OLD Miss Hewitt sat in her parlour, if not like a fat spider watching for the fly, at least like a large cat seated demurely, with an eye upon her natural prey, though her aspect was more decorous and composed than words could tell. She had been made aware by her little servant a few minutes before that “a gentleman” was coming up to the door, and had instantaneously prepared to meet the visitor. A visitor was a very rare thing at Rose Cottage.
“You’re sure it ain’t the curate, a-coming begging?”
“Oh, no,” cried the little maid, “a tall, grand gentleman, like a lord. I think I knows a pa’son when I sees ’un!” she added, with rustic contempt. Miss Hewitt settled herself in her large chair; she gave her cap that twist that every woman who wears a cap supposes to put all aright. She drew to her a footstool for her feet, and then she said, “You may let him in, Jane.” A smile of delight was upon her mouth; but she subdued even that in her sense of propriety, to heighten the effect. She had been waiting for this moment for thirty years. She had not known how it would come about, but she had always felt it must come about somehow. She had paid fifty pounds for it—and she had not grudged her money—and now it had come. She did not even know the shape it would take, or who it was who was coming to place the family of Piercey at her feet, that she might spurn them; but that this was what was about to happen, she felt absolutely sure. It could not be Sir Giles himself, which would have been the sweetest of all, for Sir Giles was too infirm to visit anybody; while she, whom he had scorned once, was hale and strong, and sure to see both of them out! Perhaps it was a solicitor, or something of the kind. What did she care? It was some one from the Pierceys coming to her, abject, with a petition—which she would not grant—no, not if they besought her on their knees.
The room seemed in semi-darkness to Gerald, coming in from the brightness of the summer afternoon. The blind was drawn down to save the carpet, and the curtains hung heavily over the window for gentility’s sake. Miss Hewitt sat with her back to the light, by the side of the fireplace, which was filled up by cut paper. There was no air in the room; and though Colonel Piercey was not a man of humorous perceptions, there occurred even to him the idea of a large cat with her tail curled round her, sitting demure, yet fierce, on the watch for some prey, of which she had scent or sight.
“My name is Piercey,” said the Colonel. “I am a relation of the family at Greyshott, who perhaps, you may have heard, are in great trouble at this moment. I have come to you, Miss Hewitt—and I hope you will pardon me for disturbing you—to know whether, by any chance, you could furnish us with Gervase Piercey’s address.”
“Ah, you’re from the Pierceys,” said Miss Hewitt. “I thought as much—though there ain’t that friendship between me and the Pierceys that should make them send to me in their trouble. And what relation may you be, if a person might ask?”
“I am a cousin; but that is of little importance. The chief thing is that Mr. Gervase Piercey is absent, and his address is not known. His mother is ill——”
“I heard of that,” said the old lady, drawing a long breath as of satisfaction. “She’s a hard one, too, she is. It would be something sharp that made her ill. I suppose as she heard——”
“She heard nothing. There was no mental cause for her illness, if that is what you mean. She had been sitting, talking just as usual——”
“Oh—h!” cried Miss Hewitt, with an air of disappointment; “then it wasn’t from the shock? And what’s their meaning, then, Mister Piercey—if you call yourself Piercey—in sending to me?”
“That is precisely what I can’t tell you,” said Gerald, with much candour. “I confess that it seems absurd, but I supposed, perhaps, that you would know.”
“And why should it seem absurd? I know a deal more about the Pierceys than you think for, or any fine gentleman that comes questioning of me, as if I were an old hag in the village. Oh! I know the way that you, as calls yourselves gentlemen, speak!”
“I hope,” said Gerald, surprised, “that I don’t speak in any unbecoming way, or fail in respect to any woman. It is very likely that you know much more than I do, and the question is one that is easily settled. Could you throw any light upon the question where Gervase Piercey is, and if so, will you tell me his address?”
She looked at him for a moment as if uncertain how to respond—whether to play with the victim any longer, or to make a pounce and end it. Then she said, quickly, “Did he send you himself?”
“Did who send me?”
“Giles—Sir Giles; don’t you understand? Was it him as thought of Patience Hewitt? That’s what I want to know.”
