“I am glad you think so, Martha. Gentlemen are very different from us; they don’t think of things that come into every woman’s mind. I shall be angry, indeed, if you keep me standing asking questions. What has all this to do with my son?”
“It’s all father’s ways of thinking. There’s nothing in it—not a thing to talk about. It’s just this—as Mr. Walter has seen Emmy a time or two at the cottage door. And he’s said a civil word. And Emmy is one as likes to talk to gentlefolks, being more like them in herself than the likes of us. And so—and so—father’s taken things into his head—as he did, my lady,” cried Martha, with a blush and a sudden change of tone, “about John Baker and me.”
“About John Baker and you?”
“Yes, my lady,” cried Martha, very red; “and there’s no more truth in it the one nor the other. Can’t a girl say a word but it’s brought up against her, like as it was a sin? or give a civil answer but it’s said as she’s keeping company? It ain’t neither just nor right. It’s as unkind as can be. It’s just miserable livin’ where there’s naught but folks suspecting of you all round.”
“Martha, is that how your father treated John Baker and you? I think you’re hard upon your father. He behaved very well about that, and you know you were yourself to blame. This that you tell me is all nonsense, to be sure. I will speak to Mr. Walter.” She paused a little, and then asked, “This Emmy that you tell me of—is she a nice girl?”
“Oh, yes, my lady.”
“Is she one that gives a civil answer, as you say, whoever talks to her?”
“Oh, yes, my lady.”
“Not particularly to young men?”
“Oh, no, my lady,” said Martha, with vehemence, her countenance flaming red, like the afternoon sun.
“If that is all true,” said Lady Penton, “you may be sure she shall have a friend in me. But I hope it is all true.”
“As sure as—oh, as sure as the catechism or the prayer-book! Oh, my lady, as sure as I’m speaking; and I wouldn’t deceive your ladyship—no, I wouldn’t deceive you, not for nothing in the world!”
“Except in respect to John Baker,” said Lady Penton, with a smile; at which Martha burst out crying over the silver that she had been cleaning, and made her plate-powder no better than a puddle of reddish mud.
This led Lady Penton, to make a few more observations on the subject with which she had begun the conversation; and then she went away. But if Martha was left weeping her mistress did not carry a light heart out of the pantry, where she had got so much information. The picture of the village siren was not calculated to reassure a mother. She had thought at first that Martha was an enemy, and ready to give the worst version of the story; and then it had turned out that Martha herself was on the side of the girl who had fascinated Walter. Had she fascinated Walter? Was it possible—a girl at a cottage door—a girl who—gave a civil answer? Lady Penton’s imagination rebelled against this description; it rebelled still more at the comparison with John Baker, with whom Martha herself had gone through a troublous episode. Walter Penton like John Baker! She tried to smile, but her lips quivered a little. What was this new thing that had fallen into the peaceful family all in a moment like a bomb full of fire and trouble? She could not get rid of the foolish picture—the girl at the cottage door, smiling on whosoever passed, with her civil answer; and Walter—her Walter, her first-born, the heir of Penton—Walter caught by that vulgar snare as he passed by! Had it been a poor lady, the curate’s daughter, the immaculate governess of romance—but the girl whose conversation was so captivating to Martha, who described what things were worn, and all that you could see in the shops—and then, with a smile at the cottage door, caught the unwary boy to whom every girl was a thing to be respected. Martha’s little bubble of tears in the pantry were nothing to the few salt drops that came to her mistress’s eyes. But Lady Penton went afterward to the book-room and told her husband that, so far as she could make out, old Crockford must have made a mistake. “Martha gives a very good account of the girl,” she said, “and Walter, no doubt, had only talked to her a little, meaning no harm.”
“He would not have answered me as he did this morning if there had been no harm,” said Sir Edward, shaking his head.
“You must have been harsh with him,” said his wife. “You must have looked as if you believed Crockford, and not him.”
“I was not harsh; am I ever harsh?” cried the injured father.
“Edward, the boy darted out without any breakfast! How is he to go through the day without any breakfast? Would he have done that if you had not been harsh to him?” Lady Penton said.
Theday was a painful one to all concerned: to the father and mother, who knew, though vaguely, all about it,and to the children who knew only that something was wrong, and that it was Walter who was in fault, a thing incomprehensible, which no one could understand. The girls felt that they themselves might have gone a little astray, that they could acknowledge as possible; but Walter! what could he have done to upset the household, to make the father so angry, the mother so sad?—to rush out himself upon the world without his breakfast? That little detail affected their minds perhaps the most of all. The break of every tradition and habit of life was thus punctuated with a sharpness that permitted no mistake. He had gone out without any breakfast—rushing, driving the gravel in showers from his angry feet. When the time of the midday repast came round there was a painful expectancy in the house. He must return to dinner, they said to themselves. But Walter did not come back for dinner. He was not visible all day. The girls thought they saw him in the distance when they went out disconsolately for a walk in the afternoon, feeling it their duty to Mab. Oh, why was she there, a stranger in the midst of their trouble! They thought they saw him at the top of the steep hill going up from the house to the village. But though they hurried, and Anne ran on in advance, by the time she got to the top he was gone and not a trace of him was to be seen. Their hearts were sadly torn between this unaccustomed and awful cloud of anxiety and the duties they owed to their guest. And still more dreadful was it when the Penton carriage came for Mab with a note only, telling her to do as she pleased, to stay for a few days longer if she pleased. “Oh, may I stay?” she asked, with a confidence in their kindness which was very flattering, but at that moment more embarrassing than words could say. The two girls exchanged a guilty look, while Lady Penton replied, faltering: “My dear! it is very sweet of you to wish it. If it will not be very dull for you—” “Oh, dull!” said Mab, “with Ally and Anne, and all the children: and at Penton there is nobody!” A frank statement of this sort, though it may be selfish, is flattering; indeed, the selfishness which desires your particular society is always flattering. None of them could say a word against it. They could not tell their visitor that she was—oh, so sadly!—in their way, that they could not talk at their ease before her; and that to be compelled to admit her into this new andunlooked-for family trouble was such a thing as made the burden miserable, scarcely to be borne. All this was in their hearts, but they could not say it. They exchanged a look behind backs, and Lady Penton repeated, with a faint quaver in her voice, “My dear! Of course, we shall be only too glad to have you if you think it will not be dull.” When Mab ran to write her note and announce her intention to remain, the three ladies felt like conspirators standing together in a little circle, looking at each other dolefully. “Oh, mother, why didn’t you say they must want her at Penton, and that we did not want her here?” “Hush, girls! Poor little thing, when she is an orphan, and so fond of you all; though I wish it had been another time,” Lady Penton said with a sigh. They seized her, one by each arm, almost surrounding her, in their close embrace. “Mother, what has Wat done? Mother, what is it about Wat?” “Oh, hush, hush, my dears!” And Lady Penton added, disengaging herself with a smile to meet Mab, who came rushing into the room in great spirits, “I think as long as the daylight lasts you ought to have your walk.” It was after this that the girls thought they saw Walter, but could not find any trace of him when they reached the top of the hill.
