Margaret Oliphant
The Cuckoo in the Nest, v. 2/2

CHAPTER XXVI

Colonel Piercey had been walking up and down somewhat impatiently for some time, at the corner of the rose-garden where Osy had left him. The child had not then seen the lady at the window who asked who was that little boy; and this incident and the account of it, which Osy had hastened to give to his mother, had naturally occupied some time. He was not much accustomed to wait, and did not like it. And when he saw Margaret come slowly along, some half-hour after he had sent, what he felt was a very respectful message to her, asking her to allow him a few minutes’ conversation, the curious opposition and sense of inevitable hostility which he felt towards his cousin, was sharpened into a keen feeling of resentment. She had held him at bay all along, never treated him with confidence or friendliness; and if she chose to affect fine-lady airs of coyness and pride now! It was quite unconsciously to himself, and he was by nature a man full of generosity, who would have been more astonished than words could say, had he been charged with presuming upon adverse circumstances; and yet he was far more angry with Margaret in her dependent position than he would have been with any woman more happily situated. He felt that she, as women he believed generally did, was disposed to stand upon the superiority of being at so great a disadvantage, and to claim consideration from the very fact that she got it from no one. Why should she bear the spurns of all the unworthy, and mount upon that pedestal of patient merit to him? It was not that he felt it natural to treat her badly because other people did, but because the fact that other people did, gave her the opportunity of assuming that it would be the same with him. He would have liked to take her by the shoulders and shake out of her that aspect of injury, without knowing that he dared not have entertained that fierce intention towards any one who was not injured. Finally, he watched her coming towards him slowly, showing her reluctance in every step, with an impatience and disinclination to put up with it, which was almost stronger than any feeling of personal opposition he had ever felt in his life. She said, before she had quite come up to him: “I am sorry I have kept you waiting. Osy has only given me your message now.”

It was on his lips to say: “You are not sorry to have kept me waiting!” but he subdued that impulse. A man like Colonel Piercey cannot give a woman the lie direct, unless in very serious circumstances indeed. He replied stiffly: “I fear I have taken a great liberty in asking you to meet me here at all.”

Margaret answered only with a faint smile and wave of her hand, which seemed to Colonel Piercey to say as plainly as words: “Everybody offers me indignity; why not you, too?” which, perhaps, was not very far from the fact; though she was a great deal too proud to have ever said, or even implied, anything of the kind. He answered his own supposition hotly, by saying: “I know no other place where we should be safe from interruption, and I thought it my duty to – speak to you about the new condition of affairs.”

“Yes?” said Margaret. “I am afraid I have very little light to throw on the position; but I shall be glad to hear what you have to say.”

All that he said in the meantime was, with some resentment: “You don’t seem so much startled by what has happened as I should have supposed.”

“I was much startled to see Patty – I mean the person whom we must now call Mrs. Gervase – at the funeral. But of course, after that, one was prepared for all the rest. I don’t know that I had much reason to be startled even at that. From the moment we found that she was absent while he was absent, I ought to have, and indeed I did, divine what must have occurred. However sure one is of such a thing, it is startling, all the same, when one comes to see it actually accomplished; but I ought not to say more than that.”

“You take it with much philosophy,” Colonel Piercey said.

“Do you think so? I should be glad to think I was so strong-minded; for there is probably no one to whom it will make so much difference as to me.”

“That is why I felt that I must speak to you. Can nothing be done to prevent this?”

“To prevent what?” she said, with some surprise.

“The reign of this woman over Uncle Giles’ house, in Aunt Piercey’s place! It is too intolerable; it is enough to make the old lady rise from her grave.”

“Poor old Aunt Piercey! She has been taken away from the evil to come. I am glad that she is dead, and has not had this to bear.”

“I suppose women have tears at their will,” cried Colonel Piercey, bursting forth in an impatience which he could restrain no longer. “She was not so kind to you that you should feel so tenderly for her.”

“How do you know she was not kind to me? She was natural, at all events,” cried Margaret. “It has all been quite natural up to this time; I went away and I came back, and whatever happened to me, I was at home. But you, Colonel Piercey, you are not natural. I have no right to accept contumely at your hands. You came here with a suspicion of Heaven knows what in your mind; you thought I had some design: what was the design which you suspected me of having against the happiness of this household? I warned you that you should have some time or other to explain what you meant – to me.”

Colonel Piercey stood confronting her among the roses which formed so inappropriate a background, and did not know what reply to make. He had not expected that assault. Answer to a man for whatever you have said or seemed to say, and whatever may lie behind, that is simple enough; but to explain your injurious thoughts to a woman, who does not even soften the situation by saying that she has no one to protect her – that is a different matter. He grew red, and then grew grey. He had no more notion what to answer to her than he had what it was, actually and as a matter of fact, that he had suspected. He had not suspected anything. He had felt that a woman like this could never have accepted the position of dependence, unless – That such a person must be a dangerous and hostile force – that she had wrongs to redress, a position to make – how could he tell? It had been instinctive, he had never known what he thought.

“Cousin Meg – ” he said, hesitating.

“From the moment,” she said indignantly, “in which you set me up as a schemer and designing person in the home that sheltered me, these terms of relationship have been worse than out of place.”

Poor Colonel Piercey! He was as far from being a coward as a man could be. If he did not write V.C. after his name, it was, perhaps, because the opportunity had not come to him of acquiring that distinction; he was the kind of man of which V.C.'s are made. But now, no expedient, save that of utter cowardice, occurred to him; for the first time in his life he ran away.

“I am very sorry you will not accord me these terms,” he said, meekly; “I don’t understand what you accuse me of. I think you a schemer and designing person! how could I? If you will excuse me, there is no sense in such a suggestion. Unless I had been a fool – and I hope, at least, that you don’t consider me a fool – how could I have thought anything of the kind? You must think me either mad or an idiot,” he went on, gaining a little courage. “I came here with no suspicions. I have been angry,” he added, turning his head away, “to see my cousin, Meg Piercey, at everybody’s beck and call, and to see how careless they were of you, and how exacting, and how – ”

“All this,” said Margaret, with surprise, “should have made you look upon me with compassion instead of something like insult.”

“Oh, compassion,” he cried, “to you! I should have thought that the worst insult of all. You are not a person to be pitied. However I may have offended, I have always felt that – ”

The end of this statement was part of the process of running away. Indeed, he was very much frightened, and felt the falseness of his position extremely. He had not a word to say for himself. To upbraid her – at a moment when her home, her last shelter, was probably about to be taken from her, and herself thrown upon the world with her helpless child – he, perhaps, being the only person who had any right to help her – was the most impossible thing in the world. And though his opinion had no time or occasion to have changed, it had always been an opinion founded upon nothing. A more curious state of mind could scarcely be. He was dislodged from his position at the point of Margaret’s sword, so to speak. And he had never had any ground for that position, or right to have assumed it; and yet he was still there in mind, though in word and profession he had run away. Margaret did not understand this complicated state of mind. She was half amused by the dismay in his face, by his too swift and complete change of front. The amende which he had made was as complete as any apology and confession could be, though it was an apology by implication, rather than a direct denial of blame. “How could I?” is different from “I did not.” But she did not dwell upon this.

“Of course,” she said, “I have no right not to accept what you say, though it is, perhaps, strangely expressed. And I scarcely know what there is I can explain to you. My aunt feared this that has taken place, before I did: she naturally thought less of her son’s deficiencies. She was so imprudent, as I thought it, as to warn the girl of things she would do to prevent it. I believe there was really nothing that could have been done to prevent it. And then she was equally imprudent in letting him go to town, and thus giving him the opportunity. She thought she could secure him by putting him in the hands of the clergyman, who never saw him at all. I feared very much how it would be, and poor Gervase was several times on the point of betraying himself. Perhaps, if I had sought his confidence – But his mother would not have paid any attention to what I could say. And I don’t know what could have been done to prevent it.”

“Why, he is next to an idiot!”

“Oh no,” cried Margaret, half offended. “Gervase is not an idiot. He has gleams of understanding, quite – almost, as clear as any one. He knows what he wants, and though you may think his mind has no steadiness, you will find he always comes back to his point. He has a kind of cleverness, even, at times. Oh no; Aunt Piercey examined into all that. They could not make him out incapable of managing his own affairs. To be sure, he has not had any to manage up to this time. And now that he has this sharp Patty behind him,” said Margaret, with a half smile —

“Then you think nothing can be done?”

“What could be done? You could not do anything in Uncle Giles’ lifetime to turn his only child out of his inheritance.”

“It is you,” said Colonel Piercey, “who are imputing intentions now. I had no such idea. I think my business as next-of-kin is to defend the poor fellow. But the woman; that is a different thing.”

“The woman is his wife. I don’t want to assume any unnatural impartiality. But, after all, is he likely ever to have had a better wife? I believe she will be an excellent wife to Gervase. One of his own class, I hope, would not have married him.”

“Why do you say, ‘I hope?’ Is that not worse than anything that could be said?”

“Perhaps,” said Margaret. “Poor Gervase is not an idiot, but neither is he just like other people. And a girl might have been driven into it, and then might have found – ” She added, with a little shiver, “It is the best thing that could have happened for him to marry Patty. I hate it, of course. How could I do otherwise? But as far as he himself is concerned – ”

“You are a great philosopher, Cousin Meg.”

“Do you think so?” Half resentful as she was, and not more than half satisfied with Colonel Piercey’s explanations, he was yet the only person in the world to whom she could speak with freedom; and it was a relief to her. “She will look after Uncle Giles’ comfort, and he will get to like her,” she continued. “She will rule the household with a rod of iron.” Margaret laughed, though her face settled down the next moment into a settled gravity. “They will have no society, but they will not want it. She will keep them amused. Perhaps it is the best thing that could have happened,” she said.

“And you? and the boy?” He stopped and looked at her standing among the roses, which were very luxuriant in the last climax of maturity, full blown, shedding their leaves, just about to topple over from that height of life into the beginning of decay. Margaret had no trace of decay about her, but she, too, was in the full height of life, the fulfilment of promise, standing at the mezzo di cammin, and full of all capabilities. She did not look up at him, but answered with a half-smile, —

“I – and the boy? We are not destitute. Perhaps it will be better for us both to set out together, and live our own life.”

