Kitobni o'qish: «The Cuckoo in the Nest. Volume 2/2», sahifa 10
CHAPTER XL
Margaret Osborne had lost no time in settling down in a cottage proportioned to her means, with her little boy and the one maid, who did all that was necessary, yet as little of everything as was practicable, for the small household. The place she had chosen was not very far from Greyshott, yet in the impracticability of country roads, especially during the winter, to those who are out of railway range, almost as far apart as if it had been at the other end of England. The district altogether had not attained the popularity it now enjoys, and the village was very rural indeed, with nobody in it above the rank of the rustic tradesmen and traffickers, except the inevitable parson and the doctor. The vicar’s wife seized with enthusiasm upon the new inhabitant as a representative of society, and various others of the neighbouring clergywomen made haste to call upon a woman so well connected, as did also the squire of the place, or, at least, the ladies belonging to him. But Mrs. Osborne had no such thirst for society as to trudge along the muddy roads to return their visits, and her income did not permit even the indulgence of the jogging pony and homely clothes-basket of a little carriage, in which many of the clerical neighbours found great comfort. She had to stay at home perforce, knowing no enlivenment of her solitude, except tea at the vicarage on rare occasions. Tea at the vicarage in earlier and homelier days would have meant a quiet share of the cheerful evening refreshments and amusements, when the guest was made one of the family party, and all its natural interests and occupations placed before her. But tea, which is an afternoon performance and means a crowd of visitors collected from all quarters, in which the natural household is altogether swamped, and the guest sees not her friends, but their friends or distant acquaintances, of whom she neither has nor wishes to have any knowledge – is a very different matter. At Greyshott there had been occasional heavy dinner-parties, in which it was Margaret’s part to exert herself for the satisfaction, at all events, of old friends, most of whom called her Meg, and had known her from her girlhood. These were not, perhaps, very entertaining evenings, but they were better than the modern fashion. She lived, accordingly, very much alone with Osy, and the maid-of-all-work, whom, knowing so little as she did of the practical arrangements of a household, she had to train, with many misadventures, which would have been amusing had there been anybody with whom she could have laughed over her own blunders and Jane’s ignorance. But alas! there was no one. Osy was too young to be amused when his pudding was burned or his potatoes like stones. He was more likely to cry, and his mother’s anxiety for his health and comfort took the fun out of the ludicrous, yet painful, errors of her unaccustomed house-keeping. It depends so much on one’s surroundings whether these failures are ludicrous or tragical. In some cases they are an enlivenment of life, in others an exaggeration of all its troubles. These, however, were but temporary; for Mrs. Osborne, though she knew nothing to begin with, and did not even know whether she was capable of learning, was, in fact, too capable a woman, though she was not aware of it, to be long overcome by troubles of this kind; and it soon became a pleasure to her and enlivenment of her life to look after her own little domestic arrangements, and carry forward the education of her little maid-servant. There was not, after all, very much to do – plenty of time after all was done for Osy’s lessons, and for what was equally important, Margaret’s own lessons, self-conducted, to fit her for teaching her boy. At seven years old a little pupil does not make any very serious call upon his teachers, and though Margaret was aware of having no education herself, she was still capable of as much as the little fellow wanted, except in one particular. Osy had, as many children have in the first stage, a precocious capacity for what his mother called “figures,” knowing no better; for I doubt whether Margaret knew what was the difference between arithmetic and mathematics, or where one ends and the other begins. Osy did in his own little head sums which made his mother’s hair stand erect on hers. She was naturally all the more proud of this achievement that she did not understand it in the least. She was even delighted when Osy found her all wrong in an answer she had carefully boggled out to one of those alarming sums, and laughed till the tears came into her eyes at the pitying looks and apologetic speeches of her little boy. “It isn’t nofing wrong, Movver,” Osy said. “Ladies never, never do sums.” He stroked her hand in his childish compassion, anxious to restore her to her own esteem. “You can wead evwyfing you sees in any book, and write bof big hand and small hand, and understand evwyfing; but ladies never does sums,” said Osy, climbing up to put his arms round her neck and console her. These excuses for her incapacity were sweeter to Margaret than any applause could have been, and such incidents soon gave pleasure and interest to her life. It is well for women that few things in life are more delightful than the constant companionship of an intelligent child, and Margaret was, fortunately, capable of taking, not only the comfort, but the amusement, too, of Osy’s new views of life. These, however, we have not, alas! space to give; and as she was obliged to engage the instructions of the village schoolmaster for him in the one point which was utterly beyond her, Osy’s mathematical genius and his peculiar phraseology soon died away together. He learned to pronounce the “th,” which is so difficult a sound in English, and his condition of infant prodigy in respect to “figures” and all the wonders of his mental arithmetic came to an end under the prosaic rules of Mr. Jones, as such precocities usually do.
