or floated there, though his panting breath told of the rush he had actually made. The moon, which had but newly risen, was behind the cottage, and consequently all was black under the hedge, concealing him in the profoundest darkness.
He was glad to pause there in that covert and ante-chamber of nature to regain command of himself, to get his breath and collect his thoughts—to think how he was to make his presence known. She had somehow divined that he was there on other nights, but this was a more important occasion, and he felt that he would be justified in defying all the restrictions put upon him, and letting even the Crockfords, the old people of the house, know that he was there. It was true that the idea of old Crockford daunted him a little. The old man hada way of saying things; he had a penetrating, cynical look. But it would be strange indeed, Walter reflected, if he who was not afraid of fate, who was about to defy the world in arms, should be afraid of an old stone-breaker on the roads.
The thought passed through his mind, and brought a smile to his face as he stood in the dark, recovering his breath. All was perfectly silent in the night around. The village had shut itself up against the cold. There was nobody near. The heat and passion in Walter’s being seemed to stand like an image of self-concentrated humanity, independent of all the influences about, indifferent, even antagonistic, throbbing with a tremendous interest in the midst of those petty personal concerns of which the world thought nothing, but in himself a world higher than nature, altogether distinct from it. The little bit of shadow swallowed him up, yet neither shadow nor light made any difference to the mind which felt all moons and stars and the whole system of the universe inferior to its own burning purpose and intense tumultuous thoughts.
But while he stood there, indifferent to the whole earth about him, a little sound of the most trivial character suddenly caught his ear, and made every nerve tingle. It was a sound no more important than the click of the latch of the cottage door. Had she heard him, then, though he was not aware of having made any sound? Had she divined him with a mind so much more sensitive than that of ordinary mankind? He stood holding his breath, listening for her step, imagining it to himself, the little skim along the pavement, the touch when she paused, firm yet so light. He heard it in his thoughts, in anticipation: but in reality that was not what he heard. Something else sounded in his ears which made his veins swell and his heart bound, yet not with pleasure—a voice which seemed to affront the stillness and offend the night, a voice without any softness or grace either of tone or words—something alive and hostile to every feeling in his heart, and which seemed to Walter’s angry fancy to jar upon the very air. And then there followed a sound of steps; they were coming to the gate. She was with him, accompanying him, seeing him off. Was it possible? Walter made a step forward and clinched his fist; he then changed his mind and drew back.
“Anyhow, you’ll think it over,” said the voice of the man whom he had met on the road. “It’s a good offer.It ain’t every day you’ll get as good. A good blow-out and a good breakfast, and all that, would suit me just as well as you. I ain’t ashamed of what I’m doing; and you’d look stunning in a veil and all that. But what’s the good of making a fuss? It’s fun, too, doing a thing on the sly.”
And was ithervoice that replied?
“Yes, it’s fun. I don’t mind that, not a bit. I should just like to see it put on the stage. You and me coming in, and your mother’s look. Oh, her look! that’s what fetches me!”
It couldnotbe her, not her! and yet the voice was hers; and the subdued peal of laughter had in it a tone which he had felt to thrill the air with delight on other occasions; but not now. The man laughed more harshly, more loudly; and then they appeared at the gate in the moonlight. He so near them, unable to stir without betraying himself, was invisible in the gloom. But the light caught a great white shawl in which she had muffled herself, and made a sort of reflection in the tall shiny hat.
They stood for a minute there, almost within reach of his hand.
“Don’t you stand chattering,” she said; “it’s time for your train; and I tell you it’s a mile off, and you’ll have to run.”
“There’s plenty of time,” said he. “I should just like to know who was that young spark that sent me off out of my way to-day. I believe it’s some one that’s sweet upon you too, and as you’re holding in hand—”
“Nonsense,” she said, “I see nobody here.”
“Oh, tell that to—them that knows no better; see nobody; only every fellow about that’s worth looking at; as if I didn’t know your little ways!”
She laughed a little, not displeased; and then said, “There’s nobody worth looking at; but let me again say, go; the old man will be out after me. He won’t believe you’ve got a message from mother; he doesn’t now. He doesn’t believe a word I say.”
“No more should I if I was in his place. Oh, I know your little ways. You’ll have to give them over when we’re married, Em. It’s a capital joke now, don’t you know, but when we’re married—”
“We’re not married yet,” she said, “and perhaps never will be, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I say! When we’ve just settled how it’s to be done, and all about it! But look here, don’t you have anything to say to that young ’un in the knickerbockers. He’s cute, whoever he is. He might have put me off the scent altogether. I couldn’t have done it cleverer myself. Don’t let him guess what’s going on. He’s just the one, that fellow is, to let the old folks know, and spoil our fun.”
