SOON after the day when this discussion was carried on among the woods of Penton over their heads, the family at Penton Hook were holding a sort of committee of ways and means in their damp domain below. The winter afternoon was clear and bright, and the river ran in deceitful brightness round the half-circle of the little promontory. It was not of itself at all a disagreeable house. If it had not been that the mud and wetness of the garden paths, where the water seemed to well up even through the gravel, made every footstep mark the too bright blue and brown tiles in the hall, and gave it a sloppy and disorderly look, the entrance itself might have been pretty enough; but there had been no attempt made to furnish or utilize it, and there were tracks of glistening steps across it in different directions to the different doors, all of which opened out of the hall. And the drawing-room was a well-sized, well-shaped room, with three or four windows; a room of which, with a little money and taste, something very pretty might have been made. But the windows were turned to the north, and the furniture was bare and worn; the walls and the carpets and curtains had all alike faded into a color which can only be described as being the color of poverty. The pattern was worn and trodden out upon the carpet; it was blurred and dull upon the walls—everything was of a brownish, greenish, grayish, indescribable hue. The picttures on the walls seemed to have grown gray, too, being chiefly prints, which ran into the tone of the whole. The table at which Mrs. Penton (poor Mrs. Penton) sat with her work was covered with a woolen cover, the ground of which had been red with a yellow pattern; but it (perhaps mercifully) had faded, too. And as for the lady, she was faded like everything else. Her dress, like the room, had sunk into the color of poverty. There was nothing about her that was above the level of matter-of-fact dullness. She was darning stockings, and they were also indefinite in hue. Her hair, which had been yellow or very light brown, had lost its gloss and sheen. It was knotted behind in a loose knot, and might have been classical and graceful had it not suggested that this was the easiest way possible to dispose of those abundant locks. Her head was stooped over her work; her basket on the table was overflowing. She paused now and then, and looked up to make her observation when it was her turn, but not even for the sake of the family consultation could she intermit her necessary work. Nine pairs of stockings, not to speak of her own, are a great deal for a woman to keep in order. Her own were not much worn, for she walked very little. She was one of those women who are indolent by nature, yet always busy. Once seated at her work, stocking after stocking went through her hands, and holes as big as a half-moon got deftly, swiftly, silently filled up; but it cost her an effort to rise from her seat to go about her domestic business. She was indolent in movement, though so industrious; a piece of still life, though her hands were never idle. This was the kind of woman to whom, in his maturer judgment, the man who had once been Alicia Penton’s adorer had turned.
He was not far from her, seated in an elbow-chair, not an easy-chair, but an old-fashioned mahogany article with arms, upon which he reposed his elbows. His hands were clasped in front of him, and now and then, when he forgot himself, he twirled his thumbs. He bore a family likeness to Sir Walter Penton, having a high nose and long face; but he was not the same kind of man. Old Sir Walter at nearly eighty was firm and erect still, but Edward Penton was limp. He was prone to tumble down upon himself, so to speak, like a crumbling wall; to go sinking, telescoping into himself like a slippery mass of sand or clay. There was an anxious look in his countenance, contradicting the pretensions of that prominent feature, the nose, which looked aristocratic, his family thought, and did its best to look strong. It was the mouth that did it, some people thought, a mouth which was manifestly weak, with all kinds of uncompleted piteous curves about it, and dubious wavering lines. His lower lip would move vaguely from time to time, as though he were repeating something. He was dressed in knickerbockers and gaiters and a rough coat, as if he had a great deal to do out-of-doors. He might have been a gentleman farmer, or a squire with an estate to look after, or even a gamekeeper of a superior kind; but he was nothing of all these. He was only a man who lived in the country, and had nothing to do, and had to walk about, as it were, for daily bread.
On the corner of the table, not far from Mrs. Penton, sat, with his legs swinging loosely, a younger, a quite young man; indeed, poor Wat did not know that he was a man at all, or realize what he was coming to. He was the eldest son. That did not seem to say very much, considering the character of the house, and the manner of life pursued in it, but it sounded a great deal to them, for young Walter was the heir intail male. He was the representative of all the Pentons, the future head of the family. He thought a great deal of his position, and so did the family. In time Penton would be his, the stately old house, and the title would be his which his ancestors had borne. The young man felt himself marked out from his kind by this inheritance. He was humble enough at present, but he had only to go on living, to wait and keep quiet, and he must be Sir Walter Penton of Penton in the end. He felt greater confidence in this than his father did who came before him. Mr. Penton did not look forward to the baronetcy for his part with much enthusiasm. It did not rouse him from his habitual depression. Perhaps because care was so close and so constant, perhaps because he had come to an age which expects but little from any change. He did not feel that to become Sir Edward would do much for him, but even he felt that for Wat it was a great thing.
