A Poor Gentleman

“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.

CHAPTER V.

A WINTER’S WALK.

Mr. Penton went out to take his walk in a depressed mood. He was familiar with all the stages of depression. He was a man who thought he had been hardly dealt with in the course of his life. In his youth there had been a momentary blaze of gayety and pleasure. In those days, when he had shared the early follies of Walter and Reginald, and fallen in love with Alicia, it had not occurred to him that the path of existence would be a dull one. But that was all over long ago. When the other young men had fallen into dissipation and all its attendant miseries, he had pulled himself up. Pleasure was all very well, but he had no idea of paying such a price for it as that. He was not a man who had ever been brought under any strong religious impulse, but he knew the difference between right and wrong. He pulled himself up with great resolution, and abandoned the flowery path where all the thorns are at first hidden under the bloom and brightness. It was no small sacrifice to descend into the gray mediocrity of Penton Hook, and give himself up to the dull life which was all that was possible; but he did it, which was not an easy thing to do. It was true that he was still in those days a young man, and might have made something better of his existence: but he had no training of any special kind, no habit of work, no great capacity one way or other. He settled down to his dull country life without any feeling that he could do better, leaving all excitement behind him. It was perhaps a more creditable thing to do than if he had been able to plunge into another kind of excitement, to face the world and carve a fortune out of it, which is the alternative possible to some men. And as there had been no illusion possible when he accepted that neutral-tinted life, so there had been no unexpected happiness involved in its results. He had married a good woman, but not a lively one. His children had been pleasant and amusing in their babyhood, but they had brought innumerable cares along with them. Before their advent Penton Hook had been dull, but it had not been without many little comforts. He had been able to keep a couple of horses, which of itself was a considerable thing, and to hold his place more or less among the county people. But as the young ones grew it made a great difference. Just at the time when life ought to have opened up for their advantage, it had to be narrowed and straitened. He was compelled to give up his own gratifications on their account, yet without any compensating consciousness that he was doing the best he could for them. Indeed, there seemed no possibility of doing the best that could be done for any one. To keep on, to do what was indispensable, to provide food and clothing—the mere sordid necessities of life—was all that was within his power. In the early days after his marriage nothing had been saved; the necessity of education and provision for the children seemed either ludicrous in presence of the tiny creatures who wanted nothing but bread and milk and kisses, or so far off as to be beyond calculation. But by gradual degrees this necessity had become the most important of all. And with it, unfortunately, had come that depreciation in the value of land which made his little estate much less productive exactly at the time when he wanted money most.

One of his farms was vacant, the others were let at low rents—all was sinking into a different level. And, on the other hand, the wants of the family increased every day. It is not to be supposed that Mr. Penton liked to take Osy from school. He had been indifferent about Wat for various reasons first because he then quite believed that was really capable of “reading” with his boy, and would rather like it than otherwise, and then it would be a good thing for them both; and second, because Wat was the heir, and no great education is necessary (Mr. Penton thought with Mrs. Hardcastle in the play) to fit a man to spend a large income. But with Osy no such argument told. Osy was heir to nothing. He was the clever one of the family; and as for reading with Osy, his father knew that he was not capable of any such feat, even if he had not proved that to keep settled hours and give up a part of his day to his son’s instruction had come to be a thing impossible to him. He knew very well now that to take Oswald from school would be to do him an injury. But what could the poor man do? All that the young ones said in their warm partisanship for Osy, in their indignation at the idea of making him suffer, had more or less affected their father. He was not very sensitive to anything they could say, and yet it wounded him in a dull way. It made him a little more depressed and despondent. To battle with the waves, to be tossed upon a great billow which may swallow you up, yet may also throw you ashore and bring you to a footing upon the solid earth, is less terrible than just to keep your head above the muddy tide which sucks you down and carries you on, with no prospect but to go to the bottom at last when your powers of endurance are spent. This last was Mr. Penton’s state. There was no excitement of a storm, no lively stir of winds and waters—all was dull, dreary, hopeless; a position in which he could do nothing to help himself, nothing to save himself—in which he must just go on, keeping his head above water as he could, now and then going down, getting his eyes and throat full of the heavy, muddy, livid stream. Poverty is little to the active soul which can struggle and strive and outwit it, which can still be doing; but to those who have nothing they can do, who can only wait speechless till they are ingulfed, how bitter is that slowly mounting, colorless, hopeless, all-subduing tide!

There was very little for a man to do at Penton Hook. He had tramped about the fields of the vacant farm, trying helplessly to look after things which he did not understand, and to make the fallow fields bear crops by looking at them, in the morning; and he had come away from them more depressed than ever, wondering whether, if he could get money enough to start and work the farm anything might be made of it; then reflecting dolefully that in all likelihood the money for such operations, even if he could raise it, might in all probability be as well thrown into the river for any good it would do. In the afternoon he did not attempt any further consideration of this question, but simply took a walk as he had been in the habit of doing for so many years. And though in some circumstances there are few things so pleasant, yet in others there is nothing so doleful as this operation of taking a walk. How much helpless idleness, how many hopeless self-questions, miserable musings, are summed up in it; what a dreamy commonplace it turns to, the sick soul’s dull substitute for something to do or think of. It was in its way a sort of epitome of Edward Penton’s wearisome life. He knew every turning of the road; there was nothing unexpected to look forward to, no novelty, no incident; when he met any one he knew, any of his equals, they were most probably riding or driving, or returning from a day with the hounds, splashed and tired, and full of talk about the run. He took off his hat to the county ladies as they drove past, and exchanged a word with the men. He had nothing to say to them nor they to him. He was of their sphere indeed, but not in it. He knew when he had passed that they would say “Poor Penton!” to each other, and discuss his circumstances. He was happier when he came now and then upon a solitary poor man breaking stones on the way, with whom he would stop and have a talk about the weather or how the country was looking. When he could find twopence in his pocket to give for a glass of beer he was momentarily cheered by the encounter. It was a cheap pleasure, and almost his only one. It gave a little relief to the dullness and discouragement which filled all the rest of the way.