“You are not destitute? I hope you will pardon me. After what you think my conduct has been, you may say I have no right – ”

Margaret smiled in spite of herself.

“But you say that your conduct has been – not what I thought.”

“Yes, yes, that is so: I have not been such a fool. Cousin Meg, we were great friends in the old days.”

“Not such very great friends – no more than girls and boys are when they are not specially attached to each other.”

He thought that she intended to give him a little prick with one of those thorns which the matured rose still keeps upon its stalk; and he felt the prick, which, being still more mature than she, he ought not to have done.

“I think it was a little more than that,” he said, in a slight tone of pique; “but anyhow – we are cousins.”

“Very distant cousins.”

“Distant cousins,” he cried, impatiently, “are near when there are no nearer between. We are of the same blood, at least. You want to push me away, to make me feel I have nothing to do with it; but that can’t be so long as you are Meg Piercey – ”

“Margaret Osborne at your service,” she said, gravely. “Forgive me, Cousin Gerald. It is true, we have had enough of this tilting. I don’t doubt for a moment that you would give me a helping hand if you could; that you wish me well, and especially,” she added, lifting her eyes with a half reproach, half gratitude in them, “the boy – as you call him.”

“What could I call him but the boy?” said Colonel Piercey, with a sort of exasperation. “Yes, I don’t deny it, it was of him I wanted to speak. He is a delightful boy – he is full of faculty and capacity, and one could make anything of him. Let me say quite sincerely what I think. You are not destitute; but you are not rich enough to give him the best of everything in the way of education, as – as – don’t slay me with a flash of lightning – as I could. Now I have said it! If you would trust him to me!”

She had looked, indeed, for a moment as if her eyes could give forth lightning enough to have slain any man standing defenceless before her; but then these eyes softened with hot tears. She kept looking at the man, explaining himself with such difficulty, putting forth his offer of kindness as if it were some dreadful proposition, with a gradual melting of the lines in her face. When he threw a hasty glance at her at the end of his speech, she seemed to him a woman made of fire, shedding light about her in an astonishing transfiguration such as he had never seen before.

“This,” she said, in a low voice, “is the most terrible demonstration of my poverty and helplessness that has ever been made to me – and the most awful suggestion, as of suicide and destruction.”

“Meg!”

“Don’t, don’t interrupt me! It is: I have never known how little good I was before. I don’t know now if it will kill me, or sting me to life; but all the same,” she cried, her lip quivering, “you are kind, and I thank you with all my heart! and I will promise you this: If I find, as you think, that, whatever I may do, I cannot give my Osy the education he ought to have, I will send and remind you of your offer. I hope you will have children of your own by that time, and perhaps you will have forgotten it.”

“I shall not forget it; and I am very unlikely to have children of my own.”

“Anyhow, I will trust you,” she said, “and I thank you with all my heart, though you are my enemy. And that is a bargain,” she said, holding out her hand.

Her enemy! Was he her enemy? And yet it seemed something else beside.

CHAPTER XXVII

While these scenes were going on, Mr. and Mrs. Gervase Piercey were very differently employed upstairs. When Patty had finished her tea, and when she had made the survey of the library, concerning which her conclusion was that these horrid bookcases must be cleared away, and that a full-length portrait of herself in the white satin which had not, yet ought to have been, her wedding-dress, would do a great deal for the cheerfulness of the room, she took her husband’s arm, and desired him to conduct her over the house. When Patty saw the drawing-room, which was very large, cold, and light in colour, with chairs and chandeliers in brown holland, she changed her mind about the library. She had not been aware of the existence of this drawing-room.

“This is where we shall sit, of course,” she said.

“Father can’t abide it,” said Gervase.

“Oh, your father is a very nice old gentleman. He will have to put up with it,” said the new lady of the house.

In imagination she saw herself seated there, receiving the county, and the spirit of Patty was uplifted. She felt, for the first time, without any admixture of disappointment, that here was her sphere. When she was taken upstairs, however, to Gervase’s room, she regarded it by no means with the same satisfaction. It was a large room, but sparsely furnished, in no respect like the luxurious bower she had imagined for herself.

“Take off my bonnet here!” she said: “no, indeed I sha’n’t. Why, there is not even a drapery to the toilet table. I have not come to Greyshott, I hope, to have less comfort than I had at home. There must be spare rooms. Take me to the best of the spare rooms.”

“There’s the prince’s room,” said Gervase, “but nobody sleeps there since some fellow of a prince – I can’t tell you what prince – And I haven’t got the keys; it’s Parsons that has got the keys.”

“You can call Parsons, I suppose. Ring the bell,” said Patty, seizing the opportunity to look at herself in the glass, though she surveyed the room with contempt.

“Lord!” cried Gervase. “Parsons, mother’s own woman – .” Then he threw himself down in his favourite chair with his hands in his pockets. “You can do it yourself. I’m not going to catch a scolding for you.”

“A scolding!” said Patty; “and who is going to scold you, you silly fellow, except me? I should like to see them try – Mrs. Parsons or Sir Giles, or any one. You can just say, ‘Speak to my wife.’”

“There’s mother, that you daren’t set up your face to. I say,” said Gervase; “Patty, what’s all this about mother? Mother’s – dead? She’ll never have a word to say about anything any more?”

“Dear mother!” said Patty. “You must always say dear mother, Gervase, now: I’m sure I should have loved her – but, you see, Providence never gave me the opportunity. No, she’ll never have a word to say: it’s me that will have everything to say. – Oh, you have answered the bell at last! Send Mrs. Parsons here.”

“Mrs. Parsons, ma’am – my lady?” the frightened little under-housemaid, who had been made to answer, said.

Patty gave her a gracious smile, feeling that at last she had found some one who understood what her claims were.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Ellen.”

“Well, Ellen, I like your looks, and I’ve no doubt we shall get on; but you needn’t call me my lady, not now, – for the present I am only Mrs. Gervase. Now, go and send Parsons here.”

“Oh, my lady, Mrs. Parsons! she’s in my old lady’s room. I daren’t disturb her, not for anything in the world; it would be as much as my place was worth.”

“I see you are only a little fool after all,” said Patty, with a frown. “Your place is just worth this much – whether you please me or not. Mrs. Parsons has as much power as – as that table. Goodness,” cried Patty, “what a state this house has been in, to be sure, when one servant is afraid of another! but I shall soon put an end to that. Call Parsons! let her come at once.”

The little housemaid came back while Patty still stood before the glass straightening the edge of her bonnet and arranging her veil.

“If you please, my lady, Mrs. Parsons is doing out my old lady’s drawers – and she has her head bent down, and I can’t make her hear.”

“I’ll make her hear,” cried Patty, with an impulse which belonged rather to her previous condition than to her present dignity; and she rushed along the corridor like a whirlwind, with her draperies flying. It was, doubtless, instinct or inspiration that directed her to the right door, while Gervase followed on her steps to see the fun, with a grin upon his face. He remembered only now and then, when something recalled it to him, that his mother was gone. He was not thinking of her now; nevertheless, when Patty burst into that room, he stood in the doorway dumb, the grin dying out from his face, and gave a scared look round as if looking for the familiar presence he had so often encountered there.

“You perhaps have not heard, Mrs. Parsons,” said Patty, with her sharp, decisive voice, “that I sent for you?”

Parsons had her head bent over the drawers. She said, without turning round, “That gaby, Ellen, said something about somebody wanting me”; and then began to count, – “Eight, nine, ten. Three dozen here and three dozen in the walnut wardrobe,” said Parsons; “that makes it just right.”

Patty’s curiosity overcame her resentment. She came forward and looked over Parsons’ shoulder. “Six dozen silk stockings,” she cried; “is that what you are counting? What a number for an old lady! and fine, too, and in good condition,” she said, putting her hand over the woman’s shoulder and bringing forth a handful. They were mingled white and black, and Patty looked upon them with covetous eyes.

“Who are you as takes such a liberty?” cried Parsons, springing to her feet. She found herself confronted by Patty’s very alert, firm figure and resolute countenance. Patty drew Lady Piercey’s silk stockings through her hands, looking at the size of them. She held them up by the toes to mark her sense of their enormous dimensions.

“I could put both my feet into one of them,” she said, reflectively, “so that they are no use to me. Oh, you are Parsons! Open the door, please, at once, of the best rooms. I want to settle down.”

The woman looked at the intruder with a mixture of defiance and fear. She turned to Gervase, appealing against the stranger. Many a time had Parsons put the Softy out of his mother’s room, bidding him be off and not aggravate my lady. But my lady was gone, and Gervase was the master, to do what he would; or, what was worse, it was Patty who was the mistress. Patty of the ale-house! Parsons looked at Gervase with an agonised appeal. “They’re your mother’s things,” she said; “Mr. Gervase, will you see them knock about your mother’s things?”

Patty’s eyes were in the drawer remarking everything, and those eyes sparkled and shone. What treasures were there! Not only silk stockings too big for her, but linen, and lace, and embroidered handkerchiefs, and silks, such as Patty had never seen before. She went to the drawers and closed them one after another.

“I see there are some nice things here,” she said. “We can’t have them turned over like this by a servant. Some servants expect their mistress’s things as their perquisites, but we can’t allow that in this house. Lock them up, lock them up at once, and I’ll take the keys.”

“The keys – my keys!” cried Parsons almost beside herself.

“The late Lady Piercey’s keys. I’ll take them, please, all of them. There’s a time for everything; and to go over my mother-in-law’s things the very day of her funeral is indecent – that is what it is, indecent; I can find no other word.”

“I’ll never give up my keys!” cried Parsons, “that my dear lady trusted me with – never, never!” And then she burst into tears, and flung them down on the floor at Gervase’s feet. “Take them all, then! all!” she cried; “I’ll not keep one of them! Oh, my dear old lady, what a good thing she has not lived to see this day! But it never would have happened had she been here. You never, never would have dared to lift up your little impudent face. – Oh, Mr. Gervase! oh, Mr. Gervase, save me from her! She’ll tear me to pieces!” Parsons cried. No doubt Patty’s look was fierce. The woman seized hold upon Gervase and swung herself out by him, keeping his limp person between her and his wife. “Don’t let her!” she cried, “don’t let her! in your own mother’s room.”

