CHAPTER III.
Captain Pennant’s family was by far the most popular in the neighborhood, and this in spite of the fact that they were far too poor to give entertainments on a large scale, or to contribute largely to charities, or to do any of those things upon which popularity is generally supposed to depend.
Captain Pennant himself, though not commonly considered to be overweighted with intellect, was a gentle and chivalrous gentleman, whose strong and kindly impulses were sometimes a little disconcerting to his wife. Thus he had, on one occasion, eighteen years before, brought home from Penzance, and placed in his wife’s lap, a baby girl, the orphan daughter of a fisherman who had been drowned while forming one of the crew of a life boat.
Mrs. Pennant, a stout, handsome little woman of the world, with twice her husband’s common sense, and none of his straightforward simplicity of character, had at last uttered a mild protest. She was in the habit of bearing with all his caprices so beautifully, respecting his prejudices and behaving with such perfect wifely submission, that he had not the least suspicion that the grey mare was the better horse. But she was a strict Conservative, and this sudden addition to her family from the ranks of the proletariat was the last straw which broke her patience.
“I am afraid, Graham,” she said, “that this dear little baby will be rather in the way in the servants’ hall.”
“The servants’ hall!” echoed Captain Pennant, indignantly, “Alicia, I’m astonished at your suggesting such a thing. I mean the darling to be brought up as our own child.”
“As our child! A fisherman’s daughter!”
“We are all of the same value in the sight of heaven, Alicia,” answered her husband, whose Conservatism was never allowed to interfere with his whims.
“And insects are all of the same value in our eyes. Yet we tolerate a fly where we should think a caterpillar out of place.”
“Well, I don’t want to know anything about flies and caterpillars, but I have adopted her as my daughter, and she is to be treated accordingly,” said Captain Pennant, with increased obstinacy because of his wife’s unexpected restiveness. “I believe that God has sent her to us as a precious gift and blessing, because among our own dear children we have not had a girl.”
He had his own way, to all appearances, as he always had. Deborah Audaer was brought up with his sons, and treated as a young lady. But equally, of course, Mrs. Pennant had her own way more surely; for, without any overt act of unkindness, she made the girl feel, and the boys feel, that between them were no ties of blood.
Then, as they all grew up, the intriguing old lady had her punishment. For, one and all, the boys fell in love with Deborah, and when she had reached the age of nineteen they were all suitors for her hand.
Of course, the girl was true to her sex, and gave her heart where it was least wanted. Hervey, the youngest boy, a slow, broad-shouldered giant with a ruddy face and ripe-corn colored hair, who had a didactic manner and a great reputation for wisdom, was only her own age, and therefore too young for her, she said. He was a great theorist, an authority upon “style” in rowing and “seat” in riding, although he could neither pull a boat along nor stick on a horse.
A dash of the kindly prig there was about Hervey, perhaps, and a little too strong a sense that other people didn’t count for much when he was about. But he was fond of Deborah, and he thought that he and she would make quite the grandest couple in the world, if only that unappreciative beast, Rees, were out of the way.
Godwin, the second son, was twenty-one; a matter-of-fact young man, of strictly moderate abilities, plenty of common sense, who never did anything that he did not do well, but in a plodding, methodical manner, without show or fuss. He had never given any trouble to anybody, and was in consequence thought very little of by anybody, particularly by his two brothers, who always exceeded their allowances while he managed to save out of his, the most meagre of the three, and who lived idly at home making up their minds “what they should be,” while he had been for two years going backwards and forwards to a bank at Monmouth, where he had got himself a situation. He adored Deborah in a prosaic manner, keeping her in sweets, of which she was childishly fond, doing her shopping for her with twice as much taste and tact as she would have shown herself, and eking out the few pounds she could spare for this purpose with money of his own, so that she was filled with admiration and astonishment at his “bargains.”
Deborah liked both Hervey and Godwin, but it was on Rees that she poured out all the devotion of a passionate and generous nature. Rees, the handsome, the daring, the brilliant, the favorite of the whole county, adored and indulged by his mother, petted and spoiled by Lord St. Austell, who put his horses, his dog-cart, his yacht, his guns at the service of the lad, whom he treated with smiling, good-humored fondness, as if Rees had been his own son. As a matter of course, the young fellow’s character suffered from all this spoiling, as Captain Pennant, far-sighted in this matter only, had early foreboded.
“Rees is one of those unlucky lads who are born to be ruined,” he had predicted, giving thereby a great shock to his wife, who was as weak as water where her eldest born was concerned, and who flattered herself, poor lady, that her prayers would counteract the effects of reckless indulgence.