Margaret’s life, however, had thus fallen into a tolerably happy vein, full of cheerful occupation and boundless hope and love – for what eminence or delight was there in the world which that wonderful child might not reach? and to be his mother was such a position, she felt, as queens might have envied – when the news of her cousin’s death broke upon her solitude with a sudden shock and horror. She had heard scarcely anything about him in the interval. One or two letters dictated to Dunning had come from her uncle in answer to her dutiful epistles, but naturally there was no communication between her and Patty, and Gervase had scarcely ever written a letter in his life. Sometimes at long intervals Lady Hartmore had taken a long drive to see her, but that great lady knew nothing about a household which nobody now ever visited. “I might give you scraps I hear from the servants,” Lady Hartmore said, – “one can’t help picking up things from the servants, though I am always ashamed of it,” – but these scraps chiefly concerned the “ways” of Mrs. Piercey, which Margaret was too loyal to her family to like to hear laughed at. Gervase dead! it seemed one of those impossibilities which the mind feels less power of accustoming itself to than much greater losses. Those whom our minds can attend with longing and awe into the eternal silence, who are of kin to all the great thoughts that fill it, and for whom every heavenly development is possible, convey no sense of incongruity, however overwhelming may be the sorrow, when they are removed from us. But Gervase! How hard it was to think of him gaping, incapable of understanding, on the verge of that new world. Who could associate with him its heavenly progress, its high communion? Gervase! why should he have died? it seemed harder to understand of him whose departure would leave so slight a void, whose trace afar would be followed by no longing eyes, than of one whose end would have shaken the whole world. The news had a great and painful effect upon Margaret, first for itself, and afterwards for what must follow. She wrote, as has been said, to her uncle, asking if she might go to him, if a visit from her would be of any comfort to him; and she wrote to Patty with her heart full, forgetting everything in the pity with which she could not but think of hopes overthrown. Patty replied with great propriety, not concealing that she had kept back Margaret’s letter to Sir Giles, explaining how little able he was for any further excitement, and that all that could be done was to keep him perfectly quiet. “He might wish to see you, but he is not equal to it,” Patty said; and she ended by saying that her whole life should be devoted to Sir Giles as long as he lived, “for I have nothing now upon Earth,” Patty said, with a big capital. All that Margaret could do was to accept the situation, thinking many a wistful thought of her poor old uncle, from whom everything had been taken. Poor Gervase, indeed, had not been much to his father, but yet he was his son.