There was, however, one incident in his walk besides the twopence to the stone-breaker. There was no novelty in this. Every day as he came up to the turning he knew what awaited him; but that did not take away from perennial interest. This incident was Penton, seen in the distance: not the terrace front, which he, like all the Pentons, thought a monument of architectural art, but a high shoulder of red masonry, which shone through the trees, and suggested all the rest to his accustomed eyes. Penton was the one incident in his walk, as it was in his life. He was poor, and the waters of misery were almost going over his head. Yet Penton stood fast, and he was the heir. He had said this to himself for years, and though the words might have worn out all their meaning, so often had they been repeated, yet there was an endless excitement in them. Twenty years before he had said them with a sense of mingled exultation and remorse, which was when the last of “the boys” died, and he became against all possibility the next heir. Sir Walter had been an old man then, and it seemed probable that these recurring calamities would end his life as well as his hopes. Edward Penton had nothing to reproach himself with; he had never been hard upon his cousins, though he had abandoned their evil ways, and he had been shocked and sorry when one by one they died. But afterward he had looked forward to his inheritance; he had believed that it could not be far off. He had come to this turning when first he began to feel life too many for him, and had looked at the house that was to be his and had taken comfort. But twenty years is a long time, and waiting for dead men’s shoes is not a pleasant occupation. He looked at Penton now always with excitement, but without any exhilaration of hope. It did not seem so unlikely as before that Sir Walter might live to be a hundred; that he might live to see his younger cousin out. As he had outlived his own sons he might outlive Edward Penton and his sons after him. Nothing seemed impossible to such an old man. And Mr. Penton did not feel that his own powers of living, any more than any other powers in him, were much to be reckoned upon. He stood on this particular day and gazed at the house of his fathers with a long and wistful look. Should he ever step into it as his own? Should he ever change his narrow state for the lordship there? This question did not bring to him the same quickening of the breath which he had been sensible of on so many previous occasions. He was too much depressed to-day to be roused even by that. He turned away with a sigh, and turned his back to that vision and his face homeward. At home all his cares were awaiting him—as if he had not carried them with him every step of the way.

As he walked back toward Penton Hook his ear was caught by the chip of the hammer, which sounded in the stillness of the wintery afternoon like some big insect on the road. Chip, chip, and then the little roll of falling stones. The man who made the sound was sitting on a heap of stones by the road-side, working very tranquilly, not hurrying himself, taking his occupation easily. He was gray-haired, with a picturesque gray beard, and a red handkerchief knotted underneath. He paused to put his hand to his cap when he saw Mr. Penton. The recollection of past glasses of beer, or hopes for the future, or perhaps the social pleasure, independent of all interested motives, of five minutes’ talk to break the dullness of the long afternoon, made the approach of the wayfarer pleasant.

“Good-afternoon, sir,” he said, cheerfully.

Old Crockford, though he was a great deal older than Mr. Penton, and much poorer absolutely, though not comparatively, was by no means a depressed person, but regarded everything from a cheerful point of view.

“Good-morning, Crockford,” said Mr. Penton. “I didn’t see you when I passed a little while ago. I thought you had not been out to-day.”

“Bless you, squire, I’m out most days,” said Crockford; “weather like this it’s nothin’ but pleasure. But frost and cold is disagreeable, and rain’s worst of all. I’m all right as long as there’s a bit o’ sunshine, and it keeps up.”

“It looks like keeping up, or I am no judge,” said the poor squire.

Crockford shook his head and looked up at the sky. “I don’t like the look of them clouds,” he said. “When they rolls up like that, one on another, I never likes the look on them. But, praise the Lord, we’s high and dry, and can’t come to no harm.”

“It is more than I am,” said Mr. Penton, testily. “I hate rain!”

“And when the river’s up it’s in of the house, sir, I’ve heard say? That’s miserable, that is. When the children were young my missis and me we lived down by Pepper’s Wharf, and the fevers as them little ones had, and the coughs and sneezin’s, and the rheumatics, it’s more nor tongue can say. Your young ladies, squire, is wonderful red in the face and straight on their pins to be living alongside of the river. It’s an onpleasant neighbor is the river, I always do say.”

“If you hear any fools saying that the water comes into my house you have my permission to—stop them,” said Mr. Penton, angrily. “It’s no such thing; the water never comes higher than the terrace. As for fevers, we don’t know what they are. But I don’t like the damp in my garden; that stands to reason. It spoils all the paths and washes the gravel away.”

“That’s very true,” said Crockford, with conviction; “it leaves ’em slimy, whatever you do. I’ve seen a sight to-day as has set me thinking, though I’m but a poor chap. Poor men, like others, they ’as their feelings. I’ve seen a lady go by, squire, as may be once upon a day years ago, you, or most of the gentlemen about—for she was a handsome one, she was—”

“Ah, an old beauty! ‘Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.’ And who might this lady be?”

“Many a one was sweet upon her,” said Crockford. “I ain’t seen her, not to call seeing, for many a year. I don’t know about ashes, squire, except as they’re useful for scouring. And they say that beauty is but skin deep: but when I looks at an ’andsome lady I don’t think nothing of all that.”

“I didn’t know you were such an enthusiast, Crockford.”

