The visit, however, began very successfully. As he had no arrière pensée, he was quite at his ease with the old people whom he neither meant to sweep away nor to succeed. He received, quite naturally, the long and elaborate apologies of Lady Piercey in respect to her son.
“Gervase will be very sorry to miss you, Gerald, – he’s in town; there is not much to amuse a young man in the country at this season of the year. He’s not fond of garden parties and so forth, the only things that are going on, and not many of them yet. He prefers town. Perhaps it isn’t to be wondered at. We have all liked to see a little life in our day.”
What “life” could it have been that Lady Piercey in her day had liked to see? the new-comer asked himself, with an involuntary smile. But he took the explanation with the easiest good humour, thinking no evil.
“Lucky fellow!” he said; “he has the best of it. I was out in India all my young time, and saw only a very different kind of life.”
“Come,” said Sir Giles, “you amuse yourselves pretty well out there. Don’t give yourself airs, Gerald.”
“Oh, yes; we amuse ourselves more or less,” he said, with a pleasant laugh. “Enough to make us envy a young swell like Gervase, who, I suppose, has all the world at his feet and nothing to do.”
There was a strange pause in the room; a sort of furtive look between the ladies; a sound – he could not tell what – from Sir Giles. Colonel Piercey had a faint comprehension that he had, as he said to himself, put his foot in it. What had he said that was not the right thing to say? He caught Margaret’s eye, and there was a warning in it, a sort of appeal; but he had not an idea what its meaning was.
“I am sure,” said Lady Piercey, with a voice out of which she vainly endeavoured to keep the little break and whimper which was habitual to her when she was moved, “my boy might have all the world at his feet – if he was that kind, Gerald. But he’s not that kind; he’s of a different sort. He takes things in a – in a kind of philosophical way.”
“Humph!” said Sir Giles, pushing back his chair. “Meg, Gerald will not mind if I have my backgammon. I’m an old fogey, you see, my boy, with long days to get through, and not able to get out. I’m past amusement. I only kill the time as well as I can now.”
“I’m very fond of a game of backgammon, too, Uncle Giles.”
“Are you, boy? why, that’s something like. Meg, I’ll give you a holiday. Ladies are very nice, but they never know the rules of a game,” the ungrateful old gentleman said.
CHAPTER XVI
That evening in the library at Greyshott was the most cheerful that had been known for a long time; Colonel Piercey made himself thoroughly at home. He behaved to the old people as if they had been the most genial friends of his youth. He told them stories of India and his experiences there. He played backgammon with Sir Giles, and let him win the game as cleverly as Dunning did, and with more grace. He admired Lady Piercey’s work and suggested a change in the shading, at which both she and Parsons exclaimed with delight that it would make all the difference! He was delightful to everybody except Margaret, of whom he took very little notice, which was a strange thing in so apparently chivalrous and kind a man, seeing in what a subject condition she was kept, how much required of her, and so little accorded to her, in the strange family party of which the two servants formed an almost unfailing part. Margaret felt herself left out in the cold with a completeness which surprised her, much as she was accustomed to the feeling that she was of no account. She had no desire that Gerald Piercey should pity her; but it was curious to see how he ignored her, never turning even a look her way, addressing her only when necessity required. It has always been a theory of mine that there exists between persons of opposite sexes who are no longer to be classed within the lines of youth, middle-aged people, or inclining that way, a repulsion instead of an attraction. A young man tolerates a girl even when she does not please him, because she is a woman; but a man of forty or so dislikes his contemporary on this account; is impatient of her; feels her society a burden, almost an affront to him. He calls her old, and he calls himself young; perhaps that has something to do with it. Colonel Piercey was not shabby enough to entertain consciously any such feeling; but he shared it unconsciously with many other men. He thought the less of her for accepting that position, for submitting to be the souffre-douleur of the household. He suspected her, instinctively, of having designs of – he knew not what kind, – of being underhand, of plotting her own advantage somehow, to the harm of the two old tyrants who exacted so much from her. Would she continue to hold such a place, to expose herself to so much harsh treatment, if it were not for some end of her own? It was true that he could not make out what that end would be; that there should be any possibility of the child (who was delightful) supplanting or succeeding Gervase, was not an idea that ever entered his mind. Gervase was a young man of whom he knew nothing, whom he supposed to be like other young men. And, after Gervase came the old General, Gerald Piercey’s father, and himself. There was no possibility of any intruder in that place. He supposed that it was their money she must be after – to get them to leave all they could to her. Meg Piercey! the girl whom he could not help remembering still, who was not in the least like this pale person: to think that years and poverty should have brought that bright creature to this!
