A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Women are not supposed to be logical,” she said.

He gave a grave smile as he took his hands away. “Women are more logical than they acknowledge,” he said. “It is a convenient plea.”

And this time there was no recall. He went out without any further hinderance, not much pleased with himself, and perhaps less with her. He was not, as she divined, satisfied at all. Rich Mrs. Penton’s husband had as little devotion to Penton as had poor Mr. Penton’s wife. He felt that he would have been more at his ease in any other house, and a subtle sort of rivalry with Penton, antagonism partly irrational, and disappointment in the thought that Sir Walter’s death, when it came, would bring him no enfranchisement, filled his mind with an irritation which it was not always possible to keep under. He did not want her to do this scanty justice to her young relations, her only relations, in order to please him. They had done no harm; why should it be an offense to her that they had in their veins a certain number of drops of kindred blood? Presently, however, this irritation turned into displeasure with himself. He had been hard upon Alicia; he had asked that the young Pentons should be invited, vaguely, without any particular meaning; and she had said she would ask them at once, along with the heiress, the great prize for whom so many were contending. It had jarred upon her when he laughed, and it now occurred to him that his laugh had been ill-timed and out of place; yet all alone as he was, when it came back to his mind he laughed again. Why not? he had said—and why not? he repeated with a gleam of humor lighting up thoughts which were not particularly pleasant in themselves. He, a poor scion of the Russells, had carried off the Penton heiress; why should not young Penton, the poor and disinherited, have a try at the other, the Russell heiress? But if Alicia saw the reason of his merriment, no wonder that it had jarred upon her. It was in bad taste, he said to himself. To compare her with the little Russell girl was a thing which even in thought was offensive. He did not wonder that she was offended by his laugh, that it made her stiff and cold. He sighed a little as all inclination to laugh died out of him. It would have suited him better to have had a mate of a lighter nature, one who would have let him laugh, who would have been less easily jarred, less serious, less full of dignity; but this was a thing that Russell Penton was too loyal even to say to himself. It might touch the surface of his thoughts, but only to be banished. It was because of this inevitable jar, this little difference, which was so little yet was fundamental, that he sighed.

And she sighed, too, she who did so many things to please him—more, far more than he had any idea of. She was ready to do almost anything to please him; almost, yet with a great reserve. Instinctively she was aware that Penton stood between them—that the bondage of the great house which was not his, and the burden of representing a family of which he was only, so to speak, an accidental member, lay very heavy upon the easy mind and cheerful, humorous nature of her husband. He was not born to be the head of a house. What he liked was the case of a life without responsibilities, without any representative character. A cheerful little place with all its windows open to the sun, where he could do what he liked, where no man could demand more of him than to be friendly and agreeable which he could leave when he chose and come back to as he pleased; that would have been his ideal home. She said to herself that the wife whom he had taken to such a little house would have been very happy, and sometimes, in the days when she still indulged in dreams (which women do in the strangest way, long after the legitimate age for it), she had seen that tiny place in a vision with children about it and no cares (as if that were possible!) and Gerald’s countenance always beaming with genial content. But the woman who was so happy, who was at her ease, whom no troubles touched, who was Gerald’s other self, was not Alicia. She had to sigh and turn away, feeling that this could never be. Her life had been already settled when she married. There was no change or escape for her; indeed, what was stranger still, though she perceived the happier possibilities in the other lot, she knew that it had never been possible to her. The ease would have wearied, perhaps even disgusted her. Attending that vision of happiness would come revelations of the slipshod, glimpses of what ease and happiness so often come to when they grow to overluxuriance. No, the difference was very slight, but it was fundamental. And in this, as in so many other contradictions of life, the woman had the worst of it. Russell Penton was tolerant by nature, and he had trained himself to still greater tolerance. He made an observation, as he said, now and then, but it was possible to him to stand by and look on, without worrying himself about that which he could not change. He would say to himself that it was no business of his; he could even refrain from criticism except in so far as we have seen, when he made a good-natured protest in defense of some one wronged, or avenged another’s injury by a laugh. But Alicia, on her side, was not so easily satisfied. She wanted him to approve; his acquiescence, his plea that it was not his affair, his declaration that he would not interfere, were to her gall and bitterness. She could not adopt his light ways, nor take things easily as he did. Following her own course, acting upon her own principles, his concurrence, his approval, were the things she longed for before all others. When he said “You are quite right” she was happy, though even then never without a sense that he must have added within himself, “right from your own point of view.” The curious thing, however, and one which she was also aware of with a strange double consciousness, was that she never thought of adopting his point of view, or attempting even any compromise between his and hers. She had placed herself so completely in her own groove that she could not get out of it, and had no wish to get out of it. But yet she wanted his approval, all the same. She wanted it passionately, with an insistence which even her own complete enlightenment as to the difference between them never affected. Having her own way, even in the supreme question which now at the last had been opened only to promise the most satisfactory solution, she yet would have no real pleasure in it unless he approved. And his mode of passing it over, his assent which meant no approval, took the pleasure out of everything. What could she do to please him more than she was doing? But she never had it, that satisfaction of the heart.