“Miss Hewitt, Lady Piercey is very ill——”
“Ah! he never was in love with her,” cried the old lady; “never! He married her—he was drawn in to do it; but I know as he hated it when he did it. It never was for her, if it was he has sent you. Not for her, but for——”
She stopped and looked at him again, with a glare in her eyes, yet resolved, apparently, not to pounce but to play a little longer. “Ah! so my lady’s ill, is she? She’s an old woman, more like an old hag, I can tell you, than me. She was thirty-five, if she was a day, when she married Sir Giles, and high living and nothing to do has made her dreadful. He never could abear fat women, and it serves him right. Some people never lose their figure, whatever their age may be.”
She sat very upright in her chair, with a smile of self-complacence, nodding her head. “Well,” she said, “and what’s wanted of me? Not to go and nurse my lady, I suppose? They don’t want me to do that?”
“They wish to know,” said Colonel Piercey, restraining himself with an effort, “Mr. Gervase Piercey’s address.”
“Their son’s address?” said Miss Hewitt. “He’s the heir, you know. The village folks calls him the Softy, but there couldn’t nothing be proved against him. He’ll be Sir Gervase after his father, and nobody can’t prevent that. And how is it as they don’t know their own son’s address? and for why should they send you to me? Me, a lady living quiet in her own house, meddling with none of them, how should I know their son’s address?”
“I have told you I have not the slightest light to throw on this question. It appears that your niece is in London, and that she was seen, or it is supposed she was seen, with my cousin.”
“And what then?” cried the old lady. “You think, perhaps, as that Softy led my Patty wrong. Ho, ho! ho, ho!” She laughed a low guttural laugh, prolonging it till Colonel Piercey’s exasperation was almost beyond bearing. “You think as he was the gay Lotharium and she was the young Lavinyar, eh? Oh, I’ve read plenty of books in my time, and I know how gentlemen talk of them sort of things. No, she ain’t, Mister Piercey. My Patty is one that knows very well what she is about.”
“So I have heard, also. I believe it is supposed that as he is such a fool, your niece may have married him, Miss Hewitt.”
“And so she have, just!” cried the old lady, springing from her chair. She waved her arms in the air and uttered a hoarse “Hooray!” “That is just what has happened, mister; exactly true, as if you’d been in all the plans from the first. You tell Sir Giles as there is a Patty Hewitt will be Lady Piercey, after all, and not the Queen herself couldn’t prevent it. Just you tell him that from me; Patience, called for her aunt, and thought to be like me, though smaller—my brother being an ass and marrying a little woman. But that’s just the gospel truth. She’s Mrs. Gervase Piercey, now, and she’ll be Lady Piercey when the time comes. Oh!” cried Miss Hewitt, sinking back in her chair, exhausted, “but I’d like to be there when he hears. And I’d like to tell her, I should,” she added, with a fierce glare in her eyes.
Gerald had risen when she did, and stood holding the back of his chair. Fortunately, he had great command of his temper, though the provocation was strong. He was silent while she settled herself again in her seat, and rearranged her cap-strings and the folds of her gown, though the flowers in her head-dress quivered with excitement and triumph. He said, “I fear you will never have that satisfaction. Lady Piercey is dying, and, happily, knows nothing about this. Perhaps your revenge might be more complete if you would summon her son to see her before she dies.”
Miss Hewitt was too much occupied by what she had herself said to pay much attention to him. It was only after some minutes of murmuring and smiling to herself, that she began to recall that he had made a reply. “What was you saying, Mr. Piercey—eh? If you was counting on succeeding you’re struck all of a heap, and I don’t wonder, for there’s an end of you, my fine gentleman! There’ll be a family and a large family, you take your oath of that. None of your marrying in-and-in cousins and things, but a fine, fresh, new stock. What was you saying? Dying is she, that woman? Well, we’ve all got to die. She’s had her share above most, and taken other folks’s bread out of their mouths, and she must take her share now. Nobody’s a-going to die instead of her. That’s a thing as you’ve got to do when your time comes for yourself.”
“And, happily,” said Gerald, “she knows nothing of all this. Perhaps if she were permitted to see her son——”
“Goodness gracious me!” cried Miss Hewitt, rousing up: “do you hate her like that? I think you must be the devil himself, to put that into a body’s head. It’s a disappointment to me, dreadful, that she should die and not know; but to send him to tell her, and the woman at her last breath—Oh! Lord, what wickedness there is in this world! Man! what makes you hate her like that?”
