THE NEW STATE OF AFFAIRS.
When Mr. Penton in the dog-cart was heard coming down the steep path to
the open gates there was a universal rush to door and window to receive
him. The delay in his coming had held the household in a high state of
tension, which the arrival of the carriage with Ally and the young
visitor increased. The girls could give no information except that Sir
Walter was very ill, and that Mr. Russell Penton himself had put them
into the carriage and sanctioned their coming away. Ally took her mother
anxiously aside to explain.
“I didn’t know what to do. She is Mr. Russell Penton’s niece; she has no
father or mother. She wanted to come, and he seemed to want her to come.
Oh, I hope I haven’t done wrong! I couldn’t tell what to do.”
“Of course, there is the spare room,” said Mrs. Penton, but she was not
delighted by the appearance of the stranger. “Tell Martha to light a
fire in the spare room. But you must amuse her yourselves, you and Anne;
your father must not be troubled with a visitor in the house.”
“Oh, she will not be like a visitor, she will be like one of ourselves,”
said Ally.
The father, however, observed the little fair curled head at the
drawing-room window as he drove up, and it annoyed him. A stranger among
them was like a spy at such a moment. The girls were at the window, and
Walter, newly returned, had been standing at the gate, and Mrs. Penton
was at the door. He jumped down, scarcely noticing the anxious look of
inquiry with which she met him, and stopped on the step to take a
sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket, which he handed to the groom who
had driven him.
“Thank you, Sir Edward,” said the man, touching his hat with great
obsequiousness.
“Sir Edward!” and a sovereign! The two things together set Mrs. Penton’s
heart beating as it scarcely ever had beat before. She did not
understand it for the moment. “Sir Edward:” and a sovereign! This
perhaps was the most impressive incident of all.
Then he took her by the arm without a word of explanation. “Come with me
into the book-room, Anne.” He had not a word even for little Molly, who
came fluttering like a little bird across the hall and embraced his leg,
and cried, “Fader, fader!” in that little sweet twitter of a voice which
was generally music to his ears.
“Take her away,” was all he said, with a hasty pat of her little shining
head. His face was as grave as if the profoundest trouble had come upon
him, and wore that vague air of resentment which was natural to him.
Fate or Fortune or Providence, however you like to call it, had been
doing something to Edward Penton again. As a matter of course, it was
always doing something to him--crossing his plans, setting them all
wrong, paying no attention to his feelings. There was no conscious
profanity in this thought, nor did the good man even suppose that he was
arraigning the Supreme Disposer of all events. He felt this sincerely,
with a sense of injury which was half comic, half tragic. Mrs. Penton
was used to it, and used to being upbraided for it, as if she had
somehow a secret influence, and if she pleased might have arrested the
decisions of fate.
“Well, Edward?” she said, breathless, as he closed the book-room door.
“Well,” he replied. The fire was low, and he took up the poker violently
in the first place and poked and raked till he made an end of it
altogether. “I think,” he said, “after being out all the morning, I
might at least find a decent fire.”
“I’ll make it up in a moment, Edward. A little wood will make it all
right.”
“A little wood! and you’ll have to ring the bell for it, and have half a
dozen people running and the whole house disturbed, just when I have so
much to say to you! No, better freeze than that.” He turned his back to
the fire, which, after all, was not quite without warmth, and added,
after a moment, not looking at her, contracting his brows, and with a
sort of belligerent shiver to let her see that he was cold, and that it
was her fault. “My uncle is dead.”
“Is it all over, Edward? I fancied that it must be soon;” and then she
added, with a little timidity, “were you in time?
“In time! I was there for hours.” He knew very well what she meant, but
it was a sort of pleasure to him to prolong the suspense. “Of course,”
he said, slowly, “he could not be expected to recover at his age. Alicia
should have known better than to have had--dances and things at his
age.”
“Dances! I have had no time to speak to Ally. I didn’t know; oh, how
dreadful, Edward, and the old man dying!”
“The old man wasn’t dying then,” he said, pettishly. “How were they to
suppose he was going to die? He has often been a great deal worse. He
was an old man who looked as if he might have lived forever.”
After this his wife made no remark, but furtively--her housewifely
instincts not permitting her to see it go out before her eyes--stooped
to the coal-box standing by to put something on the fire.
“Let it alone!” he said, angrily. “At such a moment to be poking among
the coals! Do you know what has happened? Can’t you realize it a little?
Here we have Penton on our hands--Penton! _That_ place to be furnished,
fitted out, and lived in! How are we to do it? I am in such a perplexity
I think as never man was. And instead of helping me, all your thoughts
are taken up with mending the fire!”
Mrs. Penton sat down suddenly in the first chair. She put her hand upon
her heart, which had begun to jump. “Then you were not in time? Oh, I
thought so from the first. To go on wasting day after day, and he such
an old man!”
And in the extreme excitement of the moment she began to cry a little,
holding her hand upon her fluttering heart: “It was what I always
feared: when there is a thing that is troublesome and difficult, that is
always the thing that happens,” she cried.
