NOTWITHSTANDING all 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 of her: 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 looked for 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 fortune lay 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 a gentleman 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, whose sudden 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 certain ease 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.