At three-and-twenty Rees was the handsomest young fellow in the county. Of the middle height only and slightly built, with delicate features, curly black hair, and black eyes full of fun and fire, his appearance was irresistibly attractive to man, woman, child, and animal. His dog loved Rees with a devotion uncommon even in a dog. Careful mothers were afraid of him, for there was not a pretty girl in the countryside who would not snub the richest bachelor in the principality for the sake of the supper dance with Rees Pennant.
Nothing was difficult to him. He rode and drove well by instinct, could manage a yacht like any old salt, and always made the biggest bag at a shooting party. He had a voice pleasing without cultivation, and a laugh as musical as a bird’s song. A nature so gifted, generous and genial withal, needed an armor of ideal strength of character and of intellect. Unfortunately, Rees Pennant possessed neither. The very curves of his handsome mouth betrayed weakness, which, if now excusable and even lovable, might later in life bear a pitiful significance. He was a leader and ruler now among his companions, attended by satellites of his own sex, worshipped by a troop of shy girls; but he was not of the stuff of which rulers are made, for all that.
It was on Rees Pennant that Amos Goodhare, in search of a tool and catspaw, had cast his eyes. The librarian was, perhaps, the only man in Carstow who disliked Rees; who not only saw through the lad’s bright, affectionate manner to the growing selfishness and egotism beneath, but found no charm in his grace and brightness. He was, besides, intensely jealous of the earl’s fondness for the young fellow, and of Deborah’s passionate attachment.
For Amos had himself cast on the handsome girl eyes full of covetous longing, so that Deborah, without knowing why, blushed under his gaze and felt afraid of him.
Having decided on his plan of action, the librarian lost no time. He put himself in Rees Pennant’s way one sunny April afternoon, when the latter was returning home, flushed and light-hearted, after a game of tennis on one of the Llancader lawns. The meeting took place near the top of the hilly street of which Carstow may almost be said to consist. Amos was leaning against the trunk of a tree, his soft, wide hat thrown back, his stick in his hand, as if overcome by the heat and consequent lassitude.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pennant,” he said, with that tone of flattering, dignified respect which he knew well how to assume.
“Afternoon, Goodhare,” said the lad, saluting him with the airy grace peculiar to him. “Why, you look done up. Don’t you like these warm spring days? They intoxicate me.”
“Yes, yes,” answered the elder man, putting into his grave tone an amount of respectful admiration which inclined the young fellow to stay and chat for a few minutes with the “old bookworm.” “The spring suits you, and the sunshine, and girls’ fair faces, and all bright things. But I’m only an old hulk, and men think me fit for nothing but to stick labels on the backs of books for fools to read and not to profit by.”
“Come, that’s rather hard on us Carstowites, isn’t it? Some of us read seriously, you know, and how do you know we don’t profit by what we read?”
“Well, Mr. Pennant, I don’t want to flatter you, but you must know in your own mind that you are not like the clods around you. You have a quick brain and vivid feelings. But even you—pray excuse the liberty I am taking—show signs of the rusting effect of these narrow-hearted provincial towns. Fancy a fine young fellow like you remaining content with such a horizon! You, who might aspire to be anything you pleased—a king among men—wasting your energies on lawn tennis! Why, to me, old as I am and callous as I ought to have grown, the idea seems shocking—positively shocking!”
The young man’s face had clouded slightly during this speech from the librarian, who worked himself up to a pitch of high excitement for the last words.
“How do you know that I am content?” asked Rees, quietly.
“Oh, pray forgive my taking such liberty! I got excited, carried away,” murmured Amos, showing great irritation with his own indiscreet boldness.
“I’m not offended. I repeat: how do you know I’m contented?” asked Rees, swinging his tennis racquet.
“How do I know?” echoed Amos, diffidently, but with some surprise. “Why, because with natures like yours, full of energy, and fire, and daring, to will is to do. And that you have never done anything—anything great, I mean—is proof enough to me that you have never willed to do anything; that, in fact, the air of Carstow is responsible for the waste of a fine nature. Now you said you would not be offended, Mr. Pennant, and I hold you to your word.”
He made a feint of moving away, but Rees detained him by a gracefully imperious gesture. The lad’s complexion was flushed now with something more than the sun’s heat; his candid face showed a very becoming boyish shame and modesty.
“You do me a lot more than justice, Goodhare,” said he half laughing. “You make me ashamed of my own idleness, not for the first time, I do assure you, though. You see I’ve been spoilt; I know that; but it’s so jolly that one hasn’t the strength of mind to wish people wouldn’t encourage one in one’s evil courses.”
“What evil courses? I’ve never heard a word about you in that way,” said the librarian, whose eyes had glowed with an ugly light at this suggestion.
“Oh, nothing worse than my besetting sin, idling, which they say is the parent of all others,” said Rees, looking up with his handsome, frank young face, on which was no trace of any passion worse than boyish vanity.
