TheRussell Pentons stayed a long time—at least, these anxious people thought so, who believed their visitors to be noting the signs of their unhappiness, and forming still stronger and stronger conclusions against their son. The effort Lady Penton made to carry on the conversation was one of those efforts, gigantic, unappreciated, in which women have sometimes to make an expenditure of strength which is equal to years of ordinary exertion. Who can tell the burden it was to talk, to smile, to exhaust all the trivial subjects that occurred to her, to keep at a distance all those graver topics which might bring in Walter—which might lead to discussion of where he was or how employed? She saw, so to speak, half a mile off those tendencies of conversation which might lead to him, and, with a sudden leap, would get away from these to another and another theme, which each in its turn would have to be dismissed and avoided. “All roads lead to Rome,” says the proverb; and when there is a certain subject which it is desirable to avoid, all the streamlets of conversation, by some curious tendency, go to that with infallible force. Lady Pentonhad to go through a series of mental gymnastics to avoid it—to keep her visitors from any thought of Walter—to hide him, or rather to hide the terrible blank in the house where he ought to have been. Had he been in his usual place the conversation would never have touched him; and, as a matter of fact, the Russell Penton’s did not think of him any more than they did of Horry in the nursery, a stray shout from whom could sometimes be heard, leaving no one in any doubt as to his whereabouts. But the mother, flying from subject to subject, talking as she had never been known to talk in her life before, and her taciturn husband, who said not a word that he could help saying—both felt that their misery was open and evident, that the Russell Pentons were saying in their hearts, “Poor people!” or making reflections that the boy’s upbringing must have been bad indeed when he had “gone wrong” at such an early age. Lady Penton felt instinctively that this was what must be going through Alicia’s mind. The childless woman always says so—it is one of the commonplaces of morals. If he had been brought up as he ought he would not have gone wrong. This and a hundred other things went buzzing through the poor mother’s head, confusing her as she talked and talked. “Oh,” she said to herself, “it is better that they should think that!—better blame us—blameme, who have been overindulgent, perhaps, or oversevere—overanything, so long as they do not blamehim!” But the father was not so disinterested; he was angry as well as miserable. He would have had Walter bear his own guilt; he would not allow those critics who had never had a son to say that it was the parents’ fault. So he stood with that resentment in his face, saying so little, only making an annoyed remark when appealed to, short, with suppressed temper in it, while his wife smiled and ran on. How like Edward Penton that was! his cousin thought. He had made a proposal to her which she in her pride would not accept, and his pride could not forgive her. Alicia felt that she understood it all—as well as the silly attempt of the wife to smooth it all over and make peace between them—as if the two Pentons did not understand each other better than any outsider! as if this question between them could be smoothed away by her!
“You will let me come back again?” said Mab, rubbing her little cheek like a kitten against Lady Penton’s ear.“I will never go away unless you say that I may come back.”
“What a threat!” said Russell Penton. “In order to get rid of you, Mab, the promise will have to be made.”
“Not to get rid of her: we don’t want to get rid of her. Yes, my dear, certainly as soon—as soon as we are settled, when the house is not so dull—”
“It isn’t dull, no one can be dull with you. I will tell you what I want in a whisper. I want to come and stay altogether; I want you to have me altogether,” said Mab, in the confidence of her wealth.
“My dear!” cried Lady Penton, faltering. In spite of her preoccupations she was a little alarmed. She put it off with a kiss of farewell. “You must come as often as you like,” she said. “It is sweet of you to wish to come. We shall always be glad to see you, either here or—wherever we may be.”
“At Penton,” said Mab, once more rubbing her little head against the woman to whom she clung. “Uncle Russell, oh, ask her to have me! There is no place where I could be so happy.”
“You must come as soon as we are settled,” said Lady Penton, in real panic, putting the supplicant away.
Alicia had turned during this too tender and prolonged leave-taking, with a little indignation, to the master of the house. She had never herself either attracted or been attracted to Mab, and she felt resentful, annoyed, even jealous—though she cared nothing for the little thing and her whims—of this sudden devotion. She stood by her cousin, who was resentful and indignant too. “Edward,” she said to him, “we needn’t quarrel, at least. I know you meant well in offering me Penton. Don’t be displeased because I couldn’t accept it—I couldn’t, from any one, unless it had been my right.”
“Penton! do you think of nothing but Penton?” he cried, suddenly, with an incomprehensible impatience of the subject—that subject which had once seemed so important, which appeared to him so small now.
“I speak for the sake of peace,” she said, coldly; “that need not stand between us now. We go away in a week. The things I mean to remove will be gone within a month. What I wish you to know is, that you may make arrangements for your removal as soon as you please.”
“Oh, for our removal! yes, yes,” he said, impatiently; “there is no hurry about that: if that was all one had to think of—”
“I am sorry that you should have other things to think of. To me it seems very important,” Mrs. Russell Penton said.
“Ah! you have nobody but yourself to be concerned about,” he said. But then he met his wife’s look of warning, and added no more.
Russell Penton lingered a little behind the rest. “Let me speak a word to you,” he said, detaining Lady Penton; and her heart, which had begun to beat feebly as an end approached to this excitement, leaped up again with an energy which made her sick and faint. Could he know something about Walter? might he have some news to tell her? Her face flushed, and then became the color of ashes, a change of which he was wonderingly aware, though without a notion as to why it was, “You are alarmed,” he said, “about—”
“No, no!” she interrupted, faintly; “not alarmed. Oh, no, you must not think so—not frightened at all,” but with fear pale and terrible, and suspense which was desperate, in every line of her countenance.
Russell Penton himself grew frightened too. “There is nothing to alarm you,” he said, “about little Mab.”
“Oh!” the breath which had almost failed her came back. A sudden change came over her face; she smiled, though her smile was ghastly. “About—Mab?” she said.
“It is alarming, the way in which she flings herself upon you; but you must let me explain. I see that you think her just a little girl like any other, and her proposal to come and stay with you altogether is enough to make even the most generous pause. But that is not what she means, Lady Penton. She is very rich; she is a little heiress.”
The words did not seem to convey much significance to Lady Penton’s bewildered soul. “A little heiress,” she repeated, vaguely, as if that information threw no light upon the matter. Was she stupid? he asked himself, or ridiculously disinterested, altogether unlike the other women who have sons? “Very rich—really with a great fortune—but no home. She is too young to live by herself. She has never developed the domestic affections before. I should like very well to keep her, but it would be a burdenon Alicia. Will you think it over? She has evidently set her heart on you, and if would do her so much good to be with people she cared for. There would of course be a very good allowance, if you will let me say so. Do think it over.”
They had reached the door by this time, where Sir Edward was solemnly putting his cousin into her carriage. Mr. Russell Penton pressed Lady Penton’s hand with a little meaning as he said good-bye. “Walter might have a try too,” he said, with a laugh, as he turned away.
