THE PROPOSAL.
Alicia was a little subdued when she found herself in the old library,
the room she had known so well in other circumstances. The air of decay,
the unused books which she had borrowed and read and talked over, Edward
being a little more disposed that way than her brothers, and ready to
give her advice about her reading, and receive with reverence her
comments which the others took no interest in, impressed her in spite of
herself. Her eyes turned to the corner in which there had been a
collection of the poets more accessible and readable than any that
existed at Penton, where the books were all of a ponderous kind. They
were still there, the same little volumes, which it had been so easy to
carry about, which had been brought from the Hook in Edward’s pocket,
which she had taken with her in the boat and read in the shady corners
under the trees among the water-lilies. She could see they were still
there, the binding a little tarnished, the line broken, as if several
volumes were lost or absent. Who read them now? She gave but one glance
and saw everything, then turned her back upon that corner. There was a
table in the window which had not been there formerly, a table covered
with books and papers such as she was sure Edward Penton did not amuse
himself with. It would be the boy whose name had not been mentioned,
whom she had taken no notice of, yet of whom, with a jealous, angry
consciousness she had felt the presence through all.
“You have made few changes,” she said, involuntarily, as she turned the
chair he had placed for her half round, so as not to see the shelf with
its range of little volumes. The book-room was perhaps the most
comfortable in the house, but for that faint mustiness. The walls were
well lined with books. It had been a good collection twenty years ago,
and though there had been few additions made, it was still a good
collection, and the fading of the gilding and a little raggedness of
binding here and there did not injure the appearance of the well-covered
walls. Mr. Penton lighted the two candles on the writing-table, which
seemed to add two little inquisitive eldritch spectators, blinking their
little flames at the human actors in this drama, and watching all they
did and said.
“No, there are no changes to speak of; I have had other things to think
of than making changes,” he said, with a little abruptness, perhaps
thinking that she was making a contrast between the unalterable
circumstances of his poverty and all that had been done in the great
house. But she had no such meaning, nor did she understand the tone of
almost reproach in which he spoke.
“You must have had a great deal to do, with your family; but there are
cares which many people count as happiness.”
“I am making no complaint,” he said.
And then there was a pause. There had been struck a wrong note which
rang jarring into the air, and made it more difficult to begin again.
“You must have been surprised,” she said, “to find me here to-day.”
“I don’t know that I was surprised; perhaps it was more surprising, if I
may speak my mind, Alicia, that so long a time has passed without seeing
you here. I never harmed you, that I know.”
“No,” she said, “you never harmed us; it has been a miserable mistake
altogether. For years past I have felt it to be so; but we are the
slaves of our own mistakes. I never seemed to have the courage to take
the first step to make it right.”
She had neither meant to say this, nor in cold blood would she have
allowed it to be true; but she was carried away by the subtle influence
of the familiar place, by the sight of the books she used to borrow, and
many an indefinable recollection and influence besides.
He gave a little short laugh. “That is the second time to-night,” he
said, “that I have heard the same thing said.” If she had but known who
the other was who had said it, the old man breaking stones, who had been
so glad of his twopence! Mr. Penton could not restrain the brief comment
of that laugh.
“It does not matter who says it,” said Alicia, “it is true. A thing is
done in passion, in misery: and then it is hard to descend from our
pride, or to acknowledge ourselves wrong. And you will think, perhaps,”
she added, quickly, with rising color, “that it is a selfish motive that
brings me here to-day?”
Edward Penton shook his head. “A selfish motive would mean that I could
be of use to you; and I don’t think that is very probable,” he said.
Mrs. Russell Penton colored still more. “Edward,” she said, faltering a
little, “it is curious, when there is an object on which one has set
one’s heart, how one is led on to do things that only in the doing
appear in their true colors. I have let you think I came to renew old
friendship--to see your children, your girls.” She grew more and more
agitated as she went on, and there came out in her a hundred tones and
looks of the old Alicia, who had seemed to him to have no connection
with this mature dignified self-important woman--looks and tones which
moved him as the old books in the corner, and all the associations of
the place, had moved her.
