CHAPTER XVI.
THE PRIMROSE PATH.
WALTER PENTON had been the most satisfactory of sons and brothers. He had not rebelled much even against the discipline of reading aloud. He was only twenty, and there was nothing to do in the neighborhood of the Hook, especially in the evening, so that circumstances had helped to make him good. He had, to tell the truth, taken a great interest in the novels, so much as to be tempted often to carry off the current volume and see “how it ended” by himself, which the girls thought very mean of him. But very rarely, except in summer, or when there was some special attraction out-of-doors, had he declined to aid the progress of the pinafores, in his way, by reading. But lately he had not been so good. Perhaps it was because there was a moon, and the evenings had been particularly bright; but he had not asked the girls to share his walks, as formerly it had been so natural to do. Sometimes he did not come into the drawing-room at all after tea, but would intimate that he had “work” to do, especially now, when, if he were really going to Oxford, it was necessary for him to rub up his Greek a little. Nobody could say that this was not perfectly legitimate and in fact laudable; and though the ladies were disappointed they could make no complaint, especially as in the general quickening of the family life there was, for the moment, many things to talk of, which made reading aloud less necessary. For instance, on the evening of the day which they had spent in town there was no occasion for reading. The most exciting romance could not have been more delightful than the retrospect of that delightful day. They all went up together by the early train. Mr. Penton himself had said that he thought he might as well go too, and accompany Walter to the tailor’s, as that was a place in which ladies were inadmissable; and accordingly they parted at the railway, the mother and the girls going one way, and the father and his boy another—both parties with a sense of the unusual about them which made their expedition exhilarating. To spend money when you feel (and that for the first time) that you can afford it is of itself exhilarating, especially (perhaps) to women who have little practice in this amusement, and to whom the sight of the pretty things in the shops is a pleasure of a novel kind. It was a matter of very serious business indeed to the ladies, carrying with it a profound sense of responsibility. Two evening dresses, for a girl who had never had anything better than the simplest muslin! and a “costume” for morning wear of the most complete kind, with everything in keeping, jacket and hat and gloves. The acquisition of this could scarcely be called pleasure. It was too solemn and important, a thing the accomplishment of which carried with it a certain sensation of awe; for what if it should not be quite in the fashion? what if it should be too much in the fashion? too new, too old, not having received the final approval of those authorities which rule the world? Sometimes a thing may be very pretty, and yet not secure that verdict; or it may be mal porté, as the French say, worn first by some one whose adoption of it is an injury. All these things have to be considered: and when the purchasers are country people, ignorant people who do not know what is going to be worn! So that the responsibility of the business fully equaled its pleasantness, and it was only when the more important decisions were made, and the attention of the buyers, at too high a tension in respect to other articles, came down to the lighter and easier consideration of ribbons and gloves, that the good of the expedition began to be fully enjoyed. And then they all had luncheon together, meeting when their respective business was executed. Mr. Penton took them to a place which was rather a dear place, which he had known in his youth, when all the places he had known were dear places. It was perhaps, a little old-fashioned too, but this they were not at all aware of. And the lunch he had ordered was expensive, as Mrs. Penton had divined. She said as much to the girls as they drove from their shop to the rendezvous. She said, “I know your father will order the very dearest things.” And so he had; but they enjoyed it all the more. The extravagance itself was a pleasure. It was such a thing as had never happened in all their previous experience; a day in town, a day shopping, and then a grand luncheon and a bottle of champagne. “If we are going to be so much better off they may as well get the good of it,” Mr. Penton replied, in answer to his wife’s half-hearted remonstrance. For she too found a pleasure in the extravagance. Her protest was quite formal; she too was quite disposed for it once in a way—just to let them know, in the beginning of their mended fortune, what a little pleasure was.
