THE PRIMROSE PATH.
Walter Penton had been the most satisfactory of sons and brothers. He
had not rebelled much even against the discipline of reading aloud. He
was only twenty, and there was nothing to do in the neighborhood of the
Hook, especially in the evening, so that circumstances had helped to
make him good. He had, to tell the truth, taken a great interest in the
novels, so much as to be tempted often to carry off the current volume
and see “how it ended” by himself, which the girls thought very mean of
him. But very rarely, except in summer, or when there was some special
attraction out-of-doors, had he declined to aid the progress of the
pinafores, in his way, by reading. But lately he had not been so good.
Perhaps it was because there was a moon, and the evenings had been
particularly bright; but he had not asked the girls to share his walks,
as formerly it had been so natural to do. Sometimes he did not come into
the drawing-room at all after tea, but would intimate that he had “work”
to do, especially now, when, if he were really going to Oxford, it was
necessary for him to rub up his Greek a little. Nobody could say that
this was not perfectly legitimate and in fact laudable; and though the
ladies were disappointed they could make no complaint, especially as in
the general quickening of the family life there was, for the moment,
many things to talk of, which made reading aloud less necessary. For
instance, on the evening of the day which they had spent in town there
was no occasion for reading. The most exciting romance could not have
been more delightful than the retrospect of that delightful day. They
all went up together by the early train. Mr. Penton himself had said
that he thought he might as well go too, and accompany Walter to the
tailor’s, as that was a place in which ladies were inadmissable; and
accordingly they parted at the railway, the mother and the girls going
one way, and the father and his boy another--both parties with a sense
of the unusual about them which made their expedition exhilarating. To
spend money when you feel (and that for the first time) that you can
afford it is of itself exhilarating, especially (perhaps) to women who
have little practice in this amusement, and to whom the sight of the
pretty things in the shops is a pleasure of a novel kind. It was a
matter of very serious business indeed to the ladies, carrying with it a
profound sense of responsibility. Two evening dresses, for a girl who
had never had anything better than the simplest muslin! and a “costume”
for morning wear of the most complete kind, with everything in keeping,
jacket and hat and gloves. The acquisition of this could scarcely be
called pleasure. It was too solemn and important, a thing the
accomplishment of which carried with it a certain sensation of awe; for
what if it should not be quite in the fashion? what if it should be too
much in the fashion? too new, too old, not having received the final
approval of those authorities which rule the world? Sometimes a thing
may be very pretty, and yet not secure that verdict; or it may be _mal
porté_, as the French say, worn first by some one whose adoption of it
is an injury. All these things have to be considered: and when the
purchasers are country people, ignorant people who do not know what is
going to be worn! So that the responsibility of the business fully
equaled its pleasantness, and it was only when the more important
decisions were made, and the attention of the buyers, at too high a
tension in respect to other articles, came down to the lighter and
easier consideration of ribbons and gloves, that the good of the
expedition began to be fully enjoyed. And then they all had luncheon
together, meeting when their respective business was executed. Mr.
Penton took them to a place which was rather a dear place, which he had
known in his youth, when all the places he had known were dear places.
It was perhaps, a little old-fashioned too, but this they were not at
all aware of. And the lunch he had ordered was expensive, as Mrs. Penton
had divined. She said as much to the girls as they drove from their shop
to the rendezvous. She said, “I know your father will order the very
dearest things.” And so he had; but they enjoyed it all the more. The
extravagance itself was a pleasure. It was such a thing as had never
happened in all their previous experience; a day in town, a day
shopping, and then a grand luncheon and a bottle of champagne. “If we
are going to be so much better off they may as well get the good of it,”
Mr. Penton replied, in answer to his wife’s half-hearted remonstrance.
For she too found a pleasure in the extravagance. Her protest was quite
formal; she too was quite disposed for it once in a way--just to let
them know, in the beginning of their mended fortune, what a little
pleasure was.
