The Cuckoo in the Nest, v. 2/2

by Mrs. Oliphant

I cannot help thinking that if there had been a lady at the rectory, this state of affairs would have been mended, and that a good mother, with her family to set out in the world, would have seen the advantage for her own children of doing her best to attract acquaintances and company to Greyshott. But the rector was only a man, and a timid one, fearing to break the bonds of convention, and his daughters were too young to take the matter into their own hands. They might have done it had Mrs. Piercey waited for a few years; but then Patty had no inclination to wait.

CHAPTER XLVI.

Mrs. Piercey went to town after Easter, as she was aware everybody who respected themselves, who were in Society, or who had any money to spend, did. But, alas! she did not know how to manage this any more than to find the usual solace in country life. She was, indeed, still more helpless in town; for no doubt in the country, if she had been patient, there would at last have been found somebody who would have had courage to break the embargo, to defy Lord and Lady Hartmore and all the partisans of the old family, and to call upon the lady of Greyshott. But in town what could Patty do? She knew nobody but the distant cousins somewhere in the depths of Islington, to whom she had gone at the time of her marriage, but whom she had taken care to forget the very existence of as soon as her need for them was over. Mrs. Piercey went to a fashionable hotel, and engaged a handsome set of rooms, and sat down and waited for happiness to come to her. She had her maid with her, the irreproachable Jerningham, who would not allow her mistress to demean herself by making a companion of her; and she had Robert, the footman, and her own coachman from Greyshott, and a new victoria in which to drive about—all the elements of happiness—poor Patty! and yet it would not come. She had permitted herself, by this time, to drop the weight of her mourning, and to blossom forth in grey and white; and she drove in the Park in the most beautiful costumes, with the old fat Greyshott horses, who were in themselves a certificate that she was somebody, no mushroom of a parvenue. So was the coachman, who was the real old Greyshott coachman, and (evidently) had been in the family for generations. She drove steadily every day along the sacred promenade, and was seen of everybody, and discussed among various bands of onlookers, whose only occupation, like the Athenians, was that of seeing or hearing some new thing. Who was she? That she was not of the style of her horses and her coachman was apparent at a glance. Where had she got them? Was it an attempt on the part of some visitor from the ends of the earth to pose as a lady of established family? Was it, perhaps, a daring coup on the part of some person, not at all comme il faut, to attract the observation and curiosity of the world? Patty’s little face, with its somewhat fast prettiness, half abashed, half impudent, shone out of its surroundings with a contradiction to all those suppositions. The Person would not have been at all abashed, but wholly impudent, or else quite assured and satisfied with herself; and in any case she would not have been alone. A stranger, above all, would not have been alone. There would have been a bevy of other women with her, making merry over all the novelty about them, and this, probably, would have been the case had the other idea been correct. But who was this, with the face of a pretty housemaid and the horses of a respectable dowager? Some of the gentlemen in the park, who amused themselves with these speculations, would, no doubt, have managed to resolve their doubts on the subject had not Patty been, as much as Una, though she was so different a character, enveloped in an atmosphere of such unquestionable good behaviour and modesty as no instructed eye could mistake. Women, who are less instructed on such matters, may mistake; but not men, who have better means of knowing. Thus Patty did make a little commotion; but as she had no means of knowing of it, and no one to tell her, it did her no good in the world.

And she went a good many times to the theatre, and to the opera, though it bored her. But this was a great ordeal: to go into a box all alone, and subject herself to the opera-glasses of the multitude. Patty did not mind it at first. She liked to be seen, and had no objection that people should look at her, and her diamonds; and there was a hope that it might lead to something in her mind. But how could it lead to anything? for she knew nobody who was likely to be seen at the opera. When she went home in the evening she could have cried for disappointment and mortification. Was this all? Was there never to be anything more than this? Was all her life to be spent thus in luxury and splendour; always alone?

At first she had dined in solitary state in her rooms, as she thought it right, in her position, to do. But when Patty heard that other people of equal pretensions—one of them the baronet’s lady, whom it was her despair not to be—went down to the general dining-room for their meals, she was too happy to go there too, thinking she must, at least, make some acquaintance with the other dwellers in the hotel. But things were not much better there, for Mrs. Piercey was established at a little table by herself in great state, but unutterable solitude, watching with a sick heart the groups about her—the people who were going to the theatre, or to such delights of balls and evening parties as Patty had never known. There was but one solitary person beside herself, and that was an old gentleman, with his napkin tucked into his buttonhole, who was absorbed by the menu and evidently thought of nothing else. Patty watched the groups with hungry eyes—the men in their evening coats, with wide expanses of white; the ladies, who evidently intended to dress after this semi-public dinner. Oh, how she longed to belong to some one, to have some one belonging to her! And such a little thing, she thought, would do it: nothing more than an introduction, nothing beyond the advent of some one who knew her, who would say, “Mrs. Piercey of Greyshott,” and the ice would be broken. But then that some one who knew her, where was he or she to be found?