And when they came home, bringing sugar-plums and a few toys for the little ones, they were all a little tired with this unusual, this extraordinary dissipation. After tea the pinafores did not make much progress; they were too much excited to care to go on with their reading. They wanted to talk over everything and enjoy it a second time more at their leisure. They had shaken off the sense of responsibility, and only felt the pleasure of the holiday, which was so rare in their life. Mr. Penton himself was seduced into making comparison of the London of which they had thus had a flying glimpse with the London he had known in the old days, and into telling stories of which somehow the point got lost in the telling, but which had been, as he said, “very amusing at the time;” while the girls listened and laughed, not at his stories so much as out of their own consciousness that it had all been “fun,” even the inconveniences of the day, and the prosiness of those inevitable tales. Mrs. Penton was the one who subsided most easily out of the excitement. But for a little look of complacence, an evident sense that it was she who had procured them all this pleasure, there was less trace in her than in any of the others of the day’s outing. She drew her work-basket to her as usual after tea. She was not to be beguiled out of her evening’s work; but she smiled as she went on with her darning, and listened to the father’s stories, and the saucy commentaries of the girls, with a happy abandonment of all authority in consideration of the unusual character of the day. The only thing that brought a momentary shadow over the party was that Walter was not there.
“There is no moon to-night, but Wat is off again for one of his walks. I wonder what has made him so fond of walks, just when we want him at home?” the girls cried. And then a little mist came over his mother’s eyes. She said, “Hush! he is probably at his Greek;” but whether she believed this or not nobody could say.
Walter, it need scarcely be said, was not at his Greek. He went up the road toward the village with long strides devouring the way, though there was no moon nor any visible inducement. The village was as quiet a spot as could be found in all England. The only lights it showed were in a few cottage windows, or glimmering from behind the great holly-bushes at the rectory; a little bit of a straggling street, with an elbow composed of a dozen little houses, low and irregular, which streamed away toward the dark and silent fields, with the church, the natural center, rising half seen, a dark little tower pointing upward to the clouds. There was scarcely any one about, or any movement save at the public-house, where what was quite an illumination in the absence of other lights—the red glow of the fire, and the reflection of a lamp through a red curtain—streamed out into the road, making one warm and animated spot in the gloom. Wat, however, did not go near that center of rustic entertainment. He stopped at a low wall which surrounded a cottage on the outskirts—a cottage which had once been white, and had still a little grayness and luminousness of aspect which detached it from the surrounding darkness. A few bristling dry branches of what was in summer a bit of hedge surrounded the low projection of the wall. Walter paused there, where there was nothing visible to pause for. The night was dark. A confused blank of space, where in daylight the great stretch of the valley lay, was before him, sending from afar a fresh breath of wind into his face, while behind him, in the nearer distance, shone the few cottage lights, culminating in the red glow from the Penton Arms. What did he want at this corner with his back against the wall? Nothing, so far as any one could see. He made no signal, gave forth no sound, save that occasionally his feet made a stir on the beaten path as he changed his position. They got tired, but Walter himself was not tired. Presently came the faint sound of a door opening, and a flitting of other feet—light, short steps that scarcely seemed to touch the ground—and then the gate of the little garden clicked, and, heard, not visible, something came out into the road.
“Oh, are you here again, Mr. Walter? Why have you come again? You know I don’t want you here.”
“Why shouldn’t you want me? I want to come; it’s my pleasure.”
The voice of the young man had a deeper tone, a manlier bass than its usual youthful lightness coming through the dark, and the great space and freedom of the night.
“It’s a strange pleasure,” said the other voice. “I should not think it any pleasure were I in your place. If even there was a moon! for people that are fond of the beauties of nature that is always something. But now it is so dark”—there seemed a sort of shiver in the voice. “The dark is a thing I can’t abide, as they say here.”
“For my part, I like it best. Come this way, where the view is, and you would think you could see it—that is, you can feel it, which is almost more. Don’t you know what I mean? The wind blows from far away; it comes from miles of space, right out of the sky. You could feel even that the landscape was below you from the feel of the air.”