“I don’t always understand, squire,” said Crockford, “the words the quality employ. Now and then they’ll have a kind of Greek or Latin that means just a simple thing. But I sits here hours on end, and I thinks a deal; and for a thing that pleases the eye I don’t think there’s nothing more satisfying than an ’andsome woman. I don’t say in my own class of life, for they ages fast, do the women; they don’t keep their appearance like you and me, if I may make so bold. But for a lady as has gone through a deal, and kep’ her looks, and got an air with her, that with riding in her own carriage behind a couple of ’andsome bays—I will say, squire, if I was to be had up before the magistrates for it—and you’re one yourself, and ought to know—and what I say is this: that Miss Aliciar from the great house there is just as fine a sight as a man would wish to see.”

“Miss Alicia!” cried poor Penton. The name was one he had not heard for long, and it seemed to bring back a flush of his youth which for a moment dazzled him. He burst out into a tremendous laugh after awhile. “You old blockhead!” he said. “You’re talking of Mrs. Russell Pentonon, my cousin, who hasn’t been called by that name these twenty years!”

“Twenty years,” said old Crockford, “is nothin’ squire, to a man like me. I knew her a baby, just as I knowed you. You’re both two infants to the likes of me. Bless you, I hear the bells ring for her christening and yours too. But she’s a fine, ’andsome woman, a-wheelin’ along in her carriage as if all the world belonged to her. I don’t think nothin’ of a husband that hain’t even a name of his own to bless himself with nor a penny to spend. It’s you and her that should have made a match; that’s what ought to have been, squire.”

“Unfortunately, you see,” aid Mr. Penton, “I have got a wife of my own.”

“But you hadn’t no wife nor her a husband in the old days,” said Crockford, meditatively, pausing to emphasize his words with the chip, chip of his hammer. “Dear a me! the mistakes that are in this life! One like me, as sits here hours on end, with naught afore him but the clouds flying and the wind blowing, learns a many things. There’s more mistakes than aught else in this life. Going downright wrong makes a deal of trouble, but mistakes makes more. For one as goes wrong there’s allays two or three decent folks as suffers. But mistakes is just like daily bread; they’re like the poor as is ever with us, accordin’ to the Scripture; they just makes a muddle of everything. It’s been going through my mind since ever I see Miss Aliciar in her chariot a-driving away, as fine as King Solomon in all his glory. The two young gentlemen, that was a sad sort of a thing, squire, but I don’t know as t’other is much better, the mistakes as some folks do make.”

“Crockford, you are growing old, and fond of talking,” said Mr. Penton, who had heard him out with a sort of angry patience. “Because one lets you go on and say your say, that’s not to make you a judge of your betters. Look here, here’s twopence for a glass of beer, but mind you keep your wisdom to yourself another day.”

“Thank ye, squire,” said Crockford. “I speak my mind in a general way, but I can hold my tongue as well as another when it ain’t liked. Remarks as is unpleasant, or as pricks like, going too near a sore place—”

“Oh, confound you!” said the squire; “who ever said there was a—” But then he remembered that to quarrel with Crockford was not a thing to be done. “I think, after all,” he said, “you’re right, and that those clouds are banking up for rain. You’d better pack up your hammer, it’s four o’clock, and it will be wet before you get home.”

“Well, squire, if you says so, as is one of the trustees,” said Crockford, giving an eye to the clouds, as he swung himself leisurely off his hard and slippery seat upon the heap of stones—“I’ll take your advice, sir, and thank ye, sir; and wishing you a pleasant walk afore the rain comes on.”

Mr. Penton waved his hand and continued his walk downhill toward his home. The clouds were gathering indeed, but they were full of color and reflection, which showed all the more gorgeous against the rolling background of vapor which gradually obliterated the blue. He was not afraid of the rain, though if it meant another week of wet weather such as had already soaked the country, it would also mean much discomfort and inconvenience in the muddy little domain of Penton Hook. But it was not this he was thinking of. His own previous reflections, and the sharp reminder of the past that was in old Crockford’s random talk, made a combination not unlike that of the dark clouds and the lurid reflected colors of the sky. Mistake? Yes; no doubt there had been a mistake—many mistakes, one after another, mistakes which the light out of the past, with all its dying gleams, made doubly apparent. His mind was so full of all these thoughts that he arrived at his own gates full of them, without thinking of the passing vision which had stirred up old Crockford, and his own mind too, on hearing of it. But when he pushed open the gate and caught sight of the two bays, pawing and rearing their heads, with champ and stir of all their trappings, as if they disdained the humble door at which they stood, Edward Penton’s middle-aged heart gave a sudden jump in his breast. Alicia here! What could such a portent mean?

CHAPTER VI.

RICH MRS. PENTON AND POOR MRS. PENTON.

