“Poor heir? I should say poor possessor, poor old man, who must see his home go into the hands of a stranger!”
They had come to another point where their accustomed feet paused, where the bare winter boughs, with all their naked tracery, framed in a wide opening of sky and cloud and plain, and where once more those clustered chimneys of Penton Hook, with their thin curls of smoke, seemed to thrust themselves into the front of the landscape. The house lay almost at the gazers’ feet, framed in with a cluster of trees, encircled with a glowing sweep of the stream, which, looked like a ribbon of light full of shimmering color, round the brown settlement of the half-seen building and wintery branches. Mrs. Penton clasped her hands together with a sudden quick suppressed movement of strong feeling, and turned hastily away.
CHAPTER III.
PENTON HOOK.
Soon after the day when this discussion was carried on among the woods of Penton over their heads, the family at Penton Hook were holding a sort of committee of ways and means in their damp domain below. The winter afternoon was clear and bright, and the river ran in deceitful brightness round the half-circle of the little promontory. It was not of itself at all a disagreeable house. If it had not been that the mud and wetness of the garden paths, where the water seemed to well up even through the gravel, made every footstep mark the too bright blue and brown tiles in the hall, and gave it a sloppy and disorderly look, the entrance itself might have been pretty enough; but there had been no attempt made to furnish or utilize it, and there were tracks of glistening steps across it in different directions to the different doors, all of which opened out of the hall. And the drawing-room was a well-sized, well-shaped room, with three or four windows; a room of which, with a little money and taste, something very pretty might have been made. But the windows were turned to the north, and the furniture was bare and worn; the walls and the carpets and curtains had all alike faded into a color which can only be described as being the color of poverty. The pattern was worn and trodden out upon the carpet; it was blurred and dull upon the walls—everything was of a brownish, greenish, grayish, indescribable hue. The picttures on the walls seemed to have grown gray, too, being chiefly prints, which ran into the tone of the whole. The table at which Mrs. Penton (poor Mrs. Penton) sat with her work was covered with a woolen cover, the ground of which had been red with a yellow pattern; but it (perhaps mercifully) had faded, too. And as for the lady, she was faded like everything else. Her dress, like the room, had sunk into the color of poverty. There was nothing about her that was above the level of matter-of-fact dullness. She was darning stockings, and they were also indefinite in hue. Her hair, which had been yellow or very light brown, had lost its gloss and sheen. It was knotted behind in a loose knot, and might have been classical and graceful had it not suggested that this was the easiest way possible to dispose of those abundant locks. Her head was stooped over her work; her basket on the table was overflowing. She paused now and then, and looked up to make her observation when it was her turn, but not even for the sake of the family consultation could she intermit her necessary work. Nine pairs of stockings, not to speak of her own, are a great deal for a woman to keep in order. Her own were not much worn, for she walked very little. She was one of those women who are indolent by nature, yet always busy. Once seated at her work, stocking after stocking went through her hands, and holes as big as a half-moon got deftly, swiftly, silently filled up; but it cost her an effort to rise from her seat to go about her domestic business. She was indolent in movement, though so industrious; a piece of still life, though her hands were never idle. This was the kind of woman to whom, in his maturer judgment, the man who had once been Alicia Penton’s adorer had turned.
He was not far from her, seated in an elbow-chair, not an easy-chair, but an old-fashioned mahogany article with arms, upon which he reposed his elbows. His hands were clasped in front of him, and now and then, when he forgot himself, he twirled his thumbs. He bore a family likeness to Sir Walter Penton, having a high nose and long face; but he was not the same kind of man. Old Sir Walter at nearly eighty was firm and erect still, but Edward Penton was limp. He was prone to tumble down upon himself, so to speak, like a crumbling wall; to go sinking, telescoping into himself like a slippery mass of sand or clay. There was an anxious look in his countenance, contradicting the pretensions of that prominent feature, the nose, which looked aristocratic, his family thought, and did its best to look strong. It was the mouth that did it, some people thought, a mouth which was manifestly weak, with all kinds of uncompleted piteous curves about it, and dubious wavering lines. His lower lip would move vaguely from time to time, as though he were repeating something. He was dressed in knickerbockers and gaiters and a rough coat, as if he had a great deal to do out-of-doors. He might have been a gentleman farmer, or a squire with an estate to look after, or even a gamekeeper of a superior kind; but he was nothing of all these. He was only a man who lived in the country, and had nothing to do, and had to walk about, as it were, for daily bread.
On the corner of the table, not far from Mrs. Penton, sat, with his legs swinging loosely, a younger, a quite young man; indeed, poor Wat did not know that he was a man at all, or realize what he was coming to. He was the eldest son. That did not seem to say very much, considering the character of the house, and the manner of life pursued in it, but it sounded a great deal to them, for young Walter was the heir intail male. He was the representative of all the Pentons, the future head of the family. He thought a great deal of his position, and so did the family. In time Penton would be his, the stately old house, and the title would be his which his ancestors had borne. The young man felt himself marked out from his kind by this inheritance. He was humble enough at present, but he had only to go on living, to wait and keep quiet, and he must be Sir Walter Penton of Penton in the end. He felt greater confidence in this than his father did who came before him. Mr. Penton did not look forward to the baronetcy for his part with much enthusiasm. It did not rouse him from his habitual depression. Perhaps because care was so close and so constant, perhaps because he had come to an age which expects but little from any change. He did not feel that to become Sir Edward would do much for him, but even he felt that for Wat it was a great thing.
The other two people in the room were the two girls; that was all that anybody ever said of them. They were scarcely even distinguished by name the one from the other; you could scarcely say they were individuals at all; they were the two girls. The children were apt to run their two names into one, and call them indiscriminately—Ally-Anne. Whether it was Ally or whether it was Anne who came first did not matter, it was a generic title which belonged to both. And yet they were not like each other. Ally had been called Alicia, after her relation at Penton, who was also her godmother, but at Penton Hook life was too full for so many syllables. They never got further than Alice in the most formal moments, and Ally was the name for common wear. Anne bore her mother’s name, but Mrs. Penton was Annie, whereas the girl preferred the one tiny syllable which expressed her better; for Anne, though she was the youngest, had more fiber in her than all the rest put together; but description is vain in face of such a little person. Her sister, though the eldest, was the shadow and she the substance, and no doubt it was one of the subtle but unconscious discriminations of character which the most simple make unawares, which led the little ones to call whichever individual of this pair appeared by the joint name.
“I shall always say, Edward, that you ought to have your share now,” said Mrs. Penton in a soft, even voice, never lifting her eyes from her work, but going on steadily like a purling stream; “you have more to do with it than Mr. Russell Penton, who never can succeed to anything; you ought to have your allowance like any other heir.”
“I don’t know why I should have an allowance,” said Mr. Penton, with a voice in which there was a certain languid irritation; “I have always held my own, and I shall always hold my own. And besides, Sir Walter does not want me to have the land; he would rather a great deal that it went to—Russell Penton, as you call him, though he has no right to our name.”
“But that can’t be,” cried young Wat, “seeing that I—I mean you, father, are the heir of entail.”