The Cuckoo in the Nest. Volume 2/2

“No, Mr. Gervase. Mr. Dunning things as Sir Giles ’as ’ad enough excitement for to-day.”

“Well,” said Patty, “I don’t think much of Dunning after his neglect, but he’s right in that. I should have said so myself had it been referred to me. Early to bed and kept quite quiet – that is the only thing for your poor dear papa. Are we waiting for any one?” she said, looking round with majesty. J’ai failli attendre. Patty had never heard these words, but they were written on her face.

There was silence in the hall. Colonel Piercey had turned round from the engraving which he had been examining with quite unnecessary minuteness; but as he did not know either of the strange couple who by a sudden transformation had become his hosts, it was not possible that he could give any explanations; and the butler, who had not the training of a master of the ceremonies, and who had begun to shake in his shoes before that personage who, in her day, had drawn beer for him at the Seven Thorns – who had dismissed the great Parsons, and accused the greater Dunning of neglect – remained dumb, shifting from one foot to another, looking helplessly in front of him. He ventured at last to say, with trepidation, that “Mrs. Osborne, if you please, is just coming downstairs.”

“Oh, Mrs. Osborne!” said Patty, and swept into the room. She stood looking for a moment at the expanse of the table laid with five places – one of them unnecessary. “I suppose I had better take my own proper place at once without ceremony,” she said, with an airy gesture, half to Colonel Piercey, half to the butler. “And, Gervase, as your father isn’t here, you had better sit in his place. We must make another arrangement when Sir Giles is able to come to table. Oh, Margaret Osborne! Is that where she sits? And here she is! I don’t say anything, for we are a little unpunctual ourselves to-night. But I must warn you all that I am generally exact to the minute, and I never wait for anybody,” Patty said.

CHAPTER XXVIII

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.”