MRS. PENTON was in a condition of excitement such as had never been seen in her before. She could not lay down the letter. She could not speak. She went at length and seated herself in the high chair—in the chair which her husband occupied at any great domestic crisis, when a council of the whole family was called. As her usual seat was a low one, and her usual aspect anything but judicial, there was no change which could have marked the emergency like this. It was apparent that in Mrs. Penton’s mind a moment had arrived at which some important decision had to be come to, and for which she herself and not her husband was the natural president of the family council. The young ones were a little awed by this unusual proceeding. There was not a stocking, nor a needle, nor even a reel of cotton within reach of her. She had given herself up to the question in hand. It might be supposed that the decision about Penton, which she took her share in powerfully, while considering all the time how to do that darning, was as important a matter as could come within her ken; but in her own opinion the present issue was more exciting. She had taken that calmly enough, though with decision; but about this she was excited and anxious, scarcely able to restrain herself. The girls ran in, saying, “What is it, mother?” but she only motioned to them to sit down and wait; and it was not till Walter had followed with the same question that Mrs. Penton cleared her throat and spoke.
“It is a letter I have just had,” she said—“I have not even talked it over with your father. You were the first to be consulted, for it concerns you.”
And then she stopped to take breath, and slowly unfolded her letter.
“This,” she said, “is from Mrs. Russell Penton. It is an—invitation; for two of you: to go to Penton upon a visit—for three days.”
There was a joint exclamation—joint in the sense that the sound came all together, like a piece of concerted music, but each voice was individual. “An invitation—to Penton!” cried Anne. “From Cousin Alicia?” said Ally; and “Not if I know it!” Walter cried; from which it will be seen that the one quite impartial, and ready to consider the matter on its merits, was Anne alone.
“Don’t come to any hasty decision,” said Mrs. Penton, hurriedly; “don’t let it be settled by impulse, children, which is what you are so ready to do.”
“Surely,” said Walter, “when it’s a mere matter of amusement, impulse is as good a way of deciding as another. I say ‘Not if I know it,’ and that is all I mean to say.”
“And, unless you say I’m to go, mother, I think like Wat,” said Ally, with unusual courage.
“Children, children! In the first place it’s not amusement, and your cousin has never asked you before. She is a great deal richer, a great deal better off than we are. Stop a little, Ally and Wat. I don’t say that as if being rich was everything; but it is a great deal. You will meet better society there than anywhere else. And even though your father is going to part with Penton, you never can separate yourselves from it. We shall be called Pentons of Penton always, even though we never enter the house.”
“Mother,” said Wat, “you don’t feel perhaps as I do; that is the best of reasons why I should never enter the house. So long as I was the heir, if they had chosen to ask me it might have been my duty; but now—” cried Wat, his voice rising as if into a salvo of artillery. Unutterable things were included in that “now.”
“Now,” said his mother, “because we are giving up, because we are leaving the place, so to speak, it is now much more necessary than ever it was. Your cousins have done nothing that is wrong. They don’t mean to injure you; they are doing a very natural and a very sensible thing. Oh, I am not going to argue the question all over again; but unless you wish to insult them, to show that you care nothing for them, that their advances are disagreeable to you, and that you don’t want their kindness—”
“Mother,” said Walter, “not to interrupt you, that is exactly what I want to do.”
And Ally had her soft face set. It did not seem that the little face, all movable and impressionable, could have taken so fixed a form, as if it never would change again.
“You want to insult the people, Walter, who are, to begin with, your own flesh and blood.”
“Cousins—and not full cousins—are scarcely so near as that,” said Anne, with an air of impartial calm.
“To insult anybody is bad enough, if they were strangers to you—if they were your enemies. What can be nearer than cousins except brothers and sisters? I say Mrs. Russell Penton is your own flesh and blood, and I don’t think it is very nice of you, on a subject which I must know better than you do, to contradict me. Your father calls Sir Walter uncle. How much nearer could you be? And if you live long enough, Wat, you will be Sir Walter after him. In one sense it is like being grandson to the old gentleman, who lost his own sons, as you know well enough. And is it he you would like to insult, Wat?”
This made an obvious and profound impression. The audience were awed; their mutinous spirit was subdued. The domestic orator pursued her advantage without more than a pause for breath.
“I never knew the boys: but when I saw the Pentons first everybody was talking of it. Your father had never expected to succeed, oh, never! It was a tragedy that opened the way for him. They had no reason to expect that a young cousin, a distant cousin” (this admission was no doubt contradictory of what she had just said, but it came in with her present argument, and she did not pause upon that), “should ever come in. If they had hated the very sight of those who were to take the place of their own, who could wonder? I should if—oh, Wat, if it were possible that—Osy and you”—she paused a little—“I feel as if I should hate Horry even in such a case.”
