Consequences
"However could you do it?
Some day, no doubt, you'll rue it!"
Meg's troubles were not quite over, however, even yet. When she
got into the house Nellie met her in the hall and stared at her.
"Where have you been?" she said, a slow wonder in her round eyes.
"I've been hunting and hunting for you."
"What for?" said Meg shortly.
"Oh, Dr. Gormeston and Mrs. Gormeston and two Miss Gormestons are in
the drawing-room, and I think they'll stay for ever and ever."
"Well?" said Meg.
"And the General is ill again, and Esther says she won't leave him
for a second, not if Gog and Magog were down there dying to see
her."
"Well?" said Meg again.
"And Father is as mad as he can be, and is having to keep them
all amused himself. He's sung 'My sweetheart when a boy' and
'Mona,' and he's told them all about his horses, and now I s'pose
he doesn't know what to do."
"Well, I can't help it," Meg said wearily, and as if the subject
had no interest for her.
"But you'll just have to!" Nell cried sharply, "I've done my
best: he sent out and said we were to go in, and you weren't
anywhere, so there was only Baby and me."
"And what did you do?" Meg asked, curious in spite of herself.
"Oh, Baby talked to Miss Gormeston, and they asked me to play,"
she returned, "so I played the 'Keel Row.' Only I forgot
till I had finished that it was in two sharps," she added sadly.
"And then Baby told Mrs. Gormeston all about Judy leaving the
General at the Barracks, and being sent to boarding school for it,
and about the green frog Bunty gave her, and, then Father said
we'd better go to bed, and asked why ever you didn't come in."
"I'll go, I'll go," Meg said hastily, "he'll be fearfully cross
to-morrow about it. Oh! and, Nell, go and tell Martha to
send in the wine and biscuits and things in half an hour."
She flung off her cloud, smoothed her ruffled hair, and peeped
in the hall-stand glass to see if the night wind had taken away
the traces of her recent tears. Then she went into the drawing-roam,
where her father was looking quite heated and unhappy over
his efforts to entertain four guests who were of the class
popularly known as "heavy in hand:"
"Play something, Meg," he said presently, when greetings were
finished, and a silence seemed settling down over them all again;
"or sing something that will be better--haven't you anything you
can sing?"
Now Meg on ordinary occasions had a pleasant, fresh little voice
of her own, that could be listened to with a certain amount of
pleasure, but this evening she was tired and excited and unhappy.
She sang "Within a mile of Edinboro' town," and was exceedingly
flat all through.
She knew her father was sitting on edge all the time, and that her
mistakes were grating on him, and at the end of the song, rather
than turn round immediately and face them all, she began to play
Kowalski's March Hongroise. But the keys seemed to be rising up
and hitting her hands, and the piano was growing unsteady, and
rocking to and fro in an alarming manner; she made a horrible
jangle as she clutched at the music-holder for safety, and the
next minute swayed from the stool and fell in a dead, faint right
into Dr. Gormeston's arms, providentially extended just in time.
The heavy, heated atmosphere had proved too much for her, in her
unhinged state of mind. Captain Woolcot was extraordinarily
upset by the occurrence; not one of his children had ever done
such a thing before, and as Meg lay on the sofa, with her
little fair head drooping against the red frilled cushions, her
face white and unconscious, she looked strangely like her mother,
whom he had buried out in the churchyard four years ago. He went
to the filter for a glass of water, and, as it trickled, wondered
in a dull, mechanical kind of way if his little dead wife thought
he had been too quick in appointing Esther to her kingdom. And
then, as he stood near the sofa and looked at the death-like face,
he wondered with a cold chill at his heart whether Meg was going
to die, too, and if so would she be able to tell the same little
wife that Esther received more tenderness at his hands than she
had done.
His reverie was interrupted by the doctor's sharp, surprised
voice. He was talking to Esther, who had been hastily summoned to
the scene, and who had helped to unfasten the pretty bodice.
"Why, the child is tight-laced!" he said; "surely you must
have noticed it, madam. That pressure, if it has been constant,
has been enough to half kill her. Chut, chut! faint indeed--I wonder
she has not taken fits or gone into a decline before this."
Then a cloud of trouble came over Esther's beautiful face--she had
failed again in her duty. Her husband was regarding her almost
gloomily from the sofa, where the little figure lay in its
crumpled muslin dress, and her heart told her these children
were not receiving a mother's care at her hands.
Afterwards, when Meg was safely in bed and the excitement
all over, she went up to her husband almost timidly.
"I'm only twenty; Jack; don't be too hard on me!" she said
with a little sob in her voice. "I can't be all to them that
she was, can I?"
He kissed the bright, beautiful head against his shoulder,
and comforted her with a tender word or two. But again and again
that night there came to him Meg's white, still face as it lay on
the scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind that stirred the
curtains at the window had been playing with the long grass in
the churchyard a few minutes since.