“Look here,” said the girl, “I warn you, Ned, you’ll lose your train.”
“Not I. I’ll make a run for it. Good-bye, Em!”
Great heavens! did he dare to touch her, to approach his head with the shiny hat still poised upon it to hers. The grotesque horror overwhelmed Walter as he stood trembling with rage and misery. There was a little murmuring of hushed words and laughter, and then a sudden movement: “Be off with you,” she said, and the man rushed away through the gleams of the moonlight, his steps echoing along the road. She stood and looked after him, with her white shawl wrapped round her head and shoulders, moving from one foot to the other with a light buoyant movement as if to keep herself warm. The motion, the poise of her figure, the lingering, all seemed to speak of pleasure. Walter stood in the dark with his teeth set and his hand clinched, and misery fierce and cruel in his soul. It seemed impossible to him to suffer more. He had touched the very bottom of the deepest sea of wretchedness; the bitterness of death he thought had gone over him, quenching his very soul and all his projects. His love, his hopes, his wishes seemed all to have melted into one flame of fury, fierce rage, and hate, which shook his very being. It seemed to Walter that he could almost have murdered her where she stood within three paces of him; and if the veil of darkness had been suddenly withdrawn the boldest might have shuddered at the sight of that impersonation of wrath, standing drawn back to keep himself quiet, his hand clinched by his side, his eyes blazing as they fixed upon her, within reach of the unconscious watcher, so light and pleased and easy, not knowing the danger that was so near. Her head was turned away from him watching her lover—her lover!—as he rattled along the road; and when Walter made a sudden step forward out of the shade, she started with a suppressed alarmed cry and wail of terror.
“Mr. Penton! you here!”
“Yes. I’ve been here—too long.”
“Oh, Mr. Penton,” cried the girl, “you’ve heard whatwe’ve been saying! Do you call that like a gentleman to listen to what people are saying? You have no right to make any use of it. You did not put us on our guard. You have no right to make any use of what you heard when we didn’t know.”
Walter came up to her, close to her, and put his hand upon the fleecy whiteness of her shawl, into which it seemed to sink as into snow.
“Will you tell me this?” he said. “You are one person to old Crockford, another tohim, another to me. Which is you?”
A man who has been injured acquires an importance, a gravity, which no other circumstances can give him; and the tone of his misery was in Walter’s voice. He imposed upon her and subdued her in spite of herself. She shrunk a little away from him and began to cry.
“It is not my fault! I never asked you to notice me. I never pretended I was any one—not your equal—not—”
“Which is you?’ he said. Through the soft shawl he reached her arm at last, and grasped it firmly, yet with a weakening, a softening. How could he help it when he felt her in his power? Through her shawl, and through the mist of rage and bitterness about him, the quick-witted creature felt how the poor boy’s heart was touched, and began to melt at the contact of her arm.
“Which—is me? Oh,” she cried, “you don’t know me—you don’t know my circumstances, or you would not ask. You don’t know what I come from, nor how I have been surrounded all my life. It is the best that is me! It is, whatever you may think.”
Her arm quivered in his grasp; her slight figure seemed to vibrate so near to him. It appeared to his confused brain that her whole being swayed and wavered with the appeal he made to her. She lifted her face to his, and that too was quivering in every line. She was entirely in his power, to be shaken, to be annihilated at his will, and he had the power over her of right as well as of strength.
“The best—I don’t know which is the best. I came up to tell you—to ask you—to let you decide. And I find you with a man who—is going to marry you.”
“He thinks so, perhaps; but a man can’t marry one without one’s own consent.”
“Your consent! You seemed to agree to everything hesaid!” cried the young man in his rage. “A fellow like that! A cad—a—And I waiting here—waiting to see you—oh!” He flung her arm from him, almost throwing her off her balance. But when he saw her totter, compunction seized the unhappy boy. “You make me a brute!” he cried; “I’ve hurt you!” and felt as if, in the stillness of the night, and the despair of his heart, his voice sounded like a wild beast’s cry.