There had never been any mystery, any anxiety, save in respect to the illnesses that break the routine of life with innocent trouble which anybody may share, in this innocent household. To make excuses for an absent member, and account for his absence as if it were the most natural thing in the world—not to show that you start at every opening of the door, to refrain heroically from that forlorn watch of the window, that listening for every sound which anxiety teaches: to talk and smile even when there are noises, a stir outside, a summons at the door that seems to indicate the wanderer’s return—how were they to have that science of trouble all in a moment? Lady Penton leaped to its very heights at once. She sat there as if all her life she had been going through that discipline, talking to Mab, surveying the children, neglecting nothing, while all the while her heart was in her ears, and she heard before any one the faintest movement outside. They were all very silent at table, Sir Edward making no attempt to disguise the fact that he was out of humor and had nothing to say to any one, while the girls exchanged piteous looks and kept upan anxious telegraphic communication. But Walter never appeared. Neither to dinner, neither in the evening did he return—the two meals passed without him, his place vacant, staring in their faces, as Anne said. Where was he? What could he be doing? Into what depth of trouble and misery must a boy have fallen who darts out of his father’s house without any breakfast, and, so far as can be known, has nothing to eat all day? Where could he go to have any dinner? What could have happened to him? These words express the entire disorganization of life, the end of all things in a family point of view, which this dreadful day meant to Walter’s sisters, and to his mother in a less degree. Nothing else that could have been imagined would have reached their hearts in the same way. And the last aggravation was given by the fact that all this which they felt so acutely to imply the deepest reproach against Walter was apparent to little Mab, sitting there with her little smiling face as if there was no trouble in the world. Oh, it was far better, no doubt, that she should suspect nothing, that she should remain in her certainty, so far as Penton Hook was concerned, that there was no trouble in the world! But her face, all tranquil and at ease, her easy flow of talk, her questions, her commentaries, as if life were all so simple and anybody could understand it! The impatience which sometimes almost overcame all the powers of self-control in Ally and in Anne, can not be described. They almost hated Mab’s pretty blue eyes, and her comfortable, innocent, unsuspecting smile. Had any one told them that little Mab, that little woman of the world, was very keenly alive to everything that was going on, and had formed her little theory, and believed herself to know quite well what it was all about, the other girls would have rejected such an accusation with disdain.
It was quite late, after everything was over, the children all in bed, all the noises of the house hushed and silent, when Walter came home. The family were sitting together in the drawing-room, very dull, as Lady Penton had forewarned the little guest they would be. She herself had suggested a game of besique, which she was ready to have played had it been necessary: but Ally and Anne could not for shame let their mother take that rude and arduous task in hand. So this little group of girls had gathered round the table, a pretty contrast in their extreme freshness andyouthfulness. The gravity of this, to her, terrible and unthought-of crisis, the horror of what might be happening, threw a shade upon Ally’s passive countenance which suited it. She was very pale, her soft eyes cast down, a faint movement about her mouth. She might have burst out crying over her cards at any moment in the profound tension of her gentle spirit. Anne was different; the excitement had gone to her head, all her faculties were sharpened; she had the look of a gambler, keen and eager on her game, though her concentrated attention was not on that at all. She held her head erect, her slender shoulders thrown back, her breath came quickly through her slightly opened lips. Mab was just as usual, with her pretty complexion and her blue eyes, laughing, carrying on a little babble of remark. “A royal marriage! Oh, Anne, what luck!” “Another card, please—yes, I will have another.” Her voice was almost the only one that disturbed the silence. Lady Penton in her usual place was a little indistinct in the shade. She had turned her head from the group, and her usually busy hands lay clasped in her lap. She was doing nothing but listening. Sometimes even she closed her eyes, that nothing might be subtracted from her power of hearing. Her husband, still further in the background, could not keep still. Sometimes he would sit down for a moment, then rise again and pace about, or stand before the bookshelves as if looking for a book; but he wanted no book—he could not rest.
And then in the midst of the silence of the scene came the sounds that rang into all their hearts. The gate with its familiar jar across the gravel, the click of the latch, then the step, hurried, irregular, making the gravel fly. Lady Penton did not move, nor did Sir Edward, who stood behind her, as if he had been suddenly frozen in the act of walking, and could not take another step. Ally’s cards fell from her hands and had to be gathered from the floor with a little scuffle and confusion, in the midst of which they were all aware that the hall door was pushed open, that the step came in and hurried across the hall upstairs and to Walter’s room, the door of which closed with a dull echo that ran through all the house. Their hearts stood still; and then sudden ease diffused itself throughout the place—relief—something that felt like happiness. He had come back! In a moment more the girls’ voices rose into soft laughter and talk. What more was wanted? Wat had come back. As long as he was at home, within those protecting walls, what could go wrong? “Oh, what a fright we have had,” said Ally’s eyes, with tears in them, to those of Anne; “but now it’s all over! He has come back.”
The parents looked at each other in the half light under the shade of the lamp. When Walter’s door closed upstairs Sir Edward made a step forward as if to follow to his son’s room, but Lady Penton put up her hand to check him. “Don’t,” she said, under her breath. It still seemed to her that her husband must have been harsh. “Some one must speak to him,” said Sir Edward, in the same tone; “this can not be allowed to go on.” “Oh, no, no; go on! oh, no, it can’t go on.” “What do you mean, Annie?” cried her husband, leaning over her chair. “Do you think I should take no notice after the dreadful day we have spent, and all on his account?” “No, no,” she said, in a voice which was scarcely audible; “no, no.” “What am I to do, then—what ought I to do? I don’t want to risk a scene again, but to say ‘no, no’ means nothing. What do you think I should do?”