“Mrs. Parsons,” said Patty, over Gervase’s body as it were, “do you think I would soil my fingers by touching you? You thought you would rob the poor lady that’s dead, and that nobody would notice; but you did not know that I was here. Instead of rummaging Lady Piercey’s drawers, you had better empty your own, and get ready for leaving. Have all your accounts ready and your keys ready; you shall leave this house by twelve to-morrow,” Patty cried.

“Mr. Gervase, Mr. Gervase!” cried the unfortunate woman.

“I say, don’t you go and touch me, Parsons. I don’t mind your talking, but you sha’n’t go and finger me as if I was clothes from the wash,” said Gervase. He laughed at his own joke with enjoyment. “As if I was a basket of clothes from the wash,” he said.

“Shut the door upon her, Gervase. I don’t condescend to bandy words. – At twelve to-morrow,” Patty said.

Parsons went downstairs mad with fury, and was told the tale of the tea, and how John Simpson had got his dismissal, and was never to appear before that upstart more. “We had better all give warning afore she comes to the rest of us,” said cook. But it was a good place, with many perquisites, and as she spoke she exchanged with the butler a look of some anxiety. Perhaps they did not wish to present their accounts at a moment’s notice. Perhaps they only thought regretfully of their good place. Parsons had carried things with a high hand over the younger servants for years. She had not always even respected the susceptibilities of cook. She had been her mistress’s favourite and companion, doing, they all thought, very much what she liked with the internal economy of the house. No one had ventured to contradict, or even oppose, Lady Piercey’s factotum. It was not in human nature not to be pleased, more or less, that she had found some one to repay to her in a certain degree the little tyrannies of the past. “What would Mr. Dunning say?” was what everybody asked.

The house was, however, in great agitation as the hour of dinner approached, and the drama of the family was about to be exposed to the searching observation of that keen audience which waits at table, and which had all its faculties sharpened for this, its chief moment of spectatorship. To have this mode and period of watching the crisis of life in other human creatures, must be a great dédommagement for any ills that may pertain to domestic service in these days. It is as good as a play, nay, better, seeing that there is no simulation in the history that is worked out under our servants’ eyes. It was exciting to think, even, how many places should be laid at table; whether Patty, whose new dignity had not been formally announced to any one, and, who, for anything they knew, might shrink from appearing in the midst of the family, unsupported – might not withdraw from the ordeal of the common meal, or be too much overcome with grief to come downstairs. Patty’s mind was greatly exercised on the same subject. She had chosen from among the unoccupied rooms those which pleased her best, which were not, however, the prince’s rooms, but a suite adjoining which took her fancy, the size and the fittings of which, however, suggested innumerable new ideas to a mind open and eager to receive every indication of what was suitable to her new state. For one thing, they were lined with prodigious wardrobes: miles, Patty said to herself with awe, of old dark, gleaming, mahogany doors, behind which were pegs and shelves innumerable, to contain the dresses of the inhabitant. Patty could count hers – and only two, or at most, three of these were fit for the use of Mrs. Gervase Piercey – on one hand; and the long range of empty space at once depressed and excited her – a vacancy that must be filled. In like manner, the large dressing-table had drawers for jewellery, of which Patty had none. And in this great space, where her little figure was visible in glimpses in two or three tall mirrors, there was such evident need of a maid, that her alert spirit was overawed by the necessity. Then she had nothing that was needful for the toilet: no shoes, not even a fresh handkerchief to dry those tears, which were ready to come at the mention of her dear mother-in-law’s name. The temptation to return to that dear mother-in-law’s room, and equip herself with those articles which lay there in such abundance, and which certainly, it would harm no one to make use of, was very strong. But Patty was half-afraid, half-conscious, that on this evening, at least, it would be unwise so to compromise herself. It was not an evening, she reflected, for full dress, and her mourning would be an excuse for everything. What a wise inspiration that had been, to cover her old dress with crape! Patty undid a hook or two, and folded in the corners of her bodice at the neck. It showed the whiteness of that throat, and gave an indication that she knew what was required in polite society. And she drew on again with some difficulty, over hands which were not quite so presentable, the black gloves, which had not borne the strain of the morning, the heat, and the affliction, so well as might have been desired. Before doing this, however, she had written, by a sudden inspiration, a note to Sally Fletcher, requesting her to come to Greyshott at once with Mrs. Gervase Piercey’s “things,” and to remain as her maid till further orders. And then she took her husband’s arm, and went solemnly downstairs.

Colonel Piercey was lingering in the hall, much at a loss what to do. Margaret had not yet appeared. The butler stood at the door of the dining-room, with Robert, not John Simpson, at his side. Patty knew that it was correct and proper for the party to assemble first in the drawing-room, but she waived that ceremony for to-night. She came downstairs very audibly, describing to Gervase what she intended to do.

“I can’t bear the gloomy library,” she said. “I don’t mean to sit in it. We must have the real drawing-room made fit to live in. But all that will want a little time, and, of course, your dear papa must be consulted. I would not for the world interfere with his little ways.”

“Where’s father? ain’t he coming to dinner?” said Gervase, breaking into this speech, which the audience for which it was intended had already heard, noted, and inwardly digested.

“No, Mr. Gervase. Mr. Dunning things as Sir Giles ’as ’ad enough excitement for to-day.”

“Well,” said Patty, “I don’t think much of Dunning after his neglect, but he’s right in that. I should have said so myself had it been referred to me. Early to bed and kept quite quiet – that is the only thing for your poor dear papa. Are we waiting for any one?” she said, looking round with majesty. J’ai failli attendre. Patty had never heard these words, but they were written on her face.

There was silence in the hall. Colonel Piercey had turned round from the engraving which he had been examining with quite unnecessary minuteness; but as he did not know either of the strange couple who by a sudden transformation had become his hosts, it was not possible that he could give any explanations; and the butler, who had not the training of a master of the ceremonies, and who had begun to shake in his shoes before that personage who, in her day, had drawn beer for him at the Seven Thorns – who had dismissed the great Parsons, and accused the greater Dunning of neglect – remained dumb, shifting from one foot to another, looking helplessly in front of him. He ventured at last to say, with trepidation, that “Mrs. Osborne, if you please, is just coming downstairs.”

“Oh, Mrs. Osborne!” said Patty, and swept into the room. She stood looking for a moment at the expanse of the table laid with five places – one of them unnecessary. “I suppose I had better take my own proper place at once without ceremony,” she said, with an airy gesture, half to Colonel Piercey, half to the butler. “And, Gervase, as your father isn’t here, you had better sit in his place. We must make another arrangement when Sir Giles is able to come to table. Oh, Margaret Osborne! Is that where she sits? And here she is! I don’t say anything, for we are a little unpunctual ourselves to-night. But I must warn you all that I am generally exact to the minute, and I never wait for anybody,” Patty said.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It may easily be supposed that there was not much conversation at the table thus surrounded. Colonel Piercey and Margaret Osborne sat opposite to each other, but concealed from each other by the huge bouquet of flowers which occupied the central place; and neither of them, in the shock and strangeness of the occasion, found a word to say. They were both paralysed, so to speak, by the unimaginable circumstances in which they found themselves, overwhelmed with an amazement which grew as the meal went on. Gervase, in his father’s seat, ate voraciously, and laughed a good deal, but said little. Patty was mistress of the occasion. One glance of keen observation had shown her that Mrs. Osborne’s dress was not even open at the throat; it was not covered with crape. It was the simplest of black gowns, with no special sign of “deep” mourning, such as on the evening of a funeral ought to have been indispensable. If Patty had ever entertained any doubt of herself it now vanished. It was she who was fulfilling all the duties necessary. The others were but outsiders. She had secured triumphantly her proper seat and sphere.

“It is unfortunate for us, Gervase,” she said, “to come home on such a sad day; and to think we knew nothing of all the dreadful things that were going on till we learned it all with a shock when we arrived! It is true, we were moving about on our wedding-tour; but still, if the house hadn’t been filled with those as – that – didn’t wish us well, we might have been called back; and you, dear, might have had the mournful satisfaction – ”

“You always said, Patty,” said Gervase, “that you would stay a week away.”

“And to think of my poor dear mother-in-law looking for us, holding out her poor arms to us – and us knowing nothing,” said Patty, drying her eyes – “as if there were no telegraphs nor railways! Which makes it very sad for us to come home now; but I hope your dear father, Gervase, if he’s rightly watched and done for, won’t be any the worse. Oh, I hope not! it would be too sad. That Dunning, who has been thought so much of, does not seem to me at all fit for his place. To think of him to-day, such an agitating day, with nothing to give his master! I shall take the liberty of superintending Mr. Dunning in future,” Patty said.

Gerald Piercey and Margaret Osborne ate what was set before them humbly, without raising their eyes. They were ridiculously silenced and reduced to subjection; even if they could have encouraged each other with a glance it would have been something, but they had not even that alleviation. What to say! They were ignored as completely as if they had been two naughty children. Gervase, more naughty still, but in favour, took advantage by behaving himself as badly as possible. He made signs to the butler to pour him out wine with a liberal hand, and gobbled his food in great mouthfuls. “I say, Meg,” he whispered, putting his hand before his mouth, “don’t tell! she can’t see me!” while his wife’s monologue ran on; and then he interrupted it with one of those boisterous laughs by which the Softy was known.

“What is it?” Patty cried sharply from the head of the table.

“Meg knows – Meg and me knows,” cried Gervase from the other end.

“I must request,” said Patty, “Margaret Osborne, that you will not make my husband forget, with your jokes, what day it is. You mayn’t think it, perhaps, for my poor dear mother-in-law was not very kind to me – but I feel it to be a very solemn day. And you may be very witty and very clever, though you don’t show it to me – but I won’t have laughing and nonsense at my table on poor dear Lady Piercey’s funeral day.”

What was Margaret to do? She could not defend herself from so grotesque an accusation. She looked up with some quick words on her lips, but did not say them. It was intolerable, but it was at the same time ludicrous; a ridiculous jest, and yet the most horribly, absurdly serious catastrophe in the world.

