Margaret Oliphant - The Cuckoo in the Nest. Volume 2/2

Colonel Piercey moved his chair a little; he managed to look beyond the bouquet at Margaret, sitting flushed and indignant, yet incapable of completing the absurdity of the situation by a scene at table before the servants. Colonel Piercey had run through all the gamut of astonishment, anger, and confusion; he had arrived at pure amusement now. The momentary interchange of glances made the situation possible, and it was immediately and unexpectedly ameliorated by the melodramatic appearance of Dunning behind in the half-darkness at the door.

“Mr. Gervase, if you please, Sir Giles is calling for you,” the man said.

Patty sprang up from her seat. “Sir Giles? the dear old gentleman! Oh, I foresaw this! He is ill, he is ill! Come, Gervase!” she cried.

“Not a bit,” said Gervase; “it’s only Dunning’s way. He likes to stop you in the middle of your dinner. There’s nothing the matter with the governor, Dunning, eh?”

“There’s just this, that he’s a-calling for Mr. Gervase, and not no other person,” Dunning said, with slow precision.

“Well, I’m Mrs. Gervase; I’m the same as Mr. Gervase. Come, come, don’t let’s lose a moment! Moments are precious!” cried Patty, rushing to her husband and snatching him out of his chair, “in his state of health and at his age.”

Margaret and the Colonel were left alone, but the fear of the servants was upon them. They did not venture to say anything to each other. They were helped solemnly to the dish which had begun to go round, and for a moment sat in silence like two mutes, with the inexorable bouquet between them. Then Colonel Piercey said, in very bad French, “This is worse than I feared. What are we to do?”

“I shall go to my room to Osy before she comes back.”

“I have no Osy to go to,” he said with a short laugh. “What a strange scene! stranger than any in a book. I am glad to have seen it once in a way.”

“Not glad, I hope,” said Margaret. “Sorry for Uncle Giles and all the rest. But she is not so bad as that. No, no, she is not. You don’t see – she wants to assert all her rights, to show you and me how strong she is, and how she scorns us. On ordinary occasions she is not like this.”

“You are either absurdly charitable in your thoughts, or else you want to throw dust in my eyes, Cousin Meg.”

“Nothing of the kind; I do neither. It is quite true. She is not bad in character at all. She will be kind to Uncle Giles, and probably improve his condition. We have all had a blind confidence in Dunning, and perhaps he doesn’t deserve it. She wants to get Uncle Giles into her own hands, and she will do so. But he will not suffer; I am sure of it.”

“Poor old gentleman! It is hard to be old, to be handed from one to another. And will he accept it?” Colonel Piercey said.

“She will be very nice and kind, and she is young and pretty.”

“Oh, not – not that!”

“You are prejudiced, Cousin Gerald. She is pretty when you see her in her proper aspect, and there can be no doubt she is young. Her voice is nice and soft. It is almost like a lady’s voice. Hush! I think I hear her coming back!” Margaret rose hurriedly. “Please say to Mrs. Piercey, Robert, that I am tired, and have gone to my room.”

“Let me come too,” said Gerald Piercey, following her into the hall. “I shall go away to-morrow, of course – and you, what are you going to do?”

“I cannot go to-morrow. I shall have to wait – until I am turned out, or till I can go.”

“I wish you would come with me to my father’s, where you would be most welcome: and he is a nearer relative than I am.”

“Thank you; you go too far,” said Margaret. “To think me a scheming woman only this morning, and at night to offer me a new home, where I might scheme and plot at my leisure? No, I will do that no more: I will go to nobody. We are not destitute.”

“Meg! will you remember that you have nobody nearer to you than my father and me?”

“But I have,” she said, “on my mother’s side, and on my husband’s side. We shall find relations wherever we go.”

He answered by an impatient exclamation. “There is one thing, at least, on which we made a bargain a few hours since,” he said.

The lamp in the hall did not give a good light. It was one of the things which Patty changed in the first week of her residence at Greyshott. It threw a very faint illumination on Margaret Osborne’s face. And she did not say anything to make her meaning clear. She did nothing but hold out her hand.

Patty, meanwhile, had made her way, pushing her husband before her, to Sir Giles’ door. She pushed him inside with an earnest whisper. “Go in, and talk to him nicely. Be very nice to him, as nice as ever you can be. Mind, I’m listening to you, and presently I’ll come in, too.”

The room was closely shut up, though it was a warm night, and scarcely dark as yet, and Sir Giles sat in his chair with a tray upon the table beside him. But he had pushed away his soup. His large old face was excited and feverish, his hands performing a kind of tattoo upon his chair. “Are you there, my boy? are you there, Gervase?” he said. “Come in, come in and talk to me a little. I’m left all alone. I have nobody with me but servants. Where’s – where’s all the family? Your poor mother’s gone, I know, and we’ll never see her any more. But where’s everybody? Where’s – where’s everybody?” the old gentleman said with his unsteady voice.

“I’m here, father, all right,” Gervase said.

“Sir Giles, sir, he’s fretting for company, and his game, and all that; but he ain’t fit for it, Mr. Gervase, he ain’t fit for it. He have gone through a deal to-day.”

“I’ll play your game, father. I’m here all right,” Gervase repeated. “Come, get out the table, you old humbug, and we’ll throw the men and the dice about. I’m ready, father; I’m always ready,” he said.

“No, no,” said Sir Giles, pushing the table away; “I don’t want any game. I’m a sad, lonely old man, and I want somebody to talk to. Gervase, sit down there and talk to me. Where have you been all this long time, and your mother, your poor mother, wanting you? What have you been doing? You can go, Dunning; I don’t want you now. I want to talk to my boy. Gervase, what have you been doing, and why didn’t you come home?”

“I’ve been – getting married, father,” said Gervase, grinning from ear to ear. “I would have told you, but she wouldn’t let me tell you. She thought you might have put a stop to it. A fellow wants to be married, father, when he’s my age.”

“And who has married you?” said the father, going on beating with his tremulous fingers as though keeping time to some music. “Who has married you, my poor boy? It can’t be any great match, but we couldn’t expect any great match. I saw – a young woman: I thought she was – that I had somehow seen her before.”

“Well, she’s – why, she’s just married to me, father. She’s awful proud of her new name. She signed her letter – for I saw it – Mrs. Gervase Piercey, as if she hadn’t got any other name.”

“She shouldn’t do that, though,” said the old man, “she’s Mrs. Piercey, being the son’s wife, the next heir. If Gerald had a wife, now, she’d be Mrs. Gerald, but not yours. I’m afraid she can’t know much about it. Gervase, your poor mother was struck very suddenly. She always feared you were going to do something like that, and she had somebody in her mind, but she was never able to tell me who it was. Gervase, I hope it is somebody decent you have married, now your poor mother isn’t here.”

“Oh, yes, father; awfully decent,” said Gervase, with his great laugh. “She would have given it to any one that wasn’t civil. She was one that kept you on and kept you off, and as clever as Old Boots himself, and up to – ”