“It does not matter why you have come; I am glad you have come, anyhow;
and if I can do anything--” he made a pause, and laughed again, this
time at himself. “It doesn’t seem very likely, looking at you and at me;
but you know I was always your faithful servant,” he said.
“There is only one thing I have to say for myself, Edward--I would not
allow the proposal to be made to you by any one but me.”
“What is it?” he asked. There was a proposal then, and it was something
to benefit her! Edward Penton’s bosom swelled with perhaps the first
pleasurable sense of his own position which he had felt for years.
Penton had always been an excitement to him, but there had been little
pleasure in it. For a moment, however, now, he felt himself the old, the
young Edward Penton, who had been the faithful servant of Alicia. He
could not imagine anything which he could have it in his power to do for
her, but still less could he imagine anything which he would refuse.
She went on with a hesitation which was very far from being natural to
her. “You know,” she said, “that when my father dies, which is an event
that can not be far distant, I shall have to give up--the only home I
have ever known.”
His attention was fully aroused now. He looked at her across the gleam
of the inquisitive candles, with a startled look. Was she going to ask
him to give up his inheritance? He was too much surprised to speak.
“You will think this an extraordinary beginning; but it is true. I have
never lived anywhere else. My marriage, you know, fortunately, has made
no difference. Of course I am my father’s heir in everything but what is
entailed. It has occurred to us--we have thought that perhaps--”
“What have you thought, Alicia?” he cried, with a sudden, sharp
remonstrance in his tone; “that I was just as in former times, ready for
anything that you--What have you thought?--that I was in the same
position as of old--that there was no one to consult, no one to
consider--except my devotion to you?”
“You mistake me altogether,” she cried. “Your devotion to me--which no
doubt is ended long ago--was never taken into consideration at all. We
thought of an entirely different motive when we talked it over, my
father and I. You will remember that I am only asking a question,
Edward. I wanted to ask only if a proposal might be made to you, that
was all.”
“And what was the motive which you supposed likely to move me?” he said.
He had risen up from his seat, and came and stood by the mantel-piece,
leaning on it, and looking down upon her. There was a great commotion in
his mind--a commotion of the old and of the new. He had grown soft and
tender a few minutes before, feeling himself ready to do anything for
her which a lady could ask of a man. But now, when it appeared to him
that she had gone far beyond that sphere, and was about to ask from him
the sacrifice of everything--his property, his inheritance, the fortune
of his children--a sudden hot fountain of indignation seemed to have
risen within the man. He felt as the knight did in the poem when his
lady lightly threw her glove among the lions--an impulse to give her
what she asked, to fling it in her face, doing her behest in contempt of
the unwomanly impulse which had tempted her to strain her power so far.
This was how he felt. No reasonable sentiment of self-defense, but a
burning temptation to take his heirship, his hopes, all that made the
future tolerable, and fling them with an insult in her face.
“Edward,” she said, “I came to you in confidence that you would hear
me--that you would let me speak plainly without offense; I mean none,”
she said, with agitation. “But we have both come to a reasonable age,
and surely we may talk to each other without wounding each other--about
circumstances which everybody can see.”
“Speak freely, Alicia. I only want to know what you wish, and what there
is in me to justify the proposal, whatever it may be, that you have come
to make.”
“I have begun wrong,” she said, with a gesture of disappointment. “It is
difficult to find the right words. Will you be angry if I say it is no
secret that you--that we--for Heaven’s sake don’t think I mean to hurt
you--plainly, that I, with all my father can leave, will be in a better
position for keeping up Penton than you who are the heir-at-law.”
He stood for some time with his arm on the mantel-piece making no
answer, looking down at the faint redness of a fire which had almost
burned out.
