Well, Colonel Piercey, so you are going? I hope it is not because of the circumstances, though, of course, with a death and a marriage both in the house, it isnt very suitable for strangers, is it? But Im not one that would ever wish to be rude to my husbands friends. Im told you were going, anyhow, and I hope thats the case. And Im sure you must feel Im very thoughtful, said Patty, with a little laugh, never to disturb you in your tender good-byes! Oh, I can sympathise with that sort of thing! I told Gervase, Dont disturb those poor things; there isnt a place where they can have a word quiet before they part. But I hope youll soon come and fetch her, Colonel Piercey. You and her, you are not like Gervase and me: you havent any time to lose.
I have not the honour of understanding you, Mrs. Piercey, said the Colonel, very stiffly. I must leave with you my farewells to my cousin Gervase.
Oh, you neednt; hes here, hes coming he wouldnt be so wanting as not to see you off himself, though youre only a third or fourth cousin, I hear. But as for not understanding me, Colonel Piercey, I hope you understand Meg Osborne, which is more to the purpose, and that youve named the day. Marriage is catching, Ive always heard, and you aint going to treat a relation badly, I hope, in my house. Im sure, after all the philandering and talking in corners, and
I wish you good-day, Mrs. Piercey, the Colonel said. He jumped into the dog-cart with an energy which even the quiet fat horse of Greyshott training could scarcely withstand, and, seizing the reins from the grooms hands, drove that comfortable animal down the avenue at a pace to which it was entirely unaccustomed. To describe the ferment of mind into which he was thrown by Pattys last words would be impossible. He heard the loud, vacant laugh of Gervase, and a cry of Hi! Hallo! Where are you off to? sounding after him, but took no notice. He was a man of considerable temper, as has not been concealed, and there could be no doubt that it would have afforded him considerable satisfaction to take Patty by the arms and shake her, had that been a possible way of expressing his sentiments. He was furious, first, he said to himself, at the insult to Meg; but it is doubtful whether this really was so much the cause of his indignation as he believed. The causes were complicated, but chiefly had reference to himself, who was more interesting to him at present than Meg or any one else in the world. That he should be accused of philandering and talking in corners, or of treating a woman badly, even by the most vulgar voice in the world, had something so exasperatingly inappropriate and unlikely in it that he said to himself it was laughable. Laughable, and nothing else! Yet he did not laugh; he felt himself possessed by the most furious gravity instead ready to kill anybody who should so much as smile. Philandering and with a middle-aged woman! This, no doubt, gave it a double sting. It had never occurred to Colonel Piercey, though he was forty, to think of himself as on an elderly level, or to imagine
any connection of his name with that of any woman who was not young and fair, and in the first chapter of life. I have always been of opinion that men and women about the same age, when that age has passed the boundaries of youth, are each others natural enemies rather than friends. They have fully learned that they are on opposite sides. There is a natural hostility between them. If some chance has not made them friends, and inclined to forget or pardon the difference of their sides, they are instinctively in opposition. To marry each other is the last thing that would occur to them. Of course, I am considering natural tendencies only, and not those of the fortune-hunter of either sex, or persons in quest of an establishment. The man of forty seeks a young bride; the woman of that age, or near it, finds devotion in a young man. (I dont say seeks it for all women feel this question of age to be fantastically important.) Gerald Piercey had reached the Greyshott station, and flung himself and his bags and wraps into a carriage, before he had begun to get over the sting of the suggestion that he had been philandering (Heavens, what a word!), and that not with a girl an imputation which he might have smiled at and pardoned but with a widow, a mother, a middle-aged woman! Indignity could not go further. The little barmaid, the wretched little tavern flirt who had seized possession of the home of the Pierceys, had caught him full in the centre of his shield.
It was not till long after, when that heat had died away, that he recurred to what he had at first tried to persuade himself was the occasion of his wrath the insult to Meg. Poor Meg! whose growing old he had himself so deeply and absurdly resented, as if it had been her own fault how would she fare, left in the power of that little demon? She could not go off at a moments notice, as he could. She would have to wait, he remembered with a horrified realisation, perhaps for her quarter-day, for the payment of her pension, before she would be able to budge at all. And, then, where would she go? a woman who had been accustomed to Greyshott, which, though it was not very luxurious or refined, was still, in its way, a great house. Where would she go, with her hundred or two hundred, or some such nominal sum, a year? And, perhaps, not money enough in the meantime even to pay her journey, even to carry her away! She was a hot-headed, self-willed, argumentative woman; determined in her own opinions, caring not a straw for other peoples; refusing, in the most unaccountable way, an advantageous suggestion a proposal that would have left her free, without encumbrance, to get as much comfort as possible for herself out of her very small income; an entirely impracticable, unmanageable woman! but yet to think of that little barmaid flouting her, insulting her, was too much for the Colonel. His wrath rose again, not so hot, but full of indignation a creature not worthy to tie her shoe! He seemed to see her standing there, against the dark panelling of the wall, in her black dress. And, somehow, it occurred to him all at once that the slim, tall figure did not present the usual signs which distinguish middle age. How old was Meg Piercey, after all? A dozen years ago, when he had been at Greyshott last, she was a girl in her teens. Twelve years do not make a girl of nineteen middle-aged. She had married at four or five-and-twenty not earlier; and Osy was seven or thereabouts. Gerald found himself unconsciously calculating like an old woman. If she had married at twenty-four, and if Osy were seven, that did not make her more than two-and-thirty at the outside. At thirty-two one is not middle-aged; the Colonel did not feel himself so at forty. To be sure, a woman is different; but even for a woman, though it may not be so romantic as eighteen, it is not a great age thirty-two. And to be turned out of her home; and to be left with next to nothing to live on; and to be insulted by that vulgar little village girl; and to be set down, even by a man, a relation, one bound to make the best of her, as almost an old woman at thirty-two! Poor Meg Piercey! Poor Margaret Osborne! The home of her childhood gone, and the protection of her married life gone. And her child! What was the difficulty about her child? Something more, perhaps, when one came to think of it, than merely being left without encumbrance, freed from responsibility! When one came to think of it, and to think how other women were, with their children about them, perhaps, after all, it meant more than that. Poor Meg! poor Meg!