THE MASTER OF PENTON.
Mr. Penton waited through all the dreary day. He sent the young ones
away peremptorily at the earliest opportunity, without throwing any
light to them on the state of affairs. “It would be bad taste, the worst
of taste, to have you here at such a time,” he said, but without
explaining why. “Tell your mother I will come back when I can--but not
before--” He spoke in ellipses, with phrases too full of meaning to be
put into mere words.
“Mab is coming with us, father,” said Ally. “We couldn’t leave her here
by herself.”
“Mab? Who is Mab?” said Mr. Penton, but he looked for no reply. His mind
was too much absorbed to consider what they said to him. There seemed so
little in their prattle that could not wait for another time. And his
mind was full of a hundred questions. By this time, as was natural, the
pathetic impression which had been made on him when he stood by his
uncle’s bedside through those solemn moments, and felt that next to
Alicia it was he, of all the world, who had the best right to be there,
had died away. Common life had come back to him--his own position, the
prospects of his family, what he was to do. He wandered about the house,
up and down, with very much the air of a man inspecting it before taking
possession, which was what he actually was. But no such consciousness
was in his mind. He was overflowing with thought as to what he was to do
in the new crisis at which he had arrived. It was a crisis which ought
to have been long foreseen, and indeed had been fully entered into in
detail many a day. But lately it had been put away from his thoughts,
and other possibilities had come in. He had thrust Penton away from him,
and allowed himself to feel the power of his wife’s arguments, and even
to act upon the possible increase of fortune which should be immediate,
and bring no responsibility with it. Gradually, and with a struggle,
his mind had been brought to that point. But now all this new condition
of affairs was gone, and everything restored to the old basis. The
change had come in a moment, so far as he was concerned. He had not
anticipated it, had not thought of it, until Sir Walter had suddenly
lifted up his dying voice and began to talk of the boy. The boy! he did
not realize even now, or scarcely ask himself, who was the boy. The
crisis was too great for secondary matters. The real thing to think of
was that the new deeds had never been signed nor completed, that no
change had been made, that Penton was his, as he had always looked
forward to it, not a new fortune unencumbered and free, but Penton with
all its burdens, with all its honors, with the old family importance,
the position of which he had so often heard, and so often said, that it
was one of the best in England. Perhaps at any time he would have been
startled and alarmed by the first consciousness of entering into this
great inheritance. It was not an advancement that could be thought of
lightly as mere getting on in the world. It was like ascending a throne.
It was entering on a post rather than on a mere possession. The master
of Penton had claims made upon him which were different, he thought,
from those of a mere country gentleman. At any time there would have
been solemnity in the prospect. But now that he had put it all away from
him, and made up his mind to the other, to mere money without any
position at all, and had calculated even on withdrawing from the smaller
claims of Penton Hook, and setting up in perfect freedom, without any
responsibilities, any land or burden of the soil, the awe with which he
felt his natural importance come back to him, and all his plans brought
to nothing, was great. It was as if Providence had refused to accept
that sacrifice which he had not indeed been willing to make, which he
had done not for his own pleasure but in deference to what seemed best
for the children, more practicable for himself. Providence had made
light of all those deliberations, of the mother’s arguments, and his own
laborious and cloudy attempts to decipher what was best. Whether it was
the best or the worst, in a moment God had changed all that, and here he
was again at the point from which he had set out--master of Penton, or
if not so already, at least in an hour or two to be.
And he looked, to the servants at least, exactly as if he were taking
possession, inspecting his future property. He went from one room to
another with eyes that seemed to be investigating everything, though in
reality they saw nothing. He walked about the library with his hands in
his pockets, looking at all the books, then from the windows over the
park, which stretched away down to the river, and in which there was a
great deal of wood that might come down. He lingered long over the view;
was he marking in his mind the clumps which were thickest, where the
trees most wanted cutting--the easiest way to make a little money? Then
he went to the dining-room and looked in the same keen way at the plate
upon the sideboard, calculating perhaps which were heir-looms and which
were not. The butler had his eye upon the probable new master, and drew
his own conclusions. And then he went to the drawing-room, where he
remained a long time, looking at everything. The butler had a great
contempt for the poor relation who was about to come into this great
property. “I don’t know what he could find to do away with there,” that
functionary said, and suggested that perhaps the painted roof was the
thing that had occupied the speculations of the hungry heir. As it
happened, poor Edward Penton’s reflections were of the most depressed
kind. He asked himself what would _she_ do there--how could she settle
herself and her work-basket and the children among those gilded pillars?