“I almost wonder, Gerald,” said Lady Piercey, as she sat among her silks with an air of ease diffused over all the surroundings, working a little by turns and pausing to watch benignantly the process of the backgammon, – “I almost wonder that you did not meet my boy at the station. His train would come in just before yours left, and I have been thinking since then that you might have met. He was to meet an old friend, an excellent old clergyman, with whom he was to spend a few days. Though he is full of spirit, my Gervase is very fond of all his old friends.”
“Humph!” said Sir Giles; but that was only perhaps because at that moment he made an injudicious move.
“I should not have known him had I met him,” said the Colonel, carefully making a move more injudicious still, to the delight of Sir Giles; “you forget he was only a child when I was here. I saw an old clergyman roaming about, looking into all the carriages: was that your friend, I wonder? He had found no one up to that time.”
“You sent Gregson after him then, my lady?” said Sir Giles; “though I said it wasn’t fair.”
“Why Sir Giles says it wasn’t fair is this, Gerald,” said Lady Piercey; “and you can judge between us. He thought because the boy was going to enjoy himself he shouldn’t be troubled with old friends; but I thought a good judicious old clergyman, that had known him from his cradle, couldn’t be in any one’s way.”
“I see your point of view,” said Colonel Gerald, “but I think for my part I agree with Uncle Giles. At Gervase’s age I should have thought the old clergyman a bore.”
“Ah! but my Gervase is one in a thousand,” Lady Piercey said, nodding her head and pursing up her lips.
“I saw another group at the station that amused me,” said Gerald: “a young country-fellow with something of the look of a gentleman, and a girl all clad in gorgeous apparel, who had not in the least the look of a lady. They got out of the train arm-in-arm, he holding her just as if he feared she might run away – which was the last thing I should say she had any intention of doing. Is there any hobereau about here with a taste for rustic beauties? They were newly married, I should think, or going to be married. He, in a loud state of delight, and she – I should think she had made a good stroke of business, that little girl.”
“I don’t know of any name like Hobero,” said Lady Piercey; “but there are a great many stations between this and London. I dare say they didn’t come from hereabouts at all. Girls of that class are dreadful. They dress so that you don’t know what kind they are – neither flesh nor fish nor red herring, as the proverb is – and their manners – but they haven’t got any. They think nothing is too good for them.”
“The woman in this case, I should say, knew very well that the young fellow was too good for her, but had no thought of giving him up. And he was wild with delight, a silly sort of fellow – not all there.” Colonel Piercey’s looks were bent unconsciously as he spoke upon the writing-table which stood behind Sir Giles’ chair, and on which some photographs were arranged; and from the partial darkness there suddenly shone out upon him, from the whiteness of a large vignette, a face which he recognised. He cried, “Hallo!” in spite of himself as it seemed, and then, with a sudden start, looked at Margaret. She had grown pale, and as he looked at her she grew red, and lifted a warning finger. The Colonel sank back upon his seat with a consternation he could scarcely disguise.
“What’s the matter, Gerald?” said Sir Giles, who was arranging steadily upon the board the black and white men for another game.
“Only the sight of that old cabinet which I remember so well,” cried the soldier, with a curious tone in his voice. “It used to be one of our favourite puzzles to find out the secret drawers. When Mrs. Osborne was Miss Piercey,” he continued, to give him an excuse for looking towards her again. Margaret had bent her head over her work. Was that what it meant? he asked himself. Was this designing woman in the secret? Was this her plan to harm her cousin, and get him into trouble with his parents? His face grew stern as he looked at her. He thought there was guilt in every line of her attitude. She could not face him, or give any account of the meaning in her eyes.
“Ay, it’s a queer old thing,” said Sir Giles; “many a one has tried his wits at it, and had to give up. It’s very different from your modern things.”
“You should see my Gervase at it,” said Lady Piercey. “He pulls out one drawer after another, as if he had made it all. I never could fathom it for my part, though I have sat opposite to it in this chair for five-and-thirty years. But Gervase has it all at his fingers’ ends.”