Her husband did not make any immediate reply. He wheeled round in his
turn and took up the poker, but presently threw it down again. “It is no
use making a fuss over that now. It’s that fellow Rochford’s fault. By
the way,” he said, turning round again sharply, “mind, Annie, I won’t
have that young fellow coming here so much. It might not have mattered
before, but now it’s out of character--entirely out of character. Mind
what I say.”
Mrs. Penton took no notice of this. She went on with a little murmur of
her own: “No, it is of no use making a fuss. We can’t undo it now. To
think it might have been settled yesterday, or any day! and now it never
can be settled whatever we may do.”
“I don’t know what you mean by settled,” he said, hastily; “nothing can
be more settled; it is as clear as daylight: not that there could be any
doubt at any time. The thing we’ve got to think of is what we are to
do.”
“With all the children,” said Mrs. Penton, “and that great empty house,
and no ready money or anything. Oh, Edward, how can I tell what we are
to do? It has been before me for years. And then I thought when your
cousin spoke that all was going to be right.”
“There’s no use speaking of that now.”
“No, I don’t suppose there’s any use. Still, when one thinks--which of
course I can’t help doing; when your cousin came I thought it was all
right. Though you never would listen to me, I knew that you would listen
to her. And now here it is again just as if that had never been!”
It was, perhaps, not generous of Mrs. Penton to indulge in these
regrets, but it was expecting from her something more than humanity is
capable of, to suppose that she would instantly turn into a consoler,
and forget that she had ever prophesied woe. That is very well for an
ideal heroine, a sweet young wife who is of the order of the embodied
angel. But Mrs. Penton was the mother of a large family, and she had
other things to think of than merely keeping her husband in a
tranquillity which perhaps he did not desire. When there are so many
interests involved, it is not easy for a woman to behave in this angelic
way. Perhaps her husband did not expect it from her. He stood leaning
his back upon the mantel-piece with a countenance which had relapsed
into its usual half-resentful quiet. He was not angry nor surprised, nor
did he look as if he were paying much attention. It gave him a little
time to collect his own thoughts while she got her little plaint and
irrestrainable reflections over. Sympathy is in this as much as in other
more demonstrative ways. If she had got over it in a moment without any
expression of feeling, he would probably have been shocked, and felt
that nothing mattered to her; but he got calm, while she, too, had her
little grumble and complaint against fate.
“The thing,” he said, “now, is to think what we must do. I sha’n’t hurry
the Russell Pentons; they can take their time; and in the meantime we
must look about us. The thing is there will be no rents coming in till
Lady-day, and it’s only Christmas. I never thought I should have seen it
in this light. To succeed to Penton seemed always the thing to look
forward to. It is you that have put it in this light.”
“What other light could I put it in, Edward? Penton is very different
from this, and we have never been much at our ease here. I was always
frightened for what would happen when you began to realize--But, dear
me,” she added, “what is the use of talking? We must just make the best
of it. Nothing is quite so bad as it seems likely to be. With prudence
and taking care, perhaps, after all, we may do--”
“Do!” he said, “to go to Penton, the great house of the family, and to
be the head of the family, and to have nothing better before one than a
hope that we shall be able to _do_--” And then there was a pause between
this careful and troubled pair; and of all things in the world, any
stranger who had seen them, would have imagined last of all that they
had succeeded to a great inheritance, and that the man at least had
attained to what had been his hope and dream for years.
“Well,” she said at last, “I can’t do you any good, Edward, and the bell
for dinner will be ringing directly. You must have had an agitating
morning, and I dare say eat no breakfast, and you will be the better
for your dinner. I suppose we ought to draw down all the blinds.”
“Why should you draw down the blinds? There is not too much light.”
“I should not like,” said Mrs. Penton, “to be wanting in any mark of
respect. And after all, Sir Walter was your nearest relation, and you
are his successor, so that it is really a death in the family.”
She walked to the window as she spoke, and began to draw down the blind.
He followed her hastily, and stopped her with an impatient hand.
“My windows look into the garden. Who is coming into the garden to see
whether we pay respect or not? I won’t have it anywhere. On the funeral
day if you please, but no more. I won’t have it!” It did him a little
good to have an object for his irritation. She turned round upon him
with some surprise, feeling the imperative grasp of his hand upon her
arm. Perhaps that close encounter and her startled look affected him;
perhaps only the disturbed state in which he was, with all emotions
close to the surface. He put his other hand upon her further shoulder,
and held her for a moment, looking at her. “My dear,” he said, “do you
know you’re Lady Penton now?”
She gave him another look, full of surprise and almost consternation.
“I never thought of that,” she said.
“No, I never supposed you did--but so it is. There has not been a Lady
Penton for thirty years. There couldn’t be a better one,” he said, with
a little emotion, kissing her on the forehead. The look, the caress, the
little solemnity of the announcement overcame her. Lady Penton! How
could she ever accustom herself to that name, or think it was she who
was meant by it? It drove other matters for the moment out of her head.