How were they ever to furnish it? as she had said. His wife after all
was a woman of great sense. She knew how difficult it was to adapt one
way of living to another, to transpose a household from what was little
more than a cottage to what was little less than a palace. But now all
her arguments were to come to nothing, and the revolution in his own
mind to be set aside. He stood and shivered; for the heating had been
neglected on this dismal and exciting day. The heating and everything
else had been neglected, and the great room with one feeble fire burning
was cold as any deserted place could be. What would she do there with
Horry and the rest of the little ones, and her basket with the stockings
to darn? Ally had asked herself the same question, but with a sort of
awed satisfaction, feeling that this problem would never have to be
solved. But now it had come. He strayed at last from the drawing-room
through the corridor to the great room sometimes called the music-room,
for there was an organ in it, sometimes called the king’s room, since a
sacred majesty had once, as at Lady Margaret Bellendean’s castle of
Tillietudlem, broken his fast there--where the dancing had been. And
here it was that the disorganization of the household became apparent.
Shutters were still closed and curtains drawn in this room. The pale
light struggled in by every crevice, by the folds of the shutters, from
the large open chimney, which was filled with flowers. The walls were
hung with greenery, garlands of ivy and holly, and feathery bunches of
the seed-pods of the clematis. They had been beautiful last night; they
were ghastly now, looking as if they had hung there for fifty years.
There was something in the neglect, in the deserted place, in the
contrast of all that faded decoration with the stillness and desolation
of the day, that suited Edward Penton’s mood. The rest of the house
suggested life and its ordinary occupations, neither sad nor glad, but
serious and still. This was the banquet-hall deserted, which is of all
human things the most dismal and suggestive. He walked up and down
looking at the banks of flowers, half seen in this curious subdued and
broken light. Here it was that the children were dancing, timid
strangers, half afraid of it, and of all that was going on, last night:
and now to-day--
Solemn steps came in at the other end, slowly advancing over the waxed
and slippery floor; a solemn figure in black, more grave than ever
mourner was, holding its hands folded. “Sir,” the butler said, “my
mistress has sent me to tell you all is over, about a quarter of an hour
ago.”
“All over! You mean, my uncle is dead?”
“Sir Walter Penton died, sir, about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour
ago, at twenty-five minutes past three.”
The butler took out his watch and looked at it with solemnity. “Just
twelve minutes since, sir, by the clock, sir.”
It cost the man a great effort not to say Sir Edward. Sir Edward it had
been for twelve minutes by his watch; but the decorum and a sense that
he was himself on the other side restrained him. He paused a minute,
waiting for anything that might be said to him, then went back again,
his footsteps sounding solemnly all the way upon the uncarpeted floor.
Edward Penton sat down on one of the red chairs against the wall which
the dancers had used. A more forlorn picture could not have been made.
The day breaking in through the shutters, the drooping decorations, the
waxed floor reflecting faintly those lines of pale light, and the man
against the wall with his face hidden in his hands. He might have been a
ruined spendthrift hearing of the final catastrophe of his fortune,
hearing it with metaphorical propriety, amid the relics of feasting and
merry-making. But no one would have recognized that picture to represent
a man who had just come into his inheritance.
He met Rochford going away as he returned to the inhabited parts of the
house. “I suppose I need not hesitate to congratulate you,” the lawyer
said. “Sir Edward, it is not as if the poor old gentleman had been a
nearer relation.”
“I don’t know what you call near. My uncle was the nearest relation I
had of my name; nor why you should call him poor because he has just
died.”
“I beg your pardon. I meant nothing; it is the ordinary way of talking,”
said the lawyer, somewhat abashed.
“And a very inappropriate one, I think,” Edward Penton said. He had
relapsed into his usual manner, in which there was always a little
suppressed irritation. “I suppose there never was any possibility of
producing--” He looked at the bag which Rochford carried.
“It is all so much waste paper,” said the young man. “I felt it was so
as soon as I saw him; even if we could have got him to sign it would
have been of no legal value; he was too far gone. It is curious,” he
added, “to be so nearly done, and yet not done. I wonder if you are
sorry or pleased?”
Edward Penton made no reply. Rochford’s ease and familiarity had seemed
natural enough a few days ago, the conceit perhaps of a youngster,
nothing more. Now it offended him, he could not tell why. “Do you know,”
he said, “if my cousin is still there?” He made a movement of his hand
toward the room in which Sir Walter lay.
“She has gone to her own room; they have persuaded her to lie down. Mr.
Russell Penton is about, I know, if you want to see him.”
Edward Penton went on with another wave of his hand. It was not so much
his new position (though as a matter of fact he felt that), but the
change in all things, and the confused absorbing sentiment of all that
had happened which made his companion disagreeable to him, like a
presuming stranger. He himself was as a man in a dream. As he came
through those rooms again they too were changed. They were now his. All
that foolish idea of having nothing more to do with them was past
forever. They were now his. He walked through them with the step of the
master, thinking involuntarily how this and that must be changed. The
house had become to him a place no longer to be judged on its merits as
suitable or unsuitable for the habitation of his family, but one to be
adapted, arranged, borne with as being his own. Everything had
changed--himself and his surroundings, his future, his place in the
world, and the mind with which he approached that place. In the library,
to which he returned as the room in which he was most likely to meet
some one to whom he could talk, he found Russell Penton, and the two men
instinctively shook hands with each other as if they had not met before.
