A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

“So long as one knows exactly what one’s means are,” said Mrs. Penton, “what difficulty can there be in arranging one’s expenditure? There are certain things which can, and certain things which can’t be done on a certain income. All that is necessary is to arrange one’s outgoings accordingly.”

“You see that, my dear,” Sir Walter would reply, “for you were born with the spirit of order; but there are some people who have no sense of order at all.”

The some people were the poor people at Penton Hook. These remarks were made on a day in winter, when the family at the great house were together in the library. It was a very comfortable room, nay, a beautiful one. The house was warmed throughout, and in December was genially, softly, warm as in May, no cold to be got anywhere in corridors or staircases. The fire in the library was a wood-fire, for beauty and pleasantness rather than for warmth. The walls were lined with books, dim lines of carved shelves with gleams of old gilding, and an occasional warm tone of mellowed Italian vellum here and there giving them a delightful covering. The large window looked across the country, commanding the whole broad plain through which the river ran. This landscape fell away into lovely tones of distance, making you uncertain whether it was the sea or infinitude itself at which you were gazing, in far-away stretches of tender mist, and blueness and dimness, lightly marked with the line of the horizon. Over the mantel-piece there was one picture, the portrait of an ancestor of whom the Pentons were proud—a veritable Holbein, which was as good, nay, far better, than the most finely emblazoned family pedigree. There was no room for other pictures because of the books which filled every corner; but a port-folio stood open upon a stand in which there was a quantity of the finest old engravings, chiefly historical portraits. Amid this refined and delightful luxury it would be foolish to mention the mere furniture, though that was carved oak, and very fine of its kind. Sir Walter himself sat surrounded by all the morning papers, which, as Penton was not very far from town, were delivered almost as early as in London. Mrs. Penton had a little settlement of her own between the fire and one of the windows, where she made up her household accounts, which she did with the greatest regularity. Mr. Russell Penton was the only member of the little party who seemed at all out of place. He had no special corner which he made his own. He was a restless personage, prone to wander from the fire to the window, to look out though there was nothing particular to look at, nothing more than he saw every day of his life, as his wife sometimes said to him. He ran over the papers very quickly, very often standing before the fire, which was a favorite trick of his; and after he had got through that morning duty he would lounge about disturbing everybody—that is, disturbing Mrs. Penton and Sir Walter, who were the only people subject to be affected by his vagaries. He never had letters to write, though this is one of the first duties of man, of the kind of man who has nothing else to do. A man who has no letters to write should at least pretend to do so, assuming a virtue if he has it not, in the leisure of a country house; or he should have some study, if it were only the amount of the rainfall; or he should draw and expound art. But none of all these things did Mr. Russell Penton do. And he had not the art of doing nothing quietly and gracefully as some men have. He was restless as well as idle, a combination which is more trying to the peace of your house-mates than any other can be.

Sir Walter was essentially well-bred, and the carpets were very thick, and the paneling of the floors very solid; but yet there is always a certain thrill under a restless foot, however steady the flooring is and however thick the carpet: and Mrs. Penton could not help seeing that her father now and then stopped in his reading and fixed his eyes and contracted his eyebrows with a consciousness of the movement. But after all it is difficult to find fault with one’s husband for nothing more serious than walking from the fire to the window and from the window back to the fire.

Yet it was this rather detrimental and unmeaning personage who chose suddenly, without any reason at all, to cross the current of family feeling. “The spirit of order is a very good thing,” he said, all at once, making his wife hold her breath, “but, in my opinion, when you have a large family a little money is still better.” This speech was launched into the domestic quiet like an arrow from a bow.

“Better!” said Sir Walter, letting his newspaper drop upon his knees, and pushing up his spectacles upon his forehead the better to see the speaker, who was standing, shutting out the pleasant blaze of the log on the fire in his usual careless way.

“Gerald means,” said his wife, “that it is easier to keep things in order when there is money. I have heard people say so before, and perhaps it is true—to a certain extent. You know, sir, that when one has money in hand one can buy a thing when it is cheap; one can lay in one’s provisions beforehand. The idea is not original, but there is a certain amount of truth in it, I dare say.”

“No one supposed there was not truth in it,” said Sir Walter; “for that matter there is truth in everything, the most paradoxical statement you may choose to make; but these people are not without money, I suppose. They have an income, whatever the amount may be. They are not destitute. And so long as you have certain means, as you were yourself saying, Alicia, you know what you can afford to spend, and that is what you ought to spend by every law, and not a penny more.”

“Nothing could be more true,” said Mrs. Penton, with a look from under her eyelids to her husband, who was fidgeting from one leg to another, restless as usual; “and speaking of that,” she said, with curious appropriateness, “I have been anxious to ask you, papa, about the tapestry chamber, of which, you know, we have always been so proud. Mrs. Ellis and I have made a very odd discovery—the moth has got into one of the best pieces. We have done all we could, and I think we have arrested the mischief, but to put it right is beyond our powers.”

“Dear me! the tapestry!” cried Sir Walter; “that’s serious indeed—the moth! I should think you might have done something, you and all your women, Alicia, to keep out a moth.”