CHAPTER IX
Consequences
"However could you do it? Some day, no doubt, you'll rue it!"
Meg's troubles were not quite over, however, even yet. When shegot into the house Nellie met her in the hall and stared at her.
"Where have you been?" she said, a slow wonder in her round eyes."I've been hunting and hunting for you."
"What for?" said Meg shortly.
"Oh, Dr. Gormeston and Mrs. Gormeston and two Miss Gormestons are inthe drawing-room, and I think they'll stay for ever and ever."
"Well?" said Meg.
"And the General is ill again, and Esther says she won't leave himfor a second, not if Gog and Magog were down there dying to seeher."
"Well?" said Meg again.
"And Father is as mad as he can be, and is having to keep themall amused himself. He's sung 'My sweetheart when a boy' and'Mona,' and he's told them all about his horses, and now I s'posehe doesn't know what to do."
"Well, I can't help it," Meg said wearily, and as if the subjecthad no interest for her.
"But you'll just have to!" Nell cried sharply, "I've done mybest: he sent out and said we were to go in, and you weren'tanywhere, so there was only Baby and me."
"And what did you do?" Meg asked, curious in spite of herself.
"Oh, Baby talked to Miss Gormeston, and they asked me to play,"she returned, "so I played the 'Keel Row.' Only I forgottill I had finished that it was in two sharps," she added sadly."And then Baby told Mrs. Gormeston all about Judy leaving theGeneral at the Barracks, and being sent to boarding school for it,and about the green frog Bunty gave her, and, then Father saidwe'd better go to bed, and asked why ever you didn't come in."
"I'll go, I'll go," Meg said hastily, "he'll be fearfully crossto-morrow about it. Oh! and, Nell, go and tell Martha tosend in the wine and biscuits and things in half an hour."
She flung off her cloud, smoothed her ruffled hair, and peepedin the hall-stand glass to see if the night wind had taken awaythe traces of her recent tears. Then she went into the drawing-roam,where her father was looking quite heated and unhappy overhis efforts to entertain four guests who were of the classpopularly known as "heavy in hand:"
"Play something, Meg," he said presently, when greetings werefinished, and a silence seemed settling down over them all again;"or sing something that will be better--haven't you anything youcan sing?"
Now Meg on ordinary occasions had a pleasant, fresh little voiceof her own, that could be listened to with a certain amount ofpleasure, but this evening she was tired and excited and unhappy.She sang "Within a mile of Edinboro' town," and was exceedinglyflat all through.
She knew her father was sitting on edge all the time, and that hermistakes were grating on him, and at the end of the song, ratherthan turn round immediately and face them all, she began to playKowalski's March Hongroise. But the keys seemed to be rising upand hitting her hands, and the piano was growing unsteady, androcking to and fro in an alarming manner; she made a horriblejangle as she clutched at the music-holder for safety, and thenext minute swayed from the stool and fell in a dead, faint rightinto Dr. Gormeston's arms, providentially extended just in time.
The heavy, heated atmosphere had proved too much for her, in herunhinged state of mind. Captain Woolcot was extraordinarilyupset by the occurrence; not one of his children had ever donesuch a thing before, and as Meg lay on the sofa, with herlittle fair head drooping against the red frilled cushions, herface white and unconscious, she looked strangely like her mother,whom he had buried out in the churchyard four years ago. He wentto the filter for a glass of water, and, as it trickled, wonderedin a dull, mechanical kind of way if his little dead wife thoughthe had been too quick in appointing Esther to her kingdom. Andthen, as he stood near the sofa and looked at the death-like face,he wondered with a cold chill at his heart whether Meg was goingto die, too, and if so would she be able to tell the same littlewife that Esther received more tenderness at his hands than shehad done.
His reverie was interrupted by the doctor's sharp, surprisedvoice. He was talking to Esther, who had been hastily summoned tothe scene, and who had helped to unfasten the pretty bodice.
"Why, the child is tight-laced!" he said; "surely you musthave noticed it, madam. That pressure, if it has been constant,has been enough to half kill her. Chut, chut! faint indeed--I wondershe has not taken fits or gone into a decline before this."
Then a cloud of trouble came over Esther's beautiful face--she hadfailed again in her duty. Her husband was regarding her almostgloomily from the sofa, where the little figure lay in itscrumpled muslin dress, and her heart told her these childrenwere not receiving a mother's care at her hands.
Afterwards, when Meg was safely in bed and the excitementall over, she went up to her husband almost timidly.
"I'm only twenty; Jack; don't be too hard on me!" she saidwith a little sob in her voice. "I can't be all to them thatshe was, can I?"
He kissed the bright, beautiful head against his shoulder,and comforted her with a tender word or two. But again and againthat night there came to him Meg's white, still face as it lay onthe scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind that stirred thecurtains at the window had been playing with the long grass inthe churchyard a few minutes since.