THE day was a painful one to all concerned: to the father and mother, who knew, though vaguely, all about it, and to the children who knew only that something was wrong, and that it was Walter who was in fault, a thing incomprehensible, which no one could understand. The girls felt that they themselves might have gone a little astray, that they could acknowledge as possible; but Walter! what could he have done to upset the household, to make the father so angry, the mother so sad?—to rush out himself upon the world without his breakfast? That little detail affected their minds perhaps the most of all. The break of every tradition and habit of life was thus punctuated with a sharpness that permitted no mistake. He had gone out without any breakfast—rushing, driving the gravel in showers from his angry feet. When the time of the midday repast came round there was a painful expectancy in the house. He must return to dinner, they said to themselves. But Walter did not come back for dinner. He was not visible all day. The girls thought they saw him in the distance when they went out disconsolately for a walk in the afternoon, feeling it their duty to Mab. Oh, why was she there, a stranger in the midst of their trouble! They thought they saw him at the top of the steep hill going up from the house to the village. But though they hurried, and Anne ran on in advance, by the time she got to the top he was gone and not a trace of him was to be seen. Their hearts were sadly torn between this unaccustomed and awful cloud of anxiety and the duties they owed to their guest. And still more dreadful was it when the Penton carriage came for Mab with a note only, telling her to do as she pleased, to stay for a few days longer if she pleased. “Oh, may I stay?” she asked, with a confidence in their kindness which was very flattering, but at that moment more embarrassing than words could say. The two girls exchanged a guilty look, while Lady Penton replied, faltering: “My dear! it is very sweet of you to wish it. If it will not be very dull for you—” “Oh, dull!” said Mab, “with Ally and Anne, and all the children: and at Penton there is nobody!” A frank statement of this sort, though it may be selfish, is flattering; indeed, the selfishness which desires your particular society is always flattering. None of them could say a word against it. They could not tell their visitor that she was—oh, so sadly!—in their way, that they could not talk at their ease before her; and that to be compelled to admit her into this new and unlooked-for family trouble was such a thing as made the burden miserable, scarcely to be borne. All this was in their hearts, but they could not say it. They exchanged a look behind backs, and Lady Penton repeated, with a faint quaver in her voice, “My dear! Of course, we shall be only too glad to have you if you think it will not be dull.” When Mab ran to write her note and announce her intention to remain, the three ladies felt like conspirators standing together in a little circle, looking at each other dolefully. “Oh, mother, why didn’t you say they must want her at Penton, and that we did not want her here?” “Hush, girls! Poor little thing, when she is an orphan, and so fond of you all; though I wish it had been another time,” Lady Penton said with a sigh. They seized her, one by each arm, almost surrounding her, in their close embrace. “Mother, what has Wat done? Mother, what is it about Wat?” “Oh, hush, hush, my dears!” And Lady Penton added, disengaging herself with a smile to meet Mab, who came rushing into the room in great spirits, “I think as long as the daylight lasts you ought to have your walk.” It was after this that the girls thought they saw Walter, but could not find any trace of him when they reached the top of the hill.
