“Is there anything I can show you, sir?” this stately lady said, who was as imperious as if she had been a duchess.
“I—I saw some one I knew,” said Walter; “if I might but speak to her for a moment.”
“Do you mean one of our young ladies, sir?” said that princess dowager. “The young ladies in the mantle department are under my care: we shall be happy to show you anything in the way of business, but private friends are not for business hours; and this is a place for ladies, not for young gentlemen,” the distinguished duenna said.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE END OF ALL.
What was he to do? He was stopped short, bewildered, excited, quivering with a hundred sensations, by this impassable guardian of virtue and proprieties. A young gentleman is in every personal particular stronger, more effective and potent than a middle-aged woman in a shop; yet a bolder man than Walter would have been subdued by a representative of law and order so uncompromising. He looked at her appealingly, with his young eyes full of anxiety and trouble.
“I wanted only—a moment—to say a word—” he faltered, as if his fate hung upon her grace. But nothing could move her. She stood before him with her black silk skirts filling up the passage, in all the correctness of costume and demeanor which her position required.
“Young gentleman,” she said, “remember that you may be doing a great deal of harm by insisting. You can’t speak to any one here. If you’ll take my advice you’ll join the ladies that seem to be looking for you. That’s your party, I believe, sir,” she said, with a majestic wave of her hand. And then poor Walter heard Ally’s voice behind him.
“Oh, Wat, what are you doing? We thought we had lost you, and mother is waiting. Oh, Wat, what were you doing there? Who were you talking to? What could you want among all the mantles?” Another voice came to the rescue while he turned round bewildered. “I know what he was doing, Ally; he was looking for that wrap you were talking of. You should have asked me to come and help you to choose it, Mr. Penton.” They swept him away bewildered, their voices and soft rustle of movement coming round him like the soft compulsion of a running stream. The girls flowed forth in pleasant words as they got him between them, as irresistible as the duenna, though in a different way, Ally thanking him for the intention that Mab had attributed to him. “Oh, Wat, how good of you to think of that!”
“But, Mr. Penton, you should have asked me to come with you to choose it; I would have protected you,” said the laughing Mab. He was swept away by them, confused, with something singing in his ears, with—not the earth, but at least the solid flooring, covered with noiseless carpets, laden with costly wares, giving way, as he felt, under his stumbling feet.
He accompanied them home as in a dream: fortunately their minds were engrossed with subjects of their own, so that they did not remark his silence, his preoccupation. He sat sunk in his corner of the railway carriage, his face half covered with his hand, thinking it all over, contemplating that scene, seeing those figures float before him, and her look in the mirror over her shoulder. Ah! that look in the mirror was a stab to him, keener than any blow. For it was not to him that Emmy threw that glance—it was to any man, to the first pair of admiring eyes that might find out her prettiness, her grace—oh, not to him! When she saw who it was she had covered her face and fled. She had been ashamed to be discovered. Why should she be ashamed to be discovered? There was nothing shameful in what she was doing. In the quiet of the great shop, among women, no disturbing influences near—among the pretty things that suited her, the atmosphere warm and soft, the carpets noiseless under her feet. Perhaps he said all this to himself to console him for some internal shock it gave him to see her there at everybody’s will, turning herself into a lay figure that all the vulgar women, the dumpy matrons, the heavy girls, might be deceived and think that by assuming the same garment they might become as beautiful as she. Walter was not aware of this if it were so, but all his thoughts, which he had been trying to sever from her, went back with a bound. He thought and thought, as the lines of the country, all touched with reviving green, flew past the carriage windows, and the jar and croak of the railway made conversation difficult, and justified his retirement into himself—seeing her now in a new light, seeing her in perspective, the light all round her, her daily work, her home, the diversions she had loved. He said to himself that it was a life of duty, though not one that the vulgar mind recognized as drawn on elevated lines. How patient she had been, smiling upon those whom she had served, putting on one thing after another, exhibiting everything at its best to please them! It was all curiously mixed up with pain and sharpness, this rapture of admiration, and confusion, and longing, and regret, which the sight of her had worked in his mind. The smile on her lips was a little like the smile with which her mother had been represented as charming the public. Emmy had her public to charm, too. Oh, if he could but snatch her away from it all!—carry her off, hide her from all contact with the common world! It occurred to him quite irrelevantly in the midst of his thoughts, how it might be if Emmy at Penton, or in any other such place, should suddenly encounter some one whom she had served at Snell and Margrove’s? This thought came into his mind like an arrow fired by an enemy across the tender and eager course of his anticipations and resolution. How could she bear it? and how should he bear it, to see the stare, the whisper, the wonder, the scorn in the looks of some pair of odious, envious, spiteful women (women always call forth these adjectives under such circumstances). This arrow went to his very heart, and wounded him in the midst of his longing and purpose, and hot, impatient aspiration. And then he seemed to see her with that pretty trick of movement settling the cloak upon her shoulders, to show it off to the intending purchaser! Oh, Emmy! his Emmy! that she should be exposed to that! And yet he said to himself it was nothing derogatory—oh, nothing derogatory!—a safe, sheltered, noiseless place, among women, among beautiful stuffs and things, with no jar of the outside world about! If he could but snatch her away from it, carry her away!