CHAPTER XXX.
AFTERWARD.
Everything was very quiet at the Hook on the funeral day; all the blinds were drawn down, even those which could be seen only from the garden and the river, and Mrs. Penton—nay, Lady Penton, though she did not easily fall into the title, and, indeed, until Sir Walter was buried scarcely felt it right to bear it—had quite a little festival of mourning all to herself with the girls, who had no inclination to gainsay her. They knew nothing of the vagaries of girls of the present epoch, and it never occurred to them to go against anything she proposed or to doubt its propriety, though if there was an absurd side to it they saw that too later on, and made their little criticisms, no doubt, with little jokes to each other, not to be ventilated till long, long after. There is perhaps a natural liking in the feminine heart for all those little exhibitions of importance which the great crises of life make natural. To stand in the privileged position of those who are immersed in sorrow, yet not to be immersed in sorrow; to have all the consequence which is derived from fresh mourning and nearness to “a death;” yet to have the heart untouched, and no real trouble in it—this is something which pleases, which almost exhilarates in a somber way. It is so good to think that the death is not one which touches us, that we are only lightly moved by it, sitting in a voluntary gloom to please ourselves and compliment the other, not in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Lady Penton in her way enjoyed all this, especially after her husband had gone. She put on her mourning, and made the girls dress themselves in the black frocks which had just come home, and then sitting down in the midst of them she too read the funeral service. It was very soothing, she said—all the more that she had so little real need of being soothed. The girls were full of awe and acquiescence; the new thought that some one had died, though it was only an old man, touched them, and the idea of all his death would bring about increased the subduing, half-compunctious sentiment. It was not their fault that he had died, yet they seemed somehow involved in it—almost to blame.
Little Mab put on a black frock also, though she had no intention of going into mourning, and made one of the little audience to whom the mother read the burial service. She was the spectator amid the group who felt themselves more immediately concerned, and it was all very strange to her—almost droll, it must be allowed. She was not wise enough to see how far the sentiment was real, and sprung out of the confused emotions of this critical period, and she was too sympathetic to pronounce that it was all false, which to a little woman of the world would have been the reasonable thing. She did not, in fact, at all understand these innocent people, though they were so easily understood. Her education made her look for motives in what they did; and they had no motives, but acted on the simple instinct of nature. Her keen little blue eyes, which were so child-like and full of laughter, scintillated with interest and the endeavor to understand. It was all so strange to her, so novel—the large family, the homely living, the community of feeling, everybody moving together, which was puzzling beyond description. She had seen so much of the world in her wealthy orphanhood, even though she was so young, that a sphere so simple and action so single-minded, were altogether beyond her understanding. She kept looking out for the secret, the rift within the lute, the point at which this unanimity would break up, but it did not appear. She had been taught a great deal about fortune-hunting, and the necessity of taking care of herself, and she had heard those side-whispers of society which can not escape the ears even of children—those insinuations of evil underneath and selfishness always rampant. She would not have been surprised had she found that Ally and Anne had schemes of their own, or their mother some deep-laid plan which nobody suspected. And when she found that there was nothing of the sort—so far, at least, as her keen inspection could find out—Mab was far more puzzled than if she had made any number of discoveries. There was but one particular in which she felt that there might be an opening into the unknown, and that was Walter—not, however, in the way in which she had been prepared for delinquency. He paid no attention to herself, neither did any of the others make the faintest effort to put them in each other’s way. There was certainly no fortune-hunting in the case. But Mab felt that Walter’s absences were not for nothing. She was astonished in her premature wisdom that no one took any note of them or seemed to mind. Perhaps there was a little pique in her soul. She had been interested in Walter, but he had shown no interest in her. She could not but think he would be much better employed making himself agreeable to the heiress whom fortune had thrown in his way than in involving himself in some clandestine love-making, which she felt sure was the case—some entanglement probably in the village, to which he seemed always to be going. What could be more silly? Mab had a strong practical tendency, perhaps drawn from the father who had made his own way so effectively. She felt vexed with Walter for this throwing away of his chances. Looking at the subject with perfect impartiality, she could not but feel that a young man coming into an encumbered property—or, at least, what was just the same as an encumbered property—to neglect the fortune which, for anything he knew, lay ready to his hand, was a mingled weakness and absurdity of the most obvious description. She did not enter into the question whether she herself would be disposed to assent or not. That was her own business, and not his. But that he should be so blind as not to try! And in the meantime she observed them all with wonder, and looked at their grave faces when they put themselves thus in sympathy with old Sir Walter’s burial with a little cynical disposition to laugh, which it took her some trouble to restrain.
It was amusing—it might even be said ridiculous—when Lady Penton, the little ceremonial being over and an hour or so of quiet having elapsed, drew up all the blinds again solemnly with her own hands, going from window to window.
“They will have got back to Penton by this time,” she said, in a tone perceptibly more cheerful. “You can tell Mary to take the children out for their walk; by this time it will be all over. And the affairs of life must go on, whatever happens,” she added, with a little sigh.
The sigh was for the trouble over, the cheerfulness for the life to come. They were both quite simple and true. She herself took a little walk afterward, still with much gravity, round the garden, in which Mab, in her character as a philosophical observer, took pains to accompany her.
“But you never knew Sir Walter Penton, did you?” she asked.
“Yes, I knew him, but not well. We went there a few times when we were newly married. After the death of the sons they rather turned against Edward. It was a pity, but I never blamed them.”
“Why should they have turned against him? it was not his fault.”
“My dear,” said the gentle woman, quietly, “you are not old enough to understand.”