“The laughing seems all on your husband’s side,” said Colonel Piercey, unable to refrain.

“Oh!” said Patty, fixing upon him a broad stare: and then she, too, permitted herself a little laugh. “It’s the strangest thing,” she said, “and I can’t help seeing it’s ridiculous – though laughing is not in my mind, however it may be in other people’s, on such a day – here’s a gentleman sitting at my table, and everybody knows him but me.”

“I don’t know him,” cried Gervase, “not from Adam; unless it’s Gerald Piercey, the soldier fellow that mother was so full of before I went off to get married: though nobody knew I was going to get married,” he said, with a chuckle, “except little Osy, that gave me – I say, where’s little Osy, Meg?”

“I hope,” said Patty severely, “that children are not in the habit of being brought down here after dinner as they are in some places. It’s such bad style, and, I’m thankful to say, it’s going out of fashion. It’s a thing as I could not put up with here.”

“Send some one upstairs,” said Margaret, in a low voice to the footman who was standing by her, “to say that Master Osy is not to come down.”

“What are you saying to the servant? I don’t want to be disagreeable,” said Patty, “but I object to a servant being sent away from his business. Oh, if the child comes usually, let him come, but it must be for the last time.”

“If I may go myself,” said Margaret, half rising, “that will be the most expeditious way.”

“Not before you have finished your dinner,” cried Patty; “oh, don’t, pray. I should be quite distressed if you didn’t have your dinner. And you had no tea. I know some ladies have trays sent upstairs. But I can’t tolerate such a habit as having trays upstairs: so for goodness’ sake, Margaret Osborne, sit still and finish your dinner here.”

Colonel Piercey moved his chair a little; he managed to look beyond the bouquet at Margaret, sitting flushed and indignant, yet incapable of completing the absurdity of the situation by a scene at table before the servants. Colonel Piercey had run through all the gamut of astonishment, anger, and confusion; he had arrived at pure amusement now. The momentary interchange of glances made the situation possible, and it was immediately and unexpectedly ameliorated by the melodramatic appearance of Dunning behind in the half-darkness at the door.

“Mr. Gervase, if you please, Sir Giles is calling for you,” the man said.

Patty sprang up from her seat. “Sir Giles? the dear old gentleman! Oh, I foresaw this! He is ill, he is ill! Come, Gervase!” she cried.

“Not a bit,” said Gervase; “it’s only Dunning’s way. He likes to stop you in the middle of your dinner. There’s nothing the matter with the governor, Dunning, eh?”

“There’s just this, that he’s a-calling for Mr. Gervase, and not no other person,” Dunning said, with slow precision.

“Well, I’m Mrs. Gervase; I’m the same as Mr. Gervase. Come, come, don’t let’s lose a moment! Moments are precious!” cried Patty, rushing to her husband and snatching him out of his chair, “in his state of health and at his age.”

Margaret and the Colonel were left alone, but the fear of the servants was upon them. They did not venture to say anything to each other. They were helped solemnly to the dish which had begun to go round, and for a moment sat in silence like two mutes, with the inexorable bouquet between them. Then Colonel Piercey said, in very bad French, “This is worse than I feared. What are we to do?”

“I shall go to my room to Osy before she comes back.”

“I have no Osy to go to,” he said with a short laugh. “What a strange scene! stranger than any in a book. I am glad to have seen it once in a way.”

“Not glad, I hope,” said Margaret. “Sorry for Uncle Giles and all the rest. But she is not so bad as that. No, no, she is not. You don’t see – she wants to assert all her rights, to show you and me how strong she is, and how she scorns us. On ordinary occasions she is not like this.”

“You are either absurdly charitable in your thoughts, or else you want to throw dust in my eyes, Cousin Meg.”

“Nothing of the kind; I do neither. It is quite true. She is not bad in character at all. She will be kind to Uncle Giles, and probably improve his condition. We have all had a blind confidence in Dunning, and perhaps he doesn’t deserve it. She wants to get Uncle Giles into her own hands, and she will do so. But he will not suffer; I am sure of it.”

“Poor old gentleman! It is hard to be old, to be handed from one to another. And will he accept it?” Colonel Piercey said.

“She will be very nice and kind, and she is young and pretty.”

“Oh, not – not that!”

“You are prejudiced, Cousin Gerald. She is pretty when you see her in her proper aspect, and there can be no doubt she is young. Her voice is nice and soft. It is almost like a lady’s voice. Hush! I think I hear her coming back!” Margaret rose hurriedly. “Please say to Mrs. Piercey, Robert, that I am tired, and have gone to my room.”

“Let me come too,” said Gerald Piercey, following her into the hall. “I shall go away to-morrow, of course – and you, what are you going to do?”

“I cannot go to-morrow. I shall have to wait – until I am turned out, or till I can go.”

“I wish you would come with me to my father’s, where you would be most welcome: and he is a nearer relative than I am.”

“Thank you; you go too far,” said Margaret. “To think me a scheming woman only this morning, and at night to offer me a new home, where I might scheme and plot at my leisure? No, I will do that no more: I will go to nobody. We are not destitute.”

“Meg! will you remember that you have nobody nearer to you than my father and me?”

“But I have,” she said, “on my mother’s side, and on my husband’s side. We shall find relations wherever we go.”

He answered by an impatient exclamation. “There is one thing, at least, on which we made a bargain a few hours since,” he said.

The lamp in the hall did not give a good light. It was one of the things which Patty changed in the first week of her residence at Greyshott. It threw a very faint illumination on Margaret Osborne’s face. And she did not say anything to make her meaning clear. She did nothing but hold out her hand.

Patty, meanwhile, had made her way, pushing her husband before her, to Sir Giles’ door. She pushed him inside with an earnest whisper. “Go in, and talk to him nicely. Be very nice to him, as nice as ever you can be. Mind, I’m listening to you, and presently I’ll come in, too.”

The room was closely shut up, though it was a warm night, and scarcely dark as yet, and Sir Giles sat in his chair with a tray upon the table beside him. But he had pushed away his soup. His large old face was excited and feverish, his hands performing a kind of tattoo upon his chair. “Are you there, my boy? are you there, Gervase?” he said. “Come in, come in and talk to me a little. I’m left all alone. I have nobody with me but servants. Where’s – where’s all the family? Your poor mother’s gone, I know, and we’ll never see her any more. But where’s everybody? Where’s – where’s everybody?” the old gentleman said with his unsteady voice.

“I’m here, father, all right,” Gervase said.

“Sir Giles, sir, he’s fretting for company, and his game, and all that; but he ain’t fit for it, Mr. Gervase, he ain’t fit for it. He have gone through a deal to-day.”

“I’ll play your game, father. I’m here all right,” Gervase repeated. “Come, get out the table, you old humbug, and we’ll throw the men and the dice about. I’m ready, father; I’m always ready,” he said.

“No, no,” said Sir Giles, pushing the table away; “I don’t want any game. I’m a sad, lonely old man, and I want somebody to talk to. Gervase, sit down there and talk to me. Where have you been all this long time, and your mother, your poor mother, wanting you? What have you been doing? You can go, Dunning; I don’t want you now. I want to talk to my boy. Gervase, what have you been doing, and why didn’t you come home?”

“I’ve been – getting married, father,” said Gervase, grinning from ear to ear. “I would have told you, but she wouldn’t let me tell you. She thought you might have put a stop to it. A fellow wants to be married, father, when he’s my age.”

“And who has married you?” said the father, going on beating with his tremulous fingers as though keeping time to some music. “Who has married you, my poor boy? It can’t be any great match, but we couldn’t expect any great match. I saw – a young woman: I thought she was – that I had somehow seen her before.”

“Well, she’s – why, she’s just married to me, father. She’s awful proud of her new name. She signed her letter – for I saw it – Mrs. Gervase Piercey, as if she hadn’t got any other name.”

“She shouldn’t do that, though,” said the old man, “she’s Mrs. Piercey, being the son’s wife, the next heir. If Gerald had a wife, now, she’d be Mrs. Gerald, but not yours. I’m afraid she can’t know much about it. Gervase, your poor mother was struck very suddenly. She always feared you were going to do something like that, and she had somebody in her mind, but she was never able to tell me who it was. Gervase, I hope it is somebody decent you have married, now your poor mother isn’t here.”

“Oh, yes, father; awfully decent,” said Gervase, with his great laugh. “She would have given it to any one that wasn’t civil. She was one that kept you on and kept you off, and as clever as Old Boots himself, and up to – ”

Patty had listened to this discussion till her patience was quite worn out. She had waited for a favourable moment to introduce herself, but she could not stand and hear this description, so far beneath her merits as she felt it to be. She came in with a little rush of her skirts, not disagreeable to the old man, who looked up vaguely expectant, to see her sweep round the corner of the large screen that shielded him from the draught. “I must come and tell you myself who I am, Sir Giles,” she said. “I’m Patience; and though, perhaps, I shouldn’t say it, I’m one that will take care of that, and take care of the house, and see that you are not put upon by your servants, nor made to wait for anything, but have whatever you wish. And I’ll be a very good daughter to you, if you’ll let me, Sir Giles,” she said.

The old gentleman had passed a miserable week. First his wife’s illness, so dreadful and beyond all human commiseration, and then her death, and the gloom of the house, and the excitement of the funeral, and the neglect of everything that made life bearable to him. It is true, that his soup and his wine and whatever food was allowed to him were supplied regularly, and no actual breach of his comforts had occurred. But his room had been darkened, and his backgammon had been stopped, and there had been no cheerful faces round him. Even little Osy’s company had been taken away. The child had been stated to be “too much” for him. Parsons and Dunning had held him in their hands and administered him, and they were both determined that he should do and say nothing that was not appropriate to his bereaved condition. The old man was not insensible to his wife’s death. It brought into his mind that sense of utter desolation, that chill sensation of an approaching end, which is, alas! not more palatable in many cases to an old man than to a young one. And Parsons and Dunning both thought it the most appropriate thing for him to sit alone and think of his latter end. But Sir Giles was not of that opinion. His old life was strong in him, though it was hampered with so many troubles. He wanted, rather, to forget that death was waiting for him, too, round the next corner. Who could tell how far off that next corner might be? He wanted to forget, not to be shut up helplessly with that thought alone. And Mrs. Osborne, with all the prejudices and bonds of the household upon her, had not had courage to break through the lines which had been formed around her uncle. She had believed, as it was the law of the family to believe, that Sir Giles’ faithful attendant knew best. And thus it was, that when the young woman who was Gervase’s wife came boldly in – a young person who was not afraid of Dunning, a stranger bringing a little novelty, a little stir of something unaccustomed into his life – he looked up with a kind of light in his dull eye, and relief in his mind. “Oh! you are Patience, are you?” he said. “Patience! it is a queer sort of a name, and I think I remember to have heard it before.”

