A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Oh, my little Mab!” Lady Penton cried. She gave the little girl a sudden kiss, then put her hands with a soft resoluteness upon Mab’s arms and loosed their clasp. It was as if the girl had pushed open for a moment a door which closed upon her again the next. “Yes,” she said, “my son is coming home. He has stayed a little longer than we expected, but you should not have tried to frighten him about his mother. I am not ill. If he comes rushing back before his business is done, because you have frightened him about me, what shall we do to you, you little prophet of evil?” She stooped again and kissed the girl, giving her a smile as well. But then she rose from her seat. “As soon as we get in to Penton you must come and pay us a long visit,” she said.

And this made an end of Mab’s attempt to interfere in the affairs of the family of which she was so anxious to become a member. She went away to the children with her head hanging, and in a somewhat disconsolate condition. But, being seized upon by Horry, who had a great manufacture of boats on hand, and wanted some one to make the sails for him, soon forgot, or seemed to forget, the trouble, and became herself again. “I am coming to live with you when you go to Penton,” she said.

“Hurrah! Mab is coming to live with us!” shouted the little boys, and soon this great piece of news ran over the house.

“Mad’s tumming! Mad’s tumming!” little Molly joined in with her little song.

And this new proposal, which was so strange and unlikely, and which the elder members looked upon so dubiously, was carried by acclamation by the little crowd, so to speak, of the irresponsible populace—the children of the house.

The day had been an exhausting day. When the winter afternoon fell there was throughout the house more than usual of that depressed and despondent feeling which is natural to the hour and the season. Even Mab’s going contributed to this sensation. The hopefulness of the morning, when all had felt that the sending out of the new agent meant deliverance from their anxiety, had by this time begun to sink into the dreary waiting to which no definite period is put, and which may go on, so far as any one knows, day after day. Sir Edward had withdrawn to the book-room, very sick at heart and profoundly disappointed, disgusted even not to have had a telegram, which he had expected from hour to hour the entire day. Rochford had not found Walter, then, though he was so confident in his superior knowledge. After all, he had sped no better than other people. There was a certain solace in this, but yet a dreary, dreadful disappointment. He sat over his fire, crouching over it with his knees up to his chin, cold with the chill of nervous disquietude and anxiety, listening, as the ladies had done so long—listening for the click of the gate, for a step on the gravel—for anything that might denote the coming of news, the news which he had never been able to bring himself, but which Rochford had been so sure of sending, only, as it seemed, to fail.

Lady Penton was in the drawing-room. She spent this dull hour often with her husband, but to-day she did not go to him. She could not have been with him and keep Ally’s secret, and she was loath to give him the additional irritation of this new fact in the midst of the trouble of the old. She said to herself that if Rochford succeeded in his search, if he sent news, if he brought Walter home, that then everything would be changed; and in gratitude for such a service his suit might be received. She did not wish to expose that suit to an angry objection now. Poor lady! she had more motives than one for this reticence. She would not make Ally unhappy, and she would not permit anything to be said or done that might lessen the energy of the lover who felt his happiness to depend on his success. It was because of her habit of spending this hour between the lights in the book-room with her husband that she was left alone in the partial dark, before the lamp was brought or the curtains drawn. She had gone close to the window when it was too dark to work at the table, but now her work had dropped on her lap, and she was doing nothing. Doing nothing! with so much to think of, so many, many things to take into consideration. She sat and looked out on the darkening skies, the pale fading of the light, the dull whiteness of the horizon, and the blackness of the trees that rose against it. The afternoon chill was strong upon her heart; she had been disappointed too—she too had been looking for that telegram, and her heart had sunk lower and lower as the night came on. That Walter should be found was what her heart prayed and longed for, and now there was another reason, for Ally’s sake, that the lover might claim his reward. But the day was nearly over, and, so far as could be told, the lover, with all his young energy, was as unsuccessful as Edward himself. So far as this went, their thoughts were identical, but Lady Penton’s, if less sad, were more complicated, and took in a closer net-work of wishes and hopes. She sat at the window and looked out blankly, now and then putting up her hand to dry her eyes. She could cry quietly to herself in the dark, which is a relief a man can not have.

What a sad house! with heavy anxiety settling down again, and the shadow of the night, in which even the deliverer can not work, nor telegrams come. There was a spark of warmer life upstairs, where the girls had lighted their candle, and where the tremendous secret which had come to Ally was being shyly contemplated by both girls together in wonder of so great and new a thing. And on the nursery there was plenty of cheerfulness and din. But down-stairs all was very quiet, the father and mother in different rooms thinking the same thoughts. Lady Penton wept out those few tears very quietly. There was no sound to betray them. It had grown very dark in the room and her eyes were fixed on the wan light that lingered outside. She had no hope now for a telegram. He would not send one so late. He must have written instead of telegraphing. He had found nothing, that was clear.

She had said this to herself for the hundredth time, and had added for perhaps the fiftieth that it was time to go and dress, that it was of no use lingering, looking for something that never came, that she had now a double reason to be calm, to have patience, to take courage, when it seemed to her that something, a dark speck, flitted across the pale light outside. This set her heart beating again. Could it be the dispatch after all? She listened, her heart jumping up into her ears. Oh! who was it? Nothing? Was it nothing? There was no sound. Yes, a hurried rustle, a faint stir in the hall. She rose up. Telegraph boys make a great noise, they send the gravel flying, they beat wild drums upon the door. Now there was nothing, or only a something fluttering across the window, the faintest stir at the open door.

What was it? a hand upon the handle turning it doubtfully, slowly; then it was pushed open. Oh, no; no telegraph boy. She flew forward with her whole heart in her outstretched hands. Some one stood in the dark, looking in, saying nothing, only half visible, a shadow, no more. “Wat! Wat!” the mother cried.