“Pooh! he’s known it all his life,” said Sir Giles. “Gerald, my fine fellow, we’ve just time for another before I go to bed.”
“Surely, Uncle,” said Gerald; but it seemed to him that he had become all at once conscious of another game that was being played; a tragic game, with hearts and lives instead of bits of ivory – a hapless young fellow in the hands of two women, one of whom he had been made to believe he loved, in order to carry out the schemes of the other who was planning and scheming behind backs to deprive him of his natural rights. Imagination made a great leap to attain to such a fully developed theory, but it did so with a spring. Colonel Piercey thought that the presence of this woman, pale, self-restrained, bearing every humiliation, was accounted for now.
“Why did Gerald Piercey look at you so, Meg?” asked Lady Piercey. She had said she felt tired, and risen and said good night earlier than usual, seizing her niece’s arm, not waiting till Parsons should come at her ordinary hour. She was fatigued with all the strain about Gervase; getting him off at the right hour, and getting all his “things” in order; and making out that new wonderful character for him to dazzle the visitor. She had a right indeed to be tired, having gone through so much that was exciting, and succeeded in everything, especially the last of her efforts. “Why did he look at you and talk that nonsense about the old cabinet? Something had come into his head.”
“I supposed he thought, Aunt, of the time when we used to make fun over it, and ask all the visitors to find it out.”
“Perhaps he did,” said the old lady; “but though he looked at you that once, you needn’t expect that he’s going to pay attention to you, Meg. He thinks you’re dreadfully gone off. I saw that as soon as he came into the room. You can see it in a moment from the way a man turns his head.”
“I don’t doubt that he is quite right,” said Margaret, with a little spirit.
“Oh, yes; he’s right enough. You’re a very different girl from what you used to be,” said Lady Piercey. “But you don’t like to hear it, Meg; for you don’t give me half the support you generally do. I don’t feel your arm at all. It is as if I had nothing to lean on. I wish Parsons was here.”
“Will you sit down for a moment and rest, and I will call Parsons?”
“Why should I rest – between the library and the stairs? I want to get to my room; I want to get to bed. What – what are you standing there for, not giving me your arm? I’ll – I’ll be on my nose – if you don’t mind. Give me – your arm, Meg. Meg!” The old lady gave a dull cry, and moved her left arm about as if groping for some support, though the other was clasped strongly in that of Margaret, who was holding up her aunt’s large wavering person with all the might she had. As she cried out for help, Lady Piercey sank down like a tower falling, dragging her companion with her; yet turning a last look of reproach upon her, and moving her lips, from which no sound came, with what seemed like upbraiding. There was a rush from all quarters at Margaret’s cry. Parsons and Dunning came flying, wiping their mouths, from the merry supper-table, where they had been discussing Mr. Gervase – and the other servants, in a crowd, and Gerald Piercey from the room they had just left. Margaret had disengaged herself as best she could from the fallen mass of flesh, and had got Lady Piercey’s head upon her shoulder, from which that large pallid countenance looked forth with wide open eyes, with a strange stare in them, some living consciousness mingling with the stony look of the soul in prison. Except that stare, and a movement of the lips, which were unable to articulate, and a slight flicker of movement in the left hand, still groping, as it seemed, for something to clutch at, she was like a woman made of stone.
And all in a moment, without any warning; without a sign that any one understood! Parsons, wailing, said that she wasn’t surprised. Her lady had done a deal too much getting Mr. Gervase off; she had been worried and troubled about him, poor dear innocent! She hadn’t slept a wink for two nights, groaning and turning in her bed. “But, for goodness gracious sake!” cried Parsons, “some one go back to master, or we’ll have him on our ’ands, too. Mrs. Osborne, Lord bless you! go to master. You can’t be no use here; we knows what to do – Dunning and me knows what to do. Go back to Sir Giles – go back to Sir Giles! or we won’t answer for none of their lives!”
“Cousin Gerald, go to my uncle. Tell him she’s a little faint. I will come directly and back you up, as soon as they can lift her. Go!” cried Margaret, with a severity that was not, perhaps, untouched, even at this dreadful moment, by a consciousness of the opinion he was supposed to have formed of her. It was as if she had stamped her foot at him, as she half-sat, half-lay, partially crushed by the fall of the old lady’s heavy body, with the great death-like face surmounted by the red ribbons of the cap laid upon her breast. Those red ribbons haunted several minds for a long time after; they seemed to have become, somehow, the most tragic feature of the scene.