There had never been any mystery, any anxiety, save in respect to the illnesses that break the routine of life with innocent trouble which anybody may share, in this innocent household. To make excuses for an absent member, and account for his absence as if it were the most natural thing in the world—not to show that you start at every opening of the door, to refrain heroically from that forlorn watch of the window, that listening for every sound which anxiety teaches: to talk and smile even when there are noises, a stir outside, a summons at the door that seems to indicate the wanderer’s return—how were they to have that science of trouble all in a moment? Lady Penton leaped to its very heights at once. She sat there as if all her life she had been going through that discipline, talking to Mab, surveying the children, neglecting nothing, while all the while her heart was in her ears, and she heard before any one the faintest movement outside. They were all very silent at table, Sir Edward making no attempt to disguise the fact that he was out of humor and had nothing to say to any one, while the girls exchanged piteous looks and kept up an anxious telegraphic communication. But Walter never appeared. Neither to dinner, neither in the evening did he return—the two meals passed without him, his place vacant, staring in their faces, as Anne said. Where was he? What could he be doing? Into what depth of trouble and misery must a boy have fallen who darts out of his father’s house without any breakfast, and, so far as can be known, has nothing to eat all day? Where could he go to have any dinner? What could have happened to him? These words express the entire disorganization of life, the end of all things in a family point of view, which this dreadful day meant to Walter’s sisters, and to his mother in a less degree. Nothing else that could have been imagined would have reached their hearts in the same way. And the last aggravation was given by the fact that all this which they felt so acutely to imply the deepest reproach against Walter was apparent to little Mab, sitting there with her little smiling face as if there was no trouble in the world. Oh, it was far better, no doubt, that she should suspect nothing, that she should remain in her certainty, so far as Penton Hook was concerned, that there was no trouble in the world! But her face, all tranquil and at ease, her easy flow of talk, her questions, her commentaries, as if life were all so simple and anybody could understand it! The impatience which sometimes almost overcame all the powers of self-control in Ally and in Anne, can not be described. They almost hated Mab’s pretty blue eyes, and her comfortable, innocent, unsuspecting smile. Had any one told them that little Mab, that little woman of the world, was very keenly alive to everything that was going on, and had formed her little theory, and believed herself to know quite well what it was all about, the other girls would have rejected such an accusation with disdain.
It was quite late, after everything was over, the children all in bed, all the noises of the house hushed and silent, when Walter came home. The family were sitting together in the drawing-room, very dull, as Lady Penton had forewarned the little guest they would be. She herself had suggested a game of besique, which she was ready to have played had it been necessary: but Ally and Anne could not for shame let their mother take that rude and arduous task in hand. So this little group of girls had gathered round the table, a pretty contrast in their extreme freshness and youthfulness. The gravity of this, to her, terrible and unthought-of crisis, the horror of what might be happening, threw a shade upon Ally’s passive countenance which suited it. She was very pale, her soft eyes cast down, a faint movement about her mouth. She might have burst out crying over her cards at any moment in the profound tension of her gentle spirit. Anne was different; the excitement had gone to her head, all her faculties were sharpened; she had the look of a gambler, keen and eager on her game, though her concentrated attention was not on that at all. She held her head erect, her slender shoulders thrown back, her breath came quickly through her slightly opened lips. Mab was just as usual, with her pretty complexion and her blue eyes, laughing, carrying on a little babble of remark. “A royal marriage! Oh, Anne, what luck!” “Another card, please—yes, I will have another.” Her voice was almost the only one that disturbed the silence. Lady Penton in her usual place was a little indistinct in the shade. She had turned her head from the group, and her usually busy hands lay clasped in her lap. She was doing nothing but listening. Sometimes even she closed her eyes, that nothing might be subtracted from her power of hearing. Her husband, still further in the background, could not keep still. Sometimes he would sit down for a moment, then rise again and pace about, or stand before the bookshelves as if looking for a book; but he wanted no book—he could not rest.
And then in the midst of the silence of the scene came the sounds that rang into all their hearts. The gate with its familiar jar across the gravel, the click of the latch, then the step, hurried, irregular, making the gravel fly. Lady Penton did not move, nor did Sir Edward, who stood behind her, as if he had been suddenly frozen in the act of walking, and could not take another step. Ally’s cards fell from her hands and had to be gathered from the floor with a little scuffle and confusion, in the midst of which they were all aware that the hall door was pushed open, that the step came in and hurried across the hall upstairs and to Walter’s room, the door of which closed with a dull echo that ran through all the house. Their hearts stood still; and then sudden ease diffused itself throughout the place—relief—something that felt like happiness. He had come back! In a moment more the girls’ voices rose into soft laughter and talk. What more was wanted? Wat had come back. As long as he was at home, within those protecting walls, what could go wrong? “Oh, what a fright we have had,” said Ally’s eyes, with tears in them, to those of Anne; “but now it’s all over! He has come back.”