“I hope there was no more suffering,” Edward Penton said.
“None. He never recovered consciousness, but just slept away. No man
could have wished a calmer end. He has had a long life, and his dying
has been very peaceful. What more could a man desire?”
Edward Penton bowed his head, and they stood together for a moment
saying nothing, paying their tribute not only to the life but to the
state of affairs that was over. They both felt it, the one as much as
the other. To Russell Penton it was, if not actual, at least possible
freedom, especially now that the Penton arrangement was over. He grieved
for his father-in-law, if not painfully, yet sincerely. He was a
venerable figure, a sustaining personality gone out of his life. He had
so much less to do and to think of, which was in its way a sorrowful
thought. But with that came the secret exhilaration of the consciousness
that now perhaps the guidance of his own life would be his own. He would
not oppose Alicia nor endeavor to coerce her; that would be the greatest
mistake, he felt; but it was likely enough that in her softened state
she would of her own accord subdue herself to this. At least, he hoped
so, and it spread before him the prospect of a new existence. After they
had stood together silent for a minute, Russell Penton spoke.
“I think I ought to say this,” he said. “Whatever Alicia may feel, and I
fear she will be disappointed, I am myself much more pleased, Penton,
that things should be as they are.”
“I thought that was your feeling all along.”
“Yes, they both knew it was; but I have always abstained from saying
anything. My first desire was that she should as much as possible have
what she liked best. She has well deserved it at my hands.”
Edward Penton said nothing on this subject. It was not one in which he
could deliver his opinion. “It is a great house,” he said, “and a great
responsibility for a man with a large family like me.”
“You will find it perhaps easier than you think; everything is in very
perfect order. Alicia would like me to tell you, Penton, that though it
was too late to be added as a codicil, her father’s wish is sacred to
her, and that it shall be as he desired about your boy.”
“My boy! do you mean Wat? What has he to do with it?” Edward Penton
cried, half affrighted. He who had so nearly parted with the birthright
himself, he was a little jealous of any interference now: and especially
of this, that the feelings of his son should be brought into account in
the matter.
“You heard what Sir Walter said. Your son took his fancy very much. He
found a resemblance, which I also can see: but Alicia dislikes to hear
of it, and so will you, perhaps.”
“A resemblance!” said Edward; and then he thought of Walter Penton, his
cousin. If Wat had not been like that unfortunate scapegrace why should
he have thought of him now? He said, with energy, “There is no
resemblance. They have dwelt so long on the memory of the boys that
everything they see seems to have got identified with them. It was not
so in their life. My boy Wat is more like--Why, you know, Russell; you
remember what a broken-down miserable--”
“Hush!” said Russell Penton, lifting his hand. “Let their memory be
respected here. Alicia thinks with you; she sees no resemblance: but she
will give effect to her father’s wishes. Everything he desired is sacred
in her sight.”
“I hope she will think no more of it,” said Edward Penton, growing red.
“Beg of her from me to think no more of it. I could not have--I should
not wish--in short, I should prefer nothing more to be said on the
subject. He was an old man. His memory had got confused. As I can not be
of any use here, can I have something to drive home? My wife will be
anxious, she will want to know.”
And then there was a few minutes’ brief conversation about the funeral
and all the lugubrious business of such a moment. It was with a sense of
relief that Edward Penton quitted for the first time the house that was
his own. He looked back upon it with curiously mingled feelings. He was
glad to get away. It was an escape to turn out of the avenue into the
clear undisturbed air in which there was nothing to remind him of the
close still atmosphere, the silence, the associations of this fatal
place. But yet when he looked back his heart swelled with a sensation of
pride. It was his. He had given up thinking of it, avoided looking at
it, weaned his heart in every way from that house of his fathers. Never
man had tried more honestly than he to give it up, entirely and from the
bottom of his heart--this thing which was not to be for him. And now,
without anything that could be called his doing, lo! it had come back
into his hands. It was the doing of Providence, he thought: his heart
swelled with a sort of solemn pride. As he went silently along, the
landscape took another aspect in his sight. It was the country in which
he was to spend all the rest of his life. It was his country, in which
he was one of the chief people, a man important to many, known wherever
he passed. By degrees a strange elation got into his mind. “Drive
quickly, I am in haste to get home,” he said to the groom who drove him.
“Yes, Sir Edward,” said the man, respectfully. He had changed his very
name--everything was changed. Then as the red roof of Penton Hook
appeared below at the foot of the hill he thought of the anxious faces
looking out for him, the young ones with awe in them, thinking of the
first death that had crossed their way; his wife wistful, ready to read
in his face what had happened. But none of them knowing what had really
happened--that Penton was his after all.
END OF FIRST HALF.
* * * * *
A POOR GENTLEMAN.
BY MRS. OLIPHANT
_SECOND HALF_
NEW YORK:
GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER,
17 to 27 VANDEWATER STREET.
A POOR GENTLEMAN.