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.
This was why he suspected her. The question remained, What did he suspect her of? And this was still more difficult to answer. Such a woman, of course, would live by sowing mischief in a family; by hurting in the most effectual way the superiors who kept her down, and were so little considerate of her. And their son was the way in which she could most effectively do this. Gerald Piercey had various thoughts rising in his mind about this young man, who probably was not at all fit to hold the family property and succeed Sir Giles in its honours. There was one point of view from which Colonel Piercey could not forget that he himself was the next-of-kin—that which made him, in his own eyes, the champion of Gervase—his determined defender against every assault. Perhaps the very strength of this feeling might push him beyond what was right and just; but it would be in the way of supporting and protecting his weak-minded cousin. That was a point upon which, naturally, he could have no doubt. If Meg Piercey was against him, it was Gerald Piercey’s part to defend him. But the means were a little doubtful. He was not clear whether Meg was helping Gervase to marry unsuitably, to spite his parents, or whether her intention was to prevent this marriage, in order to deprive him of his happiness and the natural protection which the support of a clever wife might afford to the half-witted young man. Thus, he had a difficult part to play; having first to find out what Margaret’s scope and meaning was, and then to set himself to defeat it. He had been but three days in the house, and what a tangled web he was involved in!—to be the Providence of all these people, old and young, whom he knew so little, yet was so closely connected with; and to defeat the evil genius, the enemy in the guise of a friend, whom he alone was clear-sighted enough to divine. But she puzzled him all the same. She had looks that were not those of a deceiver; and when she had raised her head and told him that at another moment she would demand an explanation of what his tone meant, something like a shade of alarm passed through the soldier’s mind. He would not have been alarmed, you may be sure, if Margaret had threatened him with a champion, as in the older days. Bois-Guilbert was not afraid of Ivanhoe. But, when it is the woman herself who asks an explanation, and his objections have to be stated in full words, to her alone, facing him for herself, that is a different matter. It may well make a man look pale.