The Cuckoo in the Nest. Volume 2/2

“Does the doctor say so?” asked Patty.

“My dear lady, the doctor says he has the best of nursing; and everything so much the better for a lady in the house.” It was with this douceur that the solicitor took his leave, being a man that liked to please everybody. And there can be no doubt that a softened feeling arose in the whole neighbourhood about Patty, who was said to be such a good daughter to Sir Giles. “Thrown over her own people altogether – no crowd of barbarians about the house, as one used to fear; and quite gives herself up to her father-in-law; plays backgammon with him half the day, which can’t be lively for a young woman; and expects – ” These last were the most potent words of all.

Patty was, indeed, very good to her father-in-law, and that not altogether for policy, but partly from feeling; for he had been kind to her, and she was grateful. The winter was dreary and long, and there were sometimes weeks together when Sir Giles could not get out, even into the garden, for that forlorn little drive of his in the wheeled chair. Patty gave herself up to his service with a devotion which was above all praise. She bore his fretfulness when weakness and suffering made the old man querulous. She was always at hand, whatever he wanted. She looked after his food and his comfort, often in despite of Dunning and to the great offence of the cook, but both these functionaries had to submit to Patty’s will. Had she not carried everything with a very high hand, it is possible that her footing might not have been so sure; for the women soon penetrated the fiction, which was not indeed of Patty’s creation, and Dunning even ventured upon hints to Sir Giles that all was not as he thought. The old gentleman, however, got weaker day by day; one little indulgence after another dropped from him. March was unusually blustery, and April very wet. These were good reasons why he should not go out; that he was more comfortable in his chair by the fire. Then he got indifferent to the paper, which Dunning always read to him in the morning, and only took an interest in the scraps of news which Patty repeated to him later on.

“Why did not Dunning read me that, if it is in the paper? The fellow gets lazier and lazier; he never reads the paper to me now! He thinks I forget!” When Dunning would have remonstrated Patty checked him with a look.

“You must never contradict Sir Giles!” she said to him aside.

“And he says I’m never to contradict her!” Dunning said indignantly in the housekeeper’s room, where he went for consolation; “between them a man ain’t allowed to say a word!”

The women all cried out with scorn that Sir Giles would find out different from that one o’ these days.

“Then he’ll just die,” said Dunning. Things had come to a very mournful pass in the old melancholy house.

By degrees the backgammon, too, fell out of use. Patty sat with him still in the evening, but it was in his own room, often by his bedside, and many, many conversations took place between them, unheard by any one. Dunning would catch a word now and then, as he went and came, and gathered that Sir Giles was sometimes telling her of things he would like to have done, and that sometimes she was telling him of things she would wish to be done.

“As if she had aught to do with it!” Dunning said with indignation. Dunning, observing everything, imagined, too, that Sir Giles began to grow anxious about those expectations which were so long delayed. His attendant sometimes heard mutterings of calculation and broken questioning with himself from the old gentleman.

“It’s a long time to wait – a long time – a long time!” he said.

“What is a long time, Sir Giles?” Dunning ventured to ask – but was told to hold his tongue for a fool.

One day, towards the end of April, he suddenly roused from a long muse or doze by the fire, and called to Dunning to send a telegram for Pownceby.

“Tell him to come directly. I mayn’t be here to-morrow,” Sir Giles said.

“Are you thinking of changing the air, Sir Giles?” said the astonished servant.

The rain was pouring in a white blast across the park, bending all the young trees one way, and pattering among the foliage.

“Air!” said the old man; “it’s nothing but water; but I’m soon going to move, Dunning, as you say.”

“Well, it might do you good, Sir Giles, a little later – when the weather’s better.”

Sir Giles made no reply, but Dunning heard him muttering: “She always says there’s nothing certain in this world.”

Mr. Pownceby came as quick as the railway could bring him.

“Is there anything wrong?” he asked of Mrs. Piercey, who met him at the door.

“Oh, I am afraid he’s very bad,” said Patty; “I am afraid he’s not long for this world.”

“Why does he want me? Does he want to change his will?”

“I don’t know – I don’t know. Oh, Mr. Pownceby, I don’t know how to say it. I am afraid he is disappointed: that – that you said to me last time – ”

“Was not true, I suppose?” said the father of a family, who was not without his experiences, and he looked somewhat sternly at Patty, who was trembling.

“I never said it was,” she said. “It was not I. He took it into his head, and I did not know how to contradict him. Oh, don’t say to him it’s not true! rather, rather let him believe it now. Let him die happy, Mr. Pownceby! Oh, he has been so good to me! Say anything to make him die happy!” Patty cried.

The lawyer was angry and disappointed, too; but Patty’s feeling was evidently genuine, and he could not help feeling a certain sympathy with her. Sir Giles was sitting up in bed, ashy white with that pallor of old age which is scarcely increased by death.

“I’m glad you’re come in time, Pownceby – very glad you’re come in time. I’m – I’m going to make a move; for change of air, don’t you know, as Dunning says. Poor Dunning! he won’t get such an easy berth again. My will – that’s it. I want to change – my will. Clear it all away, Pownceby – all away, except the little legacies – the servants and that – ”

“But not Mrs. Piercey, Sir Giles? If – if she’s been the cause of any – disappointment; it isn’t her fault.”