She caught his hand in hers as he leaned over her chair, their two heads were close together. “Oh, Edward, you’ve always been very good to me,” she said.
“What nonsense, Annie! good to you! we’ve not been two, we’ve been one; why do you speak to me so?”
“Edward,” she whispered, leaning back her middle-aged head upon his middle-aged shoulder. “Oh, Edward, this once let me see him. I know the father is the first. It’s right you should be the first; but, Edward, this once let me see him, let me speak to him. He might be softer to his mother.”
There was a pause, and he did not know himself, still less did she know, whether he was to be angry or to yield. He had perhaps in his mind something of both. He detached his hand from hers with a little sharpness, but he said, “Go, then: you are right enough; perhaps you will manage him better than I.”
She went softly out of the room, while the girls sat over their cards in the circle of the lamplight. They had not paid much attention to the murmur of conversation behind them. They thought she had gone to see about some supper for Walter, who had probably been fasting all day, an idea which had also entered Ally’s mind as a right thing to do; but mother, they knew, would prefer to do it herself. She did not, however, in the first place, think of Walter’s supper. She went up the dim staircase, where there was scarcely any light, not taking any candle with her, and made her way along the dark passage to Walter’s door. He had no light, nor was there any sound as she opened the door softly and went in. Was it possible he was not there? The room was all dark, and not a murmur in it, not even the sound of breathing. A dreadful chill of terror came over Lady Penton’s heart. She said with a trembling voice, “Walter, Walter!” with an urgent and frightened cry.
There was a sound of some one turning on the bed, and Walter’s voice said out of the dark in a muffled and sullen tone, “What do you want, mother? I thought here I might have been left in peace!”
“What!” she cried, “in peace. Is this how you speak to me? Oh, my boy, where have you been?”
“It can’t matter much where I’ve been. I’ve been doing no harm.”
“No, dear. I never thought you had,” said his mother, groping her way to the bedside and sitting down by him. She put out her hand till it reached where his head was lying. His forehead was hot and damp, and he put her hand away fretfully.
“You forget,” he said, “I’m not a baby now.”
“You are always my boy, Wat, and will be, however old you may grow. If your father was harsh he did not mean it. Oh, why did you rush away like that without any breakfast? Walter, tell me the truth, have you had anything to eat? have you had some dinner? Tell me the truth.”
There was a pause, and then he said, “I forget: is that all you think of, mother?”
“No, Wat, not all I think of, but I think of that too. If I bring you up something will you eat it, Wat?”
“For pity’s sake let me alone,” he said, pettishly, “and go away.”
“Walter!”
“Let me alone, mother, for to-night. I can’t say anything to-night. I came to bed on purpose to be quiet; leave me alone for to-night.”
“If I do, Wat, you will hear us, you will not turn your back upon us to-morrow?”
“Good-night, mother,” said the lad.
He turned his head away, but she bent over him and kissed his hot cheek. “I will tell your father he is not to say anything. And I will leave you, since you want me. But you will take the advice of your best friends to-morrow, Wat.”
“Good-night, mother,” he said again, and turned his flushed and shamefaced cheek to respond, since it was in the dark, to her kiss.
“Wat, there is nobody in the world can love you as we do. God bless you, my dear,” she said.
And listening in the dark, he heard the faint sound of her soft footsteps receding, passing away into the depths of the silent house, leaving him not silent, not quiet, as he said, but with a wild world of intentions and impulses whirling within him, all agitation, commotion, revolution to his finger-ends.
WhenWalter, in ungovernable excitement, trouble, and impatience, rushed out of the house in the morning, leaving old Crockford to make he knew not what revelations to his father, he had no idea either what he was going to do, or how long it might be before he returned home. It might have been that he was leaving the Hook—his birthplace, the only home he had ever known—for years. He might never see all these familiar things again—the pale river winding round the garden, the poplar-tree, thin and naked, in the wind, the little multitude in the dining-room making a hum and murmur of voices as he darted past. In his imagination he saw so clearly that breakfast-table—his mother dividing to each of the children their proper share, Ally and Anne, and little Molly, with her spoon, making flourishes, and calling, “Fader, fader!” He saw them all with the distinctness of inward vision as he darted away, though his mind was full of another image. The pang withwhich, even in the heat of his flight, he realized that he was going away, lay in the background of his heart, as that picture was in the background of his imagination; foremost was the idea of seeingherat once, of telling her that all was over here, and that he was ready to fly to the end of the world if she would but come with him, and that all should be as she pleased. He had forgotten the suggestion of last night about the oath which he would have to take as to his age. Nothing was apparent to him except that his secret was betrayed, that all was over, thatshealone remained to him, and that nothing now stood between him and her. He rushed up the hill to the cottage, feeling that reserves and concealments were no longer necessary, that the moment of decision was come, and that there must be no more delay. He would not wait any longer patrolling about the house till she should see him from a window or hear his signal. He went up to the cottage door and knocked loudly. He must see her, and that without a moment’s delay.
It seemed to Walter that he stood a long time knocking at the cottage door. He heard the sound of many goings and comings within, so that it was not because they were absent that he was not admitted. At last the door was opened suddenly by old Mrs. Crockford, who was deaf, and who made no answer to his demand except by shaking her head and repeating the quite unnecessary explanation that she was hard of hearing, backed by many courtesies and inquiries for the family.
“My master’s out, Mr. Walter—Crockford’s not in, sir; he’s gone to work, as he allays does. Shall I send him, sir, to the ’ouse when he comes in to ’is dinner?” she said, with many bobs and hopes as how her ladyship and all the family were well.
Whether this was all she knew, or whether the old woman was astute, and brought her infirmity to the aid of her wits, he could not tell.
“I want to see your niece,” he said—“your niece—your niece Emmy: I want to see Emmy,” without eliciting any further reply than, “My master’s out, Mr. Walter, and I’m a little ’ard of ’earing, sir.”