Walter might have—a try. A try at what? His mother’s head swam. She put her arm through that of Anne, who stood near her, and kept smiling, waving her hand to Mab in the carriage: but Lady Penton scarcely saw what she was looking at. There was something moving, dazzling before her eyes—the horses, the glitter of the panels, the faces, flickered before her; and then came a rush of sound, the horses’ hoofs, the carriage wheels grinding the gravel, and they were gone. Oh, how thankful she felt when they were gone! The girls led her in, frightened by her failing strength, and then Sir Edward came, as gloomy as ever, and leaned over her.
“I don’t think they knew,” he said; “I don’t think they had heard anything.”
Lady Penton repeated to herself several times over “Walter might have a try,” and then she too burst forth, “No, Edward, thank God! I am sure they did not know.”
He shook his head, though he was so much relieved, and said, half reluctant to confess that he was relieved, “But if it lasts much longer they must know. How can it be kept from them, and from everybody, if it lasts much longer?”
The girls looked at each other, but did not speak; for they were aware, though no one else was, that Mabknew; and could it be supposed thatthatlittle thing, who did not belong to them, who had no reason for sharing their troubles, would keep it to herself and never tell?
They had all thought it would be a relief to be rid of the little spectator and critic, the stranger in the house, and for a time it was so. The rest of the afternoon after she was gone the girls and their mother spent together talking it all over. They had never been able uninterruptedly to talk it over before, and there was a certain painful enjoyment in going over every detail, in putting all the facts they knew together, and comparing their views. Sir Edward had gone out to take one of his long solemn walks, from which he always came in more gloomy, more resentful than ever. He was going up to town once more to-morrow. Once more! He had gone up almost every day, but never had discovered anything, never had found the lost. And in his absence, and freed from Mab, whom they had not been able to get rid of at any moment, what a long, long consultation they had, talking over everything, except what Mab had suggested. She had said it with the intention of consoling, but the girls could not repeat it to each other, or breathe to their mother the suggestion she had made. They were not educated to that point. That their brother should have married foolishly, made an idol of some girl who was not his equal, and followed her out into the unknown world, was dreadful, but comprehensible; but that he should come back by and by when he wanted money—oh, no, no! What they imagined was that scene so well known to romance—the foolish young pair coming back, stealing in, he leading her, ashamed yet proud of her, to ask his parents’ forgiveness. The girls went over the details of this scene again and again as soon as they had heard all that their mother had to tell them.
“She must be beautiful,” they said; “she may be nice—oh, she must be nice or Wat would not love her!”
“Oh, my dears,” cried Lady Penton, “how can we tell? It is not good girls and nice girls who lead young men away from their duty.”
“But, mother, if they love each other!” said Ally, blushing over all her ingenuous, innocent countenance, with the awe and wonder of that great thing.
Lady Penton did not say anything more, but she shook her head, and then it was for the first time that there came over her the poignant suggestion of that “might have been” which she had not taken into her mind till now. Walter might have a try; little Mab with her heiress-ship had been thrown at his head, as people say: and what it might have been had these two taken to each other—had a great fortune been poured into Penton! Lady Penton had never known what a great piece of good fortune was; she was not one who expected such things. The very advantages of it, the desirableness, made it to her temperate soulthe less likely. It never could have come to pass, all the contrarieties of nature were against it; but still, when she thought that they had spent so many days under the same roof, and might have spent so many more, and how suitable it would have been, and what a good thing for Walter, it was not wonderful that she should sigh. But that was the course of nature, it was the way of human affairs. It was too good ever to come true.
After the first night, the relief of Mab’s departure was not so evident to them. She had been a restraint, not only upon their conversations and consultations, but on the entire abandonment of their life and thoughts to this anxiety and distress. They had been compelled on her account to bear the strain, to make a struggle against it. Now there was no longer that motive. Night and day their ears were intent on every sound; there was always a watcher at the window in the staircase, which commanded the ascending path to the village, a sort of lookout woman ready to dash down-stairs and give notice if by chance—ah! no, by the blessing of God—the wanderer might be seen coming home. The watch here was furtive, lest the servants should note, but it was continual; one or another was always lingering about, looking out with eyes keen and sharp with anxiety—“busy in the distance shaping things, that made the heart beat thick.” And so the days passed on, languishing, with dark nights so endless-long in which the anxious watchers could hear only and could not see.
Sir Edward Pentonwent to London most days, but he never found out anything. He was not the sort of man to act as an amateur detective, and he would not appeal to the professionals in that capacity. He was an old-fashioned man, and it seemed to him that “to set the police after” his son was an indignity impossible. He could not do it. He tramped about himself, yearning, angry, very tender underneath, thinking if he could only see Walter, meet him, which always seems so likely to country people, in the street, that all would be well. He went to all the places Crockford could tell him of—to Emmy’s mother, a fadedold actress of the lower class, whose faded graces, and her vivacity, and what had been, or had been supposed to be, her fascination, made poor Sir Edward’s heart sink into his boots. But she professed to know nothing of her daughter’s movements, and nothing at all of any gentleman. There had been a gentleman, she allowed, a young man connected with business—but it had been to escape from his addresses that her child had gone to the country: and Emmy was far too high-minded to keep company with any one of whom her mother did not know. In his despair Sir Edward even sought out the shop in which this gentleman in his business hours was to be found, and had an interview with the young man whose appearance in the village had so much alarmed and almost disgusted Walter. No information was to be obtained from him. He declared sullenly that he knew nothing about the girl: yes, he had known her, he didn’t deny; he had thought more of her than she was worth. Though it was going against all his family he had stuck to her for a long time, and would have stuck to her as long as she had stuck to him: but he knew nothing about her now. “Is it money, guv’nor; somebody left her a fortune?” he asked at the end of the interview, with a laugh which disconcerted Sir Edward. This was almost all he had been able to do, except tramping about the streets wherever he could think his son was likely to go. The poor gentleman increased his knowledge of London in the most wonderful way during these miserable days. He found out all kinds of back streets and alleys, and corners of building such as he had never remarked before, but all with a veil over them, a mist of trouble. London in January is dark enough even when the eyes are not clouded with suffering and anxiety; but with these added how miserable were the chill streets, the low skies, the yellow thickness of the atmosphere, the hopeless throngs of unknown men and women, always blank, always unresponsive to those strained and troubled eyes! Sometimes he thought he saw before him a slim young figure, moving quickly, as Walter might, through the crowd, and hurried vainly after it, pursuing at a hopeless distance, only to lose it in the ever-changing groups. Sometimes with the corner of his eye he would catch a glimpse of some one disappearing round a corner, plunging into a side street, who might be his boy. Alas! it was always a might-be. No happy chance broughtthem face to face. Had there been no particular reason for it they would have met, no doubt, in the simplest way; but this is one of the cases in which, as daily experience proves, those who seek do not find. And when Sir Edward returned home after a day so spent, the gloom he brought with him was like a London fog descending bodily upon the country. Probably there had been a little deadening of trouble in the physical exertion and gloomy expectation of these expeditions; but he brought an embodied darkness and desolation home.