Alas! there came a moment when both he and she were found, and that was the worst of all. She was seated listlessly in her usual solitude, when she saw a pair of people who were taking their seats at a table not far off. They had their backs turned towards her, and yet they seemed familiar to Patty. They were both tall, the gentleman with a military air, the lady with a little bend in her head which Patty thought she knew. There was about them that indefinable air of being lately married which it is so very difficult to obliterate, though they did not look very young. The lady was quietly dressed, or rather she was in a dress which was the symbol of quiet—quakerly, or motherly, to our grandmothers: grey satin, but with such reflections and shadows in it, as has made it in our better instructed age one of the most perfectly decorative of fabrics. Patty, experienced by this time in the habits and customs of the people she watched so wistfully, was of opinion that they were going to the opera. Who were they? She knew them—oh, certainly she knew them; and they evidently knew several of the groups about; and now at last Patty’s opportunity had surely come.

I think by this time Mrs. Piercey of Greyshott had acquired a forlorn look, the consequence of her many disappointments. It is not pleasant to sit and watch people who are better off than we are, however philosophical and high-minded we may be; and Patty, it need not be said, was neither. Her mouth had got a little droop at the corners, her eyes a little fixity, as of staring and weariness in staring. She was too much dressed for the dining-room of a hotel, and she had very manifestly the air of being alone, and of being accustomed to be alone. I think that, as so often happens, Patty was on the eve of finding the acquaintance for whom her soul longed, at these very moments when her burden was about to become too much for her to bear; and she certainly had attained recognition in the world outside, as was to be proved to her no later than to-night. Such coincidences are of frequent occurrence in human affairs. It had become known in the hotel to some kind people, who had watched her solitude as she watched their cheerful company, who she was; and the matron of the party had remembered how much that was good had been said of Patty on the trial, and how kind she had been to the old man who had left her all his money without any doing of hers. “Poor little thing! I shall certainly take an opportunity of speaking to her to-morrow,” this lady was saying, as Patty watched with absorbed attention the other people. Indeed, the compassion of this good woman might have hastened her purpose and made her “speak” that very night, had not Patty been so bent upon those other people whom she was more and more sure she knew; and what a difference—what a difference in her life might that have made! But she never knew—which was, perhaps, in the circumstances, a good thing.

It was while Patty’s attention was called away perforce by the waiter who attended to her, that the other people at whom she had been gazing became aware of her presence. The gentleman had turned a bronzed face, full of the glow of warmer suns than ours, in her direction, and started visibly. He was a man whom the reader has seen habitually with another expression—that of perplexity and general discontent; a man with a temper, and with little patience, though capable of better things. He had apparently got to these better things now. His face was lighted up with happiness; he was bending over the little table, which, small as it was, seemed too much to separate them, to talk to his wife, with the air of a man who has so much and so many things to say, that he has not a minute to lose in the outpouring of his heart. She was full of response, if not perhaps so overflowing; but on her aspect, too, there had come a wonderful change. Her beautiful grey satin gown was not more unlike the unfailing black which Mrs. Osborne always wore, than the poor relation of Greyshott was to Gerald Piercey’s wife, Meg Piercey once again. It would be vain to enter upon all the preliminaries which brought about this happy conclusion. Margaret had many difficulties to get over, which to everybody else appeared fantastical enough. A second marriage is a thing which, in theory, few women like; and to cease to belong solely to Osy, and to bear another name than his, though it was her own, was very painful to her. Yet these difficulties had all been got over, even if I had space to enter into them; which, seeing that Patty is all this time waiting, dallying with her undesired dinner, and wondering who these people are whom she seems to know, would be uncalled for in the highest degree.

When the waiter came up to the solitary lady at the table, and Colonel Piercey turned his face in that direction, he started and swore under his breath, “By Jove!” though he was not a man addicted to expletives. Then he said, “Meg! Meg!” under his breath; “who do you think is sitting behind you at that table? Don’t turn round. Mrs. Piercey, as sure as life!”

“Mrs. Piercey?” She was bewildered for a moment. “There are so many Mrs. Pierceys. Whom do you mean?”