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.