The winter was long and dreary – dreary enough at Greyshott, where the old gentleman was going daily a step farther down the hill, and often dreary, too, to Margaret, looking out from the window of her little drawing-room upon the little row of laurels glistening in the wet, with now and then a passer-by and his umbrella going heavily by. There are some people who have an invincible inclination to look out, whatever is outside the windows, were it only chimney-pots; and Margaret was one of these. She got to know every twig of those glistening laurels shining in the rain, and to recognise even the footsteps that went wading past. There was not much refreshment nor amusement in it, but it was her nature to look out wherever she was. And one afternoon, in the lingering spring, she suddenly saw a figure coming up the village road which had never been seen there before, which seemed to have fallen down from the sky, or risen up from the depths, so little connection had it with anything there. Mrs. Osborne owned the strangeness of the apparition with a jump of the heart that had been beating so tranquilly in her bosom. Gerald Piercey here! He had been for a long time abroad, travelling in the East, far out of the usual tracks of travellers, and had written to her three or four times from desert and distant places, whose names recalled the Arabian Nights to her, but nothing nearer home. The letters had always been curt, and not always amiable: “I note what you say about having settled down. If you think the stagnant life of a village the best thing for you, and your own instructions the best thing for a boy who will have a part to play in the world, of course it is needless for me to make any remark on the subject.” Margaret received these missives with a little excitement, it must be allowed, if not with pleasure. She confessed to herself that they amused her: “a boy who will have a part to play in the world!” Did he think, she asked herself with a smile, that Osy was seventeen instead of seven? At seven what did he want beyond his mother’s instructions? But it cannot be denied that letters, with curious Turkish hieroglyphics on the address, dated from Damascus, Baghdad, and other dwellings of the unknown, had an effect upon her. To receive them at Chillfold, in Surrey, was a sensation. The Vicarage children, who collected stamps, were much excited by the Turkish specimens, and she could not help a pleasurable sensation as she bestowed them. Even Osy’s babble about Cousin Colonel was not unpleasing to his mother’s ears. Gerald was far away, unable to take any steps, or even to say much about Osy. She liked at that distance to have such a man more or less belonging to her. The feeling of opposition had died away. He had been fond of Osy, wanted to have him for his own – as who would not wish to have her beautiful boy? – and what could be more ingratiating to his mother than that sentiment, so long as it was entertained by a man at Baghdad, who certainly could not take any steps to steal the boy from his mother? Into this amicable, and even vaguely pleased state of mind she had fallen – when suddenly, without any warning, without even having seen him come round the corner, Gerald Piercey stood before her eyes.
Margaret went away from the window and sat down in the corner by the fire, which was the corner most in the shade and safe from observation. That her heart should beat so was absurd. What was Gerald Piercey to her, or she to Gerald Piercey? He might make what propositions he pleased, but he could not force her to give up her boy. At seven it was ridiculous – out of the question! At seventeen it might be different, but that was ten long years off. If this was what his object was, was not her answer plain?
He came in very gravely, not at all belligerent, though he looked round with an air of criticism, remarking the smallness of the place, which recalled to some extent Mrs. Osborne’s old feelings towards him. He had no right to find the cottage small. She thought him looking old, worn, and with care in his face. He, on the other hand, was astonished to see her so young. The air of Chillfold, the tranquillity and freedom, had been good for Margaret. The desert sun and wind had baked him black and brown. The quiet of the cottage, the life of a child which she had been living, had brought all her early roses back.
“I have come,” he said, taking her hand in his, “on a sad errand.” And then he paused and cried hurriedly, “What have you done to yourself? Why, you are Meg Piercey again.”
“Margaret Osborne at your service,” she said, as she had said before; but with a very different feeling from that which had moved her on the previous occasion: to be recognised with surprise as young and fair, is a very different thing from being accused angrily of having lost your freshness and your youth, – “but what is it, what is it?”
“Uncle Giles is dying, Cousin Meg.”
“Uncle Giles!” She drew her hand from him and dropped back into her chair. For a moment she did not speak. “But I am not surprised,” she said. “I looked for it: how could he go on living with nobody – not one of his own?”
“He might have had you. Poor old man! it is not the time to blame him.”
“Me?” said Margaret. “I was not his child; nothing, and nobody, can make up for the loss of what is your very own.”
“Even when it is – Gervase Piercey?”
“Poor Gervase!” said Margaret. “Oh, Gerald Piercey, you are a man with whom things have always gone well. What does it matter what our children are? they are our children all the same. And if it were nothing but to think that it was Gervase – and what poor Gervase was.”
Though she was perhaps a little incoherent, Gerald did not object. He said: “At all events, I am very sorry for my poor old uncle. Mrs. Gervase wrote to me to say that he was sinking fast, should I like to come? and that she was writing to you in the same sense. I had only just arrived when I got her letter, and I thought that the best thing was to come to you at once, in case you were going to see him.”
“Of course, I should wish to go and see him; but I have had no letter. I must see him if she will let me. Dear old Uncle Giles, he was always good and fatherly to me.”
“And yet he let you leave your home – for this.”
“Cousin Gerald,” said Margaret, “don’t let us begin to quarrel again. This is very well – it suits me perfectly – and I am very happy here. It is my own. My dear old uncle was not strong enough to struggle in my favour, but he was always kind. I must go to see him, whether she wishes it or not.”