Mrs. Russell Penton had not come to the Hook for nothing. It was years since she had visited her cousin’s house—partly because of repeated absences—for the family at Penton were fond of escaping from the winter, and generally spent that half of the year on the Riviera—partly from the feeling she had expressed to her husband, which was not a very Christian feeling, of repulsion from her father’s heir: and partly, which was perhaps the strongest reason of all, because they were not, as she said, “in our own sphere.” How can the wife and many children of a poor man living in a small muddy river-side house be in the sphere of one of the great ladies of the district? Only great qualities on one side or another, great affection or some other powerful inducement, would be enough to span that gulf. And no such link existed between the two houses. But there had come to light between her father and herself in one of those close and long consultations, to which not even her husband was admitted, a plan which required Edward Penton’s concurrence, and which, they concluded between them, had better be set before him by Alicia herself. This might have been done by summoning the heir-at-law to Penton. But Russell Penton’s veiled remonstrances, his laugh at her inconsistency, his comparison of the importance of the moth-eaten tapestry and poor Mrs. Penton’s inability to cut her coat according to her cloth, had not been without effect on his wife’s mind. She was not incapable of perceiving the point which he made; and though she confessed to nobody, not even to herself, that her visit to Penton Hook had a little remorseful impulse in it, yet this mingled largely with the evident business which might have been managed in another way. Many recollections rose in her mind also as she went along, not exposed even to such interruptions as that of old Crockford, all by herself with her own thoughts, remembering in spite of herself the youthful expeditions in which the Hook was so large a feature, the boating parties that “took the water” there, the anxious exertions of poor Edward to make his forlorn little mansion bright. Poor Edward! She remembered so clearly his eager looks, his desire to please, the anxious devices with which he sought to gratify her tastes, to show how his own followed them. She had not seen much of his older aspect, and had no distinct image in her mind to correct that of the eager young man reading her face to see if she approved or disapproved, and having no higher standard by which to shape his own opinions. She saw him in that aspect: and she saw him as by a lightning flash of terrible recollection, which was half imagination, as he had appeared to her by the side of her last brother’s grave, the chief mourner and the chief gainer, concealing a new-born sense of his own importance under the conventional guise of woe. Alicia was half conscious that she did poor Edward wrong. He was not the sort of man to exult in his own advantage as purchased by such a terrible family tragedy. But even now, when the passion of grief and loss was over, she could not surmount the bitter suggestion, the knowledge that he had certainly gained by what was ruin to her father’s house. When she drove past the old stone breaker on the road without taking any notice of him, without even remarking his presence, this had been the recollection with which her soul was filled. But her heart melted as the carriage swept along by all the well-remembered corners, and a vision of the happy youthful party of old, the sound of the boats at the little landing, the eager delight of the young master of the place, seemed to come back to her ears and eyes.

But Penton Hook did not look much like a boating party to-day. The water was very near the level of the too green grass, the empty damp flower-beds, the paths that gleamed with wet. A certain air of deprecating helplessness standing feebly against that surrounding power was in everything about. Alicia, as she was now, the active-minded manager of much property, full of energy and resources, one of those who, like the centurion, have but to say, “Come, and he cometh; do this, and he doeth it,” cast her eyes, awakened out of all dreams, upon the sweep of river and the little bit of weeping soil which seemed to lie in its grasp appealing for mercy to the clouds and the skies. The sight gave new life to all her scornful comments upon the incompetency of those who, knowing what they had, could not take the dignified position of making it do, but sunk into failure and helpless defeat. She planned rapidly in a moment what she would do, were it but to keep the enemy at bay. Were it hers she would scarcely have waited for the dawn of the morning, she would have sent in her workmen, prepared her plans, learned the best way to deal with it, long ago. She would have made herself the mistress, not the slave, of the surrounding stream. In whatever way, at whatever cost, she would have freed herself, she would have overcome these blind influences of nature. It was with a little scorn, feeling that she could have done this, feeling that she would like to do it, that it would be a pleasure to fight and overcome that silent, senseless force, that Mrs. Russell Penton, rich Mrs. Penton, swept in through the weeping gardens of the Hook, and with all the commotion of a startling arrival, her bays prancing, her wheels cutting the gravel, drew up before the open door.

The door was always open, whether the day was warm or cold, with an aspect not of hospitality and liberal invitation, but rather of disorder and a squalid freedom from rule. The hall was paved with vulgar tiles which showed the traces of wet feet, and Mrs. Russell Penton sunk down all at once from her indignant half-satisfied conviction that it was a sign of the incompetency of poor Edward in his present surroundings that he had never attempted to do anything to mend matters when brought thus face to face with poverty. The traces of the wet feet appalled her. This was just such an evidence of an incompetent household and careless mistress as fitted in to her theory; but it was terrible to her unaccustomed senses, to which a perfection of nicety and propriety was indispensable, and any branch of absolute cleanness and purity unknown. The maid, who hurried frightened, yet delighted, to the door, did not, however, carry out the first impression made. She was so neat in her black gown and white apron that the visitor was nonplussed as by an evident contradiction. “Can you tell me if Mr. Penton is at home?” she asked, leaning out of the carriage and putting aside the footman with a momentary feeling that this, perhaps, might be one of poor Edward’s daughters acting as house-maid. “No, my lady; but missis is in,” said the handmaid with a courtesy which she had learned at school. Martha did not know who the visitor was, but felt that in all circumstances to call a visitor who came in such a fine carriage my lady could not wrong.

“Missis is in!” Rich Mrs. Penton felt a momentary thrill. It was as if she had been hearing herself spoken of in unimaginable circumstances. She paused a little with a sense of unwillingness to go further. She had met on various occasions the insignificant pretty young woman who was poor Edward’s wife. She had made an effort to be kind to her when they were first married, when the poor Pentons were still more or less in one’s own sphere. But there had been nothing to interest her, nothing to make up for the trouble of maintaining so uncomfortable a relationship, and since that period she had not taken any notice of her cousin’s wife, a woman always immured in nursing cares, having babes or nourishing them, or deep in some one of those semi-animal (as she said) offices which disgust a fastidious woman, who in her own person has nothing of the kind to do. A woman without children becomes often very fastidious on this point. Perhaps the disgust may be partly born of envy, but at all events it exists and is strong. Mrs. Penton hesitated as to whether she would turn back and not go in at all, or whether she would wait at the door till Edward came in, or ask to be shown into his particular sitting-room to wait for him: but that, she reflected, would be a visible slight to Edward’s wife. The unexpressed unformulated dread of what Russell might say restrained her here. He would not criticise, but he would laugh, which was much worse. He would perhaps give vent to a certain small whistle which she knew very well, when she acknowledged that she had been to Penton Hook without seeing the mistress of the house. She did not at all confess to herself that she was a coward, but as a matter of fact rich Mrs. Penton was more afraid of that whistle than poor Mrs. Penton was of anything, except scarlatina. Alicia hesitated; she sat still in her carriage for the space of a minute, while simple Martha gazed as if she had been a queen, and admired the deep fur on the lady’s velvet mantle, and the bonnet which had come from Paris. Then Mrs. Penton made up her mind. “Perhaps your mistress will see me,” she said; “I should like to wait till Mr. Penton comes in.”

