A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

But there was yet a deeper depth to which she never had expected to descend. Sir Walter in his great age changed his habits for nobody. He was never seen in the drawing-room except on rare occasions for an hour after dinner, when he felt better than usual. He thought the library the most cheerful as well as the warmest room in the house, and when visitors came it was expected that they should pay their respects to him there. Sir Walter had been a little restless on the day the young Pentons arrived. It had not seemed to Alicia that they were important enough to be presented to her father in a solemn interview. “There is no reason why you should trouble about them,” she said. “You will see them at dinner, that will be soon enough.” And the old gentleman had made no particular reply. Therefore when they arrived, as has been related, Mrs. Penton led them upstairs to the drawing-room and gave them tea. This room was very light, very bright, with its long range of large windows, of which the great breadth of the landscape below seemed to form a part, and the pillars which divided it into a sort of nave and aisles gave occasion for many little separate centers for conversation and the intercourse of congenial groups in a large company. Ally and Walter entered the room with dazzled eyes. It was to them as a dwelling of the gods. Had this visit been paid only a few weeks before they would have secretly taken possession, imagining how here and here each should have their special corner. The effect it produced on Walter now, as he looked round, too proud to show that it was new to him, too intent upon keeping all trace of anger out of his countenance to be otherwise than preternaturally grave, and on Ally, regarding its grandeur with an awe that was beyond words, was very different, but in both cases it was very profound. Ally thought with a movement of mingled regret and thankfulness how right mother was! What could we have done, she said to herself, in this great room? It would have been delightful indeed for the children, who on wet days would never have wanted to go out with such a place to play in. But then how could any one have had the heart to give this up to the children? She could not talk to Mrs. Penton, who maintained a little formal conversation, her mind was so full of this thought. It was beautiful. It was a magnificent room. It was wonderful to think that it might have belonged to us. But mother was right—oh, how right mother was! What could we have done with it? How could we even have furnished it? Ally said to herself; but she knew that Wat was annoyed when she allowed herself to say, “What a lovely room!”

“It is a very handsome room. I don’t think there is anything like it in the county,” said Mrs. Russell Penton. “I ought not perhaps to say so, for we have done a great deal to it ourselves. But I may allow that it is very perfect. You have never seen it before?”

“The view is fine,” said Wat, going to the window before his sister could answer; “it is so extensive that it makes any room look small.” He was so much out of temper and out of heart that he could not help making an attempt to “take” this serene great lady “down.”

She smiled in her dignified way, which made the young critic feel very small. “We seldom hear any fault found with its size,” she said.

And then, to the astonishment of Walter, the little person, whom he had allowed of his grace to pass in before him, came into the room, and took her place and addressed the great lady in the most familiar terms. “Aunt Gerald,” she said, “we are all a kind of cousins, don’t you think? We must be a kind of cousins, though we never saw each other before, for you are aunt to them and you are aunt to me, so of course we are friends by nature;” and with that she put out her hand not only to Ally, whose face brightened all over at this cordial greeting, but to Wat, who stood hanging over them like a cloud, not knowing what to say.

“You are mistaken, Mab,” said Mrs. Russell Penton; “I am not aunt but cousin to—to—” she did not know what to call them—“to my young relations,” she said at last.

“That comes exactly to the same thing—an old cousin is always aunt,” said Mab, settling herself on her seat like a little pigeon. She was very plump, pink and white, with very keen little blue eyes, not at all unlike a doll. There was nothing imposing in her appearance. “I am Mab,” she said, “and are you Alicia, like Aunt Gerald? Do all your brothers and sisters call you so? It is such a long name. I have neither brothers nor sisters.”

“Oh, what a pity,” said gentle Ally, who had brightened as soon as this new companion came in with all the freemasonry of youth.

“Do you think so? but then they say it is very good in another way. I have nobody to be fond of me though, nobody to bully me. Big brothers bully you dreadfully, don’t they?” She cast a look at Walter, inviting him to approach. She was not shy, and he was standing about, not knowing what to do with himself. Walter would have been awkward in any circumstances, having no acquaintance with strange ladies or habit of attending them at tea. He drew a step nearer indeed, but her advances did not put him at his ease; for had he not taken her for a lady’s-maid? though this she did not know.

Mrs. Russell Penton left them thus to make acquaintance, as Mab said, but not willingly. She had to obey a summons from Sir Walter. Sir Walter had been a great deal more restless than usual for the last day or two. There was nothing the matter with him, he said himself, and the doctor said he was quite well, there was not the slightest reason for any uneasiness; but yet he was restless—constantly sending for Alicia when she was not with him, changing his position, finding fault with his newspapers, and that all the little paraphernalia he loved was not sufficiently at hand. Mrs. Russell Penton was always ready when her father wanted her. She would have let nothing, not the most exalted visitor, stand between her and her father, and though she was by no means desirous of leaving these young people together, yet she got up and left them without a word. It was, however, a little too much for her when Sir Walter exclaimed almost before she got into the room, “Where are those children? I suppose they have come, Alicia. Why are you hiding them away from me?”