THE YOUNG PEOPLE.
The young people at Penton Hook were good children on the whole. They
respected their father and their mother, and though they did not always
agree in every domestic decision, with that holy ignorance which
distinguishes childhood, they were not much less docile than the little
ones in respect to actual obedience. At seventeen and eighteen, much
more at twenty, a young soul has begun to think a little and to judge,
whether it reveals its judgment or not. Anne had her own opinions on
every subject by perversity of nature; and Wat, who was a man, and the
heir, took on many points a very independent view, and could scarcely
help thinking now and then that he knew better than his father. And even
Ally, who was the quietest, the most disposed to yield her own way of
thinking, still had a little way of her own, and felt that other ways of
doing things might be adopted with advantage. They were great friends
all three, each other’s chief companions: and among themselves they
talked very freely, seeing the mistakes that were being made about the
other children, and very conscious of much that might have been done in
their own individual cases. Wat, for example, had much to complain of in
his own upbringing. He had been sent for a year or two to Eton, and much
had been said about giving him the full advantage of what is supposed to
be the best education. But it had been found after awhile that the
infallible recurrence of the end of the half, and the bills that
accompanied it, was a serious drawback, and the annoyance given by them
so entirely outbalanced any sense of benefit received, that at sixteen
he had been taken away from school under vague understandings that there
was to be work at home to prepare him for the University. But the work
at home had never come to much. Mr. Penton had believed that it would be
a pleasant occupation for himself to rub up his Latin and Greek, and
that he would be as good a coach as the boy could have. But his Latin
and Greek wanted a great deal of rubbing up. The fashions of scholarship
had changed since his day, and perhaps he had never been so good a
scholar as he now imagined. And then it was inconceivable to Mr. Penton
that regularity of hours was necessary in anything. He thought that a
mere prejudice of school-masters. He would take Wat in the morning one
day, then in the afternoon, then miss a day or two, and resume on the
fifth or sixth after tea. What could the hours matter? It came about
thus by degrees that the readings that were to fit the young man for
matriculation failed altogether, and no more was said about the
University. Wat had no very strong impulse to work in his own person,
but when he came to be twenty and became aware that nothing further was
likely to come of it, he felt that he had been neglected, and that so
far as education was concerned he had not had justice done him. Had he
been a very intellectual young man, or very energetic, he would no
doubt have been spurred by this neglect into greater personal effort,
and done so much that his father would have been shamed or forced into
taking further steps. But Wat was not of this noble sort. He was not
fond of work; he had always seen his father idle; and it seemed to him
natural. So that he, too, fell into the way of lounging about, and doing
odd things, and taking the days as they came. They kept no horses, so he
could not hunt. He had not even a gun, nothing better than an old one,
which, now he was old enough to know better, he was ashamed to carry. So
that those two natural occupations of the rural gentleman were denied to
him. And it is not to be supposed that a boy could reach his
twentieth year without feeling that an education of this kind--a
non-education--had been a mistake. He knew that he was at a disadvantage
among his fellow-boys or fellow-men. Whether he would have felt this as
much had he been under no other disadvantages in respect to horses and
guns and pocket-money, we do not venture to say; but, taking everything
together, Wat could not but feel that he was manqué, capable of nothing,
having no place among his kind. And if he felt doubly in consequence the
importance of his heirship, and that Penton would set all right, who
could blame him? It was the only possibility in that poor little dull
horizon which at Penton Hook seemed to run into the flats of the level
country, the mud and the mist, and the rising river, and the falling
rain.
The girls had their little grievances, too, but felt Wat’s grievance to
be so much greater than theirs that they took up his cause vehemently,
and threw all their indignation and the disapproval of their young
intelligences into the weight of his. It was impossible that they could
be as they were, young creatures full of life and active thought,
without feeling what a mistake it all was, and how far the authorities
of the family were wrong. They subjected, indeed, the decisions of the
father and mother, but especially the father, as all our children do, to
a keen and clear-sighted inspection, seeing what was amiss much more
clearly than the wisest of us are apt to do in our own case. A little
child of ten will thus follow and judge a philosopher, perhaps
unconsciously in most cases, without a word to express its condemnation.
The young Pentons were not so silent. They spoke their mind, in the
perfect confidence of family intercourse, to their mother always,
sometimes to their father too. And no doubt in pure logic, this
criticism and disapproval should have dealt a great blow at the
discipline of the house, and destroyed the principle of obedience. But
fortunately logic is the last thing that affects the natural family
life. Wat and Ally and Anne were in reality almost as obedient as were
the little ones to whom the decisions of papa and mamma were as the law
and the gospels. It had never occurred to them to raise any standard of
rebellion; they did what they were told by sweet natural bonds of habit,
by the fact that they had always done it, by the unbroken sentiment of
filial subjection. The one thing did not seem to affect the other. It
never occurred even to Wat to stop and argue the point with his father;
he did what he was told, though afterward, when he came to think of it,
he might think that his own way would have been the most wise.
