A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

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 next day 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. They did 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 know nothing, 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.