NO LONGER COCK-SURE.
Rochford came back in a sadly humbled condition of mind. He was indeed
summoned back by a telegram which told him that all was well and his
services unnecessary, and returned trailing his arms, so to speak, very
much cast down, beginning to say to himself that the Reading solicitor
was not at all likely to be considered a fit match for Sir Edward
Penton’s daughter now that all chance of special service to the family
was over. Young idiot! why, after staying away so long, couldn’t he have
stayed a little longer? Why not have helped somebody by his folly
instead of simply dropping from the skies when it suited him in his
egotism and selfishness? Rochford came back deeply humiliated, deeply
despondent. He too had tramped about London one weary and dismal day,
and with disgust had recognized that his mission was not so easy as he
had supposed. He had gone to the post-office which Walter had given as
his address, and had made what inquiries were possible, and then had
hung about hoping that Walter would come to fetch his letter, like those
sportsmen who hang about the pools where their big game go to drink. But
no one came; and in the morning had arrived that telegram--“All well:
further search unnecessary. Has returned home.” Confound him! Why, after
making everybody miserable, could he not have stayed another day?
Rochford came home very despondent, taking the blackest view of affairs.
If he had but acted with more prudence in the end of the year--if he had
but pushed on matters and got that bargain accomplished before Sir
Walter had been stricken with his last illness!--then the Pentons,
though they would still have had the baronetcy, would not have been a
great county family, and Ally, without fortune to speak of, would have
made no _mésalliance_ in marrying a man who could keep her in luxury
though he was but the family man of business. But now, though the
fortune was scarcely greater, the position was very different. The
mother was very artless, but still she knew enough to know that girls so
attractive, with the background of Penton behind them, even if they had
not a penny, were not to be thrown away on men like himself. Such was
the tenor of his thoughts as he came back. He had expected to return
with trumpets sounding and colors flying, bringing back in triumph the
wanderer, and having a certain right to his recompense. He came now
silent and shamed, an officious person who had offered more than he
could perform, who had thrust his services upon those who did not
require them. He had not even the courage to see Ally before he went in
humbled to her father. It was his duty to tell Sir Edward all that had
happened, but he had scarcely a doubt as to what must follow. He would
be sent away, he felt sure; probably he would not be allowed to speak to
her at all--he the man of business, and she the princess royal, the
eldest daughter of the house.
But, to his relief as well as surprise, Sir Edward met him with an
unclouded countenance. He gave him a warm grasp of the hand. He said,
“Well, Rochford, all’s well that ends well. You see it was all settled
more easily than you supposed.”
“You can’t doubt, Sir Edward, that I am most glad it should be so.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure you are; glad--but a little disappointed, eh?--it’s
quite natural: you were so cock-sure. That is the worst of you young
men. You think we elder ones are all ninnies; you think we don’t know
what we are about. And you are so certain that you sometimes take us in,
and we think so too. But you see you are wrong now and then,” said Sir
Edward, with high satisfaction, “and it turns out that it is we who are
in the right.”
Rochford did not fail to remark to himself in passing, that though he
might be wrong he saw very little reason for the assertion that Sir
Edward was right. But he was too much cast down for argument. He said,
“The chief thing is that your anxiety is relieved. I am very glad of
that--though I should have liked better to have had a hand in doing it.”
And then he drew himself together as best he could. “There is another
subject, Sir Edward, that I wished to speak to you about.”
“Yes, very likely; but you must hear first about Walter. So far as I can
make out it has been a mere escapade, and he has been mercifully saved
from committing himself, from--compromising his future. We can’t be
thankful enough for that. He comes back free as he went away, and having
learned a lesson, I hope, an important lesson. We mean to say nothing
about it, Rochford. You’ll not take any notice: I’m sure we can trust in
you.”
“I hope so,” said the young man; and then he repeated, “Sir Edward,
there is another subject--”
“You don’t look,” said Sir Edward, rubbing his hands with internal
satisfaction, “so cock-sure about that.”