The conversation which is set down in the last chapter did not give any
insight into the family controversy that had been going on--being only,
as it were, the subsiding of the waves after that discussion had come to
an end. The subject in question was one which greatly moved and excited
all the young people. Oswald, the second boy, who came next in the
family after Anne, was the genius of the house. He was not much more
than fifteen, but he had already written many poems and other
compositions which had filled the house with wonder. The girls were sure
that in a few years Lord Tennyson himself would have to look to his
laurels, and Mr. Ruskin to stand aside; for Oswald’s gifts were
manifold, and it was indifferent to him whether he struck the strings of
poetry or the more sober chord of prose. Wat’s fraternal admiration was
equally genuine and more generous, for it is a little hard upon a big
boy to recognize his younger brother’s superiority; and it was dashed by
a certain conviction that it would be for Osy’s good to be taken down a
little. But Wat as much as the girls was agitated by the question which
had been, so to speak, before a committee of the whole house. It was a
question of more importance at Penton Hook than the fate of the ministry
or the elections, or anything that might be going on in Europe. It was
the question whether Osy should be continued where he was, at
Marlborough, or if his education should be suspended till “better
times.” Behind this lay a darker and more dreadful suggestion, of which
the family were vaguely conscious, but which did not come absolutely
under discussion, and this was whether Osy’s education should be stopped
altogether, and an “opening in life” found for him. Nothing that had
ever happened to them had moved the family so much as this question. The
“better times” which the Pentons looked forward to could be nothing
other than the death of Sir Walter and Mr. Penton’s accession to the
headship of the family; and it was in the lull of exhaustion that
followed a long discussion that Mrs. Penton made her suggestion about
the propriety of an allowance being made to her husband as the heir of
the property, which had led him into the expression of those general but
discouraging ideas about entails and primogeniture. It had not perhaps
occurred to Mr. Penton before; but now he came to think of it it seemed
just of a piece with the general course of affairs, and of everything
that had happened to him in the past, that new laws should come in at
the moment and deprive him in the future of the heirship of which he had
been so sure.
When Mr. Penton went out for his walk after the statement he had made of
these possibilities, Wat and the girls went out too, on their usual
afternoon expedition to the post. There was not very much to be done at
Penton Hook, especially at this depressing time of the year when tennis
was impracticable and the river not to be thought of. The only amusement
possible was walking, and that is a pleasure which palls--above all when
the roads are muddy and there is nowhere in particular to go to. It was
Anne, in the force of her youthful invention, who had established the
habit of going to the post. It was an “object,” and made a walk into a
sort of duty--not the mere meaningless stroll which, without this
purpose, it would turn to; and though the correspondence of the
household was not great, Anne also managed that there should always be
something which demanded to be posted, and could not be delayed. When
there was nothing else she would herself dash off a note to one of the
many generous persons who advertise mysterious occupations by which
ladies and other unemployed persons may earn an income without a
knowledge of drawing or anything else in particular. Alas! Anne had
answered so many of these advertisements that she was no longer
sanguine of getting a satisfactory reply; but if there was no letter to
be sent off, nothing of her father’s about business, no post-card
concerning the groceries, or directions to the dress-maker, or faithful
family report from Mrs. Penton to one of her relations, such as, amid
all the occupations of her life, that dutiful woman sent regularly, Anne
could always supply the necessary letter from her own resources. It was
on a similar afternoon to that on which the Pentons at the great house
had discussed and thought of the poorer household; and a wintery sunset,
very much the same as that on which Mr. Russell Penton and his wife had
looked, shone in deep lines of crimson and gold, making of the river
which reflected it a stream of flame, when the three young people, far
too much absorbed in their own affairs to think of the colors in the sky
or the reflections in the river, or anything but Osy and his prospects,
and the state of the family finances, and the mistakes of family
government, came down the hill from the level of the Penton woods toward
their own home. The western sky, blazing with color, was on the left
hand; but even the sky toward the north and east shared in the general
illumination, and clouds all rose-tinted, concealing their heaviness in
the flush of reflection, hung upon the chill blue, and seemed to warm
the fresh wintery atmosphere before it sunk into the chill of night. The
girls and their brother kept their heads together, speaking two at once
in the eagerness of their feelings, and found no time for contemplation
of what was going on overhead. A sunset is a thing which comes every
evening, and about which there is no urgent reason for attention, as
there was upon this question about Osy, which struck at the foundations
of family credit and hope.
“When I left Eton,” said Wat with melancholy candor--“I had not much
sense, to be sure--it seemed rather fine coming away to work at home.
Fellows thought I was going to work for something out of the common way.
I liked it--on the whole. When you are at school there is always
something jolly in the thought of coming home. And so will Osy feel like
me.”