And when they came home, bringing sugar-plums and a few toys for the
little ones, they were all a little tired with this unusual, this
extraordinary dissipation. After tea the pinafores did not make much
progress; they were too much excited to care to go on with their
reading. They wanted to talk over everything and enjoy it a second time
more at their leisure. They had shaken off the sense of responsibility,
and only felt the pleasure of the holiday, which was so rare in their
life. Mr. Penton himself was seduced into making comparison of the
London of which they had thus had a flying glimpse with the London he
had known in the old days, and into telling stories of which somehow the
point got lost in the telling, but which had been, as he said, “very
amusing at the time;” while the girls listened and laughed, not at his
stories so much as out of their own consciousness that it had all been
“fun,” even the inconveniences of the day, and the prosiness of those
inevitable tales. Mrs. Penton was the one who subsided most easily out
of the excitement. But for a little look of complacence, an evident
sense that it was she who had procured them all this pleasure, there was
less trace in her than in any of the others of the day’s outing. She
drew her work-basket to her as usual after tea. She was not to be
beguiled out of her evening’s work; but she smiled as she went on with
her darning, and listened to the father’s stories, and the saucy
commentaries of the girls, with a happy abandonment of all authority in
consideration of the unusual character of the day. The only thing that
brought a momentary shadow over the party was that Walter was not there.
“There is no moon to-night, but Wat is off again for one of his walks. I
wonder what has made him so fond of walks, just when we want him at
home?” the girls cried. And then a little mist came over his mother’s
eyes. She said, “Hush! he is probably at his Greek;” but whether she
believed this or not nobody could say.
Walter, it need scarcely be said, was not at his Greek. He went up the
road toward the village with long strides devouring the way, though
there was no moon nor any visible inducement. The village was as quiet
a spot as could be found in all England. The only lights it showed were
in a few cottage windows, or glimmering from behind the great
holly-bushes at the rectory; a little bit of a straggling street, with
an elbow composed of a dozen little houses, low and irregular, which
streamed away toward the dark and silent fields, with the church, the
natural center, rising half seen, a dark little tower pointing upward to
the clouds. There was scarcely any one about, or any movement save at
the public-house, where what was quite an illumination in the absence of
other lights--the red glow of the fire, and the reflection of a lamp
through a red curtain--streamed out into the road, making one warm and
animated spot in the gloom. Wat, however, did not go near that center of
rustic entertainment. He stopped at a low wall which surrounded a
cottage on the outskirts--a cottage which had once been white, and had
still a little grayness and luminousness of aspect which detached it
from the surrounding darkness. A few bristling dry branches of what was
in summer a bit of hedge surrounded the low projection of the wall.
Walter paused there, where there was nothing visible to pause for. The
night was dark. A confused blank of space, where in daylight the great
stretch of the valley lay, was before him, sending from afar a fresh
breath of wind into his face, while behind him, in the nearer distance,
shone the few cottage lights, culminating in the red glow from the
Penton Arms. What did he want at this corner with his back against the
wall? Nothing, so far as any one could see. He made no signal, gave
forth no sound, save that occasionally his feet made a stir on the
beaten path as he changed his position. They got tired, but Walter
himself was not tired. Presently came the faint sound of a door opening,
and a flitting of other feet--light, short steps that scarcely seemed to
touch the ground--and then the gate of the little garden clicked, and,
heard, not visible, something came out into the road.
“Oh, are you here again, Mr. Walter? Why have you come again? You know I
don’t want you here.”
“Why shouldn’t you want me? I want to come; it’s my pleasure.”
The voice of the young man had a deeper tone, a manlier bass than its
usual youthful lightness coming through the dark, and the great space
and freedom of the night.
“It’s a strange pleasure,” said the other voice. “I should not think it
any pleasure were I in your place. If even there was a moon! for people
that are fond of the beauties of nature that is always something. But
now it is so dark”--there seemed a sort of shiver in the voice. “The
dark is a thing I can’t abide, as they say here.”
“For my part, I like it best. Come this way, where the view is, and you
would think you could see it--that is, you can feel it, which is almost
more. Don’t you know what I mean? The wind blows from far away; it comes
from miles of space, right out of the sky. You could feel even that the
landscape was below you from the feel of the air.”