The impression deepened, especially as she stopped with a low cry, to wring her hands, as if realizing that impossible catastrophe. Walter was entirely overawed. He saw the unspeakable pathos of the situation in a moment. Supposing Horry—Horry! should come in to be the heir, something having happened to Oswald and to himself!
“Don’t agitate yourself, mother,” he said, soothingly; “I see what you mean.”
“And yet you would like to insult these poor people, to refuse to see how hard it was for them, and what they have had to bear, oh, for so many years!”
Having thus broken down all opposition, Mrs. Penton made a pause, but presently resumed.
“And then from our side, children, there’s something to be said. I wish you to accept the invitation. I wish it because after all it’s your own county, and you’re of an age to be seen, and you ought to be seen first there. When all this is settled your father will be in a position to take you into society a little. We shall be able to see our friends. If I have never gone out, it has been for that—that I could not invite people back again. Now I may have it in my power more or less to do this. And I want you to be known—I want you to be seen and known. It is of great importance where young people are seen first. I can’t take you to court, Ally, which is the right thing, for we never were in circumstances to do that ourselves. And the next best thing is that you should be seen first in the house of the head of your family. Now all that is very important, and it has got sense in it, and you must now allow an impulse, a hasty little feeling, to get the better of what is sensible and reasonable—you must not indeed. It would be very unkind to me, very foolish for yourselves, very harsh and unsympathetic to the Pentons. And you have a duty to all these. To them? oh, yes, to them too, for they are your relations, and they are old, and though they are prosperous now, things went very badly with them. Besides, it would be as if you disapproved of what your father was doing and envied them Penton: which I suppose is the last thing in the world you would have them to see.”
“Disapproving father is one thing,” said Wat, “but all the rest I do, and I don’t care if they know it or not. Penton ought to be mine. You and my father don’t think so—at least you think there are other things more important.”
Mrs. Penton looked at her boy from her husband’s judicial chair with a mild dignity with which Wat was unacquainted.
“Penton would not be yours,” she said, “if Sir Walter were dead now. Would you like to step into what is your father’s, Wat? Would you like to say he is only to live five years or ten years because the inheritance is yours? Your father will probably live as long as Sir Walter. I hope so, I am sure. He is fifty now, and that would be thirty-five years hence. Would Penton be yours, or would you be impatient for your father to die?”
“Mother!” they all cried in one indignant outcry, the three together.
“It looks as if you meant that. You don’t, I know—but it looks like it. Sir Walter may just as well live ten years longer, and your father thirty years after that, so that you would be sixty before you succeeded to Penton. Is it so much worth waiting for? Is it worth while showing yourself envious, dissatisfied with what your father is doing, unkind to your relations, because, forty or fifty years hence, perhaps—”
Walter got up from his chair, as a man is apt to do when the argument becomes intolerable. “Mother,” he said, “you know very well that not one of those intentions was in my mind. I don’t want to become bosom friends with people who are injuring us for their own advantage; but as to wishing my father a single hour, a single moment less—or even Sir Walter—” the youth cried, with a break in his voice.
“Oh,” cried Anne, with impatience, “as if mother did not know that! Mother, the others are dreadfully unreasonable. I’ll go.”
Mrs. Penton paused a little and cleared her throat. “I am afraid you are just the one that is not asked. I dare say your cousin thinks that you are not out, Anne: and no more you are, my dear.”
“She is as much out as I am, and we have always said when we went anywhere we should go together. Mother, if you wish it, of course I’ll go.”
“And equally of course I will go too,” said Walter, somewhat indignant to be left out, “when my mother puts it like that.”
“Well, children dear,” said Mrs. Penton, sinking at once into an easier tone, “how could I put it otherwise? As long as you will go pleasantly and friendly, and make no reflections. It is such a natural thing, so right, so exactly what should be, both for them to ask and for you to accept. Well now,” she added, briskly, coming down from her high chair, drawing forward her own natural seat, putting out an accustomed hand for her work-basket—“now that this is all settled there are the preparations to think of. Walter, you must go up at once to your father’s tailor—to his grand tailor, you know, whom he only goes to now and then—and order yourself some new suits.”
“Some new suits!” they all cried, with widely opened eyes.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Penton, who never had been known to enter into any such schemes of extravagance before. “Indeed, we may all go to town together, for I must look after Ally’s things, and there is no time to be lost.”
“My—things, mother!” The plural in both cases was what petrified the young people, who had been used to get only what could not be done without.
“You must have a nice tweed suit for the morning, Wat, and some dress clothes, and your father will tell you whether you should get any other things for Oxford, for of course I am not an authority as to what young men require. And it is so long since I have seen anything that is fashionable,” said Mrs. Penton, “that I don’t really know even what girls wear. Girls are really more troublesome than boys, so far as dress is concerned. You can trust a good tailor, but as to what is exactly suitable to a girl’s complexion and style, and the details, you know—the shoes, and the gloves, and the fans, and all that—”
“Mother!” cried Ally. The girl was awe-stricken: pleasure had scarcely had time to spring up in her. She was overwhelmed with the glories which she had never realized before.
