The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

II

And so they had gone, and Wantley, turning away, back into the hall, felt a great depression—a feeling of utter weariness—come upon him. It was with an unreasonable and unreasoning irritation that he saw Lady Wantley walking slowly, with her peculiar leisurely grace of movement, into the great Picture Room, there to take up her accustomed position by the ivory inlaid table on which lay her books and blotting-pad.

'People when they reach that age,' he said to himself, 'have their emotions, their feelings of love and pride, mercifully deadened.' But, all the same, fearing what she might say to him, he did not follow her, but instead, slipping his hands into his pockets, and pushing his straw hat down over his eyes, made his way out of doors.

But there, in the clear September sunshine, cooled by the keen sea-wind, he felt, if anything, even more ill at ease. Every flagstone of the terrace, every bend of the path leading down to the pine-wood and to the ilex-grove, reminded him of delicious moments spent with Cecily. He felt a pang of sharp self-pity, blaming Penelope, even more blaming Providence, for the spoiling of his idyl. 'After last night,' he said to himself, 'Cecily will never again be quite the same, bless her!' And so, walking very slowly, his eyes bent on the ground, he gave himself up actively to dislike and condemnation of his cousin.

Wantley was an intensely proud man. Perhaps because he had nothing personally to be proud of, he took the more intense, if not very justifiable, pride in his unsullied name, in his respectable lineage, even in the fine traditions left by his predecessor. From boyhood he had acted according to the theory, 'If I do nothing good or worthy, I will yet avoid what is evil and unworthy.' And to this not very exalted ideal of conduct he had remained faithful.

True, Penelope, whatever his griefs against her, would give him and the world no right to despise her. Condemn her wrong-headedness, her selfishness, he was free to do; but he knew well enough how far heavier would have been his condemnation had he discovered that his cousin had become in secret Downing's mistress. But the knowledge that this would never have been possible, brought to-day but scant consolation; indeed, Wantley found it in his heart to wish that Penelope had been more akin to some of the women whom he and she had known, and to whose frailties she had always extended a haughty tolerance.

Yet he told himself that he understood her point of view. After all, she was her own mistress, in the matter of herself owing none but that same self a duty. But this was not so—ah no, indeed!—in the matter of her name and of her good repute: those belonged not only to her own self, but also to others, some dead, some living, and some—so Wantley now reminded himself—to come.

In happier, more careless days, when he had been so discontented and dissatisfied with the way his life had shaped itself, the young man had lamented his small circle of friends and acquaintances, and he had envied his contemporaries their school and college friends; but now, to-day, it seemed to him that he knew and was known to all the world—that is, to the world whose good opinion he naturally valued.

He looked into the future, and realized with shame and anger what would be said by the kind and by the unkind, by the evil-mind and by the prudish, in the boudoirs and in the smoking-rooms, when it became known that Mrs. Robinson, Penelope Wantley—the Perdita of a younger, idler hour—had 'gone off' with Persian Downing!

Then he thought, with bitter amusement, of how this same news would be received by the good people—and, on the whole, he had to admit that they were good people—who had circled round his uncle and aunt in the days when he himself was a moody, neglected youth, and Penelope a lovely and engaging, if wayward, child.

The motley crowd of pietists, some few eccentric, the majority intensely commonplace, who had attended year after year the religious conferences which had made the name of Marston Lydiate known to the whole religious world, would doubtless think it their duty to address letters of sympathy and of condolence to Penelope's mother, even—hateful thought!—to himself.

Then his mind turned once more to his cousin. What sort of life would be Penelope's after she had cut herself adrift from her own world? How would this proud, spoilt woman, who had always kept herself singularly apart from all that was unsavoury, endure the slights which would inevitably be put on one who, however much the fact might be cloaked and disguised, could never be the wife of her companion?

Penelope was not a child, to adapt herself to new conditions. Would strange, self-centred Persian Downing compensate her for all she was about to lose? Would this maker of great schemes, this seer of visions, forget himself, in order to be everything to her? For a few moments Wantley, leaning on the low wall which separated the ilex-grove from the cliff overhanging the sea, thought only of Penelope, and of what her life would be if this tragic affair shaped itself in the way that he believed to be now inevitable.

The day he had accompanied her to town, during the long railway journey back to Dorset, Lady Wantley had spoken to him mysteriously as to advice proffered by Mr. Gumberg. She had seemed to think that if all else failed he, Wantley, should speak to Sir George Downing, but to this he had in no way assented.

He turned, and slowly made his way through the pine-trees. The day—nay, even the morning—had to be lived through, and his thoughts were intolerable company—so much so, indeed, that he felt he would prefer to go and find Lady Wantley, and stay with her a while, although he was aware that she would in all probability urge him to interfere. The knowledge that he would have to tell her he could not and would not do so smote him painfully.

Downing and Penelope were not children whose wayward steps could be stayed, with whom at last force could replace argument. A braver than he might well hesitate to face the contemptuous indignation of the eccentric, powerful man, for whom Wantley even now felt kindliness and respect, reserving, unjustly enough, his greatest blame for the woman.

No, no! If Lady Wantley besought his intervention, he must tell her that in this matter he could not hope to succeed where Mr. Gumberg had apparently failed.