He raised his voice so thatshemust have heard him, and surely, surely, in the condition in which things were, ought to have answered him! But perhaps she was anxious tokeep up appearances still. He said, in his loudest voice, “I am leaving home; I must see her;” but even this produced no response: and at last he was obliged to go away, feeling as if all the machinery of life had come to a stand-still, and that nothing remained for him to do. He had abandoned one existence, but the other did not take him up. He roamed about, for he scarcely knew how long, till the wintery sun was high in the sky, then came back, and, in the audacity of despair—for so he felt it—knocked again, this time softly, disguising his impatience, at the cottage door. He had acted wisely, it appeared, for she herself opened to him this time, receding from the door with a startled cry when she saw who it was. But this time he would not be put off. He followed her into the little room in front, which was a kind of parlor, adorned by the taste of Martha and her mother, cold, with its little fire-place decked out in cut paper, and the blind drawn down to protect it from the sun. He caught sight of a box, which seemed to be half packed, and which she closed hastily and pushed away.
She turned upon him when he had followed inside this room, with an angry aspect that made poor Walter tremble. “Why do you hunt me down like this?” she cried; “couldn’t you see I didn’t want you when you came this morning pushing your way into the house? Though it’s a cottage, still it’s my castle if I want to be private here!”
“Emmy!” cried the youth, with the keenest pang of misery in his voice.
“Why do you call out my name like that? You objected to what I told you last night. Go away now. I don’t want to have anything to say to a man that objects to my plans as if I didn’t know what’s right and what’s wrong!”
“I object to nothing,” said the boy. “You sent me away from you, you gave me no time to think. And now my father knows everything, and I have left home; I shall never go back any more.”
“Left home! And how does your father know everything? And what is there to know?”
“Nothing!” cried Walter—“nothing, except that I am yours, heart and soul—except that I desire nothing, think of nothing, but you. And they had never heard of you before!”
She closed the door and pushed a chair toward him.“How did they know about me?—what do they know now? Was it you that told them? And what do they think?” she cried, with a slight breathlessness that told of excitement.
Poor Walter was glad to sit down, he was faint and weary; that rush out-of-doors into the frosty air without any breakfast, which had affected the imaginations of his family so much, had told on him. He felt that there was no strength in him, and that he was glad to rest.
“It was old Crockford who told them,” he said. “He came in upon me this morning like a—like a wolf: and my father of course heard, and came to see what it was.”
“Oh,” she said, in a tone of disappointment, not without contempt in it, “so it was not you! I thought perhaps, being so overwhelmed by what I said, you had gone right off and told your mother, as a good boy should. So it was only old Crockford? and I gave you the credit! But I might have known,” she added, with a laugh, “you had not the courage for that!”
“Courage! I did not think of it,” he said. “It did not seem a thing to tell them. How was I to do it? And Crockford came—I don’t know what for—to forbid me the house.”
“No; but to drive me out of it!” she said, with a look which he did not understand. “So you hadn’t the courage,” she said. “You have not much courage, Mr. Walter Penton, to be such a fine young man. You come here night after night, and you pretend to be fond of me. But when it comes to the point you daren’t say to your father and mother straight out, ‘Here’s a girl I’m in love with, and I want to marry her. I’ll do it as soon as I’m old enough, whether you like it or not; but if you were nice, and paid a little attention to her, it would be better for us all.’ That is what I should have said in your place. But you hadn’t the heart, no more than you’d have had the heart to run a little risk about your age and say you were six months older than you are. That’s like a man! You expect a girl to run every risk, to trust herself to you and her whole life; but to do anything that risks your own precious person, oh, no! You have not the heart of a mouse; you have not the courage for that!”
She spoke with so much vehemence, her eyes flashing, the color rising in her cheeks, that Walter could not say a word in his defense—and, besides, what was there to say?So far was he from having the courage to broach the subject in his own person, that when it had been begun by Crockford he had not been able to bear it, but had rushed away. He sat silent while she thus burst forth upon him, gazing at her as she towered over him in her indignation. He had seldom seen her in daylight, never so close, and never in this state of animation and passion. His heart was wrung, but his imagination was on fire. She was a sort of warrior-maiden—a Britomart, a Clorinda. Her eyes blazed. Her lip, which was so full of expression, quivered with energy. To think that any one should dare to think her beneath them!—of a lower sphere!—which was what he supposed his own family would do when they knew; whereas she was a kind of goddess—a creature made of fire and flame. To brave his father, with her standing by to back him; to deceive a registrar—about a miserable matter of age—six months more or less—what did these matter? What did anything matter in comparison with her?—in comparison with pleasing her, with doing what she wished to be done? He was a little afraid of her as she stood there, setting the very atmosphere on fire. If she ever belonged to him, became his familiar in every act of his life, might there not arise many moments in which he should be afraid of what she might think or say? This thought penetrated him underneath the fervor of admiration in his soul, but it did not daunt him or make him pause.
He said, “It is true I did not tell my father first. It did not come into my head. I can’t be sure now that it’s the thing to do. But when Crockford said what he did I told him it was so. It is the first time,” said Walter, with a little emotion, “that I ever set myself against my father. It may come easier afterward, but it’s something to do it the first time. Perhaps you’ve never done it, though you are braver than I.”
She laughed loudly with a contempt that hurt him.
“Never done it! Never done anything else, you mean! I never got on with my mother since I was a baby; and father, I never had any—at least I never saw him. Well! so you spoke up boldly, and said—what did you say?”
“Oh, don’t bother me!” he cried. “How can I tell what I said? And now I’ve come away. I have left home,Emmy. I am ready to go with you, dear, anywhere—if you like, to the end of the world.”
“I’ve no wish for that,” she said, with a softer laugh. “I’m going to London; that’s quite enough for me.”
“Well,” cried the lad, “I’ll go with you there; and all can be settled—everything—as you will. It can be nothing wrong that is done for you.”
“Oh, you’re thinking of the license again,” she said; “never mind that. I’ve been thinking too; and you can’t have your money till you’re twenty-one, don’t you know? Swearing will do you no good there—they want certificates and all sorts of things. And of course you can’t go to the end of the world, or even to London, without any money. So you must just wait and see what happens. Perhaps something will take place before then that will clear you altogether from me.”