The other two people in the room were the two girls; that was all that anybody ever said of them. They were scarcely even distinguished by name the one from the other; you could scarcely say they were individuals at all; they were the two girls. The children were apt to run their two names into one, and call them indiscriminately—Ally-Anne. Whether it was Ally or whether it was Anne who came first did not matter, it was a generic title which belonged to both. And yet they were not like each other. Ally had been called Alicia, after her relation at Penton, who was also her godmother, but at Penton Hook life was too full for so many syllables. They never got further than Alice in the most formal moments, and Ally was the name for common wear. Anne bore her mother’s name, but Mrs. Penton was Annie, whereas the girl preferred the one tiny syllable which expressed her better; for Anne, though she was the youngest, had more fiber in her than all the rest put together; but description is vain in face of such a little person. Her sister, though the eldest, was the shadow and she the substance, and no doubt it was one of the subtle but unconscious discriminations of character which the most simple make unawares, which led the little ones to call whichever individual of this pair appeared by the joint name.
“I shall always say, Edward, that you ought to have your share now,” said Mrs. Penton in a soft, even voice, never lifting her eyes from her work, but going on steadily like a purling stream; “you have more to do with it than Mr. Russell Penton, who never can succeed to anything; you ought to have your allowance like any other heir.”
“I don’t know why I should have an allowance,” said Mr. Penton, with a voice in which there was a certain languid irritation; “I have always held my own, and I shall always hold my own. And besides, Sir Walter does not want me to have the land; he would rather a great deal that it went to—Russell Penton, as you call him, though he has no right to our name.”
“But that can’t be,” cried young Wat, “seeing that I—I mean you, father, are the heir of entail.”
“It might be,” said Mr. Penton, going on with his tone of subdued annoyance, “if the law was changed; and one never knows in these revolutionary times how soon the law might be changed. It has been threatened to be done as long as I can remember. Primogeniture and the law of entail have been in every agitator’s mouth; they think it would be a boon to the working-man.”
“How could it be a boon to the working-man? What have we got to do with the working-man? What does it matter to him who has the property? it could not come to him anyhow,” cried Wat, with great energy, coloring high, and swinging his legs more than ever in the vehemence of personal feeling. It is all very well to talk of political principles, but when the question involves one’s self and one’s own position in the world, the argument is very much more urgent and moving. Young Walter was rather a revolutionary in his own way; he was of the class of generous aristocrats who take a great interest in the working-man; but there is reason in all things, and he did not see what this personage had to do with his affairs.
“Oh, I don’t know, there is no telling; they might be made to think it would do them good somehow. It has always been a favorite thing to say. At all events, you know,” Mr. Penton continued, with his mild disgust of everything, “it could not do them any harm. Primogeniture has always been a sort of thing that makes some people foam at the mouth.”
“My dear Edward!” cried Mrs. Penton; she almost looked up from her work, which was a great thing to say; and when this mild woman said, “My dear Edward,” it was the same thing as when a man says “By Jove,” or “By George.” In the gentle level of her conversation it counted as a sort of innocent oath. “My dear Edward! how could they abolish primogeniture? which so far as I know is just the Latin way of saying that one of your children is born before the other. Isn’t it, Wat? Well, I always thought so. The Radicals may get to be very powerful, but they can’t make you have your children all in a heap at the same time.”
“But they can make it of no importance which is born first; that is what it means,” said Mr. Penton. “They would have the children all equal, just the same; whether it is little Horry or Wat there who thinks himself such a great man.”
“Well, so they are all the same,” said the mother, a little bewildered. “I often wonder how it is that people can make favorites, for I am sure I could not say, for my part, which of them all I liked best. I like them all best—Horry because he is the littlest, and Wat because he is the biggest, and all the rest of them for some other reason, or just for no reason at all. And so, I am sure, Edward, do you.”
“In that way Wat would be no better than any of the rest,” said Anne.
