It may easily be supposed that there was not much conversation at the
table thus surrounded. Colonel Piercey and Margaret Osborne sat opposite
to each other, but concealed from each other by the huge bouquet of
flowers which occupied the central place; and neither of them, in the
shock and strangeness of the occasion, found a word to say. They were
both paralysed, so to speak, by the unimaginable circumstances in which
they found themselves, overwhelmed with an amazement which grew as the
meal went on. Gervase, in his father’s seat, ate voraciously, and
laughed a good deal, but said little. Patty was mistress of the
occasion. One glance of keen observation had shown her that Mrs.
Osborne’s dress was not even open at the throat; it was not covered with
crape. It was the simplest of black gowns, with no special sign of
“deep” mourning, such as on the evening of a funeral ought to have been
indispensable. If Patty had ever entertained any doubt of herself it now
vanished. It was she who was fulfilling all the duties necessary. The
others were but outsiders. She had secured triumphantly her proper seat
and sphere.
“It is unfortunate for us, Gervase,” she said, “to come home on such a
sad day; and to think we knew nothing of all the dreadful things that
were going on till we learned it all with a shock when we arrived! It is
true, we were moving about on our wedding-tour; but still, if the house
hadn’t been filled with those as--that--didn’t wish us well, we might
have been called back; and you, dear, might have had the mournful
satisfaction----”
“You always said, Patty,” said Gervase, “that you would stay a week
away.”
“And to think of my poor dear mother-in-law looking for us, holding out
her poor arms to us--and us knowing nothing,” said Patty, drying her
eyes--“as if there were no telegraphs nor railways! Which makes it very
sad for us to come home now; but I hope your dear father, Gervase, if
he’s rightly watched and done for, won’t be any the worse. Oh, I hope
not! it would be too sad. That Dunning, who has been thought so much of,
does not seem to me at all fit for his place. To think of him to-day,
such an agitating day, with nothing to give his master! I shall take the
liberty of superintending Mr. Dunning in future,” Patty said.
Gerald Piercey and Margaret Osborne ate what was set before them humbly,
without raising their eyes. They were ridiculously silenced and reduced
to subjection; even if they could have encouraged each other with a
glance it would have been something, but they had not even that
alleviation. What to say! They were ignored as completely as if they
had been two naughty children. Gervase, more naughty still, but in
favour, took advantage by behaving himself as badly as possible. He made
signs to the butler to pour him out wine with a liberal hand, and
gobbled his food in great mouthfuls. “I say, Meg,” he whispered, putting
his hand before his mouth, “don’t tell! she can’t see me!” while his
wife’s monologue ran on; and then he interrupted it with one of those
boisterous laughs by which the Softy was known.
“What is it?” Patty cried sharply from the head of the table.
“Meg knows--Meg and me knows,” cried Gervase from the other end.
“I must request,” said Patty, “Margaret Osborne, that you will not make
my husband forget, with your jokes, what day it is. You mayn’t think it,
perhaps, for my poor dear mother-in-law was not very kind to me--but I
feel it to be a very solemn day. And you may be very witty and very
clever, though you don’t show it to me--but I won’t have laughing and
nonsense at my table on poor dear Lady Piercey’s funeral day.”
What was Margaret to do? She could not defend herself from so grotesque
an accusation. She looked up with some quick words on her lips, but did
not say them. It was intolerable, but it was at the same time ludicrous;
a ridiculous jest, and yet the most horribly, absurdly serious
catastrophe in the world.
“The laughing seems all on your husband’s side,” said Colonel Piercey,
unable to refrain.
“Oh!” said Patty, fixing upon him a broad stare: and then she, too,
permitted herself a little laugh. “It’s the strangest thing,” she said,
“and I can’t help seeing it’s ridiculous--though laughing is not in my
mind, however it may be in other people’s, on such a day--here’s a
gentleman sitting at my table, and everybody knows him but me.”
“I don’t know him,” cried Gervase, “not from Adam; unless it’s Gerald
Piercey, the soldier fellow that mother was so full of before I went off
to get married: though nobody knew I was going to get married,” he said,
with a chuckle, “except little Osy, that gave me---- I say, where’s
little Osy, Meg?”
“I hope,” said Patty severely, “that children are not in the habit of
being brought down here after dinner as they are in some places. It’s
such bad style, and, I’m thankful to say, it’s going out of fashion.
It’s a thing as I could not put up with here.”
“Send some one upstairs,” said Margaret, in a low voice to the footman
who was standing by her, “to say that Master Osy is not to come down.”