“You have hurt me—only in my heart,” she said. “Oh, but listen. I know it all looks bad enough; but you listened to him, and you must listen to me. You think he’s not good enough for me, Mr. Penton; but a little while ago he was thought far too good, and I—perhaps I thought so, too. Not—oh, not now. Wait a minute before you cry out. Who had I ever seen that was better? I had heard of other kind of people in books, but either I thought they didn’t live now, or at least they were far, far out of my reach. I never knew a gentleman till—till—”
“Her voice died away; it had been getting lower, softer, complaining, pleading—now it seemed to die away altogether, fluttering in her throat.
“Till?” Waiter’s voice too was choked by emotion and excitement. The strong current of his thoughts and wishes, so violently interrupted, found a new channel and flooded all the obstructions away. Till—! Could anything be more pathetic than this confusion and self-revelation? “You did not tell him so,” he said, with a remnant of his wrath—a sort of rag of resentment, which he caught at as it flew away. “You let him believe it was he; you made him understand—”
“Mr. Penton,” she cried, “listen. What am I to do? You’ve sought me out, you’ve been far too kind; but I can’t let myself be a danger to you too. You know it never, never would be allowed if it were known you were coming here to me. And now that I’ve known you, how can I bear living here and not seeing you? It was the only charm, the only pleasure—Oh, I’m shameless to tell you, but it’s true.”
“Emmy,” said the lad, in his infatuation, laying once more his hand on her arm, but this time trembling himself with feeling and tenderness, “if it’s true, how could you—how could you let that man—”
“Mr. Penton, just hear me out. He can take me awayfrom this, and give me a home, and take me out of the way of harming you. Oh, don’t you see how I am torn asunder! If I throw him over there’s no hope for me. Oh, what am I to do? What am I to do?”
Walter was moved beyond himself with an impulse of enthusiasm, of devotion, which seemed to turn his feeling in a moment into something sacred—not the indulgence of his own will, but the most generous of inspirations. He put his arm round her, and supported her in her trembling and weakness.
“Emmy,” he said, his young voice ineffably soft and full of tears—“Emmy, darling, we’ll find a better way.”
Theday of Sir Walter Penton’s funeral was a great if gloomy holiday for the whole country about. A man so old, and so little known to the neighborhood, could not be greatly mourned. He had kept up, no doubt, the large charities which it is the worthy privilege of a great family to maintain for the benefit of the country, but he had never appeared in them, and few people associated a personal kindness with the image of the stately old man who had been seen so seldom for years past. The people in the village and all the houses scattered along the road were full of excitement and curiosity. The carriages which kept arriving all the morning gradually raised the interest of the spectators toward the great climax of the funeral procession, which it was expected would be half a mile long, and embraced everybody of any importance in the neighborhood, besides the long line of the tenantry. And then the flowers—that new evidence of somber vanity and extravagant fashion. To see these alone was enough to draw a crowd. In the heart of the winter, just after Christmas, what masses of snowy blossoms, piled up, crushing and spoiling each other—flowers that cost as much as would have fed a parish! The villagers stood with open mouths of wonder. No one there in all their experiences of life—all the weddings, christenings, summer festivals of their recollection—had seen such a display. The procession, headed by no black mournful hearse, such as would have seemed naturalto the lookers-on, but by a sort of triumphal car, covered with flowers, drew forth crowds all along the way.
The Pentons, who were now the lords of all—or rather of as little as was practicable, for all that was unentailed naturally went without question to Sir Walter’s daughter—had not a carriage of their own in which to swell the procession. And though they were now naturally in the chief place, they were perhaps the least known of all the rural potentates, great and small, who shook hands in silence, with looks of sympathy more or less solemn, with Mr. Russell Penton after the ceremony was over. Sir Edward, indeed, the new baronet, had known them all in his day; but Walter looked on with a half-defiant shyness, with scarcely an acquaintance in the multitude. And the sensation was very strange to both father and son when all the train had dispersed and they came back to the great house which was henceforward theirs. Mrs. Russell Penton had not since the moment of her father’s death made any show of her grief. She had been entirely stricken down on that day. A frightful combination and mingling of emotions had prostrated her. Grief for her father; ah, yes! He had been perhaps the one individual in the world upon whose full comprehension she had leaned; but in his dying even this had failed her, and she felt that he comprehended her and she him no longer, and that at the last moment his steps had strayed from hers. A more bitter and terrible discovery could not be; and when with that came the sense that all her hopes had failed—that the plans so nearly brought to some practical possibility had all come to nothing—that everything was too late—that, instead of securing her home for an eternal possession, which was what her eager spirit desired, she had only presented herself to the world in the aspect of a grasping woman, endeavoring to take advantage of a poor man and seize his inheritance—when all this became apparent to her, Alicia covered her face and withdrew from the light of day. The loss of one who had been the chief object in her life for so long, the father whom she had loved, was not much more than a pretense (and she felt this too to the bottom of her heart) for the misery that overwhelmed her; which was not grief only, but disappointment almost more bitter than grief; disenchantment and failure mingled with the sorrow and loss, and made them more keen and poignant than wordscan tell. And she was ashamed that it should be so—ashamed that, when all around her gave her credit for thus profoundly mourning her father, she was mourning in him her own disappointed hopes, her disgust, her failure, as well as the loss her heart had sustained. This consciousness was in itself one of the bitterest parts of her burden. Her husband came into the room with sympathetic looks, her maid stole about on tiptoe, everything was kept in darkness and quiet to soothe her grief. And yet her grief was but a small part of what her proud spirit was suffering. To feel that this was so was almost more than she could bear.