“But you were never clever, Wat,” said the impetuous Anne.
This was perhaps a little hard to bear. “Clever is neither here nor
there,” said Wat with a little flush. “It does not make much difference
to your feelings; I suppose I can tell better how Osy will take it than
one of you girls.”
“Oh no; for girls are more ambitious than boys, I mean boys that are
just ordinary like the rest. And Osy is not like you. He is full of
ambition, he wants to be something, to make a great name. I have the
most sympathy with that. Ally and you,” cried the girl with a toss of
her head like a young colt, “you are the contented ones, you are so
easily satisfied; but not Osy nor me.”
“Contented is the best thing you can be,” said gentle Ally. “What is
there better than content? Whatever trouble people take, it is only in
the hope of getting satisfaction at the end.”
“I wish I was contented,” said Walter, “that is all you know. What have
I got to be contented about? I have nothing to do; I have no prospects
in particular, nothing to look forward to.”
“Oh, Watty--Penton!”
“Penton is all very well: but how can we tell when Sir Walter may die?
No, I don’t want him to die,” cried the young man. “I wish no harm to
him nor to any man. I only say that because--Of course, so long as Sir
Walter lives Penton may be paradise, but it has nothing to say to us.
And then, as father says, the law may be changed before that happens, or
something else may come in the way. No, I don’t know what can come in
the way; for after Sir Walter, of course father is head of the family,
and I am the eldest son.” These words had a cheering effect upon the
youth in spite of himself. He turned back to look up where the corner of
the great house was visible amid the trees. The Pentons of the Hook knew
all the spots where that view was to be had. He turned round to look at
it, turning the girls with him, who were like two shadows. No prospects
in particular! when there was that before his eyes, the house of his
fathers, the house which he intended to transmit to his children! He
drew a long breath which came from the very depths of his chest, a sigh
of satisfaction yet of desire--of a feeling too deep to get into words.
“I say, what a sunset!” he cried, by way of diverting the general
attention from this subject, upon which he did not feel able to express
himself more clearly.
They all looked for the first time at the grand operation of nature
which was going on in the western sky. The heavens were all aglow with
lines of crimson and purple, the blue spaces of the great vault above
retiring in light ineffable far beyond the masses of cloud, which took
on every tinge of color, preserving their own high purity and charms of
infinitude. The great plain below lay silent underneath like a
breathless spectator of that great, ever-recurring drama, the river
gathering up fragments of the glory and flashing back an answer here and
there in its windings wherever it was clear of the earthly obstructions
of high banks and trees. Something of the same radiance flashed in
miniature from the young eyes that with one accord turned and
looked--but for a moment and no more. They noted the sunset in a
parenthesis, by a momentary inference; what they had sought was Penton,
with all its human interests. And then they turned again and faced the
north, where lay their poor little home and the lowliness of the
present, to which neither the sunset nor any other glory lent a charm.
“You are the eldest son,” said Anne, resuming without a pause; “that’s
all about it. That makes everything different. Suppose it is right--or
at least not wrong--for you to loaf about. But Osy hasn’t got Penton; he
has got to make himself a name. If he is stopped in his education, what
is he to do? You ought to speak to father; we all ought to make a stand.
If Osy is stopped in his education it is quite different. What is he to
do?”
“Father would never stop his education if he could afford it. It is the
money. If we could only give up something. But what is there we can give
up? Sugar and butter count for so little,” said Ally, in soft tones of
despair.
“I should not mind,” said Anne, “if we did not get anything new for
years.”
“We so seldom have anything new,” her sister said, with a sigh; there
was so little to economize in this way. All the savings they could think
of would not make up half the sum that had to be paid for Osy. Their
young spirits were crushed under this thought. What could they do? The
girls, as has been said, had answered a great many of those
advertisements which offer occupation to ladies; they had tried to make
beaded lace and to paint Christmas cards. Alas! that, like the butter
and sugar, counted for so little. They might as well try to make use of
the colors of the sunset as to make up Osy’s schooling in that way: and
Wat was even more helpless than they. It was so discouraging a prospect
that no one could say a word. They walked down with their faces to the
grayness and dimness from whence night was coming, and their hopes, like
the light, seemed to be dying away.
It was Anne, always the most quick to note everything that happened, who
broke the silence. “What is that,” she cried, “at our door? Look there,
wheeling in just under the lime-trees!”
“A carriage! Who can it be?”
“The Penton carriage! Don’t you see the two bays? Something must be up!”
cried Walter, a flash of keen curiosity kindling in his eyes.
They stopped for a moment and looked at each other with a sudden thrill
of expectation.
“No one has been to see us from Penton for years and years.”
“The carriage would not come for nothing!”
“It has been sent perhaps to fetch father!”
They hurried down with one accord, full of excitement and wonder and
awe.