“What are you saying to the servant? I don’t want to be disagreeable,”
said Patty, “but I object to a servant being sent away from his
business. Oh, if the child comes usually, let him come, but it must be
for the last time.”
“If I may go myself,” said Margaret, half rising, “that will be the most
expeditious way.”
“Not before you have finished your dinner,” cried Patty; “oh, don’t,
pray. I should be quite distressed if you didn’t have your dinner. And
you had no tea. I know some ladies have trays sent upstairs. But I can’t
tolerate such a habit as having trays upstairs: so for goodness’ sake,
Margaret Osborne, sit still and finish your dinner here.”
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----”
Patty had listened to this discussion till her patience was quite worn
out. She had waited for a favourable moment to introduce herself, but
she could not stand and hear this description, so far beneath her merits
as she felt it to be. She came in with a little rush of her skirts, not
disagreeable to the old man, who looked up vaguely expectant, to see her
sweep round the corner of the large screen that shielded him from the
draught. “I must come and tell you myself who I am, Sir Giles,” she
said. “I’m Patience; and though, perhaps, I shouldn’t say it, I’m one
that will take care of _that_, and take care of the house, and see that
you are not put upon by your servants, nor made to wait for anything,
but have whatever you wish. And I’ll be a very good daughter to you, if
you’ll let me, Sir Giles,” she said.
The old gentleman had passed a miserable week. First his wife’s illness,
so dreadful and beyond all human commiseration, and then her death, and
the gloom of the house, and the excitement of the funeral, and the
neglect of everything that made life bearable to him. It is true, that
his soup and his wine and whatever food was allowed to him were supplied
regularly, and no actual breach of his comforts had occurred. But his
room had been darkened, and his backgammon had been stopped, and there
had been no cheerful faces round him. Even little Osy’s company had been
taken away. The child had been stated to be “too much” for him. Parsons
and Dunning had held him in their hands and administered him, and they
were both determined that he should do and say nothing that was not
appropriate to his bereaved condition. The old man was not insensible to
his wife’s death. It brought into his mind that sense of utter
desolation, that chill sensation of an approaching end, which is, alas!
not more palatable in many cases to an old man than to a young one. And
Parsons and Dunning both thought it the most appropriate thing for him
to sit alone and think of his latter end. But Sir Giles was not of that
opinion. His old life was strong in him, though it was hampered with so
many troubles. He wanted, rather, to forget that death was waiting for
him, too, round the next corner. Who could tell how far off that next
corner might be? He wanted to forget, not to be shut up helplessly with
that thought alone. And Mrs. Osborne, with all the prejudices and bonds
of the household upon her, had not had courage to break through the
lines which had been formed around her uncle. She had believed, as it
was the law of the family to believe, that Sir Giles’ faithful attendant
knew best. And thus it was, that when the young woman who was Gervase’s
wife came boldly in--a young person who was not afraid of Dunning, a
stranger bringing a little novelty, a little stir of something
unaccustomed into his life--he looked up with a kind of light in his
dull eye, and relief in his mind. “Oh! you are Patience, are you?” he
said. “Patience! it is a queer sort of a name, and I think I remember to
have heard it before.”
Oh, poor Miss Hewitt, in her red and yellow bonnet! If she had but known
that this faint deposit of recollection was all that remained in her old
lover’s mind!
“But I should like you to call me Patty, Sir Giles.” She went down on
her knees at his feet, while the old gentleman looked on in wonder, not
knowing what was going to happen. “You have not got that bandage quite
straight,” she said, “and I’m sure you’re not so comfortable as you
ought to be. I can put it on better than that. Look you here, Gervase,
hold the candle, and in a minute I’ll settle it all right.”
Sir Giles was so much taken by surprise that he made no opposition; and
he was amused and pleased by her silent movements, her soft touch and
manipulation. The novelty pleased him, and the young head bent over his
suffering foot, the pretty hair, the pleasant shape, were all much more
gratifying than Dunning. He thought he was relieved, whether he was
really so or not. And he was contented, and the spell of the gloom was
broken. “But I’m not to be settled so easy as my foot,” he said. “How
dared you to take and marry my boy here, Mrs. Patty, or whatever your
name is, without saying a word to me?”
Mrs. Gervase Piercey, or Mrs. Piercey, as she henceforward called
herself, walked that night into the great state-room in Greyshott--where
Sally Fletcher awaited her, trembling, bringing Patty Hewitt’s small
wardrobe roughly packed in one small box--with the air of a conqueror,
victorious along all the line.