Part 14 (1/2)

So Mr. Penfold had his own way, and carried off Mabel wild with delight and excitement upon the day after he had received Mrs.

Conway's letter. There was no shade of embarra.s.sment in the meeting between Mrs. Conway and the man who had once been her lover. It was like two old and dear friends who had long been separated and now come together again. Mr. Penfold's first words after introducing Mabel had reference to Ralph.

”Your boy has grown quite a man, Mary, in the last six months. I scarcely recognized the bronzed young fellow who met vis at the coach office as the lad who was down with me in the summer. Don't you see the change, Mabel?”

”Yes, he is quite different,” the girl said. ”Why, the first time I saw him he was as shy as shy could be. It was quite hard work getting on with him. Now he seems quite a man.”

”Nothing like that yet, Mabel,” Ralph protested.

”Not a man!” Mr. Penfold exclaimed. ”What! after wandering about as a pirate, capturing s.h.i.+ps, and cutting men's throats for anything I know, and taking part in all sorts of atrocities? I think he's ent.i.tled to think himself very much a man.”

Ralph laughed.

”Not as bad as that, Mr. Penfold. They did take one s.h.i.+p, but I had nothing to do with it; and there were no throats cut. I simply made a voyage out and back as a boy before the mast; and, as far as I hare been concerned, the s.h.i.+p might have been a peaceful trader instead of a French privateer.”

”Well, Mary, you have not changed much all these years,” Mr. Penfold said turning to Mrs. Conway, while the two young people began to talk to each other. ”I had thought you would be much more changed; but time has treated you much more kindly than it has me. You are thirty-seven, if I remember right, and you don't look thirty. I am forty, and look at the very least ten years older.”

Mrs. Conway did not contradict him, for she could not have done so with truth.

”You are changed, Herbert; a great deal changed,” she said sadly, ”although I should have know you anywhere. You are so much thinner than when I saw you last; but your eyes have not changed, nor your smile. Of course your hair having got gray makes a difference, and--and--” and she stopped.

”I am changed altogether, Mary. I was a headstrong, impetuous young fellow then. I am a fragile and broken man now. But I am happy to meet you again. Very happy in the thought that I can benefit your son. I have an interest in life now that I wanted before; and in spite of my being anxious about Ralph while he was away, have been happier for the last six months than I have been for seventeen years past.” Mrs.

Conway turned away to conceal the tears that stood in her eyes, and a moment later said:

”I am a most forgetful hostess, Mabel. I have not even asked you to take off your things. Please come along and let me show you your room.

Supper will be ready in a minute or two, and here are we stopping and forgetting that you and Mr. Penfold must be almost famished.”

As soon as they had sat down to supper, Mr. Penfold said. ”By the way, Ralph, I have a piece of news for you. We stopped a couple of days, you know, in town, and I saw my friend at the Horse Guards, and had a chat about you. He seemed to think that you would be better if you were a few months older; but as he acknowledged that many commissions had been given to lads under sixteen, and as you had just arrived at that age, and as I told him you have had no end of experience with pirates and buccaneers, and all that sort of thing, he was silenced, and your commission will appear in the next _Gazette_.”

”Oh, Mr. Penfold!” Ralph exclaimed as he leaped from his seat in delight. ”I am obliged to you. That is glorious. I hardly even hoped I could get a commission for some months to come. Don't look sad, mother,” he said, running round and kissing her. ”I shan't be going out of England yet, you know; and now the war is over you need have no fear of my getting killed, and a few months sooner or later cannot make much difference.”

”I shall bear it in time, Ralph,” his mother said, trying to smile through her tears. ”But it comes as a shock just at first.”

The sight of his mother's tears sobered Ralph for a time, and during supper the conversation was chiefly supported by Mr. Penfold, who joked Ralph about his coming back in a few years a general without arms or legs; and was, indeed, so cheerful and lively that Mabel could scarcely believe her ears, so wholly unlike was he to the quiet friend she had known as long as she could remember. The next fortnight was a delightful one to Mabel, and indeed to all the party. Every day they went driving-excursions through the country round. Ramsgate and Deal and Folkestone were visited, and they drove over to Canterbury and spent a night there visiting the grand cathedral and the old walls.

The weather was too cold for the water, for Christmas was close at hand; but everything that could be done was done to make the time pa.s.s happily. Mrs. Conway exerted herself to lay aside her regrets at Ralph's approaching departure, and to enter into the happiness which Mr. Penfold so evidently felt. The day before their departure for town an official letter arrived for Ralph, announcing that he was gazetted into his majesty's 28th Regiment of foot, and that he was in one month's date from that of his appointment to join his regiment at Cork.

”Now, Miss Mabel,” Mr. Penfold said gayly, after the first talk over the commission was concluded, ”you will have for the future to treat Mr. Ralph Conway with the respect due to an officer in his majesty's service.”

”I don't see any change in him at present,” the girl said, examining Ralph gravely.

The boy burst into a laugh.

”Wait till you see him in uniform, Mabel,” Mr. Penfold went on. ”I am afraid that respect is one of the moral qualities in which you are deficient. Still I think that when you see Ralph in his uniform, you will be struck with awe.”

”I don't think so,” Mabel said, shaking her head. ”I don't think he will frighten me, and I feel almost sure that he won't frighten the Frenchmen.”

”My dear child,” Mr. Penfold said gravely, ”you don't know what Ralph is going to turn out yet. When you see him come back from the wars seven or eight inches taller than he is now, with great whiskers, and perhaps three or four ornamental scars on his face, you will be quite shocked when you reflect that you once treated this warrior as a playfellow.”