PENTON HOOK.
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.