Oh, poor Miss Hewitt, in her red and yellow bonnet! If she had but known that this faint deposit of recollection was all that remained in her old lover’s mind!

“But I should like you to call me Patty, Sir Giles.” She went down on her knees at his feet, while the old gentleman looked on in wonder, not knowing what was going to happen. “You have not got that bandage quite straight,” she said, “and I’m sure you’re not so comfortable as you ought to be. I can put it on better than that. Look you here, Gervase, hold the candle, and in a minute I’ll settle it all right.”

Sir Giles was so much taken by surprise that he made no opposition; and he was amused and pleased by her silent movements, her soft touch and manipulation. The novelty pleased him, and the young head bent over his suffering foot, the pretty hair, the pleasant shape, were all much more gratifying than Dunning. He thought he was relieved, whether he was really so or not. And he was contented, and the spell of the gloom was broken. “But I’m not to be settled so easy as my foot,” he said. “How dared you to take and marry my boy here, Mrs. Patty, or whatever your name is, without saying a word to me?”

Mrs. Gervase Piercey, or Mrs. Piercey, as she henceforward called herself, walked that night into the great state-room in Greyshott – where Sally Fletcher awaited her, trembling, bringing Patty Hewitt’s small wardrobe roughly packed in one small box – with the air of a conqueror, victorious along all the line.

CHAPTER XXIX

Colonel Piercey left Greyshott the next morning after these incidents. There was no reason why he should stay. Even old Sir Giles had changed his note when his kinsman took leave of him. Mental trouble does not keep its hold long on a mind which has grown weak with bodily disease and much nursing, that prevailing invalidism and necessity for taking care of one’s self which absorbs every thought; and though the old gentleman was still ready enough to mourn for the loss of his life-long companion, yet he was easily soothed and diverted by the needs of that older companion still, himself. Besides, now that the funeral was over, there was no alarming prospect before him, no terror of being compelled to act for himself. He took leave of the Colonel not uncheerfully. “Going?” he said, when Gerald appeared in his room to say good-bye. “I’m glad you could stay so long; but it’s been a sad visit. Another time, now there’s young people in the house, they’ll make it more cheerful for you, eh? Don’t be long of coming again.”

Colonel Piercey, somewhat stiffly – which was his nature, for he had not the understanding of human weakness which brings indulgence, and he could not forget that a few days before the old man had begged him with tears to stay – answered that he was glad to leave his uncle so much better and more satisfied about his son.

“Oh,” said Sir Giles, “about satisfied I don’t know, I don’t know; I can’t tell you at this moment, Gerald. She speaks fair, but then she’s on her promotion, don’t you see? Anyhow, she’s young, and perhaps she’ll learn; and she’s nice-looking – and speaks not so badly for a girl without education; not so badly, does she, Gerald? We’ll do; oh, I think we’ll do. She’ll look after Gervase, and keep him off me. And that’s a great thing, don’t you see? Though when I think what his mother would have said – Lord bless me, I tremble when I think what his mother would have said. She never would have borne it. She would have turned the house upside down and made everybody miserable; which makes me feel that being as it had to be, it’s perhaps better – better, Gerald, though it’s a hard thing to say, that his mother went first, went without knowing. You will say she suspected; and I believe she did suspect; she was a penetrating woman; but suspecting’s not so bad as knowing; and I’m – I’m almost glad, poor soul, that she’s gone. She would never have put up with it. And now this one may make something of Gervase – who knows? It is a kind of anxiety off my mind. Time for your train?” the old gentleman added cheerfully. “Well, thank you for your visit, my boy; I’ve enjoyed it – and come again, come soon again.”

Sir Giles was as much delighted to be free of his visitor as he had been to welcome him to Greyshott. And it was evident that he was conforming his mind to the new state of affairs. Gerald had meant to appeal to his kindness for Margaret, but he had not patience or self-command enough to say anything. He had no thought of the anxieties that dwelt in the old man’s mind – the dreariness of his conclusion that it was better his old wife was gone: the forlorn endurance of a state of affairs which he had no power to prevent. A little more sympathy might have made Sir Giles’ endurance take a tragic aspect, the last refuge of a sanguine and simple spirit trying to be content with the hope that something might still be made of his only child. But Gerald Piercey only thought with mingled contempt and pity of the facile mind, and the drivel of old age, things entirely beyond his sympathy or thoughts.

He had an interview of a more interesting kind with Margaret before he went away. “I wish you could leave as easily as I do,” he said.

“So do I – but that would be impossible in any case. I have Osy to think of. I must not allow myself to be carried away by any sudden impulse – even if it were for nothing else, for my poor old uncle’s sake. He is fond of Osy. It might chill his poor old clouded life still more to miss the child.”

“Oh, Uncle Giles! I think you may make your mind easy on that point. It’s age, I suppose, and illness. One thing is just as good as another to him.”

“I am not quite of your opinion,” she said.

“I think you are never quite of any one’s opinion except your own,” he retorted, quickly.

“Well, that’s best for me, don’t you think?” she replied, with something of the same flash of spirit, “seeing that I have, as people say, nobody to think of but myself.”

“And the boy? Meg, you have promised me that you will think of what I said about the boy. He should want for nothing. He should have all the advantages education could give, if you would trust him to me – or to my father, if that would give you more confidence.”

“It is not confidence that is wanting,” she said.

“Then, what is it? It cannot be that you think I speak without warrant. My father will write to you. I will pledge myself to you – as if he were my very own. His future should be my care; his education, his outset in the world – ”

Margaret stood looking at him for some time in silence, a faint smile about her lips, which began to quiver, the colour forsaking her cheeks. What she said was so perfectly irrelevant, so idiotic, to the straight-forward mind of the man who was offering her the most unquestionable advantage, and asking nothing but a direct answer – yes, or no – that he could almost have struck her in his impatience. He did metaphorically, with the severity of that flash in his eyes.

“And how there looked him in the face
An angel, beautiful and bright;
And how he knew it was a fiend,
That miserable knight.”

– This was what Margaret said.

“What do you mean?” he cried; “is it I that am the fiend, offering the best I can think of?”

“Oh, the angel,” said Margaret; “and is it my own heart that is the fiend, that makes the other picture? Oh, God help me! I don’t know. My child is my life. But there are things better than life, and that might be given up. Yet, he is my duty, too, and not yours, Gerald. Prosperity and comfort, and your great warm-hearted, honourable kindness; or poverty and nature, and a poor mother – and love? Which would be the best for him? We cannot see a step before us; and the issues are of life and death.”

“It is better not to exaggerate,” he said, with an almost angry impatience. “There need be no cutting off. You should, of course, see the child when you liked, for his holidays and that sort of thing. There’s no question of life or death, but of a man’s career for the boy, under men’s influence, or – I know, I know! You would teach him everything that is good, and put the best principles into him, and sacrifice yourself, and all that. In short, you would make a perfect woman of him, had Osy been a girl; but, as he is a boy – !”

“Don’t you think you’re a little sharp, Gerald,” she cried, “bidding me cut out my heart and give it you, and showing me all the advantages!” She laughed, with her lips quivering, holding her hands clasped, fiercely determined, whatever she did, not to cry, which is a woman’s weakness.

“Meg, you are a sensible woman: not a girl, to know no better.”

This was his honest thought: a girl, young and tender, is to be spared, though her youth has the elasticity of a flower, and springs up again to-morrow; but the woman who has passed that chapter, whose first susceptibilities are over, is a different matter. He was honestly bewildered when Margaret left him hurriedly with a choked “Thank you. Good-bye. I shall write”; and thus broke off the conversation, leaving him there astonished in the hall, with his coat over his arm, and his travelling bag in his hand: for this was how they had held their last consultation, the library and dining-room being both full of Patty, whose presence seemed to occupy the whole house, and who now came forth, with all the airs of the mistress of the house, to take leave of her guest.

“Well, Colonel Piercey, so you are going? I hope it is not because of the circumstances, though, of course, with a death and a marriage both in the house, it isn’t very suitable for strangers, is it? But I’m not one that would ever wish to be rude to my husband’s friends. I’m told you were going, anyhow, and I hope that’s the case. And I’m sure you must feel I’m very thoughtful,” said Patty, with a little laugh, “never to disturb you in your tender good-byes! Oh, I can sympathise with that sort of thing! I told Gervase, ‘Don’t disturb those poor things; there isn’t a place where they can have a word quiet before they part.’ But I hope you’ll soon come and fetch her, Colonel Piercey. You and her, you are not like Gervase and me: you haven’t any time to lose.”

“I have not the honour of understanding you, Mrs. Piercey,” said the Colonel, very stiffly. “I must leave with you my farewells to my cousin Gervase.”