On one of the days of his absence Ally was acting as a sort of sentinel in the garden: that is, she was taking a walk, as they said, but with an eye always upon the road and the gate—when her anxious mind was distracted by a sound of approaching wheels, coming, not down the hill, but along the river bank. It was a gray day, damp and soft, with no wind; one of those days which are not unusual in the valley of the Thames; not cold, save for the chill of the damp; very still; the river winding round the Hook in a pale and glistening link; the sky about the same color, which was no color at all, the leafless trees rising black as if photographed upon the gray. The river was lower than usual at this season, though it still flowed with a cruel motion round that little promontory as if meaning to make that bit of vantage ground its own some day. Ally was very sad and quiet, walking up and down, feeling as if life had come altogether to a stand-still save for that one thing; nothing else happening; nothing else seeming ever likely to happen. That furtive little current which had seemed for a moment to rise in her own life had died away. It seemed a long time since those days when young Rochford had come so often to Penton Hook. Perhaps his desire to come often had something to do with the delay which had so changed the face of affairs. This had occurred to Ally more than once, and had given her a secret feeling that it was perhaps her fault, but she had not felt able to regret it. But now all that was over, and Mr. Rochford came no longer. There was nothing for him to come about; and Ally remembered with a sort of half pang, half shame, the reception which had been given to his mother and sister when they called, and the curious sense of mingled superiority and inferiority which had overwhelmed her in their presence. They were far better acquainted with the worldthan she was; they were “in society,” or, at least, had that air of it which imposes upon simple people; but she was Miss Penton of Penton. She had felt then a great though always half-ashamed pleasure in remembering that elevation: but she had not the same sensations now. She felt that she was a snob (if a girl can be called a snob). She was ungrateful, for they had been very kind to her, and mean and petty, and everything that is most contemptible—feeling herself, only because of Penton (in which there was no merit) somehow exalted above them, the solicitor’s mother and sister. Many times since she had blushed at that incident, and sometimes at the most inappropriate moments; when she woke up in the middle of the night a flush would go over her from head to foot, thinking of what a poor creature, what a miserable little snob she was; a girl-snob, far worse than any other kind; worse than anything Mr. Thackeray had put in his book. Ally, like most people of her age, thought she did not like Mr. Thackeray, who seemed to her to make everybody look as if they had bad motives; but even he, so crushing as he was to a little girl’s optimism, had not gone so far in his cynical views as to think of a snob who was a girl. Perhaps she was wrong here, putting limits which did not exist to the great humorist’s imagination, but that was what she believed. And she was that girl-snob, which was a thing too bad to be conceived by fancy. She had repented this, and she had felt, though vaguely in the rush of other experiences, the blank that had fallen upon that opening chapter in which there had once seemed so much to come, but which had, to all appearance, ended all at once without anything coming of it. This chilled her gentle soul, she could scarcely tell why. How wretched that ball at Penton would have been to her, what a painful blight upon her girlish fancies, if it had not been for these kind people, if it had not been forhim. Yes; that was the chief point after all, though she was ashamed to admit it to herself. It had been a pleasant break upon the monotony of life whenhepaid these frequent visits, when he talked in that suggestive way, making her think of things which he did not mention, raising a soft commotion which she did not understand in her simple being. It had been like a chill to her to perceive that all this was over. It was all over and done with, apparently; it had all dropped like the falling of a curtain over a drama just begun. She had wanted to know how it would all end, what its progress would be, the scenes that would follow: and lo, no scenes had followed at all, the curtain had come down. How wicked and wrong, how horrid it was to think of it at all in the midst of the great calamity that had fallen on the family, to wish even that mother might forget poor Wat for an hour, and go and call, and so make up for the coldness of Mrs. Rochford’s reception! This was a thing, however, which Ally had never suggested, which she thought it dreadful to have even thought of in the present trouble. She defended herself to herself by saying that she had not thought of it—it had only flashed across her mind without any will of hers, which is a very different thing, as everybody knows.
And was it possible while she wandered up and down, always with her attention fixed on the gate, always looking for news, for her father’s return, for a telegraph boy, for—oh, if that might be! for Walter himself; was it possible that some feeling about this other matter intruded into her mind and shared the thoughts which should have been all devoted to her brother? Ally trembled a little, but could not but blame herself, for she did nothing of the kind with her own will. She only felt a little chill, a little blank, a wonder how that story, if it had gone on, if the curtain had not fallen so abruptly, might have ended. It would have been interesting to know; a broken-off story is always tantalizing, distressful—the world becomes duller when it breaks off and you never know the end. Perhaps this had floated across her mind dimly, not interfering with the watch she was keeping, when suddenly the wheels which had been rolling along, not disturbing her attention—for they did not come in the direction whence news could be expected—startled her by suddenly stopping outside the gate. Who could it be? Her heart began to beat. She made a few steps quickly toward the gate. It could not be her father; could it be Walter bringing back his bride? What could it be? But here suddenly her heart gave another bewildering spring. She felt her breath taken away altogether. The vehicle had stopped outside; and it was young Rochford, in all the gloss of his usual trim appearance, with the usual flower in his coat, who came forward, quickening his steps as he saw her. He did not look quite as he used to look. There was a little doubt abouthim, as though he did not know how he was to be received—a little pride, as of a man who would draw back at once if he were discouraged. Ally could not help making a few steps further to meet him. She was glad to meet him—oh, there was no doubt of that!—and not only so, but to feel the curtain slowly drawing up again, the story beginning once more, gave everything around a different aspect. She said, “Oh, Mr. Rochford!” with a voice that had welcome in it as well as surprise.
“I have come about some business,” he said; but his eyes had already asked several questions, and seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the unspoken replies. He added, lowering his voice, “I have been on the point of coming almost every day—but I felt as if perhaps—I might not be welcome.”
“Why?” said Ally, with an astonished look, which had no guilt in it; for, indeed, it was not to him, but to his mother and sister, that she had felt herself to behave like a snob.
“I scarcely know,” he said. “I thought Sir Edward might feel perhaps that my delay—. But I always half felt, Miss Penton, that you—would be rather pleased with the delay: you and your brother.”
“Yes,” she said, with a little shiver at Walter’s name; “it was wrong, perhaps, to go against my father; but I think perhaps we were glad—a little.”
“That has been a consolation; and then—But I must not trouble you with all my reasons for staying away, when most likely you never observed that I stayed away at all.”
Ally made no reply to this speech, which was so full of meaning. It was, indeed, so full of evident meaning that it put her on her guard.
“My father is in town,” she said, “if it is business; but perhaps mother—”
“I am too glad,” he said, “to meet you first, even for the business’ sake.”
Ally looked up at him with wondering eyes. What she could have to do with business of any kind, what light he could expect her to throw on any such subject, she could not understand. But there was something soothing, something pleasant, in thus strolling along the path by the flowing river with him by her side. She forgot a little the watch she had been keeping upon the gate. She recollected thathe had once told her his dream about a flood, and coming in a boat to her window, but that she would not take advantage of the boat herself, only kept handing out the children to him one by one. How could he divine that she would do that? for of course that was exactly what she would do, if such a risk could ever happen, and if he should come to rescue her as in his dream.
