SIR EDWARD PENTON went to London most days, but he never found out anything. He was not the sort of man to act as an amateur detective, and he would not appeal to the professionals in that capacity. He was an old-fashioned man, and it seemed to him that “to set the police after” his son was an indignity impossible. He could not do it. He tramped about himself, yearning, angry, very tender underneath, thinking if he could only see Walter, meet him, which always seems so likely to country people, in the street, that all would be well. He went to all the places Crockford could tell him of—to Emmy’s mother, a faded old actress of the lower class, whose faded graces, and her vivacity, and what had been, or had been supposed to be, her fascination, made poor Sir Edward’s heart sink into his boots. But she professed to know nothing of her daughter’s movements, and nothing at all of any gentleman. There had been a gentleman, she allowed, a young man connected with business—but it had been to escape from his addresses that her child had gone to the country: and Emmy was far too high-minded to keep company with any one of whom her mother did not know. In his despair Sir Edward even sought out the shop in which this gentleman in his business hours was to be found, and had an interview with the young man whose appearance in the village had so much alarmed and almost disgusted Walter. No information was to be obtained from him. He declared sullenly that he knew nothing about the girl: yes, he had known her, he didn’t deny; he had thought more of her than she was worth. Though it was going against all his family he had stuck to her for a long time, and would have stuck to her as long as she had stuck to him: but he knew nothing about her now. “Is it money, guv’nor; somebody left her a fortune?” he asked at the end of the interview, with a laugh which disconcerted Sir Edward. This was almost all he had been able to do, except tramping about the streets wherever he could think his son was likely to go. The poor gentleman increased his knowledge of London in the most wonderful way during these miserable days. He found out all kinds of back streets and alleys, and corners of building such as he had never remarked before, but all with a veil over them, a mist of trouble. London in January is dark enough even when the eyes are not clouded with suffering and anxiety; but with these added how miserable were the chill streets, the low skies, the yellow thickness of the atmosphere, the hopeless throngs of unknown men and women, always blank, always unresponsive to those strained and troubled eyes! Sometimes he thought he saw before him a slim young figure, moving quickly, as Walter might, through the crowd, and hurried vainly after it, pursuing at a hopeless distance, only to lose it in the ever-changing groups. Sometimes with the corner of his eye he would catch a glimpse of some one disappearing round a corner, plunging into a side street, who might be his boy. Alas! it was always a might-be. No happy chance brought them face to face. Had there been no particular reason for it they would have met, no doubt, in the simplest way; but this is one of the cases in which, as daily experience proves, those who seek do not find. And when Sir Edward returned home after a day so spent, the gloom he brought with him was like a London fog descending bodily upon the country. Probably there had been a little deadening of trouble in the physical exertion and gloomy expectation of these expeditions; but he brought an embodied darkness and desolation home.
On one of the days of his absence Ally was acting as a sort of sentinel in the garden: that is, she was taking a walk, as they said, but with an eye always upon the road and the gate—when her anxious mind was distracted by a sound of approaching wheels, coming, not down the hill, but along the river bank. It was a gray day, damp and soft, with no wind; one of those days which are not unusual in the valley of the Thames; not cold, save for the chill of the damp; very still; the river winding round the Hook in a pale and glistening link; the sky about the same color, which was no color at all, the leafless trees rising black as if photographed upon the gray. The river was lower than usual at this season, though it still flowed with a cruel motion round that little promontory as if meaning to make that bit of vantage ground its own some day. Ally was very sad and quiet, walking up and down, feeling as if life had come altogether to a stand-still save for that one thing; nothing else happening; nothing else seeming ever likely to happen. That furtive little current which had seemed for a moment to rise in her own life had died away. It seemed a long time since those days when young Rochford had come so often to Penton Hook. Perhaps his desire to come often had something to do with the delay which had so changed the face of affairs. This had occurred to Ally more than once, and had given her a secret feeling that it was perhaps her fault, but she had not felt able to regret it. But now all that was over, and Mr. Rochford came no longer. There was nothing for him to come about; and Ally remembered with a sort of half pang, half shame, the reception which had been given to his mother and sister when they called, and the curious sense of mingled superiority and inferiority which had overwhelmed her in their presence. They were far better acquainted with the world than she was; they were “in society,” or, at least, had that air of it which imposes upon simple people; but she was Miss Penton of Penton. She had felt then a great though always half-ashamed pleasure in remembering that elevation: but she had not the same sensations now. She felt that she was a snob (if a girl can be called a snob). She was ungrateful, for they had been very kind to her, and mean and petty, and everything that is most contemptible—feeling herself, only because of Penton (in which there was no merit) somehow exalted above them, the solicitor’s mother and sister. Many