“Oh, you needn’t; he’s here, he’s coming – he wouldn’t be so wanting as not to see you off himself, though you’re only a third or fourth cousin, I hear. But as for not understanding me, Colonel Piercey, I hope you understand Meg Osborne, which is more to the purpose, and that you’ve named the day. Marriage is catching, I’ve always heard, and you ain’t going to treat a relation badly, I hope, in my house. I’m sure, after all the philandering and talking in corners, and – ”

“I wish you good-day, Mrs. Piercey,” the Colonel said. He jumped into the dog-cart with an energy which even the quiet fat horse of Greyshott training could scarcely withstand, and, seizing the reins from the groom’s hands, drove that comfortable animal down the avenue at a pace to which it was entirely unaccustomed. To describe the ferment of mind into which he was thrown by Patty’s last words would be impossible. He heard the loud, vacant laugh of Gervase, and a cry of “Hi! Hallo! Where are you off to?” sounding after him, but took no notice. He was a man of considerable temper, as has not been concealed, and there could be no doubt that it would have afforded him considerable satisfaction to take Patty by the arms and shake her, had that been a possible way of expressing his sentiments. He was furious, first, he said to himself, at the insult to Meg; but it is doubtful whether this really was so much the cause of his indignation as he believed. The causes were complicated, but chiefly had reference to himself, who was more interesting to him at present than Meg or any one else in the world. That he should be accused of philandering and talking in corners, or of treating a woman “badly,” even by the most vulgar voice in the world, had something so exasperatingly inappropriate and unlikely in it that he said to himself it was laughable. Laughable, and nothing else! Yet he did not laugh; he felt himself possessed by the most furious gravity instead – ready to kill anybody who should so much as smile. Philandering – and with a middle-aged woman! This, no doubt, gave it a double sting. It had never occurred to Colonel Piercey, though he was forty, to think of himself as on an elderly level, or to imagine any connection of his name with that of any woman who was not young and fair, and in the first chapter of life. I have always been of opinion that men and women about the same age, when that age has passed the boundaries of youth, are each other’s natural enemies rather than friends. They have fully learned that they are on opposite sides. There is a natural hostility between them. If some chance has not made them friends, and inclined to forget or pardon the difference of their sides, they are instinctively in opposition. To marry each other is the last thing that would occur to them. Of course, I am considering natural tendencies only, and not those of the fortune-hunter of either sex, or persons in quest of an establishment. The man of forty seeks a young bride; the woman of that age, or near it, finds devotion in a young man. (I don’t say seeks it – for all women feel this question of age to be fantastically important.) Gerald Piercey had reached the Greyshott station, and flung himself and his bags and wraps into a carriage, before he had begun to get over the sting of the suggestion that he had been philandering (Heavens, what a word!), and that not with a girl – an imputation which he might have smiled at and pardoned – but with a widow, a mother, a middle-aged woman! Indignity could not go further. The little barmaid, the wretched little tavern flirt who had seized possession of the home of the Pierceys, had caught him full in the centre of his shield.

It was not till long after, when that heat had died away, that he recurred to what he had at first tried to persuade himself was the occasion of his wrath – the insult to Meg. Poor Meg! whose growing old he had himself so deeply and absurdly resented, as if it had been her own fault – how would she fare, left in the power of that little demon? She could not go off at a moment’s notice, as he could. She would have to wait, he remembered with a horrified realisation, perhaps for her quarter-day, for the payment of her pension, before she would be able to budge at all. And, then, where would she go? – a woman who had been accustomed to Greyshott, which, though it was not very luxurious or refined, was still, in its way, a great house. Where would she go, with her hundred or two hundred, or some such nominal sum, a year? And, perhaps, not money enough in the meantime even to pay her journey, even to carry her away! She was a hot-headed, self-willed, argumentative woman; determined in her own opinions, caring not a straw for other people’s; refusing, in the most unaccountable way, an advantageous suggestion – a proposal that would have left her free, without encumbrance, to get as much comfort as possible for herself out of her very small income; an entirely impracticable, unmanageable woman! but yet – to think of that little barmaid flouting her, insulting her, was too much for the Colonel. His wrath rose again, not so hot, but full of indignation – a creature not worthy to tie her shoe! He seemed to see her standing there, against the dark panelling of the wall, in her black dress. And, somehow, it occurred to him all at once that the slim, tall figure did not present the usual signs which distinguish middle age. How old was Meg Piercey, after all? A dozen years ago, when he had been at Greyshott last, she was a girl in her teens. Twelve years do not make a girl of nineteen middle-aged. She had married at four or five-and-twenty – not earlier; and Osy was seven or thereabouts. Gerald found himself unconsciously calculating like an old woman. If she had married at twenty-four, and if Osy were seven, that did not make her more than two-and-thirty at the outside. At thirty-two one is not middle-aged; the Colonel did not feel himself so at forty. To be sure, a woman is different; but even for a woman, though it may not be so romantic as eighteen, it is not a great age – thirty-two. And to be turned out of her home; and to be left with next to nothing to live on; and to be insulted by that vulgar little village girl; and to be set down, even by a man, a relation, one bound to make the best of her, as almost an old woman – at thirty-two! Poor Meg Piercey! Poor Margaret Osborne! The home of her childhood gone, and the protection of her married life gone. And her child! What was the difficulty about her child? Something more, perhaps, when one came to think of it, than merely being left without encumbrance, freed from responsibility! When one came to think of it, and to think how other women were, with their children about them, perhaps, after all, it meant more than that. Poor Meg! poor Meg!

CHAPTER XXX

Mrs. Osborne realised very fully all the weight of the trouble which had fallen upon her, but it is to be doubted whether she would have liked that compassionate apostrophe to “poor Meg!” any more than other things which had fallen from Gerald Piercey’s lips; or, indeed, whether she felt herself so much to be pitied as he did. Nobody knows like ourselves how hard and how heavy our troubles are; and yet, at the same time, our own case is generally less miserable to us than it is to the benevolent onlooker. The moment it becomes our own case it somehow becomes natural, and finds alleviations, or, if not alleviations, circumstances which prove it to be no such extraordinary thing. We change our position according to our lot, and even in the self-consciousness of crime become immediately aware of a whole world of people who are as badly off, or perhaps worse, than we are, without the same explanations of their conduct which exist in our case. Margaret, seeing what had befallen her, and what was about to befall her, instinctively changed her own point of view, and felt, along with the necessity, a new rising of life and courage. The long consideration of what she was to do, though perhaps a painful and discouraging deliberation, yet roused all her faculties and occupied her mind. At thirty-two (since we have arrived through Gerald Piercey’s calculations at something like her exact age), the thought of a new beginning can never be wholly painful. None of the possibilities of life are exhausted; the world is still before us where to choose. Nevertheless it was a confusing and not encouraging subject of thought. Margaret’s education, such as it was, had been completed before any new views about the education of women were prevalent; indeed, it would not have mattered much whether these ideas had been prevalent or not, for certainly it never would have entered into the minds of Sir Giles or Lady Piercey to send their niece to Girton, or even to any humbler place preparatory to Girton. They gave Margaret as little education as was indispensable, entertained reluctantly a governess for her for some years, and had her taught to play the piano a little, and to draw a little, and to have an awkward, not speaking acquaintance with the French verbs, which was all they knew or thought of as needful. What could she do with that amount of knowledge, even now, when she had supplemented it with a great deal of reading, and much thinking of her own? Nothing. No school would have her as a teacher, no sensible parent would trust her, all unaware of the technique of teaching as she was, with the education of their children. And what was there else that a woman, a lady, with all her wits about her, and the use of all her faculties, could do? That was the dreadful question. Margaret did not fall back with indignation on the thought that its chief difficulty arose from the fact that she was a woman; for she knew enough of life to be aware that a man of her own class in the same position, trained to nothing in particular, would be almost as badly off. There were “appointments” to be had, she knew, for men certainly, for woman too, occasionally, but she was perfectly vague about them, what they were. And the idea of going out to an office daily, which was her sole conception, and on the whole a just one, of what an “appointment” might mean, filled Margaret with a bewildering sense of inappropriateness and impossibility. It would not be she who could fill any such place. It would be something different from herself, a shadow or outward appearance of her, impossible for herself to realise. Impossible – impossible! She knew nothing but how to read, to think, to discharge the duties of a mother to her child, to live as English ladies live, concerned with small domestic offices, keeping life more or less in harmony, giving orders to the servants, and smoothing over the tempests and troubles which arose from the imperfect execution of these orders – and looking after the poor. To do all these things is to be a not unimportant servant to the commonwealth. Life would go far more roughly, with less advantage on both sides, were it not for functionaries of this kind: but then their services are generally to be had for nothing, and are not worth money; besides – which makes the matter more difficult still – these services lose a great part of their real value when they are done, not for love but for money, in which case the house lady of nature changes her place altogether and goes over to another and far less pleasing kind.

These thoughts had passed through Margaret’s mind vaguely, and without any pressure of an immediate emergency, many times already in the course of her speculations as to the future for Osy and for herself. She had often said to herself that she could not remain at Greyshott for ever; that the time must come when she would have to decide upon something; that the old couple who were her protectors could not live for ever; and that the house of Gervase, poor Gervase, however it might turn out, would probably be no home for her. She had gone over all those suggestions of what she could do to increase her small income, and to educate her child, with a ceaseless interest, but yet without any sharpness or urgency, as of a thing that might happen at any moment. And there was always a vague ground of probability behind – that either one or other of the old people, who were so fond of Osy, might leave him something to make his first steps easier, that they would not go out of the world without making some provision even for herself, who had served them like their own child, and knew no home but under their wing. There would be that, whatever it was, to make everything more possible. She had not calculated on it, and yet she had felt assured that some such thing would be. But now all those prospects had come to an end in a moment. Lady Piercey had left no will at all, and Sir Giles was no longer a free agent, or would not be so any longer. The prospect was cut off before her eyes, all that shadowy margin gone, nothing left but the bare certainty. Two hundred a year! There are very different ways of looking at two hundred pounds a year. It is not very long since the papers were full of letters demonstrating the impossibility of supporting life with honesty and gentility on seven hundred a year. The calculations looked so very convincing, that one rubbed one’s bewildered eyes if one had been accustomed to believe (as I confess I had) that there was a great deal of pleasant spending for two young people in seven hundred a year. On the other hand, I have just read a novel, and a very clever novel, in which it is considered quite justifiable for a young man to marry and take upon him the charge of his wife’s mother and sister on a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Clearly there is a very great difference between these estimates, and I think it very likely that the author of the latter is more practically instructed as to what she is speaking of than the gentleman who made the other calculations. Who shall decide upon the fact that lies between these two statements? I can only say that Margaret Osborne’s conclusion was not to waste her time in efforts to get work which she probably could not do well, and which would be quite inappropriate to her, but to try what could be done upon her two hundred pounds a year. Ah! how many, many millions of people would be thankful to have two hundred a year! How many honest, good, well-conditioned families, “buirdly chiels and clever hizzies,” have been brought up on the half of it! But yet there are differences which cannot be ignored. The working man has many advantages over the gentleman, with his host of artificial wants – but, alas! we cannot go back easily to the rule of nature. Margaret was not so utterly unprovided for as her cousin Gerald had remorsefully imagined. She was not destitute, as she said. She had laid a little money aside for this always-threatening emergency; and she had spoken to Sarah, Osy’s maid, who, though reluctantly and on a very distant and far-off possibility, had declared it possible that she might undertake to do the work of a small house. “But, oh! I wouldn’t, ma’am,” Sarah had said, “not if I was you; you would miss Greyshott and the nice big rooms, and nothing to do but ring the bell.” Margaret had laughed at this conception of life, and laughed now as she recalled it. But no doubt it was true. She was not very apt at ringing of bells, nor did she require much personal service – still it would not be without a regret, a sense of the difference – but that was of too little real importance to be thought of now.