Somehow he led her without any apparent compulsion, yet by a persistent impulse, a little way out of sight of the house behind a tuft of shrubbery. The big laurels stood up in their glistening greenness and shut out the pair from the windows of the Hook. They were close to the gray swirl of the river running still and swift almost on a level with the bank, when he said to her suddenly with his eyes fixed on her face, “I want to ask you something about your—brother.”
“My brother!” cried Ally. There was a sudden wild flushing up of color which she felt to the roots of her hair, and then a chill fell upon her, and paleness. He was watching her closely, and though she was not aware of it she had answered his question. “My brother,” she repeated, faltering, “Wat? he—he is not at home.”
“Miss Penton,” said Rochford, “do you think you could trust me?”
“Trust you!” said Ally, her voice growing fainter: and then a great panic came over her. “Oh! Mr. Rochford,” she cried, “if anything has happened to Wat, tell me, tell me! It is the not knowing that is so dreadful to bear.”
“I hope nothing has happened to him,” he said, very gravely. “It is only that I have had a letter from him, and I thought that perhaps your father had better know.”
“Come in and see mother,” said Ally, breathless. “Oh yes, yes, we had better know, whatever it is. Mr. Rochford, oh, I hope he is not ill. I hope nothing has happened.”
“I can not tell; he has written to me for money.”
“For money!” she cried, the expectation in her face suddenly dropping into a blank of astonishment and almost disappointment. “Was that all?” was the question written on Ally’s face.
“You don’t think that means much? but I fear it means a great deal: he is living in London, and he is very young. You must not think me intrusive or meddling: it is that Iam afraid of. Sir Edward might suppose, Miss Penton—your mother might think—it is a difficult thing for a man to do. I thought that you, perhaps, if I could see you, might have a little confidence in me.”
Ally did not know how it was that a sense of sweetness and consolation should thus shed itself through her heart; it was momentary, for she had no time to think of herself, but it made everything so much more easy to her. She put out her hand involuntarily with a sudden sense that to have confidence in him was the most natural thing. “Oh yes,” she said, “tell me, I have confidence. I am sure you would do nothing but what was kind; tell me, oh, tell me!”
He took her hand; he had a right to do it, for she had offered it to him. “Will you try to follow me and understand?” he said. “It is business; it may be difficult for you, for Sir Edward will see the importance of it.” And then he told her, Ally bending all her unused faculties to the work of understanding, how Walter had gone to him before he left home at all to get money, and how he had heard from him again, twice over, asking for more. Ally listened with horror growing in her heart, but perhaps the young man, though he was very sympathetic, was scarcely so sorry as he looked: and perhaps to seek her out and tell her this story was not what a man of higher delicacy would have done. But then Rochford’s desire to be of use to Walter was largely intermingled with his desire to recommend himself to Walter’s sister. He would have done it anyhow out of pity for the boy and his parents, but to secure for himself a confidential interview with Ally, and to have this as a secret between them, and her as his embassador and elucidator to her parents, was what he could not deny himself. He was sorry for Walter, who was most likely spoiling his boyish life, and whom it would be right to call back and restrain: but yet he was almost glad of the occasion which brought him so near the girl whom he loved. She on her part listened to him with excitement, with relief, with the horror of ignorance, with an underlying consciousness that all must now come right.
“If Sir Edward will let me I will go,” Rochford said. “I shall be able to get hold of him perhaps easier than any one who has authority.”
“Oh, how kind you are,” said Ally.
“Kind! I would lie down and let him walk over me to please you,” the young man murmured, as if it were to himself.
It was partly to escape from the embarrassment of such murmurs, though they were sweet enough, and partly to escape from the curious process which was turning her trouble into a semblance of happiness against her will, and without any consent of hers, that Ally insisted at last on carrying this information to her mother. “How could she think you intrusive when you bring her news of Wat?” cried the girl, betraying all the anxiety of the family without knowing it; and she hurried him in to where Lady Penton sat in the window, looking out languidly and often laying down her work to gaze. She, too, flushed with anxious interest to hear of Walter’s letter.
And when Sir Edward came home, he found the lawyer’s dog-cart still at the door, and the young man, surrounded by the three anxious ladies, laying down his plan to them as one who was master of the situation. “I will go at once if you will let me; I’ll get hold of him easier than any one who has a right to find fault,” young Rochford was saying, when, cold and hungry and discouraged, and with a smoldering fury against all the world in his heart, Sir Edward pushed the door open and found him there.
Walterhad plunged into London as a diver plunges into the sea. He was in search of but one thing: to find her again who had eluded him, who had drawn him after her by the strongest chains that can draw the imagination at his age, by all the tantalizing of vague promises, avoiding fulfillment, of vague engagements which came to nothing, and last of all by this sudden flight, a provocation more audacious than any that went before. Could he ever have expected that she would go with him, to wait all the preliminaries which (as she knew so much better than he did) must precede any possible marriage? When he came to think of it by the light of the morning, which alters the aspect of so many things, he saw quite plainly that this was not a thing he could have expected of her. She wasvery daring, he thought, and frank, and secure in her own innocence, but this was not a thing which she could be expected to do. He had been foolishly miserable, disappointed to the bottom of his soul, when he heard that she had gone away. The night he had spent trying to sleep, trying to get through the black hours that made any enterprise impossible, had been terrible to him; but with the morning there had come a better cheer. Of course, he said to himself! How could he be so imbecile, so silly, as to think differently. Of course she would not go with him under such circumstances; and it was delicacy on her part that prevented her from saying so. There are times when it is a failure of modesty even to suggest that modesty requires certain precautions. Therefore she had not said it. Impossible for her pure lips, for her pure mind, to put into words the idea that he and she, like any noble knight and maiden, might not have gone together blameless to the end of the world. But she had felt that in the present artificial state of the world it was better not to do this, and she had acted without saying anything, confident that he would understand. There is no limit to the ingenuity of a lover in framing excuses for the actions of the person beloved. Instead of being blamable, was not this another proof of her perfection, of the sensitive delicacy of all her thoughts, she who was so little bound by conventional laws? The mixture of freedom and of reserve, Walter said to himself, was what he had above all admired and adored in her. It was his own stupidity, not any fault of hers, that had given him so wretched a night, such a sense of desertion and abandonment. He remembered now that he had caught the address of the box which stood half packed in the room where she had talked to him, in Crockford’s cottage.
He comprehended everything now. She had taken him there that he should see it, that he should be able to follow her, without the need of saying a word. Oh, how well he understood it all! Had they gone together every circumstance would have been embarrassing; the mere payments to be made, the railway tickets, the cabs, everything would have been awkward. How well (he thought to himself) her fine sense had divined this, perceived it when he saw nothing! That was no doubt the woman’s part, to divine what could and could not be done—to settleit all swiftly, silently, without any need of talk, which would have been more embarrassing still.