And then the bell rang for dinner--the solid family meal in the middle
of the day, which had suited all the habits of the family at Penton
Hook. Already it seemed to be out of place. She dried her eyes with a
tremulous, half-apologetic hand, and said,
“You know, Edward, the children--must always have their dinner at this
hour.”
“To be sure,” he replied. “I never supposed there could be any change in
that respect.”
“And you must want some food,” she said, “and a little comfort”--then as
she went before him to the door, she paused with a little hesitation,
“you know they brought a little girl with them, a niece of Russell
Penton’s? It is a pity to have a stranger to-day, but they could not
help it.”
“No, I don’t suppose they could help it,” said Sir Edward. Neither he
nor she knew anything more of their visitor than that she was a little
girl, Russell Penton’s niece.
They all met round the table in the usual way, but yet in a way which
was not at all usual. The father and mother came in arm-in-arm, after
the children had gathered in the dining-room--that is to say, he had
taken her arm, placing his hand within it, and pushing her in a little
before him into the room. The little children had clambered into their
high chairs, and little Molly sat at the lower end, which was her usual
place, close to her father’s chair, flourishing a spoon in the air, and
singing her little song of “Fader, fader!” Molly was always the one that
called him to dinner when he was busy, and thus the cry of “fader!” had
become associated with dinner in her small mind. The elder ones stood
about waiting for their parents, Mab between Ally and Anne, looking
curiously on at all the manners and customs of this new country in which
she found herself--the unknown habits of a large family, who were not
rich--all of which particulars were wonderful in her eyes. Walter, as
his mother at once saw, bore a strange aspect--abstracted and
far-away--as if his mind were full of anything in the world except the
scene around him. Perhaps it was fatigue, for the poor boy had been up
all night; perhaps the crisis, which was so extraordinary, and which
contradicted everything they had been planning and thinking of. The
elder children were all grave, disturbed, a little overawed by all that
was coming to pass. And for some time there was scarcely any thing said.
The little bustle of carving, of serving the children, of keeping them
all in order, soon absorbed the mother as if it had been an ordinary
day; but at the other end of the table, neither Ally, looking at him
with anxious eyes on the one side, nor Molly on the other, got much
attention from their father, who was occupied by such different
thoughts. Mab was the only one who was free of all _arrière pensée_. She
had scarcely known Sir Walter; how could she be overwhelmed by his
death? and it made no difference to her: whereas this plunge into
novelty and the undiscovered, was more wonderful to her than anything
she had ever known. She watched the children and all their ways--the
little clamor of one, the steady perseverance of another, the watchful
way in which Horry devoured and kept the lead, observing lest any of the
brotherhood should get before him as he worked through his meal--with
delighted interest.
“Are they always like that?” she whispered to Anne. “Do you remember all
their names? Do they all always eat as much? Oh, the little pigs, what
darlings they are!” cried Mab under her breath.
Anne did not like to hear the children called little pigs, even though
the other word was added.
“They don’t eat any more than other children,” she said. And Anne, too,
if she was not anxious, was at least very curious and eager to hear all
that had happened, which only father knew. And father’s brow was full of
care. They all turned it over in their minds in their different
fashions, and asked each other what could possibly have happened worse
than had been expected; for already experience had made even these young
creatures feel that something worse happening was the most likely, a
great deal more probable, than that there was something better. The
mother was the most fortunate, who divided and arranged everything, and
had to make allowances for Horry’s third help when she first put a spoon
into the pudding, a matter of severe and abstruse calculation which left
little space in the thoughts for lesser things.
When dinner was over, the children all rushed out with that superfluity
of spirits which is naturally produced by a full meal--but also a little
quarrelsome as well, making a great noise in the hall, and requiring a
great deal of management before they could be diverted into the natural
channels in which human energy between the ages of twelve and two has to
dissipate itself in the difficult moment of the afternoon. When the
weather was good they all scampered out into the garden, where indeed
Horry and his brothers rushed now with the shouts of the well-fed and
self-satisfied. To recover these rebels on one hand, and to get the
little tumult of smaller children dancing about in all the passages
dispersed and quiet, was a piece of work which employed all the energies
of the ladies. Mab Russell looked on admiring in the midst of that
little rabble. She would have liked, above all things, to head an
insurrection and besiege the mother and sisters in their own stronghold.
She went so far as to hold out her skirts over Horry, who took refuge
behind her, seeing the face of an ally where he expected it least. They
were all anxious to get the riot over, but Mab, who knew no better,
interrupted the course of justice. Oh, how awkward it is to have a
stranger in the house when the family affairs are trembling in the
balance, and no one knows what is going to happen! This was what Ally
and Anne said to each other, almost weeping over that contrariety of
fortune, when they were compelled, instead of hearing all about it, to
go round the grounds with Mab and show how high the water had come up
last year.