Indeed, all these thoughts were as nothing to the other which Gerald Piercey, in his desire to help her, had flung into her mind like an arrow of fire. To carry Osy away to that cottage, to deprive him of all those “advantages” which, even at his age, a child can understand – Osy would know very well what that sacrifice meant when he had no pony to ride on, no great rooms to run about in, no obsequious court of flatterers ready to carry him on their shoulders, to give him drives and rides on nobler animals, to bring him dainties, and all kinds of indulgences. Osy had been the favourite of the house, as well as of old Sir Giles and my lady. He had been as free of the housekeeper’s room as of the library. There was nobody who had not bowed down before him and sought to please him. The child, though he was only a child, would understand what it was to relinquish all these, to have a small cottage, a little garden, nothing outside of them, and only a mother within. At seven years old to have this brought home to him, was early, very early. He would not understand how it was. If he heard, even at that early age, that he might have had another pony, another household to conquer by his pretty ways, and all the usual indulgences and pleasant things, but for his mother, would Osy’s childish affection bear that test? Would he like her better than his pony? And, oh! still deeper, more penetrating question, was she better than the pony, better than the larger upbringing, the position of one who is born to command, the freedom of life, the influence of men, the “every advantage” of which Gerald Piercey had spoken? Would she, a woman not very cheerful, and who must in future be very full of cares and calculations how to make both ends meet, would she be better for him than all that? She? What question could be more penetrating? “It would be better for the child.” Would it be better for him? Sometimes it comes about that in the very midst of the happiness of life, with every sail full, and the sun shining, and the horizon clear, there comes a sudden catastrophe, and some young woman whose life has been that of the group of children at her knee, has suddenly to stop and stand by with dumb anguish, and see one and another taken away from her by kind friends, kindest friends! benefactors only to be blessed and praised! while all around her other friends congratulate her, bid her feel that she must not stand in the way of the children, of their real advantage! Is it to their real advantage? Is it better to be the children of kindness or the children of love? to be brought up in your own home or in another’s? Oh, poor little mother; often you have to smile out of your broken heart and bear it! Margaret Osborne had but one thing in the world; but she would have done like the others, and smiled and endured even to be severed from that only possession, had she been sure. Who can be sure? She said to herself that love, and his own home, and the ties of nature were best. And then Gerald Piercey’s words came back and stung her like fiery serpents: “A man’s career, under men’s influence, or – ” Or what? A poor woman’s influence, a woman who was herself a failure, whom nobody cared much for under the sun. Which – which would be the best for Osy? This is the kind of argument that tears the heart in two. It is full of anguish while it is going on: and after the decision is made, it lays up poignant and dreadful recollections. If I had not done that, but the other – if I had not sent away my child into the careless hands of strangers; or, on the other hand, if I had not been so confident of myself; if I could but have seen how much better for him would have been the man’s influence, the man’s career!

This was the war that Margaret was waging with herself while she had to meet the immediate troubles of the day. It was inconceivable how soon the great house was filled with Patty’s presence, how soon it became hers, from roof to basement, how she pervaded it in all the rooms at once, so to speak, so that nothing was out of her sharp sight for more than two minutes. Mrs. Osborne had retired upstairs with her heart full when she left Colonel Piercey in the hall; but in the restlessness of a disturbed mind she came down again about an hour afterwards, partly to put a stop, for a time, to that endless argument, partly to write a letter which she had promised, to inform Lady Hartmore of what had happened, and partly, perhaps, out of that curiosity and painful inclination to hasten a catastrophe which comes to the mind in the storms of existence. It is true that she had made up her mind to leave Greyshott, but she could not do so as Gerald, a visitor, did, nor was she sure how she could best arrange her retirement with dignity and composure. She felt that there must be no semblance of a quarrel, nor would she make matters worse for Gervase’s wife by allowing it to appear to the county that her first act had been to drive Gervase’s cousin out of the house. She had decided to wait a little, to endure the new régime until she could quietly detach herself without any shock to her old uncle or commotion in the house. Yet it cannot be denied that Margaret’s nerves were very much disturbed, and that she was conscious of Patty’s entrance while she sat writing her letter, and felt her heart jump when that active, bustling little step became again and again audible. Margaret was seated with her back to the door, but the sound of this step, returning and returning, betrayed to her very clearly the impatience with which her presence was regarded. And her letter did not make much progress. She foresaw the coming attack, and she did not forestall it as she might have done by going away. At last a voice as sharp as the step broke the listening silence of the room.

“Margaret Osborne! how long are you going to be writing that letter? The housemaids are waiting, and I must have this room thoroughly done out. It wants it, I am sure! Oh, take your time! but if you will let me know about when you are likely to be done – ”

“I can finish my letter upstairs, if it is necessary,” Margaret said, turning round.

“Well, I think generally that is the best way. The library’s generally supposed to be the gentlemen’s room in a house. I mean to have the drawing-room put in order, and to use that, as it ought to be used. But not just this week, and poor mother so lately buried. I don’t know what your feelings may be, but I can’t sit in a dingy place like this,” Patty said. “Oh, take your time,” she added, with fine irony; “but if you could tell me within half an hour or so when you are likely to have done – ”

“I will finish my letter in my own room.”

“If I was you,” said Patty, “I’d write them all there in future. New folks make new ways. I am very particular about my house. I like everything kept in its proper place – and every person,” she added significantly. “The servants can’t serve two masters. That is in the Bible, you know, so it must be true.”

“I do not think,” said Margaret, with a faint smile, “that you will be troubled by their devotion to me.”

“No; I suppose you have let yourself be put upon,” said Patty; “because, though you think yourself one of the family, you ain’t exactly one of the family, and, of course, they see that. It’s not good for a houseful of servants to have a sort of a lady, neither one thing nor another, neither a mistress nor a servant, in the house. It teaches them to be disrespectful to their betters, because they know you can’t do anything to them. I would rather pension poor relations off than have them about the house putting everything out.”

“It will not be necessary in my case,” cried Margaret, with a sudden flame of anger and shame enveloping her all over. “I had fully intended to leave Greyshott, but wished to avoid any appearance of – any shock to my uncle.”

“Oh, take your time!” cried Patty, with a toss of her head; and she called to the housemaids, who appeared timorous and undecided at the door. “Come here, and I’ll show how I wish you to settle all this in future,” she said. “Oh, Mrs. Osborne’s going! You needn’t mind for her.”

CHAPTER XXXI

It was not worth while to be angry. She had known, of course, all along, how it must be. There had been no thought in her mind of resistance, of remaining in Greyshott as Patty’s companion, of appealing to her uncle against the new mistress of the house. It had not been a very happy home for Margaret at any time; though, while Lady Piercey lived, it was a sure one, as well as habitual, – the only place that seemed natural to her, and to which she belonged. Perhaps, she said to herself, as she went hurriedly upstairs, with that sense of the intolerable which a little insult brings almost more keenly than a great sorrow, it was better that the knot should thus be cut for her by an alert and decisive hand, and no uncertainty left on the subject. She went into her room quickly, with a “wind in her going,” a sweep of her skirts, an action and movement about her which was unlike her usual composure. Sarah was alone in her room, not seated quietly at work as was her wont, but standing at the window looking out upon some scene below. There was a corner of the stable yard visible from one window of Margaret’s rooms, which were far from being the best rooms in the house.

“Where is Master Osy?” Mrs. Osborne said.

“He is with Sir Giles, ma’am. I – I was just taking a glance from the window before I began my work – ”

“Sarah,” said Margaret, “we shall have to begin our packing immediately. We are going away.” How difficult it was not to say a little more – not to relieve the burden of her indignation with a word or two! for, indeed, there was nobody whom she could speak to except this round-faced girl, who looked up half frightened, half sympathetic, into her face.

“Oh, ma’am, to leave Greyshott! Where are you a-going to?” Sarah said; and her open mouth and eyes repeated with dismay the same question, fixed upon Margaret’s face.

“Shall you be so sorry to leave Greyshott?” said Mrs. Osborne.

Sarah hung her head. She took her handkerchief from her pocket, and twisted it into a knot; finally the quick-coming tears rolled over her round cheeks. “Oh, ma’am!” she cried, and could say no more. A nurserymaid’s tears do not seem a very tragic addition to any trouble, and yet they came upon Margaret with all the force of a new misfortune.

“What is it, Sarah? Is it leaving Jim? is that why you cry?”

“Oh, we was to be married at Christmas,” the girl cried, in a passion of tears.

“Then you meant to leave me, Sarah? Why didn’t you tell me so? Well, of course, I should not hinder your marriage, my good girl; but Christmas is six months off, and you will stay with Master Osy, won’t you, till that time comes?”

Sarah became inarticulate with crying, but shook her head, though she could not speak.

“No! – do you mean no? I thought you were fond of us,” said poor Margaret, quite broken down by this unexpected desertion. It was of no importance, no importance! she said to herself; but, nevertheless, it gave her a sting.

“Oh, don’t ask me, ma’am, don’t ask me! So I am, fond: there never was a nicer lady. But how do I know as Jim – they changes so, they changes so, does men!” Sarah cried, among her tears.