Colonel Piercey was not a man to interfere with a business that was not his. He saw that the attendants knew what they were about, and left them without another word.
Sir Giles was fuming a little over the interruption to his game. “What’s the matter?” he said, testily. “You shouldn’t go and leave a game unfinished for some commotion among the women. You don’t know ’em as well as I do. Come along, come along; you’ve almost made me forget my last move. What did Meg Osborne cry out for, eh? My old lady is sharp on her sometimes. She must have given her a stinger that time; but Meg isn’t the girl to cry out.”
“It was a – stumble, I think,” said the Colonel.
“Ay, ay! something of that kind. I know ’em, Gerald. I’m not easily put out. Come along and finish the game.”
Margaret came in, some time after, looking very pale. She went behind her uncle’s chair, and put her hand on his shoulder, “May I wheel you to your room, Uncle, if your game’s over, instead of Dunning? He asked me to tell you he was coming directly, and that it was time for you to go to bed.”
“Confound Dunning,” cried Sir Giles, in his big rumbling voice. “I’m game to go on as long as Frank here will play. I’ve not had such a night for ever so long. He’s a good player, but not good enough to beat me,” he said, with a muffled long odd laugh that reverberated in repeated rolls like thunder.
The Colonel looked up at her to get his instructions. He did not like her, and yet he recognised in her the authority of the moment. And Margaret no longer tried to conciliate him, as at first, but issued forth her orders with a kind of sternness. “Let me wheel your chair, sir,” he said; “you’ll give me my revenge to-morrow? Three games out of four! – is that what you call entertaining a stranger, to beat him all along the line the first night?”
Sir Giles laughed loud and long in those rumbling, long-drawn peals. His laugh was like the red ribbons, and pointed the sudden tragedy. “You shall have your revenge,” he said; “and plenty of it – plenty of it! You shall cry off before I will. I love a good game. If it wasn’t for a good game, now and then, I don’t know what would become of me. As for Meg, she’s not worth naming; and my boy, Gervase, did his best, poor chap; but between you and me, Gerald, whatever my lady says, my boy Gervase – poor chap, poor chap!” Here the old gentleman’s laughter broke down as usual in the weakness of a sudden sob or two. “He’s not what I should like to see him, my poor boy Gervase,” he cried.
He was taken to his room after a while, and soothed into cheerfulness, and had his drink compounded for him by Margaret, till Dunning came, pale, too, and excited, whispering to Mrs. Osborne that the doctor was to come directly, and that there was no change, before he approached his master, with whom, a few minutes afterwards, he was heard talking, and even laughing, by the Colonel, who remained in the library, pacing up and down with the painful embarrassment of a stranger in a new house, in the midst of a family tragedy, but not knowing what part he had to play in it, or where he should go, or what he should do. Margaret had left him without even a good-night, to return to the room upstairs, where Lady Piercey lay motionless and staring, with the red ribbons still crowning her awful brow.
CHAPTER XVII
And where was Gervase? His mother lay in the same condition all the next day. There was little hope that she would ever come out of it. The doctor said calmly that it was what he had looked for, for a long time. There had been “a stroke” before, though it was slight and had not been talked about; but Parsons knew very well what he was afraid of, and should have kept her mistress from excitement. Parsons, too, allowed that she knew it might come at any time. But Lord! a thing that may come at any time, you don’t ever think it’s going to come now, Parsons said; and who was she to control her lady as was the head of everything? It was allowed on all sides that to control Lady Piercey would have been a difficult thing indeed, especially where anything about Gervase was concerned.
“Spoiled the boy from the beginning, that was what she always did,” said Sir Giles, mumbling. “I’d have kept a stronger hand over him, Gerald; but what could I do, with his mother making it all up to him, as soon as my back was turned?”