times since she had blushed at that incident, and sometimes at the most inappropriate moments; when she woke up in the middle of the night a flush would go over her from head to foot, thinking of what a poor creature, what a miserable little snob she was; a girl-snob, far worse than any other kind; worse than anything Mr. Thackeray had put in his book. Ally, like most people of her age, thought she did not like Mr. Thackeray, who seemed to her to make everybody look as if they had bad motives; but even he, so crushing as he was to a little girl’s optimism, had not gone so far in his cynical views as to think of a snob who was a girl. Perhaps she was wrong here, putting limits which did not exist to the great humorist’s imagination, but that was what she believed. And she was that girl-snob, which was a thing too bad to be conceived by fancy. She had repented this, and she had felt, though vaguely in the rush of other experiences, the blank that had fallen upon that opening chapter in which there had once seemed so much to come, but which had, to all appearance, ended all at once without anything coming of it. This chilled her gentle soul, she could scarcely tell why. How wretched that ball at Penton would have been to her, what a painful blight upon her girlish fancies, if it had not been for these kind people, if it had not been for him. Yes; that was the chief point after all, though she was ashamed to admit it to herself. It had been a pleasant break upon the monotony of life when he paid these frequent visits, when he talked in that suggestive way, making her think of things which he did not mention, raising a soft commotion which she did not understand in her simple being. It had been like a chill to her to perceive that all this was over. It was all over and done with, apparently; it had all dropped like the falling of a curtain over a drama just begun. She had wanted to know how it would all end, what its progress would be, the scenes that would follow: and lo, no scenes had followed at all, the curtain had come down. How wicked and wrong, how horrid it was to think of it at all in the midst of the great calamity that had fallen on the family, to wish even that mother might forget poor Wat for an hour, and go and call, and so make up for the coldness of Mrs. Rochford’s reception! This was a thing, however, which Ally had never suggested, which she thought it dreadful to have even thought of in the present trouble. She defended herself to herself by saying that she had not thought of it—it had only flashed across her mind without any will of hers, which is a very different thing, as everybody knows.
And was it possible while she wandered up and down, always with her attention fixed on the gate, always looking for news, for her father’s return, for a telegraph boy, for—oh, if that might be! for Walter himself; was it possible that some feeling about this other matter intruded into her mind and shared the thoughts which should have been all devoted to her brother? Ally trembled a little, but could not but blame herself, for she did nothing of the kind with her own will. She only felt a little chill, a little blank, a wonder how that story, if it had gone on, if the curtain had not fallen so abruptly, might have ended. It would have been interesting to know; a broken-off story is always tantalizing, distressful—the world becomes duller when it breaks off and you never know the end. Perhaps this had floated across her mind dimly, not interfering with the watch she was keeping, when suddenly the wheels which had been rolling along, not disturbing her attention—for they did not come in the direction whence news could be expected—startled her by suddenly stopping outside the gate. Who could it be? Her heart began to beat. She made a few steps quickly toward the gate. It could not be her father; could it be Walter bringing back his bride? What could it be? But here suddenly her heart gave another bewildering spring. She felt her breath taken away altogether. The vehicle had stopped outside; and it was young Rochford, in all the gloss of his usual trim appearance, with the usual flower in his coat, who came forward, quickening his steps as he saw her. He did not look quite as he used to look. There was a little doubt about him, as though he did not know how he was to be received—a little pride, as of a man who would draw back at once if he were discouraged. Ally could not help making a few steps further to meet him. She was glad to meet him—oh, there was no doubt of that!—and not only so, but to feel the curtain slowly drawing up again, the story beginning once more, gave everything around a different aspect. She said, “Oh, Mr. Rochford!” with a voice that had welcome in it as well as surprise.
“I have come about some business,” he said; but his eyes had already asked several questions, and seemed to derive a certain satisfaction from the unspoken replies. He added, lowering his voice, “I have been on the point of coming almost every day—but I felt as if perhaps—I might not be welcome.”
“Why?” said Ally, with an astonished look, which had no guilt in it; for, indeed, it was not to him, but to his mother and sister, that she had felt herself to behave like a snob.
“I scarcely know,” he said. “I thought Sir Edward might feel perhaps that my delay—. But I always half felt, Miss Penton, that you—would be rather pleased with the delay: you and your brother.”
“Yes,” she said, with a little shiver at Walter’s name; “it was wrong, perhaps, to go against my father; but I think perhaps we were glad—a little.”
“That has been a consolation; and then—But I must not trouble you with all my reasons for staying away, when most likely you never observed that I stayed away at all.”
Ally made no reply to this speech, which was so full of meaning. It was, indeed, so full of evident meaning that it put her on her guard.
“My father is in town,” she said, “if it is business; but perhaps mother—”
“I am too glad,” he said, “to meet you first, even for the business’ sake.”
