A Poor Gentleman

by Mrs. Oliphant

“I know nobody,” said Ally.

“Nobody! though you have lived here all your life! Oh, you little envious thing! You want to keep them all to yourself; you won’t tell me! Very well. I have no doubt your brother dances well; he has the figure for it. I shall dance with him all the night.”

“Oh, no; that would be too much. But I hope you will dance with him to give him a little confidence. Indeed, what I say is quite true. We don’t know anybody; we have been brought up so—quietly. We never were here before.”

“Oh!” Mab said. She was an inquiring young woman, and she had not believed what she had heard. She had made very light of Mrs. Russell Penton’s description of her relations as “not in our sphere.” As Ally spoke, however, Mab’s eyes opened wider; she began to realize the real position. The misfortunes of the young Pentons had gone further than she had believed; they were poor relations in the conventional sense of the word, people to be thrust into a corner, to be allowed to shift for themselves. But not if they have some one to look after them, Mab said to herself. She took up their cause with heat and fury. “You shall soon know everybody,” she cried; “Uncle Gerald will see to that, and so shall I.” It then occurred to her that Ally might resent this as an offer of patronage, and she added, hastily, “Promise to introduce all your good partners to me, and I will introduce all mine to you. Is that settled? Oh, then between us we shall soon find out which are the best.”

How kind she was! To be sure, Cousin Alicia was not very kind; there was nothing effusive about her. No doubt she must mean to be agreeable, or why should she have asked them? though her manner was not very cordial. But as for Mab—who insisted that she was to be called Mab, and not Miss Russell—she was more “nice” than anything that Ally could have imagined possible. She was like a new sister, she was like one of ourselves. So Ally declared with warmth to Wat, who knocked at the door of her room just as she was beginning to dress for dinner, with a face full of importance and gravity. He was quite indifferent as to Mab, but he told her of Sir Walter with a sort of enthusiasm. “He said I must not forget that I was his heir, and that he would like to make a man of me. What do you think he could mean, Ally, by saying that I was his heir, after all?”

Ally could not tell; how was it possible that she should tell, as she had not heard or seen the interview? And besides, she was not the clever one to be able to divine what people meant. She threw, however, a little light on the subject by suggesting that perhaps he meant the title. “For you must be heir to the title, Wat,” she said; “nobody can take that from you.” Wat’s countenance fell at this, for he did not like to think that it was merely the baronetcy Sir Walter meant when he called him his heir. However, there was not very much time to talk. Walter had to hurry to his room to get ready, and Ally to finish dressing her hair and to put on her dress, with a curious feeling of strangeness which took away her pleasure in it. Of course, you really could see yourself better in the long, large glass than in the little ones at the Hook, but an admiring audience of mother and sisters are more exhilarating to dress to than the noblest mirror. And Ally felt sad and excited—not excited as a girl generally does before her first ball, but filled with all manner of indefinite alarms. There was nothing to be alarmed about. Cousin Alicia, however cold she might seem, would not suffer, after all, her own relations to be neglected. And then there was Mab. The girl felt the confused prospect before her of pleasure—which she was not sure would be pleasure, or anything but a disguised pain—to grow brighter and more natural when she thought of Mab. And that compact about the partners. Ally wondered whether she would get any partners, or if they would all overlook her in her corner, a little girl whom nobody knew.

And then came dinner, an agitating but brilliant ceremonial, with a confusing brightness of lights and flowers and ferns, and everything so strange, and the whole disturbed by an underlying dread of doing something wrong. Sir Walter at the head of the table, a strange image of age and tremulous state, looked to Ally like an old sage in a picture, or an old magician, one in whose very look there were strange powers. She scarcely raised her eyes when she was presented to him, but courtesied to the ground as if he had been a king, and did not feel at all sure that the look he gave her might not work some miraculous change in her. But Sir Walter did not take much notice of Ally, his attention was all given to Wat, whom he desired to have near him, and at whom he looked with that pleasure near to tears which betrays the weakness of old age. When dinner was over the old man would not have Russell Penton’s arm, nor would he let his servant help him. He signed to Wat, to the astonishment of all, and shuffled into the ball-room, where half of the county were assembled, leaning on the arm of the youth, who was no less astonished than everybody else. Sir Walter was very tall, taller than Wat, and he was heavy, and leaned his full weight upon the slight boy of twenty, who required all his strength to keep steady and give the necessary support. Mrs. Russell Penton, who was already in the ball-room receiving her guests, grew pale like clay when she saw this group approach. “Father, let me take you to your seat,” she said, hurriedly, neglecting a family newly arrived too, who were waiting for her greeting. “Nothing of the kind, Alicia. I’m well off to-night. I’ve got Wat, you see,” the old gentleman said, and walked up the whole length of the room, smiling and bowing, and pausing to speak to the most honored guests. “This is young Walter,” he said, introducing the boy, “don’t you know? My successor, you know,” with that old tremulous laugh which was half a cough, and brought the tears to his eyes. The people who knew the circumstances—and who did not know the circumstances?—stared and asked each other what could have happened to bring about such a revolution. When Sir Walter had been seated at the upper end of his room he dismissed his young attendant with a caressing tap upon his arm. “Now go, boy, and find your partner. You must open the ball, you know; nothing can be done till you’ve opened the ball. Go, go, and don’t keep everybody waiting.” Poor Wat could not tell what to do when raised to this giddy height without any preparation, not knowing anybody, very doubtful about his own powers as a dancer, or what was the etiquette of such performances. Russell Penton almost thrust Mab upon him in his pause of bewilderment. And from where she stood at the door, stately and rigid, Alicia looked with a blank gaze upon this boy, this poor relation, whom her eyes had avoided, whom she had included almost perforce in her reluctant invitation to his sister, but who was thus made the principal figure in her entertainment. She had been reluctant to ask Ally, but the brother had been put in quite against her will. His name, his look, the resemblance which she refused to see, but yet could not ignore, were all intolerable to her; but her father’s sudden fancy for the boy, his change of sentiment so inconceivable, so unexplainable, struck chill to her heart.

When she was released from her duties of receiving she found out the doctor among the crowd of more important guests, and begged him to give her his opinions.

“How do you think my father looks?”

“Extremely well—better than he has looked for years—as if he had taken a new lease,” the doctor said.