“That is all very pretty,” she said, and this time there was the indication of a yawn in her tone, “but if it is only for the sake of the landscape, one can see that when it’s day, and feeling it is a superfluity in the dark. If that was all you came for—”
“I did not come for that at all, as you know. I came for—it would be just the same to me if there was no landscape at all, if it was a street corner—”
“Under a lamp-post! Oh, that is my ideal!” with a little clap of her hands. “What I would give to see a lamp again, a bright, clear, big light, like Oxford Street or the Circus! You think that is very vulgar, I know.”
“Nothing is vulgar if you like it. I should like lamp-posts too if they had associations. I saw plenty of them to-day, and I wished I could have had you there to take you for a walk past the shop windows, since you are so fond of them.”
“Oh, the shop windows! Don’t talk to a poor exile of her native country that she is pining for! So you were in town; and what did you see there?”
“Nothing,” said Wat.
“Nothing!—in London! You must be the very dullest, or the most obstinate, or prejudiced—Nothing! why, everything is there!”
“You were not there; that makes all the difference. I kept thinking all the time where I should have found you had you been in London. You never will tell me where you live, or how can I see you when you go back.”
“I am not going back yet, worse luck,” she said.
“But that is no answer. I kept looking out to-day to see if I could find any place which looked as if you might have lived there. The only place I saw like you was in Park Lane, and that, I suppose—”
“Park Lane!” she cried, with a suppressed laugh; “that was like old Crockford’s niece. I could receive all my relations then.”
“You are not old Crockford’s niece?”
“No, I told you—I am a heroine in trouble,” she said. Her laugh was perhaps a little forced, but if Walter observed that at all it only increased the interest and fascination of such a paradox as might have startled a wiser man. “And is town very empty?” she said. “But the streets will be gay and the shop windows bright because of Christmas—there is always a little movement before Christmas, and things going on. And to think that I shall see nothing—not so much as a pantomime—buried down here!”
“I thought most people came to the country for Christmas,” said Wat.
“Oh, the sw—; why shouldn’t I say it right out?—the swells you mean; but we are not swells in my place. We enjoy ourselves with all our hearts.”
“I am sorry you think it so dull in the country,” said poor Wat. “I wish you liked it better. If you had been brought up here, like me—but of course that is impossible. Perhaps when you get better used to it—”
“I shall never be used to it; I am on the outlook, don’t you know? for some one to take me back.”
“Don’t say that,” said Walter, “it hurts me so. I should like to reconcile you to this place, to make you fond of it, so that you should prefer to stay here.”
“With whom? with old Crockford?” she said.
Walter was very young, and trembled with the great flood of feeling that came over him. “Oh, if I had only a palace, a castle, anything that was good enough for you! but I have nothing—nothing you would care for. That is what makes it odious beyond description, what makes it more than I can bear.”
“What is more than you can bear?”
“Losing Penton,” cried the young man; “I told you. If Penton were still to be mine I know what I should say. It is not a cottage like Crockford’s, nor a poor muddy sort of place like the Hook. It is a house worthy even of such as you. But I am like the disinherited knight, I have nothing till I work for it.”
“That is a great pity,” she said; “I have seen Penton; it is a beautiful place. It seems silly, if you have a right to it, to give it up.”
“You think so too!” he cried; “I might have known you would have thought so; but I am only my father’s son, and they don’t consult me. If I had any one to stand by me I might have resisted—any one else, whose fortune was bound up in it as well as mine.”
“Yes: what a pity in that case that you were not married,” she said.
“I might be still,” cried Walter, with tremulous vehemence, “if you would have faith in me—if you would forget what I am, a nobody, and think what, with such a hope, I might be.”
“I!” there was a sound of mocking in the laughing voice; “what have I got to do with it? What would those great swells at Penton think if they knew you were saying such things to old Crockford’s niece.”