He listened to the first part of this with mingled calm and alarm. To wait these six months, could he have seen her every day, would not have disturbed Walter much, notwithstanding the blaze of boyish passion which had lighted up all the world to him. The idea of a new life, an entire revolution of all the circumstances round him, and the tremendous seriousness of marriage, had given him a thrill of almost alarm. It was a plunge which he was ready to take, and yet which appalled him. And when she said that he could not have his money till he was twenty-one, a sensation half of annoyance, yet more than half of content, came over his soul. He could bear it well enough if only he could see her every day: but when she added that threat about the possibility of something happening, Walter’s heart jumped up again in his breast.
“What can happen?” he said. “Dear, nothing shall happen. If you are going to London I’ll go too—I must be near where you are—I’ve no home to go back to. London will be the best; it’s like the deep sea, everybody says. Nobody will find me there.”
“You must not be too sure of that. Sir Edward Penton’s son could be found anywhere. They will put your arrival in the papers, don’t you know? ‘At Mivart’s, Mr. Walter Penton, from the family seat.’”She broke off with a laugh. Walter, gazing at her, was entirely unaware what she meant. The fashionable intelligence of the newspapers, though his mother might possibly give an eye to it,was a blank to him; and when she met his serious impassioned look, the girl herself was affected by it. It was so completely sincere and true that her trifling nature was impressed in spite of everything. She despised him in many ways, though she was not without a certain liking for him. She was contemptuous of his ignorance, of the self-abandonment which made him ready to follow her wherever she went, even of his passion for herself. Emmy was very philosophical, nay, a little cynical in her views. She was ready to say and believe that there were many prettier girls than herself within Walter’s reach, and the idea that he cared for anything but her prettiness did not occur to this frank young woman. But the look of absolute sincerity in the poor boy’s eyes touched her in spite of herself. She put her hands on his shoulders with a momentary mute caress, which meant sudden appreciation, sudden admiration, like that with which an elder sister might have regarded the generous impulse of a boy: then withdrew laughing from the closer approach which Walter, blushing to his hair, and springing to his feet, ventured upon in response. “No, no,” she cried, “run away now. You can come back later; I’m very busy, I’ve got my packing to look after, and a hundred things to do—there’s a dear boy, run away now.”
“I am not a boy, at least not to you,” he cried, “not to you; you must not send me away.”
“But I must, and I do. How can I get my things ready with you hanging about? Run away, run away, do; and you can come back later, after it’s dark—not till after it’s dark. And then—and then—” she said.
He obeyed her after awhile, moved by the vague beatitude of that anticipation. “And then—” Nothing but the highest honor and tenderness was in the young man’s thoughts. He did not know indeed what to do when he should reach London with that companion, where he could take her, how arrange matters for her perfect security and welfare until the moment when he should be able to make her his wife. But somehow, either by her superior knowledge, or by that unfailing force of pure and honest purpose which Walter felt must always find the right way, this should be done. He went away from her cheered and inspired. But when he had got out of sight of the cottage he was not clear what to do for the long interval that mustelapse; home he could not go—where should he go? He thought over the question with the icy blast in his face as he turned toward the east. And then he came to a sudden resolution, not indeed consciously inspired by Emmy, but which came from her practical impulse. In another mood, at another stage, her suggestion about his money might have shocked and startled him. It seemed now only a proof of her superior wisdom and good sense, the perfection of mind which he felt to be in her as well as the sweetness of manner and speech, the feeling, the sentiment, all the fine qualities for which he gave her credit, and for which he adored her, not only for the beauty in which alone she believed. And if he was about to do this bold and splendid thing, to carry off the woman he loved, and marry her by whatever means—and are not all means sanctified by love?—surely, certainly, whatever else might be necessary, he would want money. Having made up his mind on this point, Walter buttoned his coat, and set off for Reading like an arrow from a bow. There he managed to dine with great appetite, which would have been a comfort to his mother had she known it, and had an interview with Mr. Rochford, the solicitor, on the subject of the money which had been left to him (as he preferred to think) by old Sir Walter, the result of which was that he got with much ease a sum of fifty pounds (to Walter a fortune in itself), with which in his pocket he walked back with a tremendous sense of guilty elation, excitement, and trouble. He lingered on the road until after dark, as she had said, until, as he remembered so acutely, the hour of the evening meal at home, when the family would be all gathering, and every one asking, Where is Wat? He had rebelled before against the coercion of that family meal. This time it drew him with a kind of lingering desire which he resisted, he who before had half despised himself for obeying the habit and necessity of it. He went to his old post under the hedge, not knowing whether Emmy wished her departure with him to be known. For himself he did not care. If everybody he knew were to appear, father and mother, and all the authorities to whom he had ever been subject, he would have taken her hand and led her away before their faces. So he said to himself as he waited in the cold, half indignant, at that wonderful moment of his fate, that any concealment should be necessary. The cottage was all dark; there was not even a light in the upper window, such as was sometimes there, to make him aware that she looked for him. Not a glimmer of light and not a sound. The cottage seemed like a place of the dead. It seemed to him so much more silent than usual that he took fright after awhile, and this, in addition to his feeling that the time for secrecy was over, emboldened him in his impatience. He went up to the cottage door and knocked repeatedly more and more loudly after awhile, with a sensation of alarm. Was it possible that old deaf Mrs. Crockford was alone in the house? He had time to get into a perfect fever of apprehension before he heard a heavy step coming from behind, and the door was opened to him by Crockford himself, who filled up the whole of the little passage. The old man had a candle in his hand. “What, is it you, Mr. Walter?” he cried, astonished. “Where is she?” said Walter. “What have you done with her? Will you tell her I am here?” He could not speak of her familiarly by her name to this man. But Crockford had no such delicacy; he stared Walter in the face, looking at him across the flame of the candle, which waved and flickered in the night air.
“Emmy!” he said. “Why, Mr. Walter, she’s gone hours ago!”
“Gone! Where has she gone? You’ve driven her away. Some one has been here and driven her away!”
“Ay, Mr. Walter! The fly at the Penton Arms as she ordered herself to catch the two o’clock train; that’s what drove her away, and thankful we was to be quit of her; and so should you be, my young gentleman, if you was wise. She’s a little—”
“Hold your tongue!” cried Walter. “Who has driven her away? Is it my father?—is it—Some one has been here to interfere. Silence! If you were not an old man I’d knock you down.”
