A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

The girls had their little grievances, too, but felt Wat’s grievance to be so much greater than theirs that they took up his cause vehemently, and threw all their indignation and the disapproval of their young intelligences into the weight of his. It was impossible that they could be as they were, young creatures full of life and active thought, without feeling what a mistake it all was, and how far the authorities of the family were wrong. They subjected, indeed, the decisions of the father and mother, but especially the father, as all our children do, to a keen and clear-sighted inspection, seeing what was amiss much more clearly than the wisest of us are apt to do in our own case. A little child of ten will thus follow and judge a philosopher, perhaps unconsciously in most cases, without a word to express its condemnation. The young Pentons were not so silent. They spoke their mind, in the perfect confidence of family intercourse, to their mother always, sometimes to their father too. And no doubt in pure logic, this criticism and disapproval should have dealt a great blow at the discipline of the house, and destroyed the principle of obedience. But fortunately logic is the last thing that affects the natural family life. Wat and Ally and Anne were in reality almost as obedient as were the little ones to whom the decisions of papa and mamma were as the law and the gospels. It had never occurred to them to raise any standard of rebellion; they did what they were told by sweet natural bonds of habit, by the fact that they had always done it, by the unbroken sentiment of filial subjection. The one thing did not seem to affect the other. It never occurred even to Wat to stop and argue the point with his father; he did what he was told, though afterward, when he came to think of it, he might think that his own way would have been the most wise.

The conversation which is set down in the last chapter did not give any insight into the family controversy that had been going on—being only, as it were, the subsiding of the waves after that discussion had come to an end. The subject in question was one which greatly moved and excited all the young people. Oswald, the second boy, who came next in the family after Anne, was the genius of the house. He was not much more than fifteen, but he had already written many poems and other compositions which had filled the house with wonder. The girls were sure that in a few years Lord Tennyson himself would have to look to his laurels, and Mr. Ruskin to stand aside; for Oswald’s gifts were manifold, and it was indifferent to him whether he struck the strings of poetry or the more sober chord of prose. Wat’s fraternal admiration was equally genuine and more generous, for it is a little hard upon a big boy to recognize his younger brother’s superiority; and it was dashed by a certain conviction that it would be for Osy’s good to be taken down a little. But Wat as much as the girls was agitated by the question which had been, so to speak, before a committee of the whole house. It was a question of more importance at Penton Hook than the fate of the ministry or the elections, or anything that might be going on in Europe. It was the question whether Osy should be continued where he was, at Marlborough, or if his education should be suspended till “better times.” Behind this lay a darker and more dreadful suggestion, of which the family were vaguely conscious, but which did not come absolutely under discussion, and this was whether Osy’s education should be stopped altogether, and an “opening in life” found for him. Nothing that had ever happened to them had moved the family so much as this question. The “better times” which the Pentons looked forward to could be nothing other than the death of Sir Walter and Mr. Penton’s accession to the headship of the family; and it was in the lull of exhaustion that followed a long discussion that Mrs. Penton made her suggestion about the propriety of an allowance being made to her husband as the heir of the property, which had led him into the expression of those general but discouraging ideas about entails and primogeniture. It had not perhaps occurred to Mr. Penton before; but now he came to think of it it seemed just of a piece with the general course of affairs, and of everything that had happened to him in the past, that new laws should come in at the moment and deprive him in the future of the heirship of which he had been so sure.

When Mr. Penton went out for his walk after the statement he had made of these possibilities, Wat and the girls went out too, on their usual afternoon expedition to the post. There was not very much to be done at Penton Hook, especially at this depressing time of the year when tennis was impracticable and the river not to be thought of. The only amusement possible was walking, and that is a pleasure which palls—above all when the roads are muddy and there is nowhere in particular to go to. It was Anne, in the force of her youthful invention, who had established the habit of going to the post. It was an “object,” and made a walk into a sort of duty—not the mere meaningless stroll which, without this purpose, it would turn to; and though the correspondence of the household was not great, Anne also managed that there should always be something which demanded to be posted, and could not be delayed. When there was nothing else she would herself dash off a note to one of the many generous persons who advertise mysterious occupations by which ladies and other unemployed persons may earn an income without a knowledge of drawing or anything else in particular. Alas! Anne had answered so many of these advertisements that she was no longer sanguine of getting a satisfactory reply; but if there was no letter to be sent off, nothing of her father’s about business, no post-card concerning the groceries, or directions to the dress-maker, or faithful family report from Mrs. Penton to one of her relations, such as, amid all the occupations of her life, that dutiful woman sent regularly, Anne could always supply the necessary letter from her own resources. It was on a similar afternoon to that on which the Pentons at the great house had discussed and thought of the poorer household; and a wintery sunset, very much the same as that on which Mr. Russell Penton and his wife had looked, shone in deep lines of crimson and gold, making of the river which reflected it a stream of flame, when the three young people, far too much absorbed in their own affairs to think of the colors in the sky or the reflections in the river, or anything but Osy and his prospects, and the state of the family finances, and the mistakes of family government, came down the hill from the level of the Penton woods toward their own home. The western sky, blazing with color, was on the left hand; but even the sky toward the north and east shared in the general illumination, and clouds all rose-tinted, concealing their heaviness in the flush of reflection, hung upon the chill blue, and seemed to warm the fresh wintery atmosphere before it sunk into the chill of night. The girls and their brother kept their heads together, speaking two at once in the eagerness of their feelings, and found no time for contemplation of what was going on overhead. A sunset is a thing which comes every evening, and about which there is no urgent reason for attention, as there was upon this question about Osy, which struck at the foundations of family credit and hope.

“When I left Eton,” said Wat with melancholy candor—“I had not much sense, to be sure—it seemed rather fine coming away to work at home. Fellows thought I was going to work for something out of the common way. I liked it—on the whole. When you are at school there is always something jolly in the thought of coming home. And so will Osy feel like me.”

“But you were never clever, Wat,” said the impetuous Anne.

This was perhaps a little hard to bear. “Clever is neither here nor there,” said Wat with a little flush. “It does not make much difference to your feelings; I suppose I can tell better how Osy will take it than one of you girls.”

“Oh no; for girls are more ambitious than boys, I mean boys that are just ordinary like the rest. And Osy is not like you. He is full of ambition, he wants to be something, to make a great name. I have the most sympathy with that. Ally and you,” cried the girl with a toss of her head like a young colt, “you are the contented ones, you are so easily satisfied; but not Osy nor me.”

“Contented is the best thing you can be,” said gentle Ally. “What is there better than content? Whatever trouble people take, it is only in the hope of getting satisfaction at the end.”

“I wish I was contented,” said Walter, “that is all you know. What have I got to be contented about? I have nothing to do; I have no prospects in particular, nothing to look forward to.”

“Oh, Watty—Penton!”