After the first day she would indeed bear it no longer. She would permit no more of that obsequious tenderness which is given to sorrow, but got up and came forth to take her usual place in the house and fulfill her ordinary duties, refusing as much as she could the praises lavished upon her for her self-control and unselfishness and regard for others. She “bore up” wonderfully, everybody said; but Alicia, to do her justice, would have none of the applause which was murmured about her. “I did not expect my father would live forever,” she said, with a tone of impatience to her husband; “and to lie there and think everything over again, is that to be desired? I would rather feel I had some duty still and claims upon me.”
“Oh, many claims,” he said; “but you must not overtask your strength.”
She had no fear of overtasking her strength, but rather a feeling that if she could get to work—as her maid did, as the house-maids did, to prepare for her departure and the entry of the other family—that would be the thing which would do her good. After the funeral she came out in her deep mourning, out of the library, in which she had been spending that solemn hour, to meet the chief mourners when they returned. It would have pleased her better to have been chief mourner herself; but it had been said on all hands that it would be “too much for her.” So she had spent the time while the slowcortegewas winding along the country road and all the gloomy formulas were being fulfilled, by herself in the old man’s favorite room, where everything spoke of him, reading the funeral service over and over, thinking—now they will be there, and there; now arrived at the grave; now leaving him—beside theboys. It was that thought that brought the tears. Beside the boys! They had lain there for twenty years and more, but she could still shed tears for them; for all the rest her eyes were dry. And when the carriages came back she came out quite composed, though so pale, in all the solemnity of her mourning, covered with crape, to the drawing-room to receive them. She had bidden her husband to bring the new proprietor back with him, that everything might at once be said which remained to say. She gave her hand to Edward, who came forward to meet her, he too in deep mourning; but her eye went beyond him to “the boy” who stood behind, and whose slight young figure seemed to hold itself more erect, and with an air of greater self-belief than when she saw him last. What wonder! he was the heir.
“I wanted to see you,” she said. “Gerald will have told you—that everything might be put at once on the footing we wish it to be.”
“I told you, Alicia, that your cousin would not hurry you. He is as anxious as I am that you should have no trouble. We have talked it all over—”
“Why shouldn’t I have trouble?” she said. “There is no reason in the world for sparing me my share of the roughness. I am better so. Edward, if you should wish to get possession soon, you and your wife, you may be sure I will put no obstacles in your way.”
“I wish you would believe that we have no wish, no desire. We want you to act exactly as may suit you best—to consider yourself still in your own house.”
“That is impossible,” she said, quickly; “mine it is not, nor ever was; and now that he is gone who was its natural master—I know perfectly well how considerate you will be. What I am expressing is my own wish—not to be in your way—not to put off your settling down. You have a large family—you will want to settle everything.”
At this Sir Edward began to clear his throat, and it took him some time to get out the next words.
“Alicia,” he said, “we have been thinking a great deal about it, my wife and I.”
“Yes, you must naturally have thought about it. Mrs. Penton”—here the speaker paused, grew red, hesitated a little, and then went on—“she must wish to have everything decided about the removal, and to know what furniture will be wanted, and a great deal besides. If you would like to bring her to see for herself, and judge what is necessary—I hope you understand me—my husband and I will give every facility.”
“My dear, your cousin knows all that,” said Russell Penton, not without impatience.
“It was something else I wanted to say. My wife—is a woman of great sense, Alicia.”