These thoughts carried him as on fairy wings to the railway station on the dark and cold morning of his flight from home. He had Rochford’s fifty pounds in his pocket, which seemed to his inexperience a fortune, a sum he would never get through, and which was his own, not taken from his father, or lessening the means at home, but his, to do what he liked with. With that in his pocket, and the delightful confidence that Emmy had not abandoned him—that, on the contrary, she had done what was ideally right, the very thing that if he had understood, if he had not been dull beyond example, he would have liked her to do—Walter rushed from his father’s house with not too much thought of the wretchedness he was leaving behind. He would not think of that, nor did he feel himself at all constrained to do so. Why should they be miserable? He was old enough to know how to take care of himself. A man did get helpless, almost effeminate, living so much at home; but, after all, he could not be made a fuss over as if he were a lost child. They would understand at least that he could take care of himself. And then he reflected, with a smile about the corners of his mouth, they would soon know why it was. If at the bottom of his heart there might be a thrill of alarm as to how they would take it, yet on the surface he felt sure that Emmy’s beauty and charm would overcome all objections; and then it was not as if he were a boy dependent on his father’s bounty. That ten thousand pounds made all the difference! He had thought at first that it was a mean thing to suppose that it made any difference or disturbed any of the bonds of duty: but now his mind was changed, and he perceived that a man has his own career to think of, that nature forbids him to be always in a state of subordination to his father—nature, and the consciousness that he has enough of his own to live upon without troubling his father. Yes, it made a difference, not only on the surface, but fundamentally, a difference which was real; and then the present matter was not one of a day. It concerned, he said to himself with tremendous gravity, the happiness of his life. How could a little anxiety on the part of his parents, a little quite groundless anxiety, be compared to that? Even to be brutal, he said to himself, as he must live longer than theycould, his happiness was of the most importance, even if it should affect permanently their peace of mind; and it was only for a time, a few weeks, a few days. What comparison was there? Even father himself, who was a just man, would see and acknowledge this. And as for his mother—oh, mother would forgive! That was easily settled. She might be unhappy for a moment, but she would rather be unhappy than condemn him to life-long misery. That he was very sure of; if the choice were given she would accept that which was best for him. Thus Walter completely vindicated to himself what he was doing; and before he got to the railway, which was a long way off, and gave time for all these elaborations of thought, he was convinced that what he was doing was what, on the whole, if they knew all the circumstances, they would like him to do.
An ordeal which he had not calculated upon met him when he reached London. The address which he had seen on Emmy’s box was in an out-of-the-way and poor place, though Walter, knowing nothing of town, did not know how much out of the way it was. He left his bag at a hotel, and then he went on in a hansom through miles and miles of squalid streets, until at length he reached the goal of his hopes. The goal of his hopes! Was it so? As he stood at the poor little narrow door the ideas with which he had contemplated Crockford’s cottage came into his mind. He had persuaded himself into thinking that Crockford’s cottage was in its way as venerable as Penton; but this No. 37 Albert Terrace, what was there to be said for it? He could not restrain a little shudder, nor could he, when he was shown into the little parlor on the ground-floor, look round him without a gasp of dismay. The only consolation he could get out of it was that he could take Emmy away, that this was indeed his object here, to take her away, to separate her from everything that was squalid and miserable, to surround her with the graces and luxuries of a very different kind of life. But even the aspect of the house, and of the little parlor, which was full of dirty finery and hung round with photographs and colored pictures of a woman in various theatrical dresses, with whom he never associated the object of his affections, was nothing to the shock which Walter sustained when the door opened and the original of these portraits presented herself, a largefaded woman, very carelessly dressed, and with the smile which was beaming around him from all the walls, the stereotyped smile of the stage, upon her face. To realize, as he did by and by, that this washer mother, to feel that she had a right to ask him questions, and consider him with a judicial air, as one who had in her greasy hands, which were so disagreeably soft, and felt as if they were pomaded, the thread of his life, gave poor young Wat such a shock as took the words from his lips. He stared at her without knowing what to say to her in a dismay which could find no expression. No, Emmy was not there. Her occupation required that she should live in another part of London. No, she did not know that she could give him her daughter’s address—but if he returned in the evening he might perhaps see her.
“You are Mr. Penton? Oh, yes, she has spoken of you. She feared that perhaps you would take this step. But, Mr. Penton, my daughter is a girl of the highest principle. She can see you only under her mother’s roof.”
“I wish nothing else!” cried poor Wat. “I—I am ready to do whatever she pleases. She knows I am ready—she knows—”
“Yes,” said the mother, nodding her terrible head, upon which was banded and braided and plaited more hair than ever grew, and smiling her terrible smile, and putting forth that odious hand to give a little confidential pressure to his. “I also know a great deal, Mr. Penton. I have heard about you—your chivalry and your magnificent position, and your many, many qualities. But, as you know, a mother’s duty is to guard her child. I know the snares of life better than she; I have trodden the thorny way before her, young gentleman. I have myself experienced much which—I would save her from,” added the woman, with the imposing gesture of amère noble, turning away her head and extending her hand as if to hold the gay deceiver at a distance.
He was the wolf at the gate of the sheepfold, it appeared. Alas, poor Wat! he did not recognize himself from that point of view. Was not he more like the poor strayed lamb, straying in ignorantly into the midst of the slayers? He was glad to get away, to bring this alarming, unexpected interview to an end: all the more that it had begun to be apparent to him, in a way that made his heart sick,that in the face of this woman, with all its traces of paint and powder, and in the little gestures and tricks of tone and movement, there were resemblances, frightful resemblances, suggestive of his Emmy; that it was possible she might some day—oh, horrible thought!—be like her mother. But no, he cried to himself! the marks which her profession had left—the lines under her eyes, the yellow stains of the rouge, the unwholesome softness of her pomaded hands—from all those he had come to deliver Emmy; these artificial evils never need to be hers. She should smile upon people who loved her, not upon the horrible public staring at her and her beauty. As he turned away from the place he even said to himself that this poor woman was not to blame for all those blemishes of self-decoration. It had been her trade; she had been compelled to do it. Who had any right to blame her? These might be as honorable scars as those which a soldier gets in battle. Perhaps she had to do it to get bread for herself and her child—to bring up Emmy and make her what he knew her. If that should be so, were not the traces of what she had gone through, of what she had had to bear, to be respected, venerated even, like any other marks of painful toil? He made these representations hotly to himself, but he did not find that any ingenuity of thought delivered him from that honor and repulsion. To see the rouge and the powder on the face of a young woman still playing her part was one thing; to mark the traces of them on the vulgarized and faded countenance of one whose day was over was quite another. It was unjust, but it was natural. And this was Emmy’s mother, and Emmy was like her. Oh, that such a thing should be!