“So that’s all,” he said at last, with the tremulous note of a sudden
laugh; and drawing a chair close up to it, began to gather together the
scraps of half-consumed wood into a blaze. All that he produced was a
very feeble momentary glimmer, which leaped up and then died out. He
threw down the poker with another short laugh. “Significant,” he said,
“symbolical! so that is all, Alicia? You are sure you want no more?”
“You have not heard me out: you don’t understand. Edward, I know the
first effect must be painful, but every word you will listen to will
lessen that impression. I am, if you will remember, a little older than
you are.”
“We were born, I think, in the same year.”
“That makes a woman much older. I told you so when it meant more. And I
am a woman, more feeble of constitution than you are--not likely to live
so long.”
“On the contrary, if you will allow me to interrupt you; women, I
believe, as a rule, are longer-lived than men.”
She drew back with a pained and irritated look. “You make me feel like a
lawyer supporting a weak case. It was not in this way that I wanted to
talk it over with you, Edward.”
“To talk over the sacrifice of everything I have ever looked to--my
birthright, and the prospects of my children. This is rather a large
affair to be talked over between you and me after five-o’clock tea,
Alicia, over a dying fire.”
“Then,” she said, “it would have been better I had not meddled at all,
as my father always said. He thought it should have been made a business
proposal only, through a solicitor. But I--I, like a foolish
woman--remembering that we had once been dear friends, and feeling that
I had been guilty of neglect, and perhaps unkindness--I would not have
anything said till I had come myself, till I had made my little overture
of reconciliation, till I--”
“If there is to be frankness on one side there should be frankness on
both. Till you had put forth the old influence, which once would have
made me do anything--give up anything--to please you.”
“You said,” she cried, provoked and humiliated, “not five minutes since,
though I did not wish it--never thought of it--that you were my faithful
servant still!”
“Yes,” he said; “and do you know what I should like to do now? You have
come to ask me for my inheritance as you might ask for a flower out of
my garden--if there were any! I should like to fling you your Penton
into your apron--into your face--and see you carry it off, and point at
you, like--you were always fond of poetry, and you will remember--the
fellow that jumped among the lions for a glove--only a glove: only his
life, don’t you know!”
It was not often that Edward Penton gave way to passion, and it was
brutal, this that he said: but for the moment he had lost all control of
himself.
She rose up hurriedly from her chair. “That was no true man!” she cried.
“Supposing that the woman was a fool too, she used him only according to
his folly to show how false he was.” She paused again, breathless, her
heart beating with excitement and indignation. “I am not asking you for
your inheritance: I came to ask you--whether an arrangement might be
proposed to you which should be for your advantage as well as mine. Let
us speak frankly, as you say. I am not a girl, to be driven away by an
insult, which comes badly--oh, very badly!--from you, Edward. If I have
wounded you, you have stung me, bitterly; so let us be quits.” She
looked at him with a smile of pain. “You have hit hardest, after all;
you ought to be pleased with that!”
“I beg your pardon, Alicia,” he said.
“Oh, it is not necessary. It was business, and not sentiment, that
brought me here. And this is the brutal truth, Edward--like what you
have just said to me. You are poor, and I am well off. Penton would be a
millstone round your neck; you could not keep it up. Whereas to me it is
my home--almost the thing I love best. Will you come to terms with us to
set aside the entail and let me have my home? The terms shall be almost
what you like. It can be done directly. It will be like realizing a
fortune which may not be yours for years. I ask no gift. Do you think I
am not as proud as you are? I would not ask you for a flower out of your
garden, as you say, much less your property--your inheritance! Ah, your
inheritance! which twenty years ago, when we used to be here together,
was no more likely to be yours--! If we begin to talk of these things
where shall we end, I wonder?” she added, with another pale and angry
smile. “You understand now what I mean? And I have nothing more to say.”
“Wait a moment,” he said; “I am not sure that I do understand you now.
It is not what I thought, apparently, and I beg your pardon. I thought
it was something that would be between you and me. But if I hear right,
it is a business transaction you propose--something to be done for an
equivalent--a bargain--a sale and barter--a--”
“Yes, that is what I mean; perhaps my father was right, and the
solicitors were the people to manage it, not you and me--”
“To manage it--or not to manage it, as may turn out. Yes, I think that
would be the better way. These sort of people can say what they like to
each other and it never hurts, whereas you and I--Are you really going?