“Silence, and asking me a dozen questions? That’s consistent, that is! There’s been nobody here—not a soul. She’s gone as she intended. She told my old woman as soon as she heard I’d been down at the house. I didn’t believe her, but she’s kept her word. All the better for you, Mr. Walter, if you only could see it; all the better, sir. She’s not the same as you think. She’s—”
“Silence!” cried Walter again. “I don’t believe shehas gone away at all; you are making up a story; you are trying to deceive me!”
At this old Crockford opened the door wider and bid him enter, and Walter, with eyes which were hot and painful, as if the blood had got into them, stared in, not knowing what he did. He had no desire to investigate. He knew well enough that it was true. She had sent him out of the way and then she had gone. She had not thought him worth the trouble. She had wanted to get rid of him. This sudden blow awoke no angry flush of pride, as it ought to have done. He felt no blame of her in his mind; instead, he asked himself what he had done to disgust her with him. It must be something he had done. He had disgusted her with his folly—with his hesitation about transgressing any puritanical habits of thought for her sake: and then by his talk about his home. He remembered her flash of disappointment, of contempt, when he had owned that it was not he who had told his father. Of course she had despised him, how could he think otherwise? She was ready to trust herself to him, and he had not been strong enough to make the least sacrifice for her. He turned and went away from Crockford’s door without a word.
And after that he did not know very well how he got through the weary hours. He walked to the railway station and prowled all about with a forlorn sort of hope that she might have missed her train. And then quite suddenly it occurred to him, having nothing else to do, that he might go home. He went, as has been seen, to his room in the dark, and sent his mother away with an entreaty to be left alone. He was not touched by his mother’s voice, or her touch or blessing. He was impatient of them, his mind being full of other things. His mind, indeed, was full of Emmy—full to bursting. It might be well for him that she was gone, if he could have thought so. He half agreed to that in his soul. But he would not think so. Had he carried her off triumphantly his mind would have been full of a hundred tremors, but to lose her now was more than he could bear. He lay thinking it all over, longing for the morning, in the dark, without candle or any other comfort, sleeping now and then, waking only to a keener consciousness. And then he became aware by some change in the chill, for there was none in the light, that it was morning.He got up in the dark—he had not undressed, but had been lying on the bed with the coverlet drawn over him in his morning clothes. It was very cold and blank, the skies all gloom, the river showing one pale gleam and no more. He got up as quietly as he could and stole down-stairs and opened stealthily the house door. No one was stirring, not even the servants, though in so full a house they were always early. The fresh morning air blew in his face and refreshed him. He felt his fifty pounds in his pocket. He scarcely thought of the misery he would leave behind him. Long enough, he said to himself, he had been bound by the family, now his own life was in question, and he must act for himself. There was a train at half past six which he could just catch. How different it was from his night drive so short a time ago! Then he was acting reluctantly for others, now willingly for himself. The cold air blew in his face with a dash of rain in it. He shut the gate quietly not to make a noise, but never looked back.
Theparents respected poor Wat’s seclusion, his misery and trouble, though it was so hard to keep away from him; not to go and talk to him, remonstrating or consoling; not to carry him a tray, to implore him to eat a little. They resisted all these impulses: the last, perhaps, was the most difficult. Lady Penton had to call to her aid all the forces of her mind, to strengthen herself by every consideration of prudence, before she could overcome the burning desire which came back and back, with renewed temptation, a hundred times in the course of the evening to take up that tray. A few sandwiches, a little claret, or some beer, would have done him no harm; and who could tell whether he had eaten enough to sustain his strength in the course of the day? But, what with her own self-reminders that it was wiser to leave him to himself, what with the half taunts, half remonstrances of her husband—“If I am not to say a word to him, which I believe is nonsense, why should you?”—holding herself as it were with both hands, she managed to refrain. The first time that such a breach comes into a family—that one member of it withdraws indarkness and silence into his own room, not to be disturbed, not to be found fault with, not even to be comforted—till to-morrow—how keen is the pang of the separation, how poignant the sense of his solitude and anguish! In such circumstances it is the culprit generally who suffers least. The grieved and perhaps angered parents, pondering what to say to him, how to do what is best for him, how not to say too much, afraid to make the fault appear too grave, afraid to make too little of it, casting about in their anxious souls what to do: the brothers and sisters looking on in the background, questioning each other with bated breath, their imaginations all busy with that too touching, too suggestive picture of the offender in his room, left to himself, eating nothing, communicating with nobody—how dreadful when it is for the first time! what a heartbreaking and hopeless wretchedness when custom has made it common, and there is no longer any confidence in remonstrance or appeal. It is generally some evident breach of the proprieties or minor morals that is the cause of such a domestic event. But this time nobody knew what Walter had done. What had he done? it could not be anything wrong. He had quarreled with father: to be sure that was as though the heavens had fallen: but yet it could only be a mistake. Father no doubt had been impatient; Wat had been affronted. They had not waited, either of them, to explain. The girls made it clear to each other in this way. At all events, it was all over now. No doubt poor Wat had spent a miserable day: but no one would remind him of it by a word, by so much as a look, and it was all over, and would be remembered no more.
The parents got up in the morning with many a troubled thought. They asked each other what it would be best to say. Perhaps it would be wisest to say as little as possible: perhaps only to point out to him that, in his position, now truly the heir of Penton, any premature matrimonial project would be ruinous: that he was far too young; that in any case, supposing the lady were the most eligible person in the world, it would be necessary to wait.
“If that is what he is thinking of,” said Sir Edward.
“What else could he be thinking of?” cried Lady Penton.
Or if perhaps it was only a passing folly, a foolish little flirtation, nothing serious at all? Then perhaps a fewwords only, to remind him that in his position one must not do such things, one must not lead a silly girl to form expectations—
“Oh, bother the silly girl!” said Sir Edward; “what are her expectations to us? It is Wat I am thinking of.”
“Dear Edward,” said the mother, “he will be far, far more likely to see the folly of it if you show him that it might have a bad effect upon another.”
At this Sir Edward shook his head, thinking that his wife did not here show her usual good sense, but he made no objection in words, and finally it was decided between them that as little as possible was to be said, nothing at all at first, and that the poor boy was to be allowed to have his breakfast in peace.