“I have a carriage ready. I thought that would be your decision. We shall get there before dark.”
“We?” she said, startled; then added, almost with timidity, “you are going – ?”
“Certainly I am going. You don’t, perhaps, think what this may be to me. My father will be the head of the house – ”
“And you after him. I fully understand what it is to you,” she said.
He gave her a singular look, which she did not at all understand, except that it might mean that with this increased power and authority he would have more to say about Osy. “And to you too,” he said.
CHAPTER XLI
Patty received her two visitors without effusion, but with civility. Her demeanour was very different from all they had known of her before. She had been defiant and impertinent, anxious to offend and disgust, rather than to attract, with the most anxious desire to get rid of both, and to make them feel that they had no place nor standing in Greyshott. She had, indeed, been so frightened lest she herself should be overthrown, that all the “manners” in which Patty had been brought up deserted her, and she behaved like the barmaid dressed in a little brief and stolen authority, which they believed her to be. Indeed, the “manners” which Patty had been taught chiefly consisted in the inculcation of extreme respect to her “betters;” and her revolt from this, and conviction that she had now no betters in the world, carried her further in the opposite direction than if she had had no training at all. But in her calm tenure of authority for nearly a year, Patty had learned many things. She had learned that the mistress of a house does not need to stand upon her authority, and that a right, acknowledged and evident, does not require to be loudly asserted. It might have been supposed, however, that a certain awe of the heir-at-law – a humility more or less towards the man to whom shortly she must cede her keys, her place, and all the rights upon which she now stood, would have shown themselves in her. But this was not at all the case. She was quite civil to Colonel Piercey, but she treated him solely as a guest – her guest – without any relationship of his own towards the house in which she received him. To Margaret she was more friendly, but more careless in her civility. “I ordered them to get ready for you the room you used to have. I thought you would probably like that best,” she said. Colonel Piercey was lodged quite humbly in one of the “bachelor’s rooms,” no special attention of any kind being paid to him, which was a thing very surprising to him, though he could scarcely have told why. To be aware that you are very near being the head of the house, and to be treated as if you were a very ordinary and distant relation, is startling in a house which is full of the presence of death. That presence, when it brings with it no deep family sorrow, brings a sombre business and activity, a sense of suppressed preparations and watchfulness for the end, which is very painful to the sensitive mind, even when moved by no special feeling. Waiting for an old man to die, it is often difficult not to be impatient for that event, as for any other event which involves long waiting. Patty went about the house with this air of much business held back and suspended until something should happen. She was called away to have interviews with this person and that. She spoke of the “arrangements” she had to attend to. “Would it not be better that Colonel Piercey should relieve you of some part of the trouble?” said Margaret. “Oh, no; one should always do one’s own business. Outsiders never understand,” said Patty, with what would have been, had she been less dignified, a toss of her head in her widow’s cap.
Was Gerald Piercey an outsider in the house that must so soon be his own? He had given Margaret to understand during their long drive that his father would not change his home or his life, and that it was he, Gerald, who would occupy Greyshott. I think Colonel Piercey was of opinion that he had made something else clear, though it had not been spoken of in words – namely, that there was but one mistress possible for Greyshott in its new life; but Mrs. Osborne did not by any means clearly understand him, having her mind preoccupied by the belief that his feelings to her were not of an affectionate kind, and that his first object was to deprive her of her child. She felt, however, that he was kind – bewilderingly kind, and that there was something in him which wanted explanation; but all the more, Margaret was anxious and disturbed by this attitude of “outsider” attributed to him. If Gerald Piercey was an outsider in Greyshott on the eve of his uncle’s death, to whom he was natural heir, who else could have any right there? He did not remark this, as was natural. He was not surprised that Patty should hold him at arm’s length. It was quite to be expected that she should feel deeply the mere fact that he was the heir. Poor girl! He wondered what provision had been made for her – if any; and if there should be none, promised himself that his father’s first act, as Sir Francis, should be to set this right. He was, in fact, very sorry for Mrs. Patty, whose ambitions and schemes had come to so summary an end. She should never require to go back to the alehouse, but should be fitly provided for as the wife of the once heir of Greyshott ought to be. He confided these intentions to Margaret at the very moment when Mrs. Osborne’s mind was full of Patty’s speech about the outsider. “You mean if Uncle Giles has not done so already,” Margaret said.