After this came the strangest episode that could occur in a young man’s life. He was afloat on London, on that sea of pleasure and misery, amid all the perils and temptations that made the hearts of those who loved him sink within them. Even little Mab, with her little stock of worldly knowledge, who thought he would return home when he “tired,” or when his money was done, could form no other idea of the prodigal than that he was living in pleasure. He was amusing himself, Rochford thought, not without a half sympathy in the break-out of the home boy. As for his father and mother, unutterable terrors were in their minds, fears of they knew not what—of vice and depravity, evilassociates, evil habits, the things that kill both body and soul. But Walter’s present life was a life more tedious than all the monotony of home. It had its bright moments, when he was with Emmy, who sometimes permitted him to take her to the play, sometimes to walk with her through the bright-lighted streets, sometimes even on Saturday afternoons or Sunday to take her to the country. It was only on these days that he saw her in daylight at all. She said, laughingly, that her occupation forbade it at other times, but she would not tell him what that occupation was. When they went to Richmond or Greenwich, or to a little box in one or other of the theaters, where they could sit half hidden by the curtains, and carry on their own little drama, which was more interesting than anything on the stage, Walter was in a strange elysium, in which the atmosphere was charged with painful elements, yet was more sweet than anything else in life. He made a hundred discoveries in her, sometimes sweet, sometimes—different. It made no alteration in his sentiment when they happened to be discoveries that wounded—sometimes even that shocked him. He was hurt, his sensitive nature felt the shock as if it had been a wound; but it did not affect his love. That love even changed a little—it became protecting, forgiving, sometimes remonstrating; he longed that she should be his, that he might put all that right, mold her to a more exquisite model, smooth away the points that jarred. Already he had begun to hint this and that to her, to persuade her to one little alteration and another. To speak more softly—she had spoken softly enough at Crockford’s, it was only the spirit of the street that had got into her blood—to move more gently, to know that some of the things she said were dreadful things—things that should not come from such lips. He had not perceived any of these things while she was at Crockford’s; he perceived them now, but they did not affect his love, they only penetrated that golden web with threads of shadow, with lines of pain, and smote his heart with keen arrows of anguish and regret—regret not that he had given his life and love to her, but only that she was less perfect than he had thought—that, instead of looking up to her always, and shaping his harsher being (as he had thought) upon her sweetness, it must be his first to shape and pare these excrescences away.
But, besides these glimpses of a paradise which had manyfeatures of purgatory, Walter had nothing at all to counterbalance the havoc he was making in his existence. He did not know what to do with himself in London. He rose late, having no occupation for the morning; he wandered about the streets; he eat the late breakfast and dinner, which were now all the meals he had time for, spinning out these repasts as long as possible. It was a wonder that he never met his father, who was straying about the streets in search of him; but Walter’s streets were not those which his father frequented. He acquired, or rather both acquired, a great knowledge of town in these perambulations, but not of the same kind. And then he would go to his occupation, the only tangible thing in his life, the meeting with Emmy. She was sadly shifty and uncertain even in these scraps of her time, which were all she would or could give him. She was not sure that she wanted to marry him at all. She was quite sure that she would only be married by special license at four in the afternoon, which was all the fashion now. But no; he was not to take that oath and make himself unhappy about her. He should not be obliged to swear. She would be married by bans—that was the fashion too. She knew all about what had to be done—everything that was necessary—but she would not tell him. She laughed and eluded him as before. Then she said, Why should they marry? they were very well as they were. “You are very good to me at present,” she said; “you think I must have a box whenever we go to the theater, and a bouquet, and everything that is nice; but after we are married, you will not be so kind.”
When Walter protested that neither marriage nor anything else could diminish his devotion, she shook her head, and said that they would not be able to afford it.
“You can’t have so much as five hundred a year,” she said; “most likely not more than four—and what would that be in London?”
“But we need not live in London,” he said; “my father would give us the Hook.”
Emmy threw up her arms with a scream.
“Should you like to murder me?” she cried.
It hurt the poor boy that she should have this opinion of his home—the home in which he had been born; and he listened with deep depression to the satirical description of it she began to make.
“We ought to be ducks to live in the damp like that. I’ve never been used to dabble in the water, and it would be my death—I know it would be my death. But we might let it, you know, and that would give us a little more money, say two hundred a year more—do you think it would bring two hundred a year?”
“Don’t talk of such things!” cried the young man; “it is not for you to be troubled about that.”
“And for whom is it, then?” she cried, “for you know no more than a baby; and I believe you think we are to live like the birds on worms and seeds, and anything else that turns up.”
Walter had never left her with so heavy a heart as on this evening. He was entirely cast down by her hesitations, her doubts, the contempt with which she spoke of the fortune which he had thought magnificent in his ignorance, and the home which he loved. He went back to his hotel with a heavy heart. He had given up everything for her—all the other objects that made life of importance. He had put himself altogether at her disposal, and lived but for the moments of their meeting. What was he to do if she despised him—if she cast him off? A faint sense of the pitiful part he had to play began vaguely to awaken in his mind, not moving him to the length of rebellion, nor even to the exercise of his critical faculties, only to misery and a chill suspicion that, instead of sharing the fervor of his feelings, she was weighing him in terrible scales of judgment, estimating what he was worth—a process which made Walter’s heart sink. For what was he worth?—unless it might happen to be love—in repayment of that which he gave.
And next evening when he went to the house, which he always approached with a shiver, afraid of meeting the mother, relieved when he found his love alone, he suddenly found himself in the presence he dreaded with a shock of alarm and surprise: for Emmy, whose perceptions were keen enough on this point, generally contrived to spare him the meeting which she divined he feared. Mrs. Sam Crockford met him with her sunniest smile. She caressed his hand with those large, soft, flaccid fingers from which he shrunk. “She is not in, but I have a message for you, my dear young sir,” she said.
“Not in!” cried Walter, his heart sinking into his boots.
“She is engaged elsewhere. May I tell you the truth, Mr. Penton? She has confidence in her mother. I am her only protector, for her step-father, though an honest fellow, does not count, being in another walk of life. I am her only protector, young gentleman.”
“But surely, surely she doesn’t want protection—from me?”
“Pardon me, my dear Mr. Penton, that is exactly where she wants protection—from you, that is, from her own heart, from her own treacherous, foolish heart. What have you to offer her, that is the question? She has had very good offers. There is one at present, hung up, so to speak, because she does not know her own mind.”
“Let me speak to her,” said Walter, hoarsely. “She can not intend to desert me after all—after all!”
“Dear boy!” cried the woman, pressing his hand once more with hers, “how I admire such impetuosity. But you must remember my duty as a mother. You have nothing to settle on her, Mr. Penton. Yes, I understand your ten thousand pounds; but you are not of age. You can’t even make your will or sign the settlements till you are of age. She has very good offers, no one could have better. Shall I tell you,” said Emmy’s mother, with the most ingenuous and ingratiating of smiles, “shall I tell you what I should do if I were you? I would not allow her to sacrifice herself. I would rather, much rather, that the sacrifice was on my side.”
“Sacrifice!” he cried, feeling the dreadful little room reel round him.
“What else can you call it, Mr. Penton? You will not be twenty-one till the autumn, I hear. October, is it? And in the meantime my chyild has to toil. Conceive a creature of her refined and sensitive temperament, young gentleman! a girl not adapted to face the world.”
This confused Walter, who could not but feel that Emmy was very well qualified to face the world, and to whom she seemed a sort of Una triumphant over it; but he would not reply on this score. All he could say was an impassioned offer if she would only accept—if her mother would but accept—all that he had. What could it matter, when so soon everything he had would be hers?