“That is all very pretty,” she said, and this time there was the
indication of a yawn in her tone, “but if it is only for the sake of the
landscape, one can see that when it’s day, and feeling it is a
superfluity in the dark. If that was all you came for--”
“I did not come for that at all, as you know. I came for--it would be
just the same to me if there was no landscape at all, if it was a street
corner--”
“Under a lamp-post! Oh, that is my ideal!” with a little clap of her
hands. “What I would give to see a lamp again, a bright, clear, big
light, like Oxford Street or the Circus! You think that is very vulgar,
I know.”
“Nothing is vulgar if you like it. I should like lamp-posts too if they
had associations. I saw plenty of them to-day, and I wished I could have
had you there to take you for a walk past the shop windows, since you
are so fond of them.”
“Oh, the shop windows! Don’t talk to a poor exile of her native country
that she is pining for! So you were in town; and what did you see
there?”
“Nothing,” said Wat.
“Nothing!--in London! You must be the very dullest, or the most
obstinate, or prejudiced--Nothing! why, everything is there!”
“You were not there; that makes all the difference. I kept thinking all
the time where I should have found you had you been in London. You never
will tell me where you live, or how can I see you when you go back.”
“I am not going back yet, worse luck,” she said.
“But that is no answer. I kept looking out to-day to see if I could find
any place which looked as if you might have lived there. The only place
I saw like you was in Park Lane, and that, I suppose--”
“Park Lane!” she cried, with a suppressed laugh; “that was like old
Crockford’s niece. I could receive all my relations then.”
“You are not old Crockford’s niece?”
“No, I told you--I am a heroine in trouble,” she said. Her laugh was
perhaps a little forced, but if Walter observed that at all it only
increased the interest and fascination of such a paradox as might have
startled a wiser man. “And is town very empty?” she said. “But the
streets will be gay and the shop windows bright because of
Christmas--there is always a little movement before Christmas, and
things going on. And to think that I shall see nothing--not so much as a
pantomime--buried down here!”
“I thought most people came to the country for Christmas,” said Wat.
“Oh, the sw--; why shouldn’t I say it right out?--the swells you mean;
but we are not swells in my place. We enjoy ourselves with all our
hearts.”
“I am sorry you think it so dull in the country,” said poor Wat. “I wish
you liked it better. If you had been brought up here, like me--but of
course that is impossible. Perhaps when you get better used to it--”
“I shall never be used to it; I am on the outlook, don’t you know? for
some one to take me back.”
“Don’t say that,” said Walter, “it hurts me so. I should like to
reconcile you to this place, to make you fond of it, so that you should
prefer to stay here.”
“With whom? with old Crockford?” she said.
Walter was very young, and trembled with the great flood of feeling that
came over him. “Oh, if I had only a palace, a castle, anything that was
good enough for you! but I have nothing--nothing you would care for.
That is what makes it odious beyond description, what makes it more than
I can bear.”
“What is more than you can bear?”
“Losing Penton,” cried the young man; “I told you. If Penton were still
to be mine I know what I should say. It is not a cottage like
Crockford’s, nor a poor muddy sort of place like the Hook. It is a house
worthy even of such as you. But I am like the disinherited knight, I
have nothing till I work for it.”
“That is a great pity,” she said; “I have seen Penton; it is a beautiful
place. It seems silly, if you have a right to it, to give it up.”
“You think so too!” he cried; “I might have known you would have thought
so; but I am only my father’s son, and they don’t consult me. If I had
any one to stand by me I might have resisted--any one else, whose
fortune was bound up in it as well as mine.”
“Yes: what a pity in that case that you were not married,” she said.
“I might be still,” cried Walter, with tremulous vehemence, “if you
would have faith in me--if you would forget what I am, a nobody, and
think what, with such a hope, I might be.”
“I!” there was a sound of mocking in the laughing voice; “what have I
got to do with it? What would those great swells at Penton think if they
knew you were saying such things to old Crockford’s niece.”