I hope you are very well wrapped up, for the night is cold. But for this
little squabble, which is a pity, which never ought to have been--”
“I can not think, Edward, that it was my fault.”
“They say that ladies always think that,” he said with a smile,
“otherwise this first visit after--how long is it?--went off fairly
well, don’t you think? At forty-five, with a wife and children, a man is
no longer ready to throw anything away; but otherwise when it comes to
business--”
“I was very foolish not to let it be done in the formal way,” she said,
with an uneasy blush and intolerable sense of the sarcasm in his tone.
But she would not allow herself to remain under this disadvantage.
“Shall I tell my father that you will receive his proposal and give it
your consideration?”
“My consideration? Surely; my best consideration,” he replied, with
still the same look of sarcastic coolness, “which anything Sir Walter
Penton suggests would naturally command from his--successor. I can not
use a milder word than that. My position,” he added, with gravity, “is
not one which I sought or had any hand in bringing about: therefore I
can have no responsibility for the changes that have happened in the
last twenty years.”
“It is I who must beg your pardon now. You are quite right, of course,
and there was no fault of yours. Good-night and good-bye. I hope you
will at least think of me charitably if we should not meet again.”
“We shall certainly, I hope, meet again,” he said, opening the door for
her. “The girls will not forget your invitation to them. They have never
seen Penton, and they take an interest, which you will not wonder at--”
“Oh, I don’t wonder--at that or anything,” she added, in a lower tone;
and, as ill-luck would have it, Wat, standing full in the light of the
lamp which lighted the hall, tall in his youthful awkwardness, half
antagonistic, half anxious to recommend himself, stood straight before
her, so that she could not, without rudeness, refuse his attendance to
the door where the carriage lamps were shining and the bays pawing
impatiently. She gave his father a look of mingled misery and
deprecation as she went out of sight. He alone understood why it was she
could not bear the sight of his boy. But though her eyes expressed this
anguish, her mouth held another meaning. “You will hear from Mr.
Rochford in a day or two,” she said, as she drove away.
He sent her back a smile of half-sarcastic acquiescence still; but then
Edward Penton went back to his library and shut himself in, and
disregarded all the appeals that were made to him during the next hour,
to come to tea. First the bell: then Ally tapping softly, “Tea is
ready.” Then Anne’s quicker summons, “Mother wants to know if we are to
wait for you?” Then the little applicant, whom he was least able to
resist, little Mary, drumming very low down upon the lower panels of the
door, with a little song of “Fader! fader!” To all this Mr. Penton
turned a dull ear. He had been angry--he had been cut to the quick;
that his poverty should be thus thrown back upon him--that he should be
expected to make merchandise of his inheritance, to give up for money
the house of his fathers, the only fit residence for the head of the
family! All this gave a sharp and keen pang, and roused every instinct
of pride and self-assertion. But when the thrill of solitude and reason
fell on all that band of suddenly unchained demons, and he thought of
the privations round him--the shabbiness of the house; the damp; the
poor wife, who could not now at all hold up her head among the county
people; the girls, who were little nobodies and saw nothing; Wat, whose
young life was spoiled: and Osy--Osy! about whom some determination must
be come to. To see a way out of all that and not to accept it: for
pride’s sake to shut up, not only himself, that was a small matter, but
the children, to poverty! The fire went out; the inquisitive candles
blinked and spied ineffectually, making nothing of the man who sat there
wrapped up within himself, his face buried in his hands. He was chilled
almost to ice when his wife stole in and drew him away to the fire in
the drawing-room, from which the young ones withdrew to make place for
him, with looks full of wonder and awe. And then it was, when he had
warmed himself and the ice had melted, that he drew the family council
together, and laid before them, old and young, the proposal which Alicia
Penton had come to make.