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!