“Oh, yes, my lady,” Martha said. Though she had been carefully instructed how to answer visitors, she felt instinctively that this visitor could not be asked her name as if she was an ordinary lady making a call. She then opened the drawing-room very wide and said, “Please, ma’am!” then stopped and let the great lady go in.

Mrs. Penton, poor Mrs. Penton was sitting by the fire on a low chair. There was not light enough to work by, and yet there was too much light to ask for the lamp. It was a welcome moment of rest from all the labors that were her heritage. She liked it perhaps all the better that her husband and the older ones, who would talk or make demands upon her to be talked to, were out and she was quite free. To be alone now and then for a moment is sweet to a hard-worked woman who never is alone. Indeed, she was not alone now. Two of the little ones were on the rug by her feet. But they made no demands upon their mother, they played with each other, keeping up a babble of little voices, within reach of her hand to be patted on the head, within reach of her dress to cling to, should a wild beast suddenly appear or an ogre or a naughty giant. Thus, though they said nothing to each other, they were a mutual comfort and support, the mother to the children and the children to the mother. And if we could unveil the subtle chain of thinking from about that tired and silent woman’s heart, the reader would wonder to see the lovely things that were there. But she was scarcely aware that she was thinking, and what she thought was not half definite enough to be put into words. A world of gentle musings, one linked into another, none of them separable from the rest, was about her in the firelight, in the darkness, the quiet and not ungrateful fatigue. She was not thinking at all she would have said. It was as though something revolved silently before her, gleaming out here and there a recollection or realization. The warmth, the dimness, the quiet, lulled her in the midst of all her cares. She had thought of Osy till her head ached. How this dreadful misfortune could be averted; how he could be kept on at Marlborough; until, in the impossibility of finding any expedient, and the weariness of all things, her active thoughts had dropped. They dropped as her hands dropped, as she gave up working, and for that moment of stillness drew her chair to the fire. There was nothing delightful to dwell upon in all that was around and about her. But God, whom in her voiceless way she trusted deeply, delivered the tired mother from her cares for the moment, and fed her with angels’ food as she sat without anything to say for herself, content by the fire.

It was a moment before she realized what had happened when the door opened and the visitor swept in. She was not clever or ready, and her first consciousness that some one had come in was confused, so that she did not know how to meet the emergency. She rose up hastily, all her sweet thoughts dispersing; and the children, who saw a shadowy tall figure and did not know what it was, shuffled to her side and laid hold of her dress with a horrible conviction that the ogre who eats children on toast had come at last. Rich Mrs. Penton sweeping in had command of the scene better than poor Mrs. Penton had who was its principal figure. She saw the startled movement, the slim figure rising up from before the fire, in nervous uncertainty what to say or do, and the sudden retreat of the little ones from their place in the foreground, lighted by the warm glow of the fire, to the shelter of their mother’s dress. The whole group had a timid, alarmed look which half piqued and half pleased Alicia. She rather liked the sensation of her own imposing appearance which struck awe, and yet was annoyed that any one should be afraid of her. She had no doubt what to do; she went forward into the region of the firelight and held out a hand. “You don’t remember me,” she said, “or perhaps it is only that you don’t see me. I am Alicia Penton. May I sit down here a little till my cousin comes in?”

“Mrs. Russell Penton! oh, sit down, please. Will you take this chair, or will you come nearer the fire? I am ashamed to have been so stupid, but I have not many visitors, and I never thought—will you take this chair, please?”

“You never thought that I should be one? Oh, don’t think I blame you for saying so. It is my fault; I have often felt it. I hope you will let by-gones be by-gones now, and look upon me as a friend.”

“Horry,” said Mrs. Penton, “run and tell Martha to bring the lamp.” She did not make any direct reply to her visitor’s overture. “I am fond of sitting in the firelight,” she said. “A little moment when there is nothing to do, when all is so quiet, is pleasant. But it is awkward when any one comes in, for we can not see each other. I hope Sir Walter is quite well,” she added, after a momentary pause.

It was in the rich Mrs. Penton’s heart to cry out, “Don’t ask me about Sir Walter; you don’t hope he is well; you wish he was dead, I know you must, you must!” These words rushed to her lips but she did not say them. There was in this mild interior no justification for such a speech. The absence of light threw a veil upon all the imperfections of the place, and there was something in the gentle indifference of the mistress of the house, the absence of all feeling in respect to her visitor except a startled civility, which somehow humbled and silenced the proud woman. She had been, in spite of herself, excited about this meeting. She had come in with her heart beating, making overtures, which she never would have made to a stranger. She did not know what she expected; either to be received with warm and astonished gratitude, or to be held at arm’s-length in offense. But this mild woman in the soft confusion of the firelit gloom did neither—had not evidently been thinking of her at all—had no feeling about her one way or another. Mrs. Russell Penton felt like one who had fallen from a height. She blushed unseen with a hot sensation of shame. To feel herself of so much less consequence than she expected, was extraordinary to her, a sensation such as she had rarely felt before. She felt even that the pause she made before replying, which she herself felt so much, and during which so many things went through her head, was lost upon the other, who was preoccupied about the lamp, and anxious lest it should smell, and concerned with a hundred other things.