This was not very discouraging if he had retained sufficient presence of
mind to see it. But he was out of heart as well as out of confidence,
and everything seemed to him to be of evil augury. “No, indeed,” he
said, “I am far from being sure. I feel that what I am going to ask will
seem to you very presumptuous: and if it were not that my whole heart is
in it and all my hopes--”
“Ah, you use such words lightly, you young men--”
“I don’t use them lightly. If I could help it I would put off speaking
to you. I would try whether it were not possible to find some way of
recommending myself--of making you think a little better of me.”
“If you suppose,” cried Sir Edward, benignly, “that I think less of you
because you were not successful about Walter you are quite mistaken,
Rochford. You had not time to do anything. He left town almost as soon
as you arrived in it. I never expect impossibilities, even when they are
promised,” he added, with a nod of his head.
“It is I that am looking for impossibilities, Sir Edward. I can’t think
how I could have been so bold. I have been letting myself think that
perhaps--that if you could be got to take it into consideration--that,
that in short--”
And Mr. Rochford, crimsoning, growing pale, changing from one foot to
another, looking all embarrassment and awkwardness, came to a dead stop
and could find nothing more to say.
“What is it? You seem to have great difficulty in getting it out. What
have I in my power that is so important, and that you are so shy about?”
“I am shy, that is just the word. You will think me--I don’t know what
you will think me--”
“Get it out, man. I can’t tell till I know.”
“Sir Edward,” said Rochford, more and more embarrassed, “your
daughter--”
“Oh, my daughter! Is that how it is?” It is not to be supposed that a
day had elapsed after Walter’s return and the relief of mind that
followed it without some communication passing between Lady Penton and
her husband on the second of the subjects that had excited her so
deeply.
“Sir Edward,” said the young man, “Miss Penton’s family and position are
of course superior to mine. It all depends on the way these matters are
looked upon. Some people would consider this an insuperable obstacle.
Some do not attach much importance to it. Ideas have changed so much on
this subject. My grandfather, as perhaps you are aware, married a Miss
Davenport of Doncaster. But I don’t know how you may look on that sort
of thing.”
“I don’t exactly see the connection,” said Sir Edward; “your
grandfather’s marriage was a good while ago.”
“Yes, when prejudices were a great deal stronger than now. Though they
exist in some places, I have the strongest reason to believe that among
the best people they are no longer held as they used to be. Eva Milton
married a Manchester man that had no education to speak of at all.”
“Are you arguing the question on abstract principles?” said Sir Edward,
who was nursing his foot, and looking half-amused, half-bored. His
companion was too anxious to be able to judge what this look meant, and
he was sadly afraid of irritating the authority in whose hands his
happiness lay.
“Oh, no, not at all,” he cried, anxiously: “I wanted to remind you, sir,
that it was not the first time that such things had been done. It’s no
abstract question: all that I look forward to in life depends on it. I
am not badly off, as I can prove to you if you will let me. I could keep
my wife, if I had the good fortune to--to--make sure of that--surrounded
by everything that belongs to her sphere. There should be nothing
wanting in that way. I could make settlements that would be, I think,
satisfactory.”
“Is that how you talked to Ally?” said Sir Edward, a perception of the
humor of the situation breaking in. “How astonished she must have been!”
His mind was so unusually at ease that he was ready to smile even in the
midst of an important arrangement like this.
“To Ally!” cried Rochford, startled by the reference, and in his
confusion unable to see how much it was in his favor. “No, sir,” he
said, eagerly, “not a word! Do you think I would fret her delicate mind
with any such suggestions? No. She is far above all that. She knows
nothing about it. I may not be worthy of her, but at least I know how to
appreciate her. She has heard nothing like this from me.”
“But I suppose you must think that what you did say was not without
effect, and that the appreciation is not all on your side? You don’t
mind fretting my delicate mind, it appears,” said Sir Edward; and then,
in a sharper tone, “How far has this matter gone?”