CHAPTER XIV.
A TRANSITION PERIOD.

Mr. Penton’s long interview with the young solicitor had ended in this:—and though it did not seem exactly a settlement of the question, it had been taken for granted by both families as such—that he consented to treat with Sir Walter Penton. The terms might take a longer time to arrange, and there were conditions—some of a rather peculiar character, as his opponents thought—which Mr. Penton insisted upon. But upon the general question he was supposed to have yielded. It had taken him a great deal of thought, and he was not happy about it. He went about the house and his few fields with a moody countenance, avoiding every turn or point of view which revealed Penton—those points of view which had once been his happiness. This fact alone took a great deal of the pleasure out of his life. It had been his relief in former days to mount the road to that corner where the view was, or to go out and sit on the bench under the poplar-tree; but now he turned his back upon these favorite places. When he was low he had no longer this way of escaping from himself. Of all points of the compass, that on which Penton lay had become the most distasteful to him. He would have liked to have had it blotted out from the landscape altogether: there was nothing but pain in the sight of it, in the mere knowledge that it was there. And winter is cruel in this particular. It spares you nothing—not even a chimney. The weather-cock, glowing through the bare trees, seemed to catch every ray of light and blazon it over the whole country; the windows that faced the south were in a perpetual scintillation. The great house would not be hidden; it made no account of the feelings of those who were in the act of parting with it forever; though its aspect was now a reproach and humiliation to them instead of a pride, it seemed to force itself more and more on their eyes. Walter felt this almost more strongly than his father, if that were possible. He, too, went about moody, with the air of a man injured, turning his back on the once favorite quarter where the sunset was. He said in his haste that he never wanted to see a sunset again, and when the girls called his attention to all the stormy gorgeous colors of the winter afternoon, would turn his back upon them and declare that the reflection in the river, the secondary tints in the cold gray of the east, were enough for him. He said this with a vehemence which his father did not display. But Walter had solaces and alleviations of which his father was incapable; and Mr. Penton was the one who felt it most deeply after all. In his middle-aged bosom the tide of life was not running high. He had few pleasures; even few wishes. It no longer moved him in his habitual self-restraint that he had no horses, no means of keeping his place among his peers. All that had dropped away from him in the chill of custom—in that acceptance of the inevitable which is the lowest form of content. But there had always been Penton in which his imagination could take refuge. Penton was still an earthly paradise into which one day or other he should find entrance, which nobody could close from him. And now that too was closed, and his fancy could no longer go in and dwell there. He said very little about it, but he felt it to the bottom of his heart. It was the sort of thing of which he might have died had the floods been out or the atmosphere as deleterious as it sometimes was; but happily it was not an exceptionally wet season, and the river had not as yet been “out” that year.

The ladies from the first had taken it better, and they continued to do so. Mrs. Penton began to make calculations with bated breath and many a “hush!” when either father or son were nigh—of what she would now be able to do. She thought it would be well for them all, as soon as matters were settled, to go away; for though the waters were not out yet, it was scarcely to be hoped for that they should not after Christmas, in rainy February at the latest, have their way; and a separation from the scene of their disappointment would, she thought, be good both for Mr. Penton and Wat. Mrs. Penton said this with a sigh, feeling already all that was involved in a removal in the middle of winter; but it would be good, she felt, for Horry and the rest to be out of the damp, and it would be very good for Wat. The thing for Wat would be to go to Oxford without delay; fortunately he was not too old, and that would take him off thinking about Penton if anything would. As for the father, there was no such panacea for him. What can be done to distract or divert a man who has outlived the ordinary pleasures, and can not have his mouth stopped or his heart occupied with any new toy? A horse or two such as he would now be able to afford would have done a great deal for him once; but now he had got out of the habit of riding, and might not care to take it up again. It was easier to think of the young ones whose life lay all before them, and who would enter the world now under so much better conditions, though not those they had calculated upon. Mrs. Penton made up her mind that if all was settled on the terms proposed she would be able to give the girls “every advantage.” They should be taken to see a great many things, they should have clothes and surroundings that suited their condition; they might even “see a little of the season” when the proper time came round. All these things were pondered and decided upon in the many hours when the feminine portion of the household sat together, which were more than had ever been before. For Wat did not care to have his sisters constantly with him as he once had done; they set it down to his disappointment about Penton, and the disturbance of his temper and of his life which had ensued—which when they accused him of it he agreed in with a sort of satisfaction. But when Anne said, without thought, “One would think Wat had found somebody else to go with him,” he was very angry, and grew very red, and demanded to know who else? who was he likely to have else? with an indignation which the provocation did not justify.