“Disappointment!” said the old man. “Quite the contrary. She’s been just the reverse. It was a good day for me when she came to the house. No, I don’t mean that it was a good day, for it was my poor wife’s funeral; but if anybody could have made a man of Gervase she would have done it. She would have done it, Pownceby. Yes, yes; sweep her away! sweep everybody away! I give and bequeath Greyshott and all I have – all I have, don’t you know? Gerald Piercey can have the pictures if he likes; she won’t care for them to – ”

The old man was seized with a fit of coughing, which interrupted him at this interesting moment. Mr. Pownceby sat with his pen in his hand and many speculations in his mind. To cut off his daughter-in-law’s little income even while he praised her so! And who was the person to whom it was all to be left without regard for the rest? Meg Piercey, perhaps, who was one of the nearest, though she had never been supposed to have any chance. The lawyer sat with his eyes under his spectacles intently fixed upon Sir Giles, and with many remonstrances in his mind. Mrs. Gervase might be wrong to have filled the poor man with false hopes; but to leave her to the tender mercies of Meg Piercey, whom she had virtually turned out of the house, would be cruel. Sir Giles began to speak before his coughing fit was over.

“She says, poor thing,” and here he coughed, “she s – says that there’s nothing – nothing certain in this world. She’s right, Pownceby – she’s right. She – generally is.”

“There’s not much risk in saying that, Sir Giles.”

“No, it’s true enough – it’s true enough. It might grow up like its father. God grant it otherwise. You remember our first boy, Pownceby? Wasn’t that a fellow! as bold as a lion and yet so sweet. His poor mother never got over it – never; nor I neither, nor I neither – though I never made any fuss.”

Was the old man wandering in his mind?

“I hoped it would have been like him,” said Sir Giles, with a sob. “I had set my heart on that. But none of us can tell. There’s nothing certain, as she says. It might grow up like its father. I’ll make all safe, anyhow, Pownceby. Put it down, put it down – everything to – ”

“Sir Giles! to whom? Everything to – ?”

“Why, Pownceby, old fellow! Ah, to be sure he doesn’t know the first name. Sounds droll a little, those two names together. Quick! I want it signed and done with, in case I should, as Dunning says – don’t you know, change the air.”

“But, Sir Giles!” cried the lawyer, in consternation: “Sir Giles!” he added, “you don’t mean, I hope, to leave the property away from the family and the natural heir?”

“What a muddlehead you are, Pownceby!” said Sir Giles, radiant. “Why, It will be the natural heir. It will be the head of the family. And it will grow up like our first boy, please God. But nothing is certain; and supposing it was to turn out like its father? My poor boy, my poor Gervase! It wasn’t as if we weren’t fond of him, you know, Pownceby. His poor mother worshipped the very ground he trod on. But one can’t help hoping everything that’s good for It, and none of the drawbacks – none of the drawbacks. Make haste, Pownceby; draw it out quick! You’re quicker than any clerk you have, when you’ll take trouble. Nothing’s certain in this world; let’s make it all safe, Pownceby, however things may turn out.”

“I’ll take your instructions, Sir Giles – though I don’t like the job. But it’s a serious matter, you know, a very serious matter. Hadn’t you better think it over again? I’ll have the will drawn out in proper form, and come back to-morrow to have it signed.”

“And how can you tell that you’ll find me to-morrow? I may have moved on and got a change of air, as Dunning says. No, Pownceby, draw up something as simple as you like, and I’ll sign it to-day.”

The solicitor met Mrs. Piercey again in the hall as he went out. He had not been so kind on his arrival as she had found him before; but now he had a gloomy countenance, almost a scowl on his face, and would have pushed past her without speaking, with a murmur about the train which would wait for no man. Patty, however, was not the woman to be pushed aside. She insisted upon hearing his opinion how Sir Giles was.

“I think with you that he is very ill,” he replied, gloomily, “and in mind as well as in body – ”

“Oh no,” cried Patty, “not that, not that! as clear in his head, Mr. Pownceby, as you or me.”

He gave her a dark look, which Patty did not understand. “Anyhow,” he said, “he’s an old man, Mrs. Piercey, and I don’t think life has many charms for him. We have no right to repine.”

Mr. Pownceby had known Sir Giles Piercey all his life, and liked him perhaps as well as he liked any one out of his own family. But to repine – why should he repine, or Patty any more, who stood anxiously reading his face, and only more anxious not to betray her anxiety than she was to hear what, perhaps, he might tell? But he did not do this. Nor would he continue the conversation, nor be persuaded to sit down. He asked that he might be sent for, at any moment, if Sir Giles expressed a wish to see him again. “I will come at a moment’s notice – by telegraph,” he said, with a gloomy face, that intended no jest. And he added still more gloomily, “I believe it will be for your advantage, too.”

“I am thinking of my father-in-law and not of my advantage,” Patty said with indignation. The anxiety in her mind was great, and she could not divine what he meant.

CHAPTER XL

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.