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.