The mother put away his offer with her large white hand, turning her shoulder to him and half averting herhead. “Money! I dare not propose it; I dare not suggest it, though it is most generous, most noble on your part,” she added, turning round suddenly, seizing his hand in both of hers with a soft lingering pressure, which poor Walter could not help feeling left something of the pomade behind. Then she subsided into a more majestic pose. “But, dear fellow, what have you?” she said, with a sort of caressing reflectiveness. It all seemed like a scene in a play to Walter, notwithstanding that he himself was one of the actors. “What have you?” she said, with a sort of tender regret. “Your agent will soon tire of making you advances, and every advance diminishes your capital. We are talking of marriage, my dear young gentleman, not of mere amusement and spending your money free, as some young men will do to please a girl they are in love with; but the object of my life has been to bring up my girl respectable, and nothing of that sort is possible.” She waved her hand, dismissing the idea, while Walter stood stupefied, gazing at her. “It is a question of marriage,” she added, with solemnity; “and what have you to offer—expectations?” Then she sunk her voice to a sort of stage whisper. “Do you know that your father is after you, young sir? He has been here.”
“Here!” said the boy, in sudden alarm and dismay.
She nodded her head slowly and solemnly. “Here. I need not say I gave him no information: but if you rely upon him to receive and support you, as my child has told me—Young Mr. Penton, Emmy must not be exposed to an angry father’s wrath.”
“My father here!” He looked round him, at the room, at the woman, at all these dreadful accessories, with a sinking heart. He seemed to see them all through his father’s eyes, who had never seen Emmy, and to himself they were terrible enough, with all the charm that she exercised.
“No!” she said, raising her arm. “I can not have her exposed to an angry father’s wrath. Mr. Penton, this suit of yours must come to an end.”
“I must see Emmy,” he cried, with confused misery. “I must see Emmy; don’t, don’t, for pity’s sake, say any more. It is she who must decide.”
“Pardon me; she takes her own way in small matters, but in this a mother is the best judge. Mr. Penton, she must not be exposed to an angry—”
“I must see Emmy, I must see Emmy,” cried poor Walter. He was capable of no other thought.
Sir Edward, with more than the usual irritation in his countenance, contemplated the new member of the family council. He had come in with a great deal to say, and the sight of Rochford was like a sudden check, unlooked for, and most unwelcome. He had, indeed, begun to speak, throwing himself into a chair. “I’ve got my trouble for my pains—” when he perceived that the weariness, the contrariety, the trouble in his face, had been betrayed to a stranger. He pulled himself up with a sudden effort. “Ah, Rochford,” he said, with an attempt at a smiling welcome, which was as much out of his usual habits as of his present state of mind.
“Edward,” said his wife, “Mr. Rochford has heard from Walter. He came to bring us the letter; he has some information, and he knows, oh, more than any of us—from the first.”
“What is it he knows?” cried the father, exasperated, with a start of energy in defense of his privacy and of his son. He looked with his angry, troubled eyes at the intruder with an angry defiance and contempt. Rochford the solicitor! the man of business, a man whom indeed he could not treat as an inferior, but who had no claim to place himself on the same level as a Penton of Penton. He had not hitherto shown any disposition to stand on his dignity to make the difference between the old level and the new. But that this young fellow should presume to bring information about his son, to thrust in a new and intrusive presence into a family matter, was more than he could bear. “I am very glad to consult Mr. Rochford on matters within his range,” he added, with an angry smile, “but this is a little, just a little, out of his sphere.”
“Edward!” cried Lady Penton, and “Father!” cried Ally; the latter with an indignation and resentment which surprised herself. But to hear him, so kind as he was, put down so, put aside when he wanted nothing but to help, had become suddenly intolerable to Ally. Why shouldWalter, who was behaving so unkindly, be considered so much above him, who had come out of his way to help? An impulse almost of indignation against Walter filled her mind, and she felt ready to silence her father himself, to demand what he meant. She did not herself comprehend the fervor of new feeling, the opposition, the resentment that filled her heart.
“When Sir Edward reads this letter he will understand,” said the young man, who kept his temper admirably. He was ready to bear a great deal more than that, having so much at stake. And he for his part was quite aware that for a Rochford of Reading to ally himself to the Pentons of Penton was a great matter, and one which might naturally meet with opposition. To have his part taken by Ally was a great matter—he could put up with her father’s scorn for a time.
Sir Edward read the letter, and his serious countenance grew more somber still. “From this it appears that my son has applied to you for money? I am sorry he has done it, but I don’t see that it tells any more. Walter has not made a confidant of you that I can see. My dear, I don’t mean to be disagreeable to Mr. Rochford; but he must see, any one might see, that a family matter—a—a consultation among ourselves—a question which has nothing to do with the public—”
“I am your man of business, Sir Edward,” said Rochford. “My family have known the secrets of yours long before my time. I don’t think we have ever betrayed our trust. Your son has put some information into my hands. I did not think I was justified in keeping it from you, and I think, if you will let me, that I can help you. Intrusion was not what I meant.”
He was the least excited of that tremulous party, and he felt that the object which was before him was well worth a struggle; but at the same time the young man was not without a certain generosity of purpose, a desire to help these troubled and anxious people. To Ally his attitude was entirely one of generosity and nobleness. He had come in the midst of the darkness to bring the first ray of light, and he was too magnanimous to be disgusted or repulsed by the petulance of her father’s distress. If he had a more individual motive it was that of pleasingher, and that wasno selfish motive, surely. That added—how could it be otherwise?—a charm to all the rest in her dazzled eyes.
“Mr. Rochford is very kind, Edward,” said Lady Penton. “Why should we not take the help he offers? He is a young man, he understands their ways, not like you and me. The young ones understand each other, just as we understand each other. They haven’t the same way of judging. They don’t think how their fathers and mothers suffer at home. Oh, let him go! it isn’t as if he would talk of it and betray us. Listen to him. He has known of this all the time, and he hasn’t betrayed us. Oh, let him go.”
“Go! where is he to go?”
“To find Walter,” they all cried together.
“It is killing you,” said Lady Penton. “Let the young man—who doesn’t feel as we do, who doesn’t think of it as we do—let him go, Edward. It seems so dreadful to us, but not to him. He thinks that probably there is nothing dreadful in it at all, that it is a thing that—a thing that—boys do: they are so thoughtless—they do it, meaning no particular harm.”
“There is something in that,” said Sir Edward, with relief. “I am glad you begin to see it in that way, my dear. It is more silly than wrong—I have thought so all along.”
“That is what Mr. Rochford says. He is a young man himself. He thinks the boy will never have considered—and that as soon as he thinks, as soon as he finds out—Edward, we mustn’t be tragical about it. I see it now as you say. Stay at home—you have so many things to think of—and let the young man go. They understand each other between themselves,” Lady Penton said, with a somewhat wan smile.