“It is they who have nothing to do with it,” he cried. “Do you think if you were to trust me that I should care what they—But oh, don’t, don’t call yourself so, you know it is not true; not that it matters if you were. You would to me, all the same, be always yourself, and that means everything that a woman can be.”
There was a pause before she replied, and her voice was a little softened. “They will never know anything about me at Penton, or anywhere else. I have come here in the dark; you have scarcely seen me in daylight at all, for all you are so silly.”
“Yes, a hundred times,” cried Walter. “Do you think you can go out that I don’t see you? I live about the roads since you have been here.”
“It is a pity,” she said, with a little sharpness, “that you have nothing better to do,” then, resuming her lighter tone, “If you don’t soon begin to do something a little more practical how are you ever to be—that somebody that you were offering to me?”
“It is true,” he said, “it is true; but don’t blame me. I am going to Oxford next month, and then, if I do not work—”
“To Oxford! But that’s not work, that’s only education,” she cried, with a faint mixture of something like disappointment in her voice.
“Education is work; it opens up everything. It gives a man a name. I have been kept back; but, oh, now, if you will say I may look forward—if you will say I may hope.”
“Look forward to what?” she said; “to come up here every evening, and invite me out to talk in the cold at the corner of old Crockford’s wall? I do not mind, for I’ve nothing else to amuse me now: and you have nothing else to amuse you, so far as I can see; but, presently I shall disappear like a will-o’-the-wisp, and what will you look forward to then?”
“That is what I say,” he said. “I feel it every day. You will go away, and what am I to do, where am I to find you? Every morning when I wake it is the first thing I think of—perhaps she may be gone, and not a trace, not an indication, left behind, not even a name.”
“Oh, it is not so bad as that. You know my name, but I tell you always it is a great deal better you should know no more, for what is the use? You are going to Oxford, where you will be for years and years before you can do anything. And at present you are the disinherited knight and I am a will-o’-the-wisp. Very well. We play about a little and amuse each other, and then you will ride off and I shall dance away.”
“No, no, no; for the sake of pity, if not for love—”
“What has a will-o’-the-wisp to do with these sort of things, or a young man at college? At college! it is only a school-boy a little bigger. Ride off, ride off, Sir Disinherited Knight; and as for me, it’s my part to go dancing, dancing away.”
And she was gone, disappearing with no sound but the little click of the gate, the pat of those footsteps which scarcely touched the ground, snatching from him the hand which he had tried to take, the hand which he had never yet been allowed to hold for a moment, he stood for a time at the corner of the wall, tantalized, tremulous, trying to persuade himself that she was not really gone, that she would appear again, a shadow out of the darkness. This was all he had seen of her except in distant glimpses, although their intercourse had gone so far. He was ready to pledge his life to her, and yet this was all he knew. Walter thought to himself as he went slowly down the hill, all thrilling with this interview, that never had there been a courtship before. He was proud of it, poor boy. There was something rapturous in its strangeness, in the fact that he did not even know her name, nothing but Emmy, which he had heard Martha call her. Emmy did not mean much, yet it was all he knew. He called her in his heart by names out of the poets—Una, Rosalind, Elaine. She was as much a creature of romance as any of them. He dreamed in those sweet dreams awake which are the privilege of youth, of seeing her flash out upon him from unimaginable surroundings, a princess, a peerless lady, something noble and great, something not to be put on the level of ordinary women. What she was doing in this cottage he scarcely asked himself—she who belonged to so different a sphere. But it was sweet to him to think that his love was so original, unlike that of any one else. His head was full of an intoxication of pleasure, of pride and wonder. Nobody had ever had such a story. Ah, if he had but Penton to take her home to! But anyhow he could conquer fortune for the sake of this sweet unknown.
This was how Walter spent his evenings while the others sat round the household lamp. He had the best of it. While Ally was thinking only of the visit to Penton, or at least of nothing else that she allowed even to herself, Wat, only two years older, felt himself standing on the threshold of an illimitable future, full of everything that was wonderful and sweet.