Mrs. Russell Penton made a slight bow of assent. She had nothing to do with his wife. She did not like to hear of her at all, the woman who was now Lady Penton, and yet was a woman of no account, an insignificant mother of a family. This description, which the person to whom it belongs is generally somewhat proud of, is often to women without that distinction a contemptuous way of dismissing an individual of whom nothing else can be said. Edward Penton’s wife was no more than that. Sense! Oh, yes, she might have sense, so far as her brood and its wants were concerned.
“She always thought—an opinion which, however, she did not express till very lately, and in which I did not agree—that this house, which you and my poor uncle kept up so splendidly—”
Alicia gave an impatient wave of her hand. She could not see why Sir Walter should be called poor because he was dead.
“Yes,” said Sir Edward, “it has been splendidly kept up; nothing could be more beautiful, or in better taste. You always had admirable taste, Alicia; and my poor dear uncle—”
“Don’t,” she cried; “what is it you want to say? I beg your pardon, Edward, if I am impatient. For Heaven’s sake come to the point.”
“I know,” he said, with a compassionate look, “grief is irritable. My wife has always been of opinion that for us, with our large family, the possession of Penton would be no advantage. We could not keep it up as it has been kept up. The entailed estates by themselves are not—you must have a little patience with me, my dear Alicia, or I never can get out what I have to say.”
She seated herself with a sigh of endurance. All this was intolerable to her. She wanted nothing to be said, but simply that she should go away, who no longer could keeppossession, and that they who had the right should come in—no struggle about it, not a word said, not a lament on her side, and if possible not a flourish of trumpets on theirs—at least, not anything that she should hear. It was like Edward to maunder on, though he must have known that she could not endure it. And his wife with her sense! But an appearance of dignity must be kept up, and she must, she knew, hear out what he had to say.
“Go on,” said Russell Penton, “you can understand that she is not able for very much.” And he came and stood by the back of his wife’s chair with his usual undemonstrative self-forgetfulness, full of sympathy for her, though he did not approve of her—all of which things she knew.
“It comes to this,” said Edward Penton, a little confused in his story; “I did not agree with her at all. When we entered into the negotiations—which have come to nothing—I did it without any heart. It was only on the morning I spent here, you know, the morning that—it was only then I perceived that my wife was right. We have talked it over since, Alicia, and I have a proposal to make you. If you like to remain—”
She got up from her chair suddenly, clinching her hands in impatience. “No, no, no,no,” she cried, almost violently, “I want to hear nothing more about it. There is nothing, nothing more to say.”
“If you would but hear me out, Alicia! this that I’m speaking of would really be a favor to us. We have not the means to keep it up. We have things to think of, of far more importance than the gardens and glass and all that. We have our children to think of. The house is a great deal to you—and—and it’s something to me that know it so well; but to them—to them it doesn’t matter,” he said, with a sort of contempt for the Pentons who were only half Pentons though they were his children. “I would rather a great deal you kept it and lived in it, and remained as you have been.”
There was a curious little by-play going on in the meantime. Walter listened to his father with consternation, moving a step nearer, looking on eagerly as if desiring to interfere in his own person—while over the face of Russell Penton there came a shade of anxiety, suspense, and annoyance. He was sufficiently calm to put out his handkeeping Walter back; but he was no longer a mere spectator of the interview. Alarm was in his face; he had thought he had escaped, and here was the chain again ready to drag him back. Sir Edward turned to him at the end of his little speech with a direct appeal, “Speak to her, Russell; I make the offer in a friendly spirit. There’s nothing behind,” he said.
“That I am sure of, but it is for Alicia to answer. She must decide, not me.”
“I have decided,” said Mrs. Penton, with something like suppressed passion. “No; if it had been mine I should have been glad, why should I deny it? I was born here. I like it better than any other place in the world. But there are some things more important than even the house in which one was born. Go back to your wife, Edward, and tell her I dare say she understands many things, but me she doesn’t understand. To owe my house to your civility and hers, to hold it at your pleasure, no, no—a thousand times. Perhaps you mean well—I will say I am sure you mean well; but I couldn’t do it. Gerald, there’s been enough of this, I should like to go away.”
Over Russell’s face there shot a gleam of satisfaction; but he did not let it appear in what he said. “Alicia, you must not be hasty. Your cousin can mean nothing but kindness. Let me tell him you will think of it. He does not want an immediate answer. You might be sorry after—”
“Gerald! it is not a thing you have ever wished.”