Colonel Piercey heard a great deal about Gervase that he had never been intended to hear. Lady Piercey’s fiction, which she had made up so elaborately about the young man of fashion, crumbled all to pieces, poor lady; while one after another made their confidences to him. The only one who said nothing was Margaret. She was overwhelmed with occupation; all the charge of the house, which Lady Piercey had kept in her own hands, falling suddenly upon her shoulders, and without any co-operation from the much-indulged old servants, who were all servile to their imperious mistress, but very insubordinate to any government but hers. It became a serious matter, however, as the days passed by, and the old lady remained like a soul in prison, unable to move or to speak, yet staring with ever watchful eyes at the door, looking, they all felt, for some one who did not come. Where was Gervase? There was more telegraphing at Greyshott than there ever had been since such a thing was possible. Mr. Gregson replied to say that he had not found Gervase at the train, and had not seen him, news which brought everything to a standstill. Where, then, had he gone? They had no address to send to, no clue by which he might be traced out. He had disappeared altogether, nobody could tell where. Colonel Piercey’s first impulse had been to leave the distracted family, thus thrown into the depths of domestic distress, but Sir Giles clung to him with piteous helplessness, imploring him not to go.
“After my boy Gervase, there’s nobody but you,” he cried, “and he’s away, God knows where, and whom should I have to hold on by if you were to go too? There’s Meg, to be sure: but she’s got enough to do with my lady. Stay, Gerald, stay, for goodness’ sake. I’ve nobody, nobody, on my side of the house but you; and if anything were to happen,” cried the poor old gentleman, breaking down, “who have I to give orders, or to see to things? I don’t know what is to become of me if you won’t stay.”
“I’ll stay, of course, Uncle Giles, if I can be of any use,” said Colonel Piercey.
“God bless you, my lad!” cried Sir Giles, now ready to sob for satisfaction, as he had before been for trouble. “Now I can face things, if I’ve you to stand by me.”
The household in general took heart when it was known he was to stay.
“Oh! Colonel Piercey, if you’d but look up Mr. Gervase for my lady? – she can’t neither die nor get better till she sees her boy,” said the weeping Parsons; and “Colonel Piercey, Sir,” said Dunning, “Sir Giles do look to you so, as he never looked to any gentleman before. I’ll get him to do whatever’s right and good for him if so be as he knows you’re here.” Thus, both master and servants seized upon him. And yet what could he do? He could not go out and search for Gervase whom he had never seen, knowing absolutely nothing of his cousin’s haunts, nor of the people among whom he was likely to be. And he could not consult the servants on this point. There was but one person who could give him information, and she kept out of his way.
On the evening of the second day, however, Margaret came into the library after Sir Giles had been wheeled off to bed. It happened that Colonel Piercey was standing before the writing-table, examining that very photograph which he had discovered with such surprise, and which had made him break off so quickly in his story on the night when Lady Piercey was taken ill. She came suddenly up to him where he stood with the photograph, and laid her hand on his arm. He had not heard her step, and started, almost dropping it in his surprise. “Mrs. Osborne!” he exclaimed.
“You are looking at Gervase’s picture? Cousin Gerald, help us if you can. I don’t know how much or how little she feels, but it is Gervase my aunt is lying looking for – Gervase, who doesn’t know she is ill even if he had the thought. Was it him you saw with – with the woman? I have not liked to ask you, but I can’t put it off any longer. Was it Gervase? Oh! for pity’s sake, speak!”
“How should I know,” he said, “if you don’t know?”
“Know? I! What way have I of knowing? You saw him, or you seemed to think you did.”
“It was only for a moment. I had never seen him before; I might be mistaken. It seemed to me that it was the same kind of face. But how can I speak on the glimpse of a moment? I might be quite wrong.”
“You are very cautious,” she cried at last, “oh, very cautious! – though it is a matter of life and death. Won’t you help us, then, or can’t you help us? If this is so, it might give a clue. There is a girl – who has disappeared also, I have just found out. Oh! Cousin Gerald, you know what he is? – you must have heard enough to know: not a madman, nor even an imbecile, yet not like other people. He might be imposed upon – he might be carried away. There was something strange about him before he went. He said things which I could not understand. But they suspected nothing.”
“Was it not your duty,” said Gerald Piercey, almost sternly, “to tell them – if they suspected nothing, as you say?”
“You speak to me very strangely,” she said with a forced smile; “as if I were in the wrong, anyhow. What could I tell them? That I was uneasy, and not satisfied? My aunt would have asked what did it matter if I were satisfied or not? – and Uncle Giles!” She stopped, and resumed in a different tone, “And the girl has gone up to London from the Seven Thorns – so far as I can make out, on the same day.”