“It is very unlikely he should have done so. Of course there could be no settlement; and who was there to point out to him that such a thing was necessary?” Colonel Piercey was so strong in his conviction that Margaret did not like to suggest even that Patty might herself have pointed it out. But her own mind was full of vague suspicion and alarm. An outsider! Gerald Piercey, the natural heir of the house?
Late that night the two visitors were called to Sir Giles’ room. “He is awake and seems to know everybody; I should like you to see him now,” Patty said, going herself to Mrs. Osborne’s room to call her. Colonel Piercey was walking up and down in the hall, with an air of examining the old family pictures, which Patty had not thought it necessary to meddle with, though she had removed those that had been in the library. He was not really looking at them, except as accessories to the scene – silent witnesses of the one that was passing away, and the other that was about to come. Gerald Piercey had a deep sadness in his heart, though he could not keep his thoughts from the new life that was before him. The very warmth of the rising of that new life and all its hopes made him feel all the more the deep disappointment and loss in which the other was ending. Poor Gervase would never have been a fit representative of the Pierceys, but as Margaret said, as she had always said, he was his father’s son, and the object of all the hopes of the old pair who had reigned so long in Greyshott. And now this branch was cut off, their line ended, and the old tree falling that had flourished so long. He wondered if it would really be any comfort to poor old Sir Giles, dying alone in his desolate house, that there were still Pierceys to come after him: the same blood and race, though not drawn from his source. It seemed questionable how far he would be comforted by this; perhaps not at all, perhaps rather embittered by the fact that it was a cousin’s son and not his own, who should now be the head of the house.
“Come now, come now,” cried Patty eagerly, “as long as he is so conscious and awake. He sleeps most of his time, and it’s quite a chance – quite a chance. I want you to see with your own eyes that he’s all himself, and has his faculties still.” She had an air of excitement about her perhaps not quite appropriate to the moment, as if her nerves were all in motion, and she could scarcely keep her fingers still or subdue the quiver in her head and over all her frame. She led the way hurriedly, opening the doors one after another in an excited way, and pushing into the sick room with a “Look, dear papa, who I’ve brought to see you.” Sir Giles was sitting up in his bed, his large ashy face turned towards the door, his dim sunken eyes looking out from fold upon fold of heavy eyelid, his under-lip hanging as that of poor Gervase had done. “Ah,” he stammered, “let ’em come in – to the light, my dear. I’m not in a state – to see strangers; but to please you – my dear.”
“Uncle Giles,” said Margaret, with an exclamation of pain, “surely you know me?”
“Eh? let her stand – in the light – in the light; why, why, why – Meg: it’s Meg, – that’s Meg.” She kissed him, and he made an effort to turn his feeble head, and with his large moist lips he gave a tremulous kiss in the air. “I’m – I’m glad to see you, Meg. You were the first to – tell me – to tell me: I’ll be always grateful to you – for that.”
“For what, dear uncle? It is I who owe everything to you. Oh, Uncle Giles, if I could only tell you how much and how often I think of it! you were always kind, always kind; and dear Aunt Piercey; you gave me my home, the only home I ever had.”
“Eh! eh! What is she saying, my dear? You’ll – you’ll look after Meg – never let her come to want. She was the first to tell me. The greatest news that has come – to Greyshott. You remember, Meg – and Osy, bless him, how he cheered! There’s – there’s something for Osy. He cheered like a little trump, and he gave – he gave my boy his only wedding present, the – the only one. Dunning, where is my purse? Osy must have a tip – two tips for that.”
“Dear papa,” cried Patty, “don’t disturb yourself; oh, don’t disturb yourself! I’ll see to it.”
“My – my purse, Dunning!” The purse was procured while they all stood by, and the old man fumbling, got with difficulty, one after another, two sovereigns, which fell out of his trembling fingers upon the bed. “One for – for cheering; and one for – for the other thing. Give ’em to Osy, Meg, bless him; and my blessing. When It comes and all’s right, that’ll be a friend for Osy – always a friend, better than an old man.”