“It is they who have nothing to do with it,” he cried. “Do you think if
you were to trust me that I should care what they--But oh, don’t, don’t
call yourself so, you know it is not true; not that it matters if you
were. You would to me, all the same, be always yourself, and that means
everything that a woman can be.”
There was a pause before she replied, and her voice was a little
softened. “They will never know anything about me at Penton, or anywhere
else. I have come here in the dark; you have scarcely seen me in
daylight at all, for all you are so silly.”
“Yes, a hundred times,” cried Walter. “Do you think you can go out that
I don’t see you? I live about the roads since you have been here.”
“It is a pity,” she said, with a little sharpness, “that you have
nothing better to do,” then, resuming her lighter tone, “If you don’t
soon begin to do something a little more practical how are you ever to
be--that somebody that you were offering to me?”
“It is true,” he said, “it is true; but don’t blame me. I am going to
Oxford next month, and then, if I do not work--”
“To Oxford! But that’s not work, that’s only education,” she cried, with
a faint mixture of something like disappointment in her voice.
“Education is work; it opens up everything. It gives a man a name. I
have been kept back; but, oh, now, if you will say I may look
forward--if you will say I may hope.”
“Look forward to what?” she said; “to come up here every evening, and
invite me out to talk in the cold at the corner of old Crockford’s wall?
I do not mind, for I’ve nothing else to amuse me now: and you have
nothing else to amuse you, so far as I can see; but, presently I shall
disappear like a will-o’-the-wisp, and what will you look forward to
then?”
“That is what I say,” he said. “I feel it every day. You will go away,
and what am I to do, where am I to find you? Every morning when I wake
it is the first thing I think of--perhaps she may be gone, and not a
trace, not an indication, left behind, not even a name.”
“Oh, it is not so bad as that. You know my name, but I tell you always
it is a great deal better you should know no more, for what is the use?
You are going to Oxford, where you will be for years and years before
you can do anything. And at present you are the disinherited knight and
I am a will-o’-the-wisp. Very well. We play about a little and amuse
each other, and then you will ride off and I shall dance away.”
“No, no, no; for the sake of pity, if not for love--”
“What has a will-o’-the-wisp to do with these sort of things, or a young
man at college? At college! it is only a school-boy a little bigger.
Ride off, ride off, Sir Disinherited Knight; and as for me, it’s my part
to go dancing, dancing away.”
And she was gone, disappearing with no sound but the little click of the
gate, the pat of those footsteps which scarcely touched the ground,
snatching from him the hand which he had tried to take, the hand which
he had never yet been allowed to hold for a moment, he stood for a time
at the corner of the wall, tantalized, tremulous, trying to persuade
himself that she was not really gone, that she would appear again, a
shadow out of the darkness. This was all he had seen of her except in
distant glimpses, although their intercourse had gone so far. He was
ready to pledge his life to her, and yet this was all he knew. Walter
thought to himself as he went slowly down the hill, all thrilling with
this interview, that never had there been a courtship before. He was
proud of it, poor boy. There was something rapturous in its
strangeness, in the fact that he did not even know her name, nothing but
Emmy, which he had heard Martha call her. Emmy did not mean much, yet it
was all he knew. He called her in his heart by names out of the
poets--Una, Rosalind, Elaine. She was as much a creature of romance as
any of them. He dreamed in those sweet dreams awake which are the
privilege of youth, of seeing her flash out upon him from unimaginable
surroundings, a princess, a peerless lady, something noble and great,
something not to be put on the level of ordinary women. What she was
doing in this cottage he scarcely asked himself--she who belonged to so
different a sphere. But it was sweet to him to think that his love was
so original, unlike that of any one else. His head was full of an
intoxication of pleasure, of pride and wonder. Nobody had ever had such
a story. Ah, if he had but Penton to take her home to! But anyhow he
could conquer fortune for the sake of this sweet unknown.
This was how Walter spent his evenings while the others sat round the
household lamp. He had the best of it. While Ally was thinking only of
the visit to Penton, or at least of nothing else that she allowed even
to herself, Wat, only two years older, felt himself standing on the
threshold of an illimitable future, full of everything that was
wonderful and sweet.