Thus it will be seen that the circumstances of the household were much changed. They had not been in a very flourishing condition when they first discussed the law of entail and the possibility that it might be attacked by a reforming parliament and their birthright taken from them; but somehow that simple time of expectation and depression, which now looked as if it might be years ago, had been, with all its straitenedness, a happier time than now. A certain agitation had got into all their veins; the girls and their mother sat mostly alone in the evenings. There was no reading aloud. Wat was out almost always, taking a walk, he said; or when he was not out he was in the book-room, grinding, as he told them, at his Greek, which was quite necessary if he was going up to Oxford in the beginning of the year. The girls would have thought this state of affairs insupportable a little while ago, but in the commotion of the approaching change they found so much to talk of that they were partially reconciled to making pinafores all the evening in the light of the paraffin lamp, though it smelled badly, and there was no one to read to them. They had a great deal to talk about. As for Mrs. Penton, her mouth was opened as it had never been in her life before. She talked of balls, and theaters, and of the “things” they must get as soon as ever matters were settled. She recounted to them her own experiences—the dances she had gone to before her marriage, and all the competition there had been to secure her for a partner. “They said I was as light as a feather,” she said, with her eyes fixed upon the stocking she was darning, and without raising her head; “and so they will say of Ally, for Ally is just the same figure I was. But you must have some lessons when we go to town.” She was pleased thus to talk, recalling old recollections, to which the girls listened with astonishment; for they had never supposed that their mother knew anything of those gayeties, which to themselves were like the fables of golden isles unknown to men; but they were not displeased to listen, weaving into the simple story as it flowed the imaginations, the anticipations which filled that unknown world upon the threshold of which they stood. It was even more absorbing than the stories of the good and fair heroines (for Mrs. Penton was very particular in her choice of the books which were read by them) to which they had been in the habit of listening. But they missed Wat, to whom, however, they allowed the narration of mother’s tales might have seemed a little flat had he been there. Wat up to the present moment had shown very little interest in anything of the kind; but it was a little strange now that he should so often be “taking a turn” even when the moon was not shining, and when the country roads were so dark.

Mr. Rochford, the solicitor, came on several occasions during this time of transition. He came often enough to make the children quite familiar with that trim and shining dog-cart, and the horse which was so sleek and shining, too. Horry had been driven round and round in it, nay, had been allowed to drive himself, making believe, before it was put up: and he and his smaller brother assisted at the harnessing and unharnessing of this famous animal with the greatest enthusiasm every time he came. Young rustic lads attending at a monarch’s levee could not have been more interested than were these babes. And Mr. Rochford made himself more or less agreeable in other ways to the whole family, except Wat, who did not take to him, but kept him at a distance with an amount of unfriendly temper which he showed to no one else. There was no idea now of a tray carried into the book-room when this visitor came. He was introduced to the early dinner where all the children sat in their high chairs, and where the food was more wholesome than delicate—a meal which was too plainly dinner to be disguised under the name of luncheon. Mr. Rochford made himself quite at home at this family dinner. He praised everything, and declared that he was always most hungry at this hour, and eat so heartily that Mrs. Penton took it as a personal compliment; for though Mrs. Penton sometimes made a little moan about the appetites of the children, she yet was much complimented when visitors (who were so few at the Hook) eat well and seemed to relish the simple food. “Roast mutton may be very simple,” she said, “but there is roast mutton and roast mutton—a big, white, fat leg half cooked is a very different thing from what is set on our table, for I must say that Jane, if she is not much to look at, is an excellent cook.” She liked to see people eat; not Horry getting three helps and gorging himself; that was a different matter altogether; but a visitor who could appreciate how good it really was.

And after dinner was over Mr. Rochford would ask whether he might not to be taken round the garden to see, not the flowers, for there were none, but the flood-marks of different years, and how high the river had come on the last occasion when the waters were “out.” He had a great interest in the floods—more than Mr. Penton, who got weary of his guest’s enthusiasm, and stole back to the book-room, leaving him with the girls; and more than Anne, who heard her mother calling her, or found she had something to do in the poultry-yard, every time this little incident occurred. Ally was the most civil, the most long-suffering, and it soon became evident that there was only one who had patience to conduct Mr. Rochford to see the flood-marks.