“It might be,” said Mr. Penton, going on with his tone of subdued annoyance, “if the law was changed; and one never knows in these revolutionary times how soon the law might be changed. It has been threatened to be done as long as I can remember. Primogeniture and the law of entail have been in every agitator’s mouth; they think it would be a boon to the working-man.”
“How could it be a boon to the working-man? What have we got to do with the working-man? What does it matter to him who has the property? it could not come to him anyhow,” cried Wat, with great energy, coloring high, and swinging his legs more than ever in the vehemence of personal feeling. It is all very well to talk of political principles, but when the question involves one’s self and one’s own position in the world, the argument is very much more urgent and moving. Young Walter was rather a revolutionary in his own way; he was of the class of generous aristocrats who take a great interest in the working-man; but there is reason in all things, and he did not see what this personage had to do with his affairs.
“Oh, I don’t know, there is no telling; they might be made to think it would do them good somehow. It has always been a favorite thing to say. At all events, you know,” Mr. Penton continued, with his mild disgust of everything, “it could not do them any harm. Primogeniture has always been a sort of thing that makes some people foam at the mouth.”
“My dear Edward!” cried Mrs. Penton; she almost looked up from her work, which was a great thing to say; and when this mild woman said, “My dear Edward,” it was the same thing as when a man says “By Jove,” or “By George.” In the gentle level of her conversation it counted as a sort of innocent oath. “My dear Edward! how could they abolish primogeniture? which so far as I know is just the Latin way of saying that one of your children is born before the other. Isn’t it, Wat? Well, I always thought so. The Radicals may get to be very powerful, but they can’t make you have your children all in a heap at the same time.”
“But they can make it of no importance which is born first; that is what it means,” said Mr. Penton. “They would have the children all equal, just the same; whether it is little Horry or Wat there who thinks himself such a great man.”
“Well, so they are all the same,” said the mother, a little bewildered. “I often wonder how it is that people can make favorites, for I am sure I could not say, for my part, which of them all I liked best. I like them all best—Horry because he is the littlest, and Wat because he is the biggest, and all the rest of them for some other reason, or just for no reason at all. And so, I am sure, Edward, do you.”
“In that way Wat would be no better than any of the rest,” said Anne.
“I should have no call to do anything for you,” said the young man, with an uncomfortable laugh. “It would be every one for himself. There would be no bother about little sisters or brothers either. On the whole, it would be rather a good bargain, don’t you think so, mother? Horry and the others must all shift for themselves when there is no eldest son—”
This time Mrs. Penton really did lift her soft eyes. “Don’t say such wicked things!” she said; “it is going against Scripture. As if anything could change you from being the eldest son! Who should look after the children if your father and I were to die? Oh, Wat! how can you speak so?—when it is just my comfort, knowing how uncertain life is, that the eldest is grown up, and that there would be some one to take our place, and take care of all these little things!”
Mrs. Penton had no mind for politics, as will be perceived, but the vision of the little orphans without an elder brother struck her imagination. This picture of unnatural desolation brought the tears warm to her eyes. She took another view of primogeniture from that which is familiar to discussion, and it was some time before they could explain it to her and get her calmed and soothed. Indeed, as to explaining it, that was never accomplished; but when she fully knew that her first-born did not cast off all responsibility in respect to little Horry she was calm.