The parents looked at each other in the half light under the shade of the lamp. When Walter’s door closed upstairs Sir Edward made a step forward as if to follow to his son’s room, but Lady Penton put up her hand to check him. “Don’t,” she said, under her breath. It still seemed to her that her husband must have been harsh. “Some one must speak to him,” said Sir Edward, in the same tone; “this can not be allowed to go on.” “Oh, no, no; go on! oh, no, it can’t go on.” “What do you mean, Annie?” cried her husband, leaning over her chair. “Do you think I should take no notice after the dreadful day we have spent, and all on his account?” “No, no,” she said, in a voice which was scarcely audible; “no, no.” “What am I to do, then—what ought I to do? I don’t want to risk a scene again, but to say ‘no, no’ means nothing. What do you think I should do?”
She caught his hand in hers as he leaned over her chair, their two heads were close together. “Oh, Edward, you’ve always been very good to me,” she said.
“What nonsense, Annie! good to you! we’ve not been two, we’ve been one; why do you speak to me so?”
“Edward,” she whispered, leaning back her middle-aged head upon his middle-aged shoulder. “Oh, Edward, this once let me see him. I know the father is the first. It’s right you should be the first; but, Edward, this once let me see him, let me speak to him. He might be softer to his mother.”
There was a pause, and he did not know himself, still less did she know, whether he was to be angry or to yield. He had perhaps in his mind something of both. He detached his hand from hers with a little sharpness, but he said, “Go, then: you are right enough; perhaps you will manage him better than I.”
She went softly out of the room, while the girls sat over their cards in the circle of the lamplight. They had not paid much attention to the murmur of conversation behind them. They thought she had gone to see about some supper for Walter, who had probably been fasting all day, an idea which had also entered Ally’s mind as a right thing to do; but mother, they knew, would prefer to do it herself. She did not, however, in the first place, think of Walter’s supper. She went up the dim staircase, where there was scarcely any light, not taking any candle with her, and made her way along the dark passage to Walter’s door. He had no light, nor was there any sound as she opened the door softly and went in. Was it possible he was not there? The room was all dark, and not a murmur in it, not even the sound of breathing. A dreadful chill of terror came over Lady Penton’s heart. She said with a trembling voice, “Walter, Walter!” with an urgent and frightened cry.
There was a sound of some one turning on the bed, and Walter’s voice said out of the dark in a muffled and sullen tone, “What do you want, mother? I thought here I might have been left in peace!”
“What!” she cried, “in peace. Is this how you speak to me? Oh, my boy, where have you been?”
“It can’t matter much where I’ve been. I’ve been doing no harm.”
“No, dear. I never thought you had,” said his mother, groping her way to the bedside and sitting down by him. She put out her hand till it reached where his head was lying. His forehead was hot and damp, and he put her hand away fretfully.
“You forget,” he said, “I’m not a baby now.”
“You are always my boy, Wat, and will be, however old you may grow. If your father was harsh he did not mean it. Oh, why did you rush away like that without any breakfast? Walter, tell me the truth, have you had anything to eat? have you had some dinner? Tell me the truth.”
There was a pause, and then he said, “I forget: is that all you think of, mother?”
“No, Wat, not all I think of, but I think of that too. If I bring you up something will you eat it, Wat?”
“For pity’s sake let me alone,” he said, pettishly, “and go away.”
“Walter!”
“Let me alone, mother, for to-night. I can’t say anything to-night. I came to bed on purpose to be quiet; leave me alone for to-night.”
“If I do, Wat, you will hear us, you will not turn your back upon us to-morrow?”
“Good-night, mother,” said the lad.
He turned his head away, but she bent over him and kissed his hot cheek. “I will tell your father he is not to say anything. And I will leave you, since you want me. But you will take the advice of your best friends to-morrow, Wat.”
“Good-night, mother,” he said again, and turned his flushed and shamefaced cheek to respond, since it was in the dark, to her kiss.
“Wat, there is nobody in the world can love you as we do. God bless you, my dear,” she said.
And listening in the dark, he heard the faint sound of her soft footsteps receding, passing away into the depths of the silent house, leaving him not silent, not quiet, as he said, but with a wild world of intentions and impulses whirling within him, all agitation, commotion, revolution to his finger-ends.