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 cant 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 dont 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 dont 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 dont 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!
Dont, dont interrupt me! It is: I have never known how little good I was before. I dont 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
This is where we shall sit, of course, she said.
Father cant abide it, said Gervase.
Oh, your father is a very nice old gentleman. He will have to put up with it, said the new lady of the house.
In imagination she saw herself seated there, receiving the county, and the spirit of Patty was uplifted. She felt, for the first time, without any admixture of disappointment, that here was her sphere. When she was taken upstairs, however, to Gervases room, she regarded it by no means with the same satisfaction. It was a large room, but sparsely furnished, in no respect like the luxurious bower she had imagined for herself.
Take off my bonnet here! she said: no, indeed I shant. Why, there is not even a drapery to the toilet table. I have not come to Greyshott, I hope, to have less comfort than I had at home. There must be spare rooms. Take me to the best of the spare rooms.
Theres the princes room, said Gervase, but nobody sleeps there since some fellow of a prince I cant tell you what prince And I havent got the keys; its Parsons that has got the keys.
You can call Parsons, I suppose. Ring the bell, said Patty, seizing the opportunity to look at herself in the glass, though she surveyed the room with contempt.
Lord! cried Gervase. Parsons, mothers own woman . Then he threw himself down in his favourite chair with his hands in his pockets. You can do it yourself. Im not going to catch a scolding for you.