“Will you allow her to see her son?” Colonel Piercey asked.
The old woman rose up again in her agitation. One of the old Puritan divines describes Satan as putting so big a stone into the sinner’s hand to throw at his enemy, that the bounds of human guilt were over-passed and the almost murderer pitched it at his tempter instead. This suggestion was to Patience Hewitt, in the sense in which she understood it, that too-heavy stone. The desire for revenge had been very strong in her. She had waited and plotted all her life for the opportunity of returning to Sir Giles the reward of his desertion of her, and she had attained her object, and a furious delight was in it. But to seethe the kid in his mother’s milk is a thing about which the most cruel have their prejudices. To bring the Softy back to shout his news into the ear of the dying woman, that was a more fiendish detail than she had dreamed of. She rose up and sat down again, and clasped her hands and unclasped them, and turned over the terrible temptation in her mind. No doubt it would be the very crown of vengeance, to prove to Sir Giles’ wife that she, whom she had supplanted, was the victor at the last. That was what she had hoped for all through. She had hoped that it was some rumour of what had happened that had been the cause of Lady Piercey’s illness. A stroke! it was quite natural she should have a stroke when she heard; it was the vengeance of God long deferred for what she had done unpunished so many years ago. But between this, in which she felt a grim joy, and the other, there was a great gulf. To send for Gervase, in order that he, with his own hand, should give his mother her death-blow, the horrible thought made her head giddy and her heart beat. It was a temptation—the most dreadful of temptations. It seized upon her imagination even while it filled her with horror. It answered every wild desire of poetic justice in the untutored mind: never had been any vengeance like that. It was a thing to be told, and shuddered at, and told again. “Oh! for goodness gracious sake, go along with you, go along with you,” she cried, putting out her hands to push the Colonel away, “for I think you must be the very devil himself.”
It was almost with the same words that Gerald Piercey answered Margaret, who met him eagerly as he returned. Sir Giles was out in the garden with Dunning and Osy, and there was no one to disturb the consultation of these two enemies or friends. “Have you heard anything of him?” cried Margaret. Colonel Piercey answered almost solemnly, “I have seen the devil; if he ever takes a woman’s form.”
“I have heard that she was a dreadful old woman.”
“And I have made a dreadful suggestion to her, which she is turning over in her dreadful mind. She hates poor old Lady Piercey with a virulence which—— perhaps you may understand it, knowing the circumstances; I don’t. She is terribly disappointed that it was not the news which was the cause of the illness. And I have suggested that if the bridegroom could be sent home, the old lady might still hear it before she dies.”
“The news—the bridegroom! Then it is so? They are married!”
“That’s better, I suppose,” said the Colonel, “than if it had been worse.”
Margaret coloured high at this enigmatical speech. “To everybody but Aunt Piercey,” she said. “My uncle will get used to the idea; but his mother! It is better he should not come than come to tell her that.”
“If he comes we can surely keep him silent,” Colonel Piercey said. “I thought that was the one thing to be attained at all risks.”
“And so it was. And I thank you, Cousin Gerald, and we can but do our best.”
Lady Piercey turned her eyes towards the door as Margaret went into the room. A dreadful weariness was in those living eyes, which had not closed, in anything that could be called sleep, since her seizure. She had lain there dead, but for that look, for three days, unable to move a finger. But always her eyes turned to the door whenever it opened, however softly. Sometimes the film of a doze came over them; but no one came in without meeting that look—the look of a soul in prison, with no sense but that one remaining to make existence a fact. How much she knew of what was passing around her, they could not tell; or of her own condition, or of what was before her. All she seemed to know was that Gervase did not come. Sometimes her eyes fell upon Margaret with a look which seemed one of angry appeal. And then they returned to watch the door, which opened, indeed, from time to time, but never to admit her son. Oh, dreadful eyes! Mrs. Osborne shrank from encountering them. It was she, she only of whom they asked that question—she whom they seemed to blame. Where was Gervase? Why did he not come? Was he coming? Speech and hearing were alike gone. Her question was only in her eyes.
And thus the evening and the morning made the fourth day.