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 and youthfulness. 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?”