“Of course,” she said, “I have no right not to accept what you say, though it is, perhaps, strangely expressed. And I scarcely know what there is I can explain to you. My aunt feared this that has taken place, before I did: she naturally thought less of her son’s deficiencies. She was so imprudent, as I thought it, as to warn the girl of things she would do to prevent it. I believe there was really nothing that could have been done to prevent it. And then she was equally imprudent in letting him go to town, and thus giving him the opportunity. She thought she could secure him by putting him in the hands of the clergyman, who never saw him at all. I feared very much how it would be, and poor Gervase was several times on the point of betraying himself. Perhaps, if I had sought his confidence – But his mother would not have paid any attention to what I could say. And I don’t know what could have been done to prevent it.”
“Why, he is next to an idiot!”
“Oh no,” cried Margaret, half offended. “Gervase is not an idiot. He has gleams of understanding, quite – almost, as clear as any one. He knows what he wants, and though you may think his mind has no steadiness, you will find he always comes back to his point. He has a kind of cleverness, even, at times. Oh no; Aunt Piercey examined into all that. They could not make him out incapable of managing his own affairs. To be sure, he has not had any to manage up to this time. And now that he has this sharp Patty behind him,” said Margaret, with a half smile —
“Then you think nothing can be done?”
“What could be done? You could not do anything in Uncle Giles’ lifetime to turn his only child out of his inheritance.”
“It is you,” said Colonel Piercey, “who are imputing intentions now. I had no such idea. I think my business as next-of-kin is to defend the poor fellow. But the woman; that is a different thing.”
“The woman is his wife. I don’t want to assume any unnatural impartiality. But, after all, is he likely ever to have had a better wife? I believe she will be an excellent wife to Gervase. One of his own class, I hope, would not have married him.”
“Why do you say, ‘I hope?’ Is that not worse than anything that could be said?”
“Perhaps,” said Margaret. “Poor Gervase is not an idiot, but neither is he just like other people. And a girl might have been driven into it, and then might have found – ” She added, with a little shiver, “It is the best thing that could have happened for him to marry Patty. I hate it, of course. How could I do otherwise? But as far as he himself is concerned – ”
“You are a great philosopher, Cousin Meg.”
“Do you think so?” Half resentful as she was, and not more than half satisfied with Colonel Piercey’s explanations, he was yet the only person in the world to whom she could speak with freedom; and it was a relief to her. “She will look after Uncle Giles’ comfort, and he will get to like her,” she continued. “She will rule the household with a rod of iron.” Margaret laughed, though her face settled down the next moment into a settled gravity. “They will have no society, but they will not want it. She will keep them amused. Perhaps it is the best thing that could have happened,” she said.
“And you? and the boy?” He stopped and looked at her standing among the roses, which were very luxuriant in the last climax of maturity, full blown, shedding their leaves, just about to topple over from that height of life into the beginning of decay. Margaret had no trace of decay about her, but she, too, was in the full height of life, the fulfilment of promise, standing at the mezzo di cammin, and full of all capabilities. She did not look up at him, but answered with a half-smile, —
“I – and the boy? We are not destitute. Perhaps it will be better for us both to set out together, and live our own life.”
“You are not destitute? I hope you will pardon me. After what you think my conduct has been, you may say I have no right – ”
Margaret smiled in spite of herself.
“But you say that your conduct has been – not what I thought.”
“Yes, yes, that is so: I have not been such a fool. Cousin Meg, we were great friends in the old days.”
“Not such very great friends – no more than girls and boys are when they are not specially attached to each other.”
He thought that she intended to give him a little prick with one of those thorns which the matured rose still keeps upon its stalk; and he felt the prick, which, being still more mature than she, he ought not to have done.
“I think it was a little more than that,” he said, in a slight tone of pique; “but anyhow – we are cousins.”
“Very distant cousins.”
“Distant cousins,” he cried, impatiently, “are near when there are no nearer between. We are of the same blood, at least. You want to push me away, to make me feel I have nothing to do with it; but that can’t be so long as you are Meg Piercey – ”
“Margaret Osborne at your service,” she said, gravely. “Forgive me, Cousin Gerald. It is true, we have had enough of this tilting. I don’t doubt for a moment that you would give me a helping hand if you could; that you wish me well, and especially,” she added, lifting her eyes with a half reproach, half gratitude in them, “the boy – as you call him.”
“What could I call him but the boy?” said Colonel Piercey, with a sort of exasperation. “Yes, I don’t deny it, it was of him I wanted to speak. He is a delightful boy – he is full of faculty and capacity, and one could make anything of him. Let me say quite sincerely what I think. You are not destitute; but you are not rich enough to give him the best of everything in the way of education, as – as – don’t slay me with a flash of lightning – as I could. Now I have said it! If you would trust him to me!”
She had looked, indeed, for a moment as if her eyes could give forth lightning enough to have slain any man standing defenceless before her; but then these eyes softened with hot tears. She kept looking at the man, explaining himself with such difficulty, putting forth his offer of kindness as if it were some dreadful proposition, with a gradual melting of the lines in her face. When he threw a hasty glance at her at the end of his speech, she seemed to him a woman made of fire, shedding light about her in an astonishing transfiguration such as he had never seen before.
“This,” she said, in a low voice, “is the most terrible demonstration of my poverty and helplessness that has ever been made to me – and the most awful suggestion, as of suicide and destruction.”
“Meg!”
“Don’t, don’t interrupt me! It is: I have never known how little good I was before. I don’t know now if it will kill me, or sting me to life; but all the same,” she cried, her lip quivering, “you are kind, and I thank you with all my heart! and I will promise you this: If I find, as you think, that, whatever I may do, I cannot give my Osy the education he ought to have, I will send and remind you of your offer. I hope you will have children of your own by that time, and perhaps you will have forgotten it.”
“I shall not forget it; and I am very unlikely to have children of my own.”
“Anyhow, I will trust you,” she said, “and I thank you with all my heart, though you are my enemy. And that is a bargain,” she said, holding out her hand.
Her enemy! Was he her enemy? And yet it seemed something else beside.
CHAPTER XXVII
While these scenes were going on, Mr. and Mrs. Gervase Piercey were very differently employed upstairs. When Patty had finished her tea, and when she had made the survey of the library, concerning which her conclusion was that these horrid bookcases must be cleared away, and that a full-length portrait of herself in the white satin which had not, yet ought to have been, her wedding-dress, would do a great deal for the cheerfulness of the room, she took her husband’s arm, and desired him to conduct her over the house. When Patty saw the drawing-room,