Читать книгу A Poor Gentleman - Mrs. Oliphant - Страница 7

They all looked for the first time at the grand operation of nature which was going on in the western sky. The heavens were all aglow with lines of crimson and purple, the blue spaces of the great vault above retiring in light ineffable far beyond the masses of cloud, which took on every tinge of color, preserving their own high purity and charms of infinitude. The great plain below lay silent underneath like a breathless spectator of that great, ever-recurring drama, the river gathering up fragments of the glory and flashing back an answer here and there in its windings wherever it was clear of the earthly obstructions of high banks and trees. Something of the same radiance flashed in miniature from the young eyes that with one accord turned and looked—but for a moment and no more. They noted the sunset in a parenthesis, by a momentary inference; what they had sought was Penton, with all its human interests. And then they turned again and faced the north, where lay their poor little home and the lowliness of the present, to which neither the sunset nor any other glory lent a charm.

“You are the eldest son,” said Anne, resuming without a pause; “that’s all about it. That makes everything different. Suppose it is right—or at least not wrong—for you to loaf about. But Osy hasn’t got Penton; he has got to make himself a name. If he is stopped in his education, what is he to do? You ought to speak to father; we all ought to make a stand. If Osy is stopped in his education it is quite different. What is he to do?”

“Father would never stop his education if he could afford it. It is the money. If we could only give up something. But what is there we can give up? Sugar and butter count for so little,” said Ally, in soft tones of despair.

“I should not mind,” said Anne, “if we did not get anything new for years.”

“We so seldom have anything new,” her sister said, with a sigh; there was so little to economize in this way. All the savings they could think of would not make up half the sum that had to be paid for Osy. Their young spirits were crushed under this thought. What could they do? The girls, as has been said, had answered a great many of those advertisements which offer occupation to ladies; they had tried to make beaded lace and to paint Christmas cards. Alas! that, like the butter and sugar, counted for so little. They might as well try to make use of the colors of the sunset as to make up Osy’s schooling in that way: and Wat was even more helpless than they. It was so discouraging a prospect that no one could say a word. They walked down with their faces to the grayness and dimness from whence night was coming, and their hopes, like the light, seemed to be dying away.

It was Anne, always the most quick to note everything that happened, who broke the silence. “What is that,” she cried, “at our door? Look there, wheeling in just under the lime-trees!”

“A carriage! Who can it be?”

“The Penton carriage! Don’t you see the two bays? Something must be up!” cried Walter, a flash of keen curiosity kindling in his eyes.

They stopped for a moment and looked at each other with a sudden thrill of expectation.

“No one has been to see us from Penton for years and years.”

“The carriage would not come for nothing!”

“It has been sent perhaps to fetch father!”

They hurried down with one accord, full of excitement and wonder and awe.