But at breakfast Walter did not appear. It was thought at first that he was late on purpose, waiting perhaps till the children had finished—till he might have a hope of being alone; or at least, if he had to face his father, to secure that no one else should be present when he was called to account. By and by, however, a thrill of alarm began to be felt; and then came a terrible disclosure which froze their very blood—Gardener coming to his work very early in the morning had met Mr. Walter leaving the house. He had on his big great-coat and a bag in his hand, and he was in a great hurry, as a man might be who was bent on catching the seven o’clock train. Walter’s room was searched at once in case he should have left a note or anything to explain: but there was not a scrap of explanation. He was gone, that was clear. He had taken some linen, a change of dress in his bag; his drawers were left open, and all the contents thrown about, as is usual when a man selects for himself a few articles of dress to take with him. The look of these drawers carried dismay to his mother’s heart. He was gone. Where had he gone? So young, so little accustomed to independent action, so ignorant of the world! Where had the boy gone? what had happened to him? Lady Penton recollected after the event, as we so often do, that Walter had made no response to her suggestions of what was to be said and done to-morrow. He had answered “Good-night, mother,” and no more; that was no answer. He had never said he would accept her advice to-morrow, that he would discuss what had happened, or hear what his father had to say. “Good-night, mother,” that was all he had said. And oh! she might have known, when he eluded the subject in this way—she might have known! She ought to have been on her guard. Sir Edward said very little; his face grew dark with anger and indignation, and he walked off at once in the direction of the village without saying where he meant to go. All at once from their happiness and unsuspecting peace the family plunged into that depth of dismay and misery which comes with the first great family anxiety. It seemed to them all who were old enough to understand anything about it that a great shame and horror had come into the midst of them. Walter had left home without a word; they did not know where he was, or why he had gone, or in whose company. Could anything be more terrible? Just grown to man’s estate, and he had disappeared, and no one knew where he had gone!
The period that followed is beyond description in these pages. Out of the clear serenity of innocent life this blameless household fell—as into an abyss of terror and shame, of new experiences unthought of, and new conditions. The girls, with a gasp, behind backs, scarcely daring to look at each other, heard their mother say to Mab, who was so great an aggravation of their trouble, that Walter had gone—to town on business; that he had preparations to make and things to get before he went to Oxford. Lady Penton said this in a voice which scarcely faltered, looking the visitor, who was so sadly out of place in the midst of the agitated company, in the face all the time.
“Oh, to be sure,” said Mab, “they always do. Any excuse is good enough for gentlemen, don’t you think, Lady Penton? they are always so pleased to get to town.”
Lady Penton looked quite gratefully at the girl. “Yes,” she said; “they all like it.”
“And so should I,” said little Mab, “if I were a boy.”
It was not of any importance what little Mab said, and yet it was astonishing how it comforted Lady Penton. She said to the girls afterward that living so quietly as they had all done made people disposed to make mountains out of mole-hills. “But you see that little girl thinks it quite a common sort of thing,” she said.
But Sir Edward’s gloomy face was not a thing that was capable of any disguise. He was in movement the whole day long. He went all about, taking long walks, and nextday went up to London, and was absent from morning to night. He never said anything, nor did the girls venture to question him. There seemed to have grown a great difference between them—a long, long interval separating him from his daughters. He had long private conversations with his wife when he came back; indeed, she would withdraw into the book-room when she saw him coming, as if to be ready for him. And they would shut themselves up and talk for an hour at a time, with a continuous low murmur of voices.
“Oh, mother, tell us,” Ally or Anne would cry when they could find her alone for a moment, “is there any news? has father found anything out?” to which Lady Penton would reply, with a shake of her head, “Your father hopes to find him very soon. Oh, don’t ask questions! I am not able to answer you,” she would say.
This seemed to go on for ages—for almost a life-time—so that they began to forget how peaceful their lives had been before; and to go into Walter’s room, which they did constantly, and look at his bed, made up in cold order and tidiness, never disturbed. To see it all so tidy, not even a pair of boots thrown about or a tie flung on the table, made their hearts die within them. It was as if Walter were dead—almost worse. It seemed more dreadful than death to think that they did not know where he was.
And Mab stayed on for one long endless week. Some one of them had always to be with her, trying to amuse her; talking, or making an effort to talk. Lady Penton was the one who succeeded best. She would let the girl chatter to her for an hour together, and never miss saying the right thing in the right place, or giving Mab the appropriate smile and encouragement. How could she do it? the girls wondered and asked each other. Did she like that little chatter? How did she bear it? Did it make her forget? Or finally—a suggestion which they hardly dared to make—did mother not care so very much; Was that possible? When one is young and very young, one can not believe that the older people suffer as one feels one’s self to suffer. It seems impossible that they can do it. They go steadily on and order dinner every day, and point out to the house-maid when she has not dusted as she ought. This suggestion to the house-maid (which they called scolding Mary) was a great stumbling-block to the girls. Theydid not understand how their mother could be very miserable about Walter, and yet find fault, nay, find out at all the dust upon the books. They themselves lived in a world suddenly turned into something different from the world they had known, where the air kept whispering as if it had a message to deliver, and sounds were about the house at night as of some one coming, always coming, who never came. They had not known what the mystery of the darkness was before, the great profundity of night in which somewhere their brother might be wandering homeless, in what trouble and distress who could tell? or what aching depths of distance was in the great full staring daylight, through which they gazed and gazed and looked for him, but never saw him. How intolerable Mab became with her chatter; how they chafed even at their mother’s self-command, and the steadiness with which she went on keeping the house in order, it would be difficult to say. Their father, though they scarcely ventured to speak to him in his self-absorbed and resentful gloom, had more of their sympathy. He not only suffered, but looked as if he suffered. He lost his color, he lost his appetite, he was restless, incapable of keeping still. He could no longer bear the noise of the children, and sickened at the sight of food. And there was Mab all the time, to whom Lady Penton had told that story about Walter, but who, when they felt sure, knew better, having learned to read their faces, and to see the restrained misery, the tension of suspense. Oh, if this spectator, this observer, with her quick eyes, which it was so difficult to elude, would but go away!
At last it was announced that the Russell Pentons were coming to fetch her, an event which the household regarded with mingled relief and alarm. Sir Edward’s face grew gloomier than ever. “They have come to spy out the nakedness of the land,” he said; “Alicia will divine what anxiety we are in, and she will not be sorry.”
“Oh, hush, Edward,” said his wife; “we do not want her to be sorry. Why should she be sorry? she knows nothing.”