Goodhare’s face fell, though its change of expression was not noticeable enough for his ingenuous companion to remark it.
“You see, dear old Lord St. Austell is ever so much too good to me,” continued Rees with an affectionate inflection; “and while there are always his horses for me to ride and his coverts for me to shoot over, the temptation for me to do nothing else is too great.”
“And why should you do anything else, at least in your leisure?” asked Goodhare, with apparent surprise. “Doesn’t every gentleman who goes in for a public career in any profession amuse himself so—among other ways, of course?”
Rees laughed rather bitterly.
“Gentlemen who go in for a public career have private means, Mr. Goodhare,” said he. “Everybody knows I have nothing——”
“But you are the eldest son?”
“And heir to my father’s liabilities; nothing else, I assure you.”
“But when you become Lady Marion’s husband—”
The lad started in astonishment. The idea had never occurred to him.
“Lady Marion’s husband!” he repeated, bewildered.
“Why, Mr. Pennant, you are very modest. Or don’t you wish it to be talked about so soon? If so, I really beg your pardon. But you must know that it has already become common talk—”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it, though,” said Rees, dryly. “Lord St. Austell would never let me enter Llancader Castle again if I were to hint at such a thing.”
“And Lady Marion herself?” suggested the librarian, with malice.
Rees laughed rather self-consciously.
“Poor girls! They must have some creature to talk to, especially now, for this fright about scarlet fever has caused his lordship to give orders for them to remain shut up here all through the London season.”
“And do you believe that, being as fond of you as his lordship is, that his daughter would not be able to talk him round?”
“I am sure she would not. I know the earl.”
“So do I; and I say he would.”
Rees shrugged his shoulders. He was rather impressed by the tone of quiet conviction of the elder man. After a short pause he said, hesitatingly:
“He might, perhaps, if I had money. But as it is——”
“Ah, that want of money—that fatal, miserable want of money. That’s the pinch; yes, that’s always the pinch,” burst out Amos, with surprising energy. “How many a promising, brilliant young man—and yet not so brilliant as—well, as some I know, either—how many have been wrecked on that shoal! What might I not have done myself in the world, with the moderate abilities I have and with perseverance, if it had not been for that curse, want of money. Yes, there’s the rub.”
There was a pause. The younger man was lost in thought, the elder was watching him. Rees woke out of his reverie with a start, and a laugh which was, perhaps, a shade less light-hearted than usual.
“And after all,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and throwing his racquet high in the air, to catch it again as easily as if he had been born a conjuror, “I don’t know, when one comes to think of it, whether I would care about Lady Marion as a wife. She’s a good girl, but not the most graceful creature in the world. Why, I know a girl, one who doesn’t dislike me very furiously either, who has more beauty in the bend of her little finger than all the Ladies Cenarth have in their whole bodies.”
Amos cast at him out of the corners of his eyes a brief glance instinct with venom.
“I don’t suppose there are many girls about, high or low, who do dislike you very furiously, Mr. Pennant,” he said, in a tone of sly malice not altogether as pleasing as the words; “but I do earnestly hope, if I may presume to say so, that you will not destroy chances which I, an old experienced man, perceive to be great, for the sake of a pretty face in a rank of life beneath you.”
“You may be quite sure that the girl I should choose for a wife would be beneath nobody, Goodhare,” said Rees, with haughtiness in which there was no offence. “But anyhow,” he added, with another laugh, “there’s time enough to think about that. I don’t mean to bestow upon any lady my name and my tennis racquet—all I possess—for the next ten years.”
“Of course not. You mean to enjoy yourself.”
Rees did not quite understand the significance of the elder man’s tone, but it rather grated on him.
“Yes, I mean to enjoy myself in my own way,” he said, as he sprang up from the gate on which he had been sitting, and prepared to continue his walk. “Well, good night, Goodhare; I must be getting home.”
“Good night, Mr. Pennant. I wish you’d come round to the library some evening and see an edition of Carlyle which I’ve just had rebound after my own taste. I’m rather proud of it. It won’t be very entertaining for you, but it will bring a ray of sunshine into my grey life, and show me that you are not offended by my frankness.”
He had touched on the right chord again. The young fellow held out his hand and grasped that of the librarian warmly.
“Of course I’ll come,” he said good humoredly. “Only you mustn’t butter me up so; it’ll turn my head.”
He ran down the hill like the boy he still was, and turned his handsome young face for a farewell nod to Goodhare as he reached the bottom.
Amos returned the salutation, but Rees was too far off to hear his suppressed chuckle of hideous exultation.
“He takes the bait already,” he said to himself, grinding out the words between his teeth. “What a pitiful fool he is, and how splendidly he’ll suit my purpose.”