“Well, well; you will pack for me, at least,” said Margaret, with a faint laugh, “if that is how we are to part, Sarah, – but you must begin at once; no more looking out of the window, for a little while, at least. But Jim is a good fellow. He will be faithful – till Christmas.” She laughed again; was it as the usual alternative to crying? or was it because there are junctures of utter forlornness and solitude to which a laugh responds better than any crying? not less sadly, one may be sure.

Sarah dried her streaming eyes, but continued to shake her head. “It’s out o’ sight out of mind with most of ’em,” she said. “I’ll have to go and get the boxes, ma’am, and I don’t know who there is to fetch ’em up, unless I might call Jim – and the others, they don’t like to see a groom a-coming into the house.”

“Then let the others do it, Sarah.”

“Oh, Mrs. Osborne! they won’t go agin the – the new lady, as they calls her. Oh, they calls her just Patty and nasty names among themselves, but if you asks them to do a thing, they says, ‘We wasn’t hired to work for the likes of you and your Missus, Sal.’ Not a better word from one o’ them men,” cried Sarah, “not one of ’em! They’re as frightened of her already as if she was the devil, and she isn’t far short. I’ll call him, ma’am, when they’re at their dinners; and, perhaps, you’d give him a word, just a word, to say as how you think he’s a lucky fellow to have got me, and that kind of thing – as a true friend.”

“Is that the office of a true friend?” said Margaret. It is a great thing in this life, which has so many hard passages, when you are able to be amused. Sarah’s petition and the words which she kindly put into her mistress’s mouth, did Margaret more good than a great deal of philosophy. She went away after a time to look for her boy and to tell her uncle of the decision she had come to. They were out, as usual, in the avenue, Sir Giles being wheeled along by a very glum Dunning, and Osy babbling and making his little excursions round and about the old gentleman’s chair.

“When I am a man,” Osy was saying, “I s’all be far, far away from here. I s’all be a soldier leading my tompany. I s’an’t do what nobody tells me – not you, Uncle Giles, nor Movver, nobody but the Queen.”

“And I sha’n’t be here at all, Osy,” said the old man. “When you come back a great Captain like your cousin Gerald, there will be no old Uncle Giles to tell you what you said when you were a little boy.”

“Why?” said the child, coming up close to the chair. “Will they put you down in the black hole with Aunt Piercey, Uncle Giles?”

“Master Osy, don’t you speak of no such drefful things,” said Dunning.

“But Parsons said, ‘She have don to heaven,’ ” said the child. “I like Parsons’ way the best, for heaven’s a beau’ful place. I’d like to go and see you there, Uncle Giles. You wouldn’t want Dunning, you’d have an angel to dwive you about.”

“Oh, my little man!” said Sir Giles, “I don’t think I am worthy of an angel. I’m more frightened for the angel than for the black hole, Osy. I don’t think I want any better angel than you are, my nice little boy. I hope God will let me go on a little just quietly with Dunning, and you to talk to your old uncle. Tell me a little more about what you will do when you are a man. That amuses me most.”

“Uncle Giles, Cousin Gervase doesn’t do very much though he’s a man. He’s only don and dot marrwed. I’m glad he’s dot marrwed. I dave him my big silver penny for a marrwage present. If he hadn’t been marrwed he would have tooked it, and a gemplemans s’ouldn’t never do that. So I’m glad. Are you glad, Uncle Giles?”

“Never mind, never mind, my boy. Are you sure you’ll go to India, Osy, and fight all the Queen’s battles? She doesn’t know what a great, grand champion she’s going to have, like Goliath,” said the old man with his rumbling laugh.

“Goliaf,” said Osy, gravely, “wasn’t a nice soldier. He was more big nor anybody and he bragged of it. It’s grander to be the littlest and win. I am not very big, Uncle Giles, not at pwesent.”

“No, Osy. That’s true, my dear,” said the old gentleman.

“But I’ll twy!” cried the boy. “I’m not fwightened of big men. They’re generwally,” he added, half apologetically and with a struggle over the word, “nice to little boys. Cousin Colonel, he is wather like Goliaf. He dave me a wide upon his s’oulder; but when he sawed Movver tomin, he – Are big men ever fwightened of ladies, Uncle Giles?”

“Sometimes, Osy,” said Sir Giles, with a delighted laugh.

“Then it was that!” cried Osy. “I touldn’t understand. Oh, wait, Uncle Giles; just wait till I tatch that butterfly. I’ll tatch him; I’ll tatch him in a moment! I’m a great one,” the child sang, running off – “for tatching butterflies, for tatching – Movver, movver, you sended it away.”

“What did the little shaver mean by giving a wedding present?” said Sir Giles. “Where’s my money, Dunning? have I got any money? If he gave my boy a wedding present, it was the – the only one. They’ll come in now, perhaps, when it gets known; but I’ll not forget Osy for that, I’ll not forget Osy for that. Did you ever see a child like him, Dunning? I never saw a child like him, except our first one that we lost,” said the old man with a sob. “Did I ever tell you of our first that we lost? Just such a child; just such a child! And my poor Gervase was the dearest little thing when he was a baby, before – . Children are very different from men – very different, very different, Dunning. You never know how the most promising is to grow up. Sometimes they’re a – a great disappointment. They’re always a disappointment, I should say from what I’ve seen, comparing the little thing with the big man, as Osy says. But, please God, we’ll make a man of that boy, whatever happens. Ah, Meg! is it you? I was just saying we must make a man of Osy – we must make a man of him – whatever happens.”

“I hope he will turn out a good man, Uncle Giles.”

“Oh, we shall make a man of him, Meg! not but what, as I was saying, they’re always disappointments more or less. Your poor aunt would never let me say that, when she was breaking her poor heart for our first boy that we lost. I used to say he might have grown up to rend our hearts – but she would never hear me, never let me speak. It broke her heart, that baby’s going, Meg.” This had happened a quarter of a century before, but the old gentleman spoke as if it had been yesterday. “You may think she did not show it, and looked as if she had forgotten; but she never forgot. I saw it in her eyes when she saw Gerald Piercey first. She gave me a look as if to say, this might be him coming home, a distinguished man. For he was a delightful child – he might have grown to be anything, that boy!”

“Dear Uncle Giles! You must try to look to the future – to think that there may be perhaps other children to love.” Margaret laid her hand tenderly upon the old man’s shoulder, which was heaving with those harmless sobs – which meant so little, and yet were so pitiful to the beholder. “I wanted to speak to you – about Osy, Uncle Giles.”

“Yes, yes,” said the old man, cheering up. “Did you hear that he gave my poor Gervase a wedding present? that little chap! and the only one – the only one! I’ll never forget that, Meg, if I should live to be a hundred. And, please God, we’ll pay it back to him, and make a man of him, Meg.”

“It was precisely of that, Uncle, I wanted to speak.” But how was she to speak? What was she to say to this old man so full of affection and of generous purpose? Margaret went on patting the old gentleman on the shoulder unconsciously, soothing him as if he had been a child. “Dear Uncle Giles, you know that now Gervase is married, they – he will want to live, perhaps, rather a different way.”

“What different way?” said Sir Giles, aroused and holding up his head.

“I mean, they are young people, you know, and will want to, perhaps – see more company, have visitors, enjoy their life.”

Sir Giles gave her an anxious, deprecating look.

“Do you think then, Meg, that – that she will do? that she will know how to manage? that she will be able to keep Gervase up to the mark?”

“I think,” said Margaret, pausing to find the best words, “I think – that she is really clever, and very, very quick, and will adapt herself and learn, and – yes – I believe she will keep him up to the mark.”

“God bless you for saying so, my dear! that is what I began to hope. We could not have expected him to make a great match, Meg.”

“No, Uncle.”

“His poor mother, you know, always had hopes. She thought some nice girl might have taken a fancy to him. But it was not to be expected, Meg.”

“No, Uncle. I don’t think it was to be expected.”

“In that case,” said Sir Giles – he was so much aroused and interested that there was a certain clearness in his thoughts – “in that case, it is perhaps the best thing that could have happened after all.”

“Dear Uncle, yes, perhaps. But to give them every chance, to make them feel quite at ease and unhampered, I think they should be left to themselves.”

“I will not interfere with them,” he cried; “I will not meddle between them. Once I have accepted a thing, Meg, I accept it fully. You might know me enough for that.”

“I never doubted you, Uncle; but there is more: I think, dear Uncle Giles, I must go away.”

“You – go away!” he said, looking up at her, his loose lips beginning to quiver; “you – go away! Why, Meg, you can be of more use here than ever. You can show her how to – how to – why, bless us, we all know, after all, that though she’s Mrs. Piercey, she was only, only – well, nobody, Meg! you know – don’t bother me with names. She is nobody. She can’t know how to – to behave herself even. I looked to you to – Dunning, be off with you: look after Master Osy. I know it’s wrong to speak before servants, Meg, but Dunning’s not exactly a servant, he knows everything; he has heard everything discussed.”

“Too much, I fear,” said Margaret half to herself. “Dear Uncle, perhaps you have not considered that mine has always been rather a doubtful position. I am your niece, and you have always been like my father, but Gervase’s wife thinks me only a dependant. One can’t wonder at it – neither mistress nor servant. She thinks a little as the servants do. I am only here as a dependant. She will not take a hint from me. She will be better without me here. For one thing, she would think I was watching her, and making unkind remarks, however innocent I might be. It is best, indeed it is best, dear Uncle, that I should go.”

“Go! away from Greyshott, Meg! – why, why! Greyshott – you have always been at Greyshott.”

“Yes, Uncle Giles, thanks to you; dear Uncle Giles, when I was an orphan, and had no one, you have done everything for me; but now the best thing I can do for you is to go away. Oh, I know it, and am sure of it; everything will go better without me. You may imagine I don’t like to think that, but it is true.”

There was an interval, during which the old man was quite broken down, and Dunning, rushing to his master’s side, shot reproachful speeches, as well as glances, at Mrs. Osborne. “It appears,” said Dunning, “that I’m never believed to know nothink, not even my own dooty to my master; but those as comes to him with disagreeable stories and complaints, and that just at this critical moment in the middle of his trouble, poor gentleman, knows less than me. Come, Sir Giles. Compose yourself, Sir Giles. I’ll have to give you some of your drops, and you know as you don’t like ’em, if you don’t take things more easy, Sir Giles.”

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