And then Sir Edward began to relax a little. “Rochford is right there,” he said. “It is perhaps a good thing to have a man’s view. You, of course, were always unduly frightened, my dear. As for not writing, that is so common a thing—I could have told you all that. But, naturally, seeing you in such a state has affected me. When you are married,” he said, turning to Rochford with a faint smile, “you will find that though you may think it weak of her, or even silly, the color of your thoughts will always be affected by your wife’s.”
This speech produced a curious little momentary dramatic scene which had nothing to do with the question in hand. Rochford’s eyes instinctively flashed a glance at Ally, who, though hers were cast down, saw it, and flamed into sudden crimson, the consciousness of which filled her with shame and confusion. Her blush threw a reflection instantaneous, like the flash of a fire, over him, and lighted up his eyes with a glow of delight, to conceal which he too looked down, and answered, with a sort of servile respect, “I have no doubt of it whatever, sir; and it ought to be so.”
“Well, perhaps theoretically it ought to be so,” Sir Edward said, who noticed nothing, and whose observation was not at any time quick enough to note what eyes say to eyes. Now that it was all explained and settled, and he felt that it was by his wife’s special interposition that Rochford had been taken into favor, there could be no doubt that it was a comfort to have a man, with all the resources of youth and an immediate knowledge of that world which Sir Edward was secretly aware he had almost forgotten, to take counsel with. His spirits rose. His trouble had been greatly intensified by that sensation of helplessness which had grown upon him as he wandered about the London streets, sick at heart, obstinate, hopeless, waiting upon chance, which is so poor a support. This day he had been more hopeless than ever, feeling his impotence with that sickening sense of being able to do nothing, to think of nothing, which is one of the most miserable of sensations. It was so far from true that he had taken the color of his thoughts from his wife, or felt Walter’s absence more lightly than she had done, that it was he who had been the pessimist all along, whose imagination and memory had furnished a thousand stories of ruin and the destruction of the most hopeful of young men, and to whom it was almost impossible to communicate any hopefulness. But a partnership of any kind is of great use in such circumstances, and above all the partnership of marriage, in which one can always put the blame upon the other with the advantage of being himself able to believe that the matter really stands so. Lady Penton did not complain. She was willing enough to bear the blame. Her own heart was much relieved by Rochford’s cheerful intimation that Walter’s little escapade was the commonest thing in the world, andmost probably meant nothing at all. If it might but be so! If it were only his thoughtlessness, the folly of a boy! At least if that could not be believed it was still a good thing and most fortunate that people should think so, and the man who suggested it endeared himself to the mother’s heart.
And then another and more expansive consultation began. On ordinary occasions Sir Edward allowed himself to be questioned, giving brief answers, sometimes breaking off impatiently, shutting himself up in a troubled silence, from which an unsatisfactory scrap of revelation unwillingly dropped would now and then come. Sometimes he drove them all away from him with the morose irritation of his unsuccess. What did it matter what he had done in town, when it all came to nothing, when it was of no consequence, and brought no result? But to-day he spoke with a freedom which he had never shown before. Everything was more practical, more possible. The new agent had to be informed of all the facts upon which perhaps his better knowledge of such matters might throw new light. Sir Edward confessed that he had extracted from old Crockford the address of the girl’s mother, “Though I could not allow—though I mean I feel sure that the boy never mixed himself up with people of that sort,” he added, with his little air of superiority; then described Mrs. Sam Crockford to them, and her declaration that she knew nothing of the young gentleman. In his heart of hearts Sir Edward did not believe this any more than Rochford did, but it gave him a countenance, it supported his new theory, the theory so adroitly suggested to him that Walter after all was probably not much to blame. This theory was a greater consolation than can be told to all of them. Not much to blame! Careless only, amusing himself, a thing which most youths of his age did somehow or other. “Of course,” Rochford said, “there are some preternatural boys who never tear their pinafores or do anything they ought not to do.” Thus he conveyed to their minds a suggestion that it was in fact rather spirited and fine of Walter to claim the emancipation which was natural to his kind. The load which was thus lifted from their gentle bosoms is not to be described. Lady Penton indeed knew better, but yet was so willing to be deceived, so ready to be persuaded! And Sir Edward knew—oh, a great manyvariations of the theme, better and worse—but yet was willing too to take the young man’s word for it, the young man who belonged to Walter’s generation and knew what was in the minds of the boys as none of the others could do. He brought comfort to all their hearts, both to those who had experience of life and those who had none, by his bold assumption of an easy knowledge. “I have no doubt, if truth were told, he is dying to come home,” Rochford said, “and very tired of all the noise and nonsense that looks so pleasant at a distance. I know how one feels in such circumstances—bored to death, finding idleness and the theaters and all that sort of thing the dreariest routine, and yet ashamed to own it and come back. Oh, he only wants to see a little finger held up to him from home, I know!” said the young fellow, with a laugh. He did himself the greatest injustice, having been all his life of the order of those who have the greatest repugnance to dirtying their pinafores. But love and policy, and pity as well, inspired him, and his laugh was the greatest comfort in the world to all those aching hearts. He took down Mrs. Sam Crockford’s address, and all the information which could be given to him; the very sight of his little note-book inspiring his audience with confidence. “The thing for me to do,” he said, “is to take him myself the money he wants. Though the address he gives is only at a post-office I shall find him out—and perhaps take a day or two’s amusement in his company,” he added, with a smile.
“Oh, Mr. Rochford, that would be kindness indeed!” Lady Penton said.
And Ally gave him a look—what did it say? Promises, pledges, a whole world of recompense was in it. He said, with another little laugh of confidence and self-satisfaction, not untouched with emotion, “Yes, I think that’s the best way. I’ll get him to take me about, I only a country fellow, and he up to all the ways of town; and it will be strange if we don’t get to be on confidential terms; and as I feel quite certain he is dying to come home—”
“Most likely, most likely,” said Sir Edward. It was, as Rochford felt, touch and go, very delicate work with Sir Edward. A word too much, a look even, might be enough to remind Walter’s father that he was the head of the house of Penton, and that this was only his man of business.The young lawyer was acute enough to see that, and wise enough to restrain the natural desire to enlarge upon what he could do, which the intoxication of feminine belief which was round him encouraged and called forth. He subdued himself with a self-denial which was very worthy of credit, but which no one gave him any credit for. And by this time the afternoon was spent, darkness coming on, and it was necessary he should go home: he felt this to be expedient in the state of affairs, though it was hard to go without a word from Ally, without a moment of that more intimate consultation, all in the erring brother’s interests, which yet drew these two so much closer together. “I will come this way,” he said, as they all went with him to the door where the dog-cart was standing, “to-morrow, on my way to town, to see if there are any last directions—anything you wish to suggest, Sir Edward—anything that may occur to you in the meantime, which I might carry out.”
“Yes, perhaps that will be well,” Sir Edward said.
“To go direct from you will give me so much more influence.”
“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. It was very delicate work with Sir Edward. “Telegraph if I’m wanted. Of course I am ready—whatever is wanted.”
“And you will let us know at once, oh, at once, Mr. Rochford; you know how anxious, though foolishly, as you all say—”