“You think so,” he cried; “but depend upon it everybody knows.”
“Why should everybody know? Nobody shall know from me; and the girls will betray nothing. They knownothing, poor children. If you will only try to look a little cheerful yourself, and keep up appearances—”
“Cheerful!” he said, with something of the same feeling as the girls had, that she could not surely care so much. Was it possible that she did not care? But nevertheless he tried to do something to counteract that droop of his mouth, and make his voice a little more flexible and natural, when the sound of the wheels on the gravel told that the Pentons had come. Meanwhile Mab had gone, attended by the sisters, to make her preparations for going. They had packed her things for her, an office to which she was not accustomed, while she mourned over her departure, and did their best not to show her that this was a feeling they did not share.
Mab lingered a little after the carriage arrived. She wanted to show her sympathy, though it was not quite easy to see how that was to be done. She remained silent for a minute or so, and then she said, “I haven’t liked to say anything, but I’ve been very, very sorry,” giving Ally a sudden kiss as she spoke.
The two girls looked at each other, as was their wont, and Anne, who was always the most prompt, asked, “Sorry for what?”
“Do you really, really not know where he is?” said Mab, without pausing to reply. “I think I could tell you where he is. He is in town with—some one—”
“Some one?” they both cried, with a sudden pang of excitement, as though they were on the verge of a discovery; for unless she knew something—though how could she know anything?—it seemed impossible that she could speak so.
“Oh, the one he went out every night to see. There must have been somebody. When they go out every night like that it is always to see—some one,” she said, nodding her head in the certainty of her superior knowledge of the world.
“Oh, how do you know? You are mistaken if you think that Walter—how can you know about such things?”
“Because I am little,” said Mab, “and not very old, that’s not to say that I haven’t been a great deal about: and I’ve heard people talking. They pretend they don’t talk before girls. I suppose they think they don’t. They stop themselves just enough to make you want to find out,and then they forget you are there, and say all sorts of things. That’s where he is, you may be sure: and he will come back by and by, especially if he wants money. You needn’t be afraid. That is what they all do. Oh, listen; they are calling us from down-stairs! I am so sorry I must go: I wish I could stay: I like this better than any place I ever stayed at, and you’ve all been so kind. Write to me and tell me, will you, all about it? I shall be anxious to know. But don’t make yourselves miserable, for he will come back when he has spent his money, or when—Yes, we are coming! We are coming! Ally, mind you write and tell me. I shall want so much to know.”
They tried to interrupt her again and again to tell her she was mistaken; that Walter had only gone to town; that they were not anxious, or ignorant where he was, or unhappy about him: with much more to the same effect; but Mab’s cheerful certainty that she was right overpowered their faltering affirmations, of which she took no notice. She kissed them both with enthusiasm in the midst of her little harangue, and ran on with expressions of her regret as they went down-stairs. “Oh, I wish Lady Penton would have me for good,” Mab said; “but you don’t care for me as I do for you.”
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, Lady Penton was receiving her visitors with an eager cordiality that was scarcely consistent with her nature, and which was meant to show not only that she was entirely at her ease, but that her husband’s gloom, which he had tried to shake off, but not very successfully, did not mean anything. As a matter of fact, the Russell Pentons, knowing nothing of the circumstances of Walter’s disappearance, were quite unaware of any effort, or any reason why an effort should be made. They interpreted the husband’s half-resentful looks—for that was the natural aspect of distress with Edward Penton—and the excessive courtesy and desire to please, of his wife, as fully accounted for by the position toward each other in which the two families stood. Why should Edward Penton be resentful? He had got his rights, those rights upon which he had stood so strongly when his cousin Alicia had paid her previous visit. She was ready to put a private interpretation of her own on everything she saw. He had resisted then her proposals and overtures, although afterward he had been anxious to accede to them; and nowhe was disappointed and vexed that the bargain against which he had stood out at first had come to nothing, and that she would not relieve him from the burden of the expensive house which he had first refused to give up and then been so anxious to be quit of. How inconsistent! How feeble! And the wife endeavoring with her little fuss of politeness to make up, perhaps thinking that she might succeed where her husband had failed! This was how Mrs. Russell Penton interpreted the aspect of the poor people whose object was to conceal their unhappiness from all eyes, and that nobody might have a word to say against the boy who was racking their hearts.
“I have been sorry to leave Mab so long, to give you the trouble,” Mrs. Russell Penton said, with her stiff dignity. “Her uncle, in his consideration for me, did not think of your inconvenience, I fear.”
“There has been no inconvenience. We are so many that one more or less does not matter. We have treated her without ceremony, as one of the family—”
“And made her very happy, evidently,” said Russell Penton. “She is very unwilling to come away.”
And then there was a pause. That Mab Russell, the heiress, should be treated as one of the family by these poor Pentons was to Alicia a reversal of every rule which she could scarcely accept without a protest. “It must have been a glimpse of life very different from anything she has been accustomed to,” she said at last.
“Yes, poor little thing! with no brothers or sisters of her own.”
“She has compensations,” said Russell Penton, with a glimmer of humor in his eyes. But Lady Penton looked at him without any response in hers. He was so surprised at this, and bewildered that Mab’s value should not be known, that involuntarily, out of the commotion in his own mind, he put a question which seemed full of meaning to the troubled listeners. “I don’t see your son,” he said.
The father and mother exchanged a miserable look. “It is known, then,” their eyes said to each other: and in spite of herself the blood rushed to Lady Penton’s face and then ebbed away again, leaving her faint and pallid; but she made an effort at a smile. “Walter,” she said, “is not at home. He is going to Oxford in a month or two, and he is away for a little.”
“Taking a holiday?” suggested Russell Penton, with a curious consciousness, though without any understanding, of trouble in the air.
“Oh, it is rather—business,” said the mother. Sir Edward did not change that aspect of severe gravity which he had borne all the time. He had too much set wretchedness in his face to change as she did. “You have been more good to him,” she continued, glad of the excuse which justified her trembling voice, “more good than words can say.”
“I have no right to any credit: I only carried out my father’s wishes,” said Mrs. Penton. How severe her tone was! how clear that she was aware that Walter, the recipient of her kindness, had shown himself unworthy! If anything could have made these poor people more unhappy it was this—that their precautions seemed useless and their trouble known.