“Sir Edward,” stammered the young man: his anxiety stupefied instead of
quickening his senses; he seemed able to perceive nothing that was not
against him, “I--I--”
“You don’t give me very much information,” repeated the father. “Can’t
you tell me how far this matter has gone?”
Rochford was a keen man of business. He was not to be overpowered by
the most powerful judge or the most aggravating jury. He was in the
habit of stating very clearly what he wanted to say. But now he stood
before this tribunal stammering, without a word to say for himself. “Sir
Edward,” he repeated, “if I had taken time to think I should have felt
that you ought to have been consulted first. But in an unguarded
moment--my--my feelings got the better of me. I saw her unexpectedly
alone. And then,” he added with melancholy energy, “I thought, I
confess, that if I could be of use, if I could find and bring back--”
“I see,” said Sir Edward, “that was why you undertook so much. It was
scarcely very straightforward, was it, to profess all that interest in
the brother when it was the sister you were thinking of all the time?”
“Perhaps it might not be straightforward,” owned the unsuccessful one;
“and yet,” after a pause, “it was no pretense. I was interested, if you
will let me say so, in--all the family, Sir Edward. I should have been
too glad--to be of any use: even if there had been no--even if there had
not existed--even if--”
“I see,” said the stern judge again: and then there was a dreadful
pause. Circumstances alter much, but not even the advanced views of the
nineteenth century can alter the position in which a young lover stands
before the father of the girl he loves--a functionary perhaps a little
discredited by the march of modern ideas, but who nevertheless has still
an enormous power in his hands, a power which the feminine heart
continues to believe in, which is certainly able to cause a great deal
of discomfort and inconvenience, if nothing else. Rochford stood
thoroughly cowed, with his eyes cast down, before this great arbiter of
fate, although after a while, as the silence continued, there began to
crop up in his mind suggestions, resolutions: how nothing should make
him resign his hopes; how only Ally herself could loose the bond between
them, how he would take courage to say to the father that however much
they respected him his decision would not be absolute, that on the
contrary it could be resisted, that the two whose happiness was
involved--that the two--the two--words which made his heart jump with a
sudden throb in the midst of this horrible uncertainty--would stand
against the world together not to be sundered. All these heroic
thoughts gathered in his mind as he stood awaiting the tremendous
parental decision, which came in a form so utterly unexpected, so
bewildering, that he could only gasp, and for a moment could not reply.
This was what Sir Edward said:
“You know, I suppose, that my girls will have no money, Rochford?”
“Sir!” cried the lover, with a burst of pent-up breath which seemed to
carry away with it the burden of a whole lifetime of care from his soul.
“They will have no money. I am a poor man, and have always been so all
my life. If you have not known that before you will have to know it now
in your capacity (as you say) of the Penton man of business. To keep up
Penton will tax every resource. We shall be rather poorer, my wife
thinks, than we have been at the Hook; and as for the girls--”
“Do you mean that that’s all?” cried the young man. “You don’t make
any--other objection? What do you think I’m made of? I don’t want any
money, Sir Edward. Money! when there is Miss Penton--Ally, if I may call
her so. How shall I ever thank you enough? I have plenty of money; it’s
not money I want, it’s--it’s--”
Words failed him: he stood and swung Sir Edward’s hand, who looked not
without a glow of pleasurable feeling at this young fellow who beamed
with gratitude and delight. It is never unpleasant to confer so great a
favor. This had not been generally the position in which fate had placed
Edward Penton. It had been usually the other way. He had received few
blessings, even from the beggars, having so little to give; but an
emperor could not have conferred a greater gift than his daughter, a
spotless little princess of romance, a creature altogether good and fair
and sweet. He felt the water come into his eyes out of that simple sense
of munificence and liberal generosity. “I think,” he said, “you’re a
good fellow, Rochford, and that you’ll be good to little Ally. She’s too
young for anything of the kind, but her mother sees no objection. And
she ought to know best.”