“No, I am like your cousin’s wife,” he said, with a slight laugh. “But what has that to do with it? It is for you to judge; and you might repent—”
She cast a glance round the stately room, with all the beautiful furniture so carefully chosen to enhance and embellish it. Can one help the hideous thoughts that against one’s will come into one’s mind? Swift as lightning there flashed before her a picture of what it would be—the pictures gone, the rich carpets, in which the foot sunk, the hangings of satin and velvet—and the whole furnished as an upholsterer would do it, called in in a hurry, and kept to the lowest possible estimate; and then the children of all ages, rampant, running over everything. She saw this in her imagination, and with it at the same instant felt a shrinking of horror from the desecration, and a horriblemomentary exultation. Yes, exultation! over the difference, over the contrast. It was better so; the stateliness and splendor must sink with her reign. With the others, her supplanters, would come in squalor, pettiness, all the unlovely details of poverty. It gave her a sense almost of guilty pleasure that the contrast should be so marked beyond all possibility of mistake.
“No,” she said, with forced composure, “I shall not repent. This chapter of life is over. It has been long, far longer than is usually permitted to a woman. I shall not interfere with you, Edward; it is your place, and you must take it. Good-bye; it was only to tell you that no hinderance should be raised on my part—that as soon almost as you please—as soon as it is possible—”
“There was something else, Alicia, you meant to say.”
“What else?” Her eyes followed her husband’s to where Walter stood; then a sudden flush covered her pale face. “Yes, that is true—it is concerning your son. Mr. Rochford will give you the papers, and my husband will explain. My father had an idea, I can not think how it arose; but he had an idea, and it is my business to carry it out.”
“Then is this all?” cried Edward Penton; for his part, he was not even curious as to what had been done for Walter. He almost resented it as she did. “Is this all? You will not allow us to offer—you will not listen. After all, if I am my poor uncle’s successor I am still your cousin, Alicia. It is not my fault.”
“It is no one’s fault,” she said.
“And we all feel for you. Even were it a sacrifice we should be glad to make it. My wife—”
Mrs. Russell Penton rose hurriedly. “You are very kind,” she said. “Good-bye, Edward; I have had a great deal to try me, and I don’t think I can bear any more.”
She hurried out of the room as the servant came in with a message. She could not bear to hear the new title, and yet how could she avoid hearing it? Sir Edward—it was in her ears all the time. And when her husband had said in that cumbrous way, “your cousin’s wife,” there had passed through her mind the “Lady Penton” which he would not say, which she could not say, which seemed to choke her. Lady Penton, her mother’s name! And it was all perfectly just and right. This was what made it so intolerable. They had a right to the name. They had a right tothe position. And nothing could be more wretched, envious, miserable than the exasperation in her soul.
Everythingwas very quiet at the Hook on the funeral day; all the blinds were drawn down, even those which could be seen only from the garden and the river, and Mrs. Penton—nay, Lady Penton, though she did not easily fall into the title, and, indeed, until Sir Walter was buried scarcely felt it right to bear it—had quite a little festival of mourning all to herself with the girls, who had no inclination to gainsay her. They knew nothing of the vagaries of girls of the present epoch, and it never occurred to them to go against anything she proposed or to doubt its propriety, though if there was an absurd side to it they saw that too later on, and made their little criticisms, no doubt, with little jokes to each other, not to be ventilated till long, long after. There is perhaps a natural liking in the feminine heart for all those little exhibitions of importance which the great crises of life make natural. To stand in the privileged position of those who are immersed in sorrow, yet not to be immersed in sorrow; to have all the consequence which is derived from fresh mourning and nearness to “a death;” yet to have the heart untouched, and no real trouble in it—this is something which pleases, which almost exhilarates in a somber way. It is so good to think that the death is not one which touches us, that we are only lightly moved by it, sitting in a voluntary gloom to please ourselves and compliment the other, not in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Lady Penton in her way enjoyed all this, especially after her husband had gone. She put on her mourning, and made the girls dress themselves in the black frocks which had just come home, and then sitting down in the midst of them she too read the funeral service. It was very soothing, she said—all the more that she had so little real need of being soothed. The girls were full of awe and acquiescence; the new thought that some one had died, though it was only an old man, touched them, and the idea of all his death would bringabout increased the subduing, half-compunctious sentiment. It was not their fault that he had died, yet they seemed somehow involved in it—almost to blame.