“My father is quite well,” said Alicia, with a little emphasis; “I never saw him in better health. It is not thought necessary for him, he is so well, to go abroad this year.”

The maid was at the door with the lamp, and there came in with her, exactly as Mrs. Penton feared, an odor of paraffin, that all-pervading unescapable odor which is now so familiar everywhere. She scarcely caught what her visitor said, so much more anxious was she about this. And in her mind there arose the anxious question, what to do? Was it better to say nothing about the smell, and hope that perhaps it might not be remarked? or confess the matter and make a commotion, calling Mrs. Penton’s attention to it by sending it away? Even if she did the latter she could not send away the smell, which, alas! was here, anyhow, and would keep possession. She resolved desperately, therefore, to take no notice, to hope, perhaps, that it might not be remarked. This presumption, though poor Mrs. Penton was so far from suspecting it, completed the discomfiture of the great lady who had made sure that her visit would be a great event.

“I am very glad,” said the mistress of the house at last, vaguely; “Edward has gone out for a walk, he will be in directly, and I am sure it will give him great pleasure to see you. The girls are out, too; there is not very much for them in the way of amusement at this time of the year.”

And then there was a pause, for neither of the ladies knew what to say. Mrs. Russell Penton examined her hostess closely by the light of the malodorous lamp. It was kinder to the poor lady than daylight would have been, and to the poor room, which, with the flickering firelight rising and falling, and the shade over the lamp, which left the walls and the furniture in a flattering obscurity, showed none of their imperfections to the stranger’s eyes. And all that was apparent in Mrs. Penton was that her gown, which was of no particular color, but dark and not badly cut, hung about her slim figure with a certain grace, and that the curling twist of her hair, done up in that soft large knot on the back of hegr head, suited her much better than a more elaborate coiffure would have done. Rich Mrs. Penton looked closely at her poor relation, but her scrutiny was not returned. The thing that had now sprung into prominence in the mind of the mistress of the house was whether Martha would bring tea in nicely, and whether the cake would be found which was kept for such great occasions, without an appeal to herself for the keys. She was careful and burdened about many things; but in the very excess of her anxieties was delivered from more serious alarms. It did not occur to her to trouble herself with the questions which the children had asked each other so anxiously, which Mr. Penton was inquiring of himself with a beating heart, “What could have brought Alicia Penton here?”

CHAPTER VII.

THE YOUNG AND THE OLD.

There was, however, no lack of excitement when the rest of the family came in. The girls dazzled with the quick transition from the darkness outside to the light within, their eyes shining, their lips apart with breathless curiosity and excitement, and a thrill of interest which might have satisfied the requirements of any visitor; and after a little interval their father, pale, and somewhat breathless, too, whose expectation was not of anything agreeable, but rather of some new misfortune, of which perhaps his cousin had come to tell him. Edward Penton did not pause to think that it was very unlikely that Alicia would thus break in upon his retirement in order to tell him of some misfortune. The feeling was instinctive in his mind, because of long acquaintance with defeat and failure, that every new thing must mean further trouble. He was always ready to encounter that in his depressed way. He came into the atmosphere which was tinged with the smell of paraffin, the discomfort of which was habitual to him, added to the undercurrent of irritation in his mind, and with the feeling that there was already a crowd of people in the room, where probably no one was necessary but himself. Alicia Penton had long, long ceased to be an object of special interest to him; nobody now was of particular interest to Mr. Penton in that or any sentimental way. The people who were about him now either belonged to him, in which case they gave him a great deal of altogether inevitable trouble; or else they did not belong to him, and were probably more or less antagonistic—wanting things from him, entertainment, hospitality, subscriptions, something or other which he did not wish to give. Such were the two classes into which the human race was divided; but if there was a debatable ground between the two, a scrap of soil upon which a human foot could be planted. Sir Walter and his daughter were its possible inhabitants. They belonged to him, too—in a way; they were antagonistic, too—in a way. Both the other halves of the world were more or less united in them.

He came forward into the light, which, however, revealed his knickerbockers and muddy boots more distinctly than his face. “It is a long time,” he said, “since we have met.”

“Yes, Edward, it is a long time; I have been saying so to your wife. The girls have grown up since I saw them last; they were little girls then, and now they are—grown up—”

When emotion reaches a high strain and becomes impassioned the power of expression is increased, and eloquence comes; but on the lower levels of feeling, suppressed excitement and commotion of mind often find utterance in the merest commonplace.

“Yes, they are grown up—the boy, too,” said Mr. Penton, under the same spell.

She cast a glance upward to where, beyond the lamp, on his mother’s side of the table, Wat appeared, a lengthy shadow, perhaps the most uncongenial of all. She made a slight forward inclination of her head in recognition of his presence, but no more. The girls she had shown a certain pleasure in. They stood together, with that pretty look of being but one which a pair of sisters often have, so brightly curious and excited, scanning her with such eager eyes that it would have been difficult not to respond to their frank interest. But Mrs. Penton could not tolerate Wat; his very presence was an offense to her, and the instinctive way in which he went over to his mother’s side, and stood there in the gloom looking at the visitor over the shade of the lamp. She would have none of him, but she turned with relief to the girls.

“I am ashamed to ask the question,” she said, “but which of you is my godchild? You seem about the same age.”

It was a vexation that it should be the other one—the one who was like her mother, not the impetuous darker girl whose eyes devoured the great lady who was her cousin—who replied, “It is I who am Ally. There is only a year between us. We are more together than any of the others.”

“Ally?” said Mrs. Russell Penton, with a little scorn. “And what is your name?”

