The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Wantley assented cordially, pleased that his cousin should for once propose a common-sense plan in which he, Wantley, would play a proper part.

Wantley, as Penelope shrewdly suspected—for to her he had never worn his heart upon his sleeve—had spent from boyhood onwards much more time than was good for his soul's health in self-pity and self-examination.

This was especially true during that portion of the year when he was in England, and especially the case when he was staying, as he did each summer, at Monk's Eype. In his heart he grudged his beautiful cousin the possession of a place created by a man to whom they stood in equal relationship, but which, as he never failed to remind himself when in Dorset, had always belonged to the Lord Wantley of the day. At Monk's Eype he felt himself a stranger where he ought to have felt at home; and this was the more painful to him because the villa had been the creation of the one man with whom he believed himself to be in closer affinity than with any other former bearer of his name.

During his long idle youth, Wantley's happiest moments had been those spent in wandering along the byways of France, Spain, and Germany. He had been denied the ordinary upbringing of his rank and race, but, during the long Continental journeys in which he had been the companion of Lord and Lady Wantley and their daughter, he had learnt and seen much which in later life was to cause him abiding pleasure and comfort, the more so as he was a fair artist, and came of scholar stock.

Brought up by a mother to whom her son's future had been the only consoling thought in a middle age of singular trials and perplexities, Ludovic Wantley had from childhood realized, to an almost pathetic extent, the pleasant possibilities of life as a British peer. But very soon after he had succeeded his cousin he discovered that much of the glories, and all the pleasures attached to the position would be denied him, partly from want of means, more perhaps from lack of that robustness of outlook induced, not wholly to his spiritual advantage, in the average public school boy.

When abroad Wantley never became, as it were, forgetful of his identity—never affected the incognito so dear, and sometimes so useful, to the travelling English peer. Indeed, young Lord Wantley had soon become the Continental innkeeper's ideal 'milord,' content to pay well for indifferent accommodation, delighted rather than otherwise to meet with those trifling mishaps which annoy so acutely the ordinary tourist, and content to come back, winter after winter, to the same auberge, osteria, or gasthaus.

In yet another matter he differed greatly from the conventional travelled and travelling Englishman: he came and went alone, apparently feeling no need, as did most of his countrymen, of congenial companionship. One day the kindly landlady of one of those stately posting inns, yclept 'Le Tournebride,' which may still be found scattered through provincial France, had ventured to suggest that the next time she had the pleasure of seeing him she hoped he would come accompanied by 'une belle milady.' He had smiled as he had answered: 'Jamais! jamais! jamais!' But that particular 'Tournebride' had known him no more.

Wantley had thought much of marriage. What man so situated does not do so? He knew, or thought he knew, that to him money and marriage must be synonymous terms, and the knowledge had angered him. In one of his rare moments of confidence he had said to his cousin: 'Like your eccentric friend who always knew when there was a baronet in the room, I always know when there's an heiress there. And, what is more serious, her presence always induces a feeling of repulsion!'

Penelope had laughed suddenly, and then changed the subject. Any allusion to Wantley's monetary affairs held for her a sharp if small pin-prick of conscience. For a while she had tried, it must be admitted in but a fitful and desultory way, to bring him in contact with the type of English girl, often, let it be said in parenthesis, a not unpleasing type of modern girlhood, who is willing to consider very seriously, and in all good faith, the preliminaries to a bargain in which she and her fortune, a peer and his peerage, are to be the human goods weighed opposite one another in the balance of life.

There had also been periods in Wantley's life when he had found himself in love with love, and ready to weave an ardent romance round every pretty sentimentalist in search of an adventure. But these feelings had never deepened into one so strong as to compel the thought of an enduring tie. His fastidious critical temperament shrank from concrete realities, and as time went on he had felt, over-sensitively, how little he had to offer to a woman of the kind to whom he sometimes felt a strong if temporary attraction.