“What sort of a girl?”
Margaret described her as well as she was able.
“I cannot give you many details. I think she is pretty: brown hair and eyes, very neat and nice in her dress, though my aunt thinks it beyond her station. I think, on the whole, a nice-looking girl – not tall.”
“The description would answer most young women that one sees.”
“It is possible – there is nothing remarkable. She looks clever and watchful, and a little defiant. But I did not mean you to go into the streets to look for Patty. I thought you might see whether my description agreed.”
“Mrs. Osborne, perhaps you will tell me what you suppose to have happened, and what there is that I can do.”
“If we are to be on such formal terms,” said Margaret, colouring deeply, “yes, Colonel Piercey, I will tell you. I suppose, or rather, I fear, that Gervase may have gone away with Patty Hewitt. She is quite a respectable girl. She would not compromise herself; therefore – ”
“You think he has married her?”
“I think most likely she must have married him – or intends to do it. But that takes time. They could not have banns called, or other arrangements made – ”
“They could have a special licence.”
“Ah! but that costs money. They would not have money, either of them. I have been trying to make inquiries quietly. But time is passing, and his poor mother! It would be better to consent to anything,” said Margaret, “than to have her die without seeing him; and perhaps if he were found, the pressure on the brain might relax. No, I don’t know if that is possible; I am no doctor. I only want to satisfy her. She is his mother! Whatever he is, he is more to her than any one else in the world.”
“She does not seem very kind to you, that you should think so much of that.”
“Who said she was not kind to me? You take a great deal upon yourself, Colonel Piercey, to be a distant cousin!”
“I am the next-of-kin,” he said. “I’d like to protect these poor old people – and it is my duty – from any plot there may be against them.”
“Plot – against them?” She stared at him for a moment with eyes that dilated with astonishment. Then she shook her head.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “If you will not help, I must do what I can by myself. And you are free on your side to inquire, and I hope will do it, and take such steps as may seem to you good. The thing now is to find Gervase for his mother. At another moment,” said Margaret, raising her head, “you will perhaps explain to me what you mean by this tone – towards me.”
She turned her back upon him without another word, and walked away, leaving Colonel Piercey not very comfortable. He asked himself uneasily what right he had to suspect her? – what he suspected her of? – as he stood and watched her crossing the hall. It was a sign of the agitation in the house, that all the doors seemed to stand open, the centre of the family existence having shifted somehow from the principal rooms downstairs to some unseen room above, where the mistress of the house lay. What did he suspect Meg Piercey of? What had he against her? When he asked himself this, it appeared that all he had against her was that she was a dependent, a widow, a middle-aged person – one of those wrecks which encumber the shores of life, which ought to have gone down, or to be broken up, not to strew the margins of existence with unnecessary and incapable things, making demands upon feeling and sympathy which might be much better expended elsewhere. Colonel Piercey was not a hard man by nature: he was, in fact, rather too open to the claims of charity, and had expended too much, not too little, upon widows and orphans in his day. But it had stirred up all the angry elements in his nature to see Meg Piercey in that condition which was not natural to her. She ought to have died long ago along with her husband, or she ought to have a position of her own: to see her here in that posture of dependence, in that black gown, with that child, living, as he said to himself harshly, upon charity, and accepting all the penalties, was more than he could bear. There is a great deal to be said for the Suttee, though a humanitarian government has put an end to it. It is so much more dignified for a woman. To a man of fine feelings, it is a painful thing to see how a person whose natural rôle is that of a princess, a dispenser of help to others, should come down herself into the rank of the beggar, because of the death of, probably, a very inferior being to whom she was married. It degraded her altogether in the scale of being. A princess has noble qualities, large aims, and stands above the crowd – a dependant does quite the reverse. Scheming and plotting are the natural breath of the latter; and that a woman should let herself come down to that wilfully, rather than die and be done with it, which would be so much more natural and dignified! Colonel Piercey was aware that his thoughts were very fantastic, and yet this is how they were – he could not help himself. He was angry with Margaret. It was not the place she was born to; a sort of Abigail about the backstairs, existing by the caprice of a disagreeable old woman. Oh, no! it was not a thing that a man could put up with. And, of course, she must have sunk to the level of her kind.