“I am Anne.”

“She should be Anna,” said her mother, “which is far prettier; but she likes what is shortest best. There are so many of them. None of them have their full names. Some families make a great stand on that—to give every one their full name.”

“It is a matter of taste,” said the visitor, coldly.

She was doubly, but most unreasonably, annoyed after her first moment of interest to find that it was the wrong sister who was her godchild, and that even she did not bear the name that had been given her. It seemed a want of respect, not only to herself, but to the family, in which there had been Alicias for countless years.

“I hope my uncle is well?” said Mr. Penton, after another embarrassed pause. Sir Walter was not his uncle, but it was a relic of the old days, when he was a child of the house, that the younger cousin was permitted to call the elder so. “I heard you were not going away this year.”

“No; the doctors think he may stay at home, as there is every prospect of a mild winter. Of course, if it became suddenly severe we could take him away at a moment’s notice.”

“Of course,” Edward Penton said. However severe the weather might become neither he nor his could be taken away at a moment’s notice. He could not help feeling conscious of the difference, but with a faint smile breaking upon his depression. Alicia did not mean it, he was sure, but it seemed curious that she should put the contrast so very clearly before him. There was a little whispering going on between the mother and daughters about the tea. Tea was a substantial meal at the Hook, and the little ornamental repast at five o’clock was unusual, and made a little flurry in the household. Mrs. Penton had to give Anne certain instructions about a little thin bread-and-butter and the cake. She thought that Edward, who was keeping up the conversation, screened off these whisperings from his cousin’s notice; but as a matter of fact Alicia was keenly alive to all that was taking place, and felt a sharper interest in the anxiety about Martha’s appearance than in anything Edward was saying. “You still keep the villa at Cannes?” he went on.

“Yes; up to this time it has been a necessity for my father; but I have not seen him so well for years.”

“I am very glad to hear it,” Mr. Penton said, with a little emphasis. He had to stand aside as he spoke, for Martha arrived, rather embarrassed, with her tray, for which there was no habitual place; and the girls had to clear the books and ornaments off a little table while she waited. He was used to these domestic embarrassments, and it must be said for him that he did the best he could to screen them even at the sacrifice of himself. He drew a chair near to his cousin and sat down, thus doing what he could to draw her keen attention from these details. “It is long since I have seen Penton,” he said. “I hear you have made many improvements.”

“Nothing that you would remark—only additions to the comfort of the house. It used to be rather cold, you will remember.”

“I don’t think I knew what cold was in those old days,” he said, with a slight involuntary shiver, for the door had just opened once more to admit the cake, and a draught came in from the always open hall.

“We have had it now warmed throughout,” said Mrs. Russell Penton, with a slight momentary smile; “and we are thinking of fitting it up with the electric light. My husband has a turn for playing with science. It is a great deal of trouble at first, but very little afterward, I believe: and very convenient, without any of the drawbacks of lamps or gas.”

She could not but turn her head as she spoke, to the large crystal lamp upon the table, which filled the room with something more than light. The tea had been arranged by this time, and poor Mrs. Penton had begun to pour it out, but not yet was her mind disengaged from the many anxieties involved—for the tea was poor. She shook her head and made a little silent appeal to the girls as she poured out the first almost colorless cup. And then there was a jug of milk, but no cream. This necessitated another whispering, and the swift dispatch of Ally to fetch what was wanted. Mrs. Russell Penton looked on at all this, and took in every detail as if it had been a little scene of a comedy enacted for her amusement; but there was in the amusement an acrid touch. The smile was sharp, like Ithuriel’s spear, and cut all those innocent little cobwebs away.

“I have no doubt you will make it very complete,” Edward Penton said, with a sigh. There was an assumed proprietorship about all she said, which was like cutting him off from the succession, that only possibility which lay in his future. And yet they could not cut him off, he said, to himself.

“Is this tea for me? How very kind! but I never take it at this hour,” said Alicia, putting up her gloved hand with a little gesture of refusal. It smote, if not her heart, yet her conscience, a little to see the look that passed between the mother and the girls. Had Russell seen that scene he would assuredly have retired into a corner, and relieved himself with a whistle, before asking for a cup and eating half the cake, which was what he would have done regardless of consequences. Rendered compunctious by this thought, Alicia added, hastily, “You must bring the girls up to see the house; they ought to know it; and I hope I may see more of them in the time to come.”

“Their mother, I have no doubt, will be pleased,” said Edward Penton, vaguely.

“Indeed, you must not think of me,” his wife said; she had not taken offense. It was not in her mild nature to suppose that any one could mean to slight or insult her; but she was a little annoyed by the unnecessary waste of tea. “I am a poor walker, you know, Edward; and always occupied with the children; but I am sure the girls would like it very much. It would be very nice for them to make acquaintance—Wat could walk up with them if you were busy. Especially in the winter,” she said, with a little conciliatory smile toward the great lady, “I am always looking out for a little change for the girls.”

“Then we shall consider that as settled,” said Alicia. She rose, in all the splendor of her velvet and furs, and the whole family rose with her. A thought ran through their minds—a little astonished shock—a question, Was it possible that this was all she had come for? It was a very inadequate conclusion to the excitement and expectation in all their minds. Mrs. Penton alone did not feel this shock. She did not think the result inadequate; a renewal of acquaintance, an invitation to the girls, probably the opening to them of a door into society and the great world. She came forward with what to her was warmth and enthusiasm. “It is very kind of you to have called,” she said, “I am truly grateful, for I make few calls myself, and I can’t wonder if I fall out of people’s recollection. It is a great thing for a woman like you to come out of your way to be kind to Edward’s little girls. I am very grateful to you, and I will never forget it.” Poor Mrs. Penton gave her rich namesake a warm pressure of the hand, looking at her with her mild, large-lidded gray eyes, lit up by a smile which transformed her face. Not a shadow of doubt, not the faintest cloud of consciousness that Alicia’s motive had been less than angelic, was in her look or in her thoughts.