Little Mab put on a black frock also, though she had no intention of going into mourning, and made one of the little audience to whom the mother read the burial service. She was the spectator amid the group who felt themselves more immediately concerned, and it was all very strange to her—almost droll, it must be allowed. She was not wise enough to see how far the sentiment was real, and sprung out of the confused emotions of this critical period, and she was too sympathetic to pronounce that it was all false, which to a little woman of the world would have been the reasonable thing. She did not, in fact, at all understand these innocent people, though they were so easily understood. Her education made her look for motives in what they did; and they had no motives, but acted on the simple instinct of nature. Her keen little blue eyes, which were so child-like and full of laughter, scintillated with interest and the endeavor to understand. It was all so strange to her, so novel—the large family, the homely living, the community of feeling, everybody moving together, which was puzzling beyond description. She had seen so much of the world in her wealthy orphanhood, even though she was so young, that a sphere so simple and action so single-minded, were altogether beyond her understanding. She kept looking out for the secret, the rift within the lute, the point at which this unanimity would break up, but it did not appear. She had been taught a great deal about fortune-hunting, and the necessity of taking care of herself, and she had heard those side-whispers of society which can not escape the ears even of children—those insinuations of evil underneath and selfishness always rampant. She would not have been surprised had she found that Ally and Anne had schemes of their own, or their mother some deep-laid plan which nobody suspected. And when she found that there was nothing of the sort—so far, at least, as her keen inspection could find out—Mab was far more puzzled than if she had made any number of discoveries. There was but one particular in which she felt that there might be an opening into the unknown, and that was Walter—not, however, in the way in which she had been prepared for delinquency. He paid no attention to herself,neither did any of the others make the faintest effort to put them in each other’s way. There was certainly no fortune-hunting in the case. But Mab felt that Walter’s absences were not for nothing. She was astonished in her premature wisdom that no one took any note of them or seemed to mind. Perhaps there was a little pique in her soul. She had been interested in Walter, but he had shown no interest in her. She could not but think he would be much better employed making himself agreeable to the heiress whom fortune had thrown in his way than in involving himself in some clandestine love-making, which she felt sure was the case—some entanglement probably in the village, to which he seemed always to be going. What could be more silly? Mab had a strong practical tendency, perhaps drawn from the father who had made his own way so effectively. She felt vexed with Walter for this throwing away of his chances. Looking at the subject with perfect impartiality, she could not but feel that a young man coming into an encumbered property—or, at least, what was just the same as an encumbered property—to neglect the fortune which, for anything he knew, lay ready to his hand, was a mingled weakness and absurdity of the most obvious description. She did not enter into the question whether she herself would be disposed to assent or not. That was her own business, and not his. But that he should be so blind as not to try! And in the meantime she observed them all with wonder, and looked at their grave faces when they put themselves thus in sympathy with old Sir Walter’s burial with a little cynical disposition to laugh, which it took her some trouble to restrain.
It was amusing—it might even be said ridiculous—when Lady Penton, the little ceremonial being over and an hour or so of quiet having elapsed, drew up all the blinds again solemnly with her own hands, going from window to window.
“They will have got back to Penton by this time,” she said, in a tone perceptibly more cheerful. “You can tell Mary to take the children out for their walk; by this time it will be all over. And the affairs of life must go on, whatever happens,” she added, with a little sigh.
The sigh was for the trouble over, the cheerfulness for the life to come. They were both quite simple and true. She herself took a little walk afterward, still with muchgravity, round the garden, in which Mab, in her character as a philosophical observer, took pains to accompany her.
“But you never knew Sir Walter Penton, did you?” she asked.
“Yes, I knew him, but not well. We went there a few times when we were newly married. After the death of the sons they rather turned against Edward. It was a pity, but I never blamed them.”
“Why should they have turned against him? it was not his fault.”
“My dear,” said the gentle woman, quietly, “you are not old enough to understand.”
Mab looked at her with those keen little eyes, which twinkled and sparkled with curiosity, and which to the little girl’s own apprehension were able to look through and through all those simple people. But even Mab was daunted by this gentle and undoubting superiority of experience.
Lady Penton resumed quietly, speaking more to herself than to her companion, “I hope she will not feel it now—not too much to listen. I hope she may not prove more proud than ever.”
She shook her head as she went slowly along, and Mab could not divine what she was thinking. They went together to the bench under the poplar-tree, where the weathercock which was over the Penton stables caught the red gold of the westering sun, and blazed so that it looked like a sun itself, stretching brazen rays over the dark and leafless woods.
“Do you think she could be happy living anywhere else?” Lady Penton said at last.