Ally looked up at him with wondering eyes. What she could have to do with business of any kind, what light he could expect her to throw on any such subject, she could not understand. But there was something soothing, something pleasant, in thus strolling along the path by the flowing river with him by her side. She forgot a little the watch she had been keeping upon the gate. She recollected that he had once told her his dream about a flood, and coming in a boat to her window, but that she would not take advantage of the boat herself, only kept handing out the children to him one by one. How could he divine that she would do that? for of course that was exactly what she would do, if such a risk could ever happen, and if he should come to rescue her as in his dream.
Somehow he led her without any apparent compulsion, yet by a persistent impulse, a little way out of sight of the house behind a tuft of shrubbery. The big laurels stood up in their glistening greenness and shut out the pair from the windows of the Hook. They were close to the gray swirl of the river running still and swift almost on a level with the bank, when he said to her suddenly with his eyes fixed on her face, “I want to ask you something about your—brother.”
“My brother!” cried Ally. There was a sudden wild flushing up of color which she felt to the roots of her hair, and then a chill fell upon her, and paleness. He was watching her closely, and though she was not aware of it she had answered his question. “My brother,” she repeated, faltering, “Wat? he—he is not at home.”
“Miss Penton,” said Rochford, “do you think you could trust me?”
“Trust you!” said Ally, her voice growing fainter: and then a great panic came over her. “Oh! Mr. Rochford,” she cried, “if anything has happened to Wat, tell me, tell me! It is the not knowing that is so dreadful to bear.”
“I hope nothing has happened to him,” he said, very gravely. “It is only that I have had a letter from him, and I thought that perhaps your father had better know.”
“Come in and see mother,” said Ally, breathless. “Oh yes, yes, we had better know, whatever it is. Mr. Rochford, oh, I hope he is not ill. I hope nothing has happened.”
“I can not tell; he has written to me for money.”
“For money!” she cried, the expectation in her face suddenly dropping into a blank of astonishment and almost disappointment. “Was that all?” was the question written on Ally’s face.
“You don’t think that means much? but I fear it means a great deal: he is living in London, and he is very young. You must not think me intrusive or meddling: it is that I am afraid of. Sir Edward might suppose, Miss Penton—your mother might think—it is a difficult thing for a man to do. I thought that you, perhaps, if I could see you, might have a little confidence in me.”
Ally did not know how it was that a sense of sweetness and consolation should thus shed itself through her heart; it was momentary, for she had no time to think of herself, but it made everything so much more easy to her. She put out her hand involuntarily with a sudden sense that to have confidence in him was the most natural thing. “Oh yes,” she said, “tell me, I have confidence. I am sure you would do nothing but what was kind; tell me, oh, tell me!”
He took her hand; he had a right to do it, for she had offered it to him. “Will you try to follow me and understand?” he said. “It is business; it may be difficult for you, for Sir Edward will see the importance of it.” And then he told her, Ally bending all her unused faculties to the work of understanding, how Walter had gone to him before he left home at all to get money, and how he had heard from him again, twice over, asking for more. Ally listened with horror growing in her heart, but perhaps the young man, though he was very sympathetic, was scarcely so sorry as he looked: and perhaps to seek her out and tell her this story was not what a man of higher delicacy would have done. But then Rochford’s desire to be of use to Walter was largely intermingled with his desire to recommend himself to Walter’s sister. He would have done it anyhow out of pity for the boy and his parents, but to secure for himself a confidential interview with Ally, and to have this as a secret between them, and her as his embassador and elucidator to her parents, was what he could not deny himself. He was sorry for Walter, who was most likely spoiling his boyish life, and whom it would be right to call back and restrain: but yet he was almost glad of the occasion which brought him so near the girl whom he loved. She on her part listened to him with excitement, with relief, with the horror of ignorance, with an underlying consciousness that all must now come right.
“If Sir Edward will let me I will go,” Rochford said. “I shall be able to get hold of him perhaps easier than any one who has authority.”
“Oh, how kind you are,” said Ally.
“Kind! I would lie down and let him walk over me to please you,” the young man murmured, as if it were to himself.
It was partly to escape from the embarrassment of such murmurs, though they were sweet enough, and partly to escape from the curious process which was turning her trouble into a semblance of happiness against her will, and without any consent of hers, that Ally insisted at last on carrying this information to her mother. “How could she think you intrusive when you bring her news of Wat?” cried the girl, betraying all the anxiety of the family without knowing it; and she hurried him in to where Lady Penton sat in the window, looking out languidly and often laying down her work to gaze. She, too, flushed with anxious interest to hear of Walter’s letter.
And when Sir Edward came home, he found the lawyer’s dog-cart still at the door, and the young man, surrounded by the three anxious ladies, laying down his plan to them as one who was master of the situation. “I will go at once if you will let me; I’ll get hold of him easier than any one who has a right to find fault,” young Rochford was saying, when, cold and hungry and discouraged, and with a smoldering fury against all the world in his heart, Sir Edward pushed the door open and found him there.