“Yes, my dear; there are a great many things involved in a girl’s toilet which you would never think of; the dress is not all, nor nearly all. I have been so long out of the world, I have not even seen what people are wearing; but it will be easy to get a few hints. And what if we make a day of it, and go to town all together? Anne shall come too, though Anne is not going to Penton. I don’t often allow myself a holiday,” said Mrs. Penton, with her hands full of pinafores, “but I think I must just do so for once in a way.”
The idea of this wonderful outing, which was much more comprehensible, besides being far more agreeable, than the visit to Penton, filled them all with pleasure. “For we know that will be fun!” said Anne. “Penton, I wish you joy of it, you two! You will have to be on your best behavior, and never do one thing you wish to do. I shall have the best of it—the day in town, and the shopping, which must be amusing, and to see everything; and then when you are setting out for Penton, and feeling very uncomfortable, I shall stay at home, and be the eldest, and be very much looked up to. Mother, when shall we go?”
“And oh, mother! how, how—”
“Is it to be paid for, do you want to know, Ally? My dear, we are going to have four times as much income as we ever had before. Think of that! And can you wonder I am glad? for I shall be able to do things for all of you that I never dared think of, and, instead of only having what you couldn’t do without—enough to keep you decent—I can now give you what is right for you and best for you. Oh, my dears, you can’t tell what a difference it makes! What is a place like Penton (which I never cared for at all) in comparison to being able to get whatever you want for your children? There is no comparison. It has not come yet, it is true, for the papers are not ready, but still it is quite certain. And I can venture to take you to town for a day, and we can all venture to enjoy ourselves a little. And I’m sure I am very much obliged to Mrs. Russell Penton for taking such a thing into her head.”
To this even the grumblers had nothing to say; even Wat himself, who perhaps was less impressed by the idea of two new suits from the tailor’s than his sisters were about their new frocks. A new suit of evening clothes can scarcely be so exciting to a boy as the thought of a ball-dress with all its ribbons and flowers and decorations, and those delightful adjuncts of shoes and gloves and fan all in harmony, is to a girl. Ally’s imagination was so startled by it that she could scarcely realize the thought in any practical way, and her enjoyment was nothing to Anne’s, who mapped it all out in her mind, and already began to suggest to her sister what she should have, with a perception which must have been instinct: since Anne had not even that knowledge of an evening party which any one of the maids who had assisted at such ceremonials might possess, though in a humble way. Martha, for instance, in her last place had helped to dress the young ladies when they were going out, and had got a glimpse of Paradise in the cloak-room when her former mistress had a ball. But alas! such possibilities had never come to Ally and Anne. They knew nothing about the fineries in which girls indulged. Anne, however, by intuition, whatever the philosophers may say, knew, never having learned. Perhaps she had got a little information to guide her out of novels, of which, in a gentle way, Mrs. Penton herself was fond, and which had opened vistas of society to the two girls.
“You must have a white, of course,” she said to her sister, “blues and pinks, and that sort of thing, may go out of fashion, but white never. Mother thinks you must have two.”
“We are only asked for three days,” cried Ally, “and that only means two evenings. Why should I have more than one dress for only two evenings?”
“Why, just for that reason, you silly!” cried Anne.
“Do you think mother would like to send you to Penton with just what was necessary, to make them think you had only one frock? Oh, no! If you were staying for a fortnight of course you would not want something different every night; but for two days—”
“I should much rather you had the second one, Anne.”
“I dare say! as if there was any question about me. I shall have what I require when my time comes. Don’t you know we are going to be well off now?”
“Oh, Anne! it is rather poor to think of being well off only as a way of getting new frocks.”
“It is a great deal more than that, of course, but still it is that too. It is nice to have new frocks when one wants them, instead of waiting and waiting till one can have the cheapest possible thing that will do. We have always had things that would do. Now we are to have what we require—what we like. I wish Wat and you, Ally, would see it as mother and I do. Perhaps it may be nice to be the chief people of one’s name, and be able to snub all the rest, even Cousin Alicia, but—”
“I never wished to snub any one, much less Cousin Alicia,” cried Ally, with indignation.
“That is really what it comes to. We wanted to be the grandest of the family, to be able to say to Mrs. Russell Penton, ‘Stand aside, you’re only a woman, and let Sir Edward walk in.’ And why should she be disinherited because she’s a woman? I am going in for women, for the woman’s side. I don’t believe father is as clever as she is. Oh, to be sure I like father a great deal better. How could you ask such a question? But he rather looks up to her; he is not so clever; he couldn’t set one down as she does, only by a look out of her eyes. No, no, no; a new frock when one wants it, and to go to town for the day, and even to the theater, or to have a dance at home—all that is far, far better than snubbing Cousin Alicia. But,” added Anne, with sudden gravity, “for you that have got to go and stay there, it is rather dreadful after all.”