“Dear papa,” cried Patty, pushing forward again, “here is some one else to see you – Colonel Piercey, dear, don’t you remember? Colonel Piercey – Gerald – that once paid you a long visit; I know you’ll remember if you try. Here,” she said, seizing his arm, pulling him forward, “stand in the light that he may see you.”
She was vibrating with excitement like a creature on wires. The touch of her hand on Gerald’s arm was like an electric cord; and to be pushed forward thus, and accounted for as if he had been an absolute stranger, to be brought with difficulty to the mind of the dying man, was to Gerald Piercey, as may well be supposed, an insupportable sensation. He drew back, saying hastily, “I cannot disturb him. I will not have him disturbed for me – let him alone, let him alone.”
“Eh? what? who’s that? somebody else? Gerald?” said Sir Giles. He held out his hand vaguely into the air, not seeing where his attention was called, the large old limp grey hand, with so little volition or power left in it. “Ah, Gerald, come to see the end of the old man? that’s kind! that’s kind! My poor wife and I used to think if our first boy had lived, don’t you know, he might have been a man like you. Well, Gerald, I’ve nothing to give you, but my blessing – but my blessing. You won’t mind if your nose is put out of joint, you know, as the old folks say. And you’ll stand by It, Gerald, a – a good fellow like you.”
“Dear papa, I think they’ll go now; it’s late, and you ought to go to sleep.”
“Not yet,” said Sir Giles, who had fallen into the old strain of faint sobbing and laughing; “plenty – plenty of time for sleep. Thousands of years, don’t you know, till it’s all – all over. Where are they? eh, Meg. I scarcely see you; eh!” he kissed the air again with his hanging, lifeless lips, “good-night; and t’other man. Gerald, be kind to her, my boy; a good girl, Meg, a good girl. She’s been married, which some might think a drawback; but if you’re fond of her, and she’s fond of you. Eh, Dunning? well I’m not tired, not tired a bit – let him be the god-father, my dear; and good-night to you, good-night to you – all.”
He died in the night.
The third funeral within a year from Greyshott! What a melancholy record was that – father and mother, and the only child! Sir Giles was the only one of the three who could be said to have been beloved. His wife had always been an imperious woman, his son had been a fool; but the old man was full of gentleness and kindness, and had been a model country gentleman in his day, known to everybody, and always genial to rich and poor. Once more the avenue was full of carriages, and the house of mourners, and there were some tears, and many kind recollections, and a great deal of talk about him as they carried him away. “It will be a long time before we see the like of him again,” the country folk and tenants said, while the gentlemen of the county congratulated themselves that the old name was not to be extinct nor the land transferred to other hands. The new baronet was not there; he was also an old man, and not fond of much movement, but Colonel Piercey was his representative, and an excellent representative, a man of whom the whole district might be proud. He was looked to by every one, pointed out to those who did not know him, and surrounded by a subtle atmosphere of suspended congratulation and welcome, notwithstanding the universal grief for Sir Giles. The old man’s dying words had not made a very deep impression on Colonel Piercey, except those which concerned Margaret. He had not understood the allusions, nor indeed thought of them, save as the wanderings of weakness. It seemed all of a piece to him – the thought that Sir Giles’ firstborn, the boy dead some thirty years ago, might have grown such a man as he, and his nose being put out of joint, and the petition that he should be good to some one, and stand by it. All these wild and wandering words Gerald Piercey put out of his head as meaning nothing. It was, perhaps, the “first boy,” whom he had never heard of before, whom he was to be good to, yet who would put his nose out of joint. It was all a muddle, and Gerald did not attempt to grope his way through it. He was deeply impressed and touched by the image of the old man dying; but he had no doubt as to his own prospects, and thought of no disaster. How could there be any doubt? If there had been a new will made since the death of Gervase, no doubt the estate had been charged with an adequate provision for Gervase’s wife; if there had been no will made, his father and he, as the next-of-kin and heir-at-law, would of course take that into their own hands, and secure it at once. Beyond this and the natural legacies, Gerald suspected no new thing.