Rich Mrs. Penton faltered and shrunk before this look of gratitude. She knew that, far from deserving it, there had been nothing but contempt in her thoughts toward this simple woman who had been to her like a bit of a comedy. She withdrew her hand as quickly as possible from that grateful clasp.

“You give me credit—that I don’t deserve,” she said. “I—I came to speak to my cousin on business. It was really a—I won’t call it a selfish motive, that brought me. But it will give me real pleasure to see the girls.”

To divine the hidden meaning of this little speech, which was entirely apologetic, occupied the attention of the anxious family suddenly pushed back into eagerness again by the intimation of her real errand. It was not all for nothing, then! It was not a mere call of civility! Mr. Penton, who had felt something like relief when she rose, consoled by the thought that there could not at least be any new misfortune to intimate to him, fell again into that state of melancholy anticipation from which he had been roused, while the young ones bounded upward to the height of expectation. Something was coming—something new! It did not much matter to them what it was. They looked on with great excitement while their father conducted his cousin across the hall to his book-room, as it was called. They were not given to fine names at Penton Hook. It had been called the library in former days. But it was a little out at elbows, like the rest of the house—the damp had affected the bindings, the gilding was tarnished, the russia leather dropping to pieces, a smell of mustiness and decay, much contended against, yet indestructible, was in the place. And it was no longer the library, but only the book-room. The door of the drawing-room being left open, the family watched with interest indescribable the two figures crossing the hall. Mrs. Russell Penton, though she had not been there for so many years, knew her way, which particular interested the girls greatly, and opened a new vista to them, into the past. Mrs. Penton, for her part, knew well enough all about Alicia, but she was not jealous. She shivered slightly as she saw the great lady’s skirt sweep the hall.

“Oh, Anne,” she whispered, “tell Martha to bring a cloth and wipe it. A velvet dress! You children, with your wet feet, you are enough to break any one’s heart. What are the mats put there for, I should like to know?”

“Oh, what do you think of her, mother? Did you like her? Don’t you think she meant to be kind? Do you think we must go?”

“Certainly you must go,” said Mrs. Penton. “What do I think of her? This is not the first time I have seen Alicia Penton, that you should ask me such a question. Yes, yes, you must go. You ought to know that house better than any house in the country, and it is only right that you should first go into society there.”

“Do you think Cousin Alicia will ask us to parties? Do you think she really meant—really, without thinking of anything else—to be kind to Ally and me?”

“Anne, I am sorry that you should take such notions. What object could she have but kindness?” said Mrs. Penton, with mild conviction, “for coming here? It is all very well to talk of business with your father. Yes, no doubt she has business with your father, or she would not have said so; but I am very sure she must have suffered from the estrangement. I always thought she must suffer. Men do not think of these things, but women do. I feel sure that she has talked her father over at last, and that we are all to be friends again. Sir Walter is an old man; he must want to make up differences. What a dreadful thing it would be to die without making it up!”

“Was there any real quarrel?” said Wat, coming forward with his hands in his pockets. “She may be kind enough, mother, that fine lady of yours, but she does not like me.”

“How can she know whether she likes you or not? She doesn’t know you, Wat.”

“She hates me, all the same. I have never done anything to her that I know of. I suppose I did wrong to be born.”

“If it were not you it would be some one else,” said Mrs. Penton; “but, children! oh, don’t talk in this hard way. Think how her brothers died, and that she has no children. And the house she loves to go away from her, and nothing to be hers! I do not think I could bear it if it was me. Make haste, Anne, oh, make haste, and get Martha to wipe up the hall. And, Horry, you may as well have the thin bread and butter. If I had only known that Mrs. Russell Penton never took tea—”

About this failure Mrs. Penton was really concerned; it was not only a waste of the tea and of that nice bread and butter (which Horry enjoyed exceedingly), but it was a sort of a sham, enacted solely for the benefit of the visitor, which was objectionable in other points of view besides that of extravagance. It gave her a sense of humiliation as if she had been masquerading in order to deceive a stranger who was too quick of wit to be deceived. But Mrs. Penton neither judged her namesake, nor was suspicious of her, nor was she even very curious as the children were, as to the subject of the interview which was going on in the book-room. She feared nothing from it, nor did she expect anything. She was not ready to imagine that anything could happen. Sir Walter might die, of course, and that would make a change; but she had Mrs. Russell Penton’s word for it that Sir Walter was better than usual; and in the depth of her experience of that routine of common life which kept on getting a little worse, but had never been broken by any surprising incidents, she had little faith in things happening. She felt even that she would not be surprised for her part if Sir Walter should never die. He was eighty-five, and he might live to be a hundred. Though they had not met for years she saw nothing extraordinary in the fact that Alicia Penton had come to talk over some business matters with her cousin. It was partly indolence of mind and partly because she had so much that it was real to occupy her that she had no time for imaginary cases. And so while the girls hung about the doors in excitement unable to settle to anything, curious to see their great relation pass out again, and to watch her getting into her carriage, and pick up any information that might be attainable about the object of her mission, Mrs. Penton with a word of rebuke to their curiosity, took Horry upstairs to the nursery and thence retired to her own room to make her modest little toilet for the evening. There was no dinner to dress for, but the mother of the household thought it was a good thing as a rule and example that she should put on a different gown for tea.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PROPOSAL.

“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.”