“I should have no call to do anything for you,” said the young man, with an uncomfortable laugh. “It would be every one for himself. There would be no bother about little sisters or brothers either. On the whole, it would be rather a good bargain, don’t you think so, mother? Horry and the others must all shift for themselves when there is no eldest son—”
This time Mrs. Penton really did lift her soft eyes. “Don’t say such wicked things!” she said; “it is going against Scripture. As if anything could change you from being the eldest son! Who should look after the children if your father and I were to die? Oh, Wat! how can you speak so?—when it is just my comfort, knowing how uncertain life is, that the eldest is grown up, and that there would be some one to take our place, and take care of all these little things!”
Mrs. Penton had no mind for politics, as will be perceived, but the vision of the little orphans without an elder brother struck her imagination. This picture of unnatural desolation brought the tears warm to her eyes. She took another view of primogeniture from that which is familiar to discussion, and it was some time before they could explain it to her and get her calmed and soothed. Indeed, as to explaining it, that was never accomplished; but when she fully knew that her first-born did not cast off all responsibility in respect to little Horry she was calm.
“I don’t pretend to understand politics,” she said, with great truth, “but I know nature,” which perhaps was not quite so true.
Mr. Penton was not at all moved by this little digression, he took no notice of the argument between the mother and the children. He was a man who inclined to the opinion that things were badly managed in this world, and that those who meant to do well had generally a hard fight. He thought that on the whole the worst people had the best of it, and that a man like himself, struggling to do as well as he could for his children, and to live as well as he could, and do his duty generally, was surrounded by hinderances and drawbacks which never came in the way of less scrupulous people. Such an opinion as this often fills a man with indignation and something like rage, but it did not have this effect upon Mr. Penton. It gave him a general sense of discouragement, a feeling that everything was sure to go against him; but it did not make him angry. Instead of pointing, as the Psalmist did, with wonder and indignation to the wicked who flourished like a green bay-tree, he was more disposed to regard this spectacle with a melancholy smile as the natural course of affairs. One might have known that was how it would be, his look said. And he was rather apt perhaps to identify himself as the righteous man who had no such good fortune to look for. He had followed his own train of thoughts while the others talked, and now he went on continuing the subject. “We never can tell,” he said, “one day from another what changes may be made in the law. Sir Walter is an old man, and it doesn’t seem as if there could be any changes in his time; but still a craze might get up, and the thing might be done all in a moment, which has been threatened ever since I can recollect. So I hope none of you will fill your heads with foolish thoughts of what may happen when Penton comes to me: for you see, for anything we know, it may never come to me at all.”
Having said this, he ceased twirling his thumbs, and rising up slowly cast a glance about him as if looking for his hat. He never brought his hat into the drawing-room, yet he always did this, just as a dog will try to scrape a hole in a Turkey carpet; and then Mr. Penton said, as if it was quite a new idea, “I think I’ll just take a little walk before tea.”
It was from an unusual quarter that the conversation was renewed. Ally, who was so like her mother, who had the same kind of light-brown hair shading her soft countenance, knotted low at the back of her head, the same fragile willowy figure and submissive ways, lifted up her head after the little pause that followed his exit, when they all instinctively listened, and followed him, so to speak, with their attention while he walked out of the house. Ally raised her head and asked, in a voice in which there was a little apprehension, “I wonder if father really thinks that; and what if it should come true!”
“Your father would not say it,” Mrs. Penton replied, always careful to maintain her husband’s credit, “unless he thought it, in a kind of a way. But, for all that, perhaps it may never happen. Things take a long time to happen,” she said, with unconscious philosophy. “We just worry ourselves looking for changes, and no change comes after all.”
“But such a thing might happen suddenly,” said Wat, thinking it necessary, in his father’s absence, to take up the serious side of the argument, “father is quite right in that. With all the extensions of the suffrage and that sort of thing, which you don’t understand, Ally, a change in the law that has been long talked about might happen in a moment. It all depends upon what turn things may take.”
“Then we may never go to Penton at all,” said Anne, jumping up and throwing her work into her mother’s large basket. “I have always been frightened for Penton all my life. It’s a horrid big chilly place that never would look like home. I like the little old Hook best, and I hope they will abolish primogeniture, or whatever you call it, and so Wat will have to do something and we shall all stay at home.”
“Anne! do you wish that your father should never come into his fortune,” her mother said, in a reproachful tone, “when you know his heart is set upon it? I am frightened myself sometimes when I think of the change of living, and having to give dinner-parties and all that; but when I think that Edward has never yet been in his right element, that he has never had the position he ought to have had—ah! for that I could put up with anything,” she said.