“She—who? Do you mean Aunt Gerald? Oh, yes, to be sure, when she knows it isn’t hers. And my uncle hates it.”
“Your uncle!” Lady Penton repeated. And then she said, after a time, “I don’t think she could be happy in any other house.”
But what was meant by this, or whether the new mistress of Penton was glad that her predecessor should suffer, or if these words were said in sympathy, was what little Mab could not understand. She had to betake herself to an investigation of the sentiments of the others. It began a new chapter in her investigations when at last Sir Edwardand his son appeared in their sables, both very grave and preoccupied. The father went into the house with his wife; the son joined the youthful group about the door. But no one could be more unwilling to communicate than Walter proved himself. He stood like a hound held in and pulling at the leash—like a horse straining against the curb. (“If you were to give him his head how he would go!” Mab said to herself.) But he did not break loose as she expected him to do. Impatient as he was, he stood still, with now and then a glance at the western sky. The sunset was a long time accomplishing itself. Was that what he was so impatient for?
“I suppose there was a wonderful crowd of people, Wat?”
“Yes, there were a great many people.”
“Everybody—that was anybody—”
“Everybody, whether they were anybody or not.”
“And were there a great many flowers? and did our wreath look nice? was it as big as the others?”
“There were heaps of flowers; ours didn’t show one way or another. How could you expect it among such a lot?”
“But you were the chief mourners, Wat!”
“Yes, we were the chief mourners. I wish you wouldn’t ask me so many questions. Just because we were the chief mourners I saw next to nothing.”
“Did Cousin Alicia go?”
“How do you suppose she could go—to have all those people staring?”
“But did you see her?—did you see anybody? Did father say—”
“Oh, don’t bother me,” Walter cried. “Don’t you see I have enough to think of without that!”
“What has he to think of, I wonder?” said Mab to herself, gazing at him with her keen eyes. But the girls were silent, half respectful of the mysterious unknown things which he might now have to think of, half subdued by the presence of the looker-on, before whom they could not let it be supposed that Wat was less than perfect. And presently, after moving about a little, saying scarcely anything, he disappeared in-doors. Was it to the book-room, to look over his Greek? or was it to steal out by the other door and hurry once more to the village? It was there Mab felt surethat he always went. To the village—meaning doubtless to some girl there, of whose existence nobody knew.
Sir Edward took his wife in-doors, solemnly leading her by the hand, and when they got to the book-room he put a chair for her solemnly. Already his old breeding—too fine for the uses of every day at the Hook—began to come back to him.
“I have not been successful,” he said, “It will not do.”
“It will not do? She won’t take it from you, Edward?”
“There is no reason why she shouldn’t take it from me; but she will not hear of it. I have done all I could, my dear. There is nothing more possible. We can go in when we like; they will put no obstacles in our way.”
“Go in when we like—and how are we to furnish Penton?” she cried.
“And keep it up,” he said, with a groan; “there are literally acres of glass—and to see the gardeners going away in the evening it is like a factory. But we can not help it. I have done my best. By the bye,” he added, in something of his old aggrieved tone, “they have behaved what I suppose will be called very handsomely in another way. I told you my uncle’s fancy about Walter—they have given him ten thousand pounds.”
“What?” she said, almost with a scream.
“Walter—he took my uncle’s fancy; didn’t I tell you? He is to have ten thousand pounds. It’s a good sum, but nothing to them; they are very rich; what with all the savings of the estate, and the money in the funds, and the lands elsewhere that are out of the entail, Alicia’s very rich. They can afford it; but all the same, it’s a nice sum.”
“Ten thousand pounds,” she repeated to herself. She had not remarked the rest. A sort of consternation of pleasure overwhelmed her. “It is very good of them, Edward, oh, very good. Why, Walter will be independent. Ten thousand pounds! Oh, dear me, what a good that would have done us—how much we should have thought of it! Ten thousand pounds! And what does he say?”
“Nothing, so far as I remarked. I was not thinking of him,” said Sir Edward, with a little impatience. He had so much to think of in respect to the family at large and all the cares of the new life, that he was a little annoyed to have Walter thrust into the front at such a moment. “Of course it is a great thing for him,” he said. “It wouldhave been a great thing for us at this moment to have command of a sum of money. My uncle might have thought of that. He might have thought that to change our style of living as we shall be obliged to do, to set up an establishment on a totally different scale, to alter everything, a little ready money would have been a great help; whereas Walter has no use for it, no need of it, a boy of twenty. But there is no limit to the fantastic notions of old men with money to leave.”