The Cuckoo in the Nest. Volume 1/2

“That’s a lie!” said the young man; “and I don’t take more than I want when I’m thirsty. It’s only you that are contrary. There’s that Roger; you let him have as much as you like – ”

“What Roger?” cried Patty, with a flash of her eyes, which was visible even in the moonlight. “If it’s Mr. Pearson you mean, he never looks at beer except just to stand pots round for the good of the house – ”

“If that’s what pleases you, Patty, I’ll – I’ll stand anything – to anybody – as long as – as long as – ” Poor Gervase thrust the hand which she would not permit to hold hers, into his pocket, searching for the coin that he had not. At which his tormentor laughed.

“As long as you’ve anything to pay it with,” she said. “And you have not – and that makes all the difference. Roger Pearson – since you’ve made so bold as to put a name to him – has his pockets full. And you’re running up a pretty high score, Mr. Gervase, I can tell you, for nobody but yourself.”

“I don’t know how he has his pockets full,” Gervase said, with a growl; “it isn’t from the work he does – roaming the country and playing in every match – ”

“You see he can play,” said Patty, maliciously; “which some folks couldn’t do, not if they was to try from now to doomsday.”

“But it don’t get him on in his business, or make money to keep a wife,” said the young man with a flash of shrewdness, at which Patty stared with astonishment, but with a touch of additional respect.

“Well, Mr. Gervase,” she said, making a swift diversion; “I shall always say it’s a shame keeping you as short as you are of money; and you the heir of all.”

“Isn’t it?” cried Sir Giles Piercey’s heir. “Not a penny but what’s doled out as if I were fifteen instead of twenty-five – or I’d have brought you diamonds, before now, Patty, to put round your neck.”

“Would you, now, Mr. Gervase? And what good would they have been to me at the Seven Thorns? You can’t wear diamonds when you’re drawing beer,” she added, with a laugh.

“I can’t abide you to be drawing beer,” cried the young man: “unless when it is for me.”

“And that’s the worst I can do,” said Patty, quickly. “Here’s just how it is: till you give up all that beer, Mr. Gervase, you’re not the man for me. It’s what I begun with, and you’ve brought me round to it again. Him as I’ve to do with shall never be like that. Father sells it – more’s the pity; but I don’t hold with it. And, if I had the power, not a woman in the country would look at a man that was fond of it: more than for his meals, and, perhaps, a drop when he’s thirsty,” she added, in a more subdued tone.

“That’s just my case, Patty,” said Gervase; “a drop when I’m thirsty – and most often I am thirsty – ”

“That’s not what I mean, neither. If you were up and down from morning to night getting in your hay, or seeing to your turnips, or riding to market – well, then I’d allow you a drink, like as I would to your horse, only the brute has the most sense, and drinks good water; but roaming up and down, doing nothing as you are – taking a walk for the sake of getting a drink, and then another walk to give you the excuse to come back again, and nothing else in your mind but how soon you can get another; and then sitting at it at night for hours together till you’re all full of it – like a wet sponge, and smelling like the parlour does in the morning before the windows are opened – Faugh!” cried Patty, vigorously pushing him away, “it is enough to make a woman sick!”

Personal disgust is the one thing which nobody can bear; even the abject Gervase was moved to resentment. “If I make you sick, I’d better go,” he said sullenly, “and find another place where they ain’t so squeamish.”

“Yes, do; there are plenty of folks that don’t mind: neither for your good nor for their own feelings. You can go, and welcome. And I’m going back to the house.”

“Oh, stop a moment, Patty! Don’t take a fellow up so quick! It isn’t nice to hear a girl say that, when you worship the ground she stands on – ”

“The smell of beer,” said Patty, sniffing audibly with her nostrils in the air, “is what I never could abide.”

“You oughtn’t to mind it. If it wasn’t for beer – ”

“Oh, taunt me with it, do!” cried Patty. “If it wasn’t for beer, neither Richard Hewitt of the Seven Thorns, nor them that belongs to him, that once had their lands and their farms as good as any one, and more horses in their stables than you have ever had at the Manor, couldn’t get on at all, nor pay their way – Oh, taunt me with it! It’s come to that, and I can’t gainsay it. I draw beer for my living, and I ought to encourage them that come. But I can’t abide it, all the same,” cried Patty, stamping her foot on the dry and sandy turf; “and I won’t look at a man, if he was a prince, that is soaking and drinking night and day!”

She turned and walked off towards the house with her quick, springy step, followed by the unhappy Gervase, who called “Patty! Patty!” by intervals, as he went after humbly. At last, just before they came into sight of the loungers about the door, he ventured to catch at her sleeve.

“Patty! Patty! just for one moment! Listen – do listen to me!”

“What were you pleased to want, sir?” said Patty, turning upon him. “Another tankard of beer?”

“Oh, Patty,” said the young man, “if I was to give it up, and never touch another blessed drop again – ”

“It would be real good for you – the very best thing you could do.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that. Would you be a little nice to me, Patty? Would you listen to me when I speak? – would you – ?”

“I always listen to them that speaks sense, Mr. Gervase.”

“I know I ain’t clever,” said the poor fellow; “and whether this is sense I don’t know: but you shall be my lady when father dies, if you’ll only listen to me now.”

Patty’s eyes danced, and her pulses beat with a thrill which ran through her from head to foot. But she said:

“I’ll never listen to any man, if he would make me a queen, so long as he went on like that with the beer!”

CHAPTER III

Greyshott Manor, to which Gervase directed his steps after the interview above recorded, was a large red brick mansion, no earlier than the reign of Anne; though there were traces in various parts of the house of a much older lineage. The front, however, which you could see through the wonderful avenue of beeches, which was the pride of the place, bore a pediment and twinkled with rows of windows, two long lines above the porticoed and pillared door, which also had a small pediment of its own. It looked old-fashioned, but not old, and was in perfect repair. When the sun shone down the beech avenue, which faced to the west, it turned the old bricks of the house into a sort of glorified ruddiness, blended of all the warmest tones – red and russet, and brown and orange, with a touch of black relieving it here and there. The effect in autumn, when all those warm tints which, by the alchemy of nature, bring beauty out of the chilly frost and unlovely decay – was as if all the colours in the rainbow had been poured forth; but all so toned and subdued by infinite gradation that the most violent notes of colour were chastened into harmony. It was not autumn, however, at this moment, but full summer, – the trees in clouds and billows of full foliage, dark on either side of that glory of the moon, which poured down like a silver river between, and made all the windows white with the whiteness of her light. The avenue was a wonderful feature at Greyshott, and even the mere passer-by had the good of it, since it was closed only by a great gate of wrought iron, which would also have been worth looking at had the spectator been a connoisseur. The fault of the avenue was that it was a short one – not above a quarter of a mile long – and it was now used only by foot-passengers, who had a right of way through the little postern that flanked the big gate. Important visitors drove up on the other side, through what was called the Avenue, which was just like other avenues; but the Beeches were the pride of Greyshott. To think that the one slim shadow that came into the moonlight in the midst of them, with a wavering gait and stooping shoulders, should be the future lord and master of all those princely older inhabitants, with the power of life and death in his hands! A few years hence, when old Sir Giles had come to the end of his existence, his son could cut them down if he pleased. He could obliterate the very name of the great trees, so much more dignified and splendid members of society than himself, which stood in close ranks on either side of the path: he so little and they so great, and yet this confused and bewildered mortal the master of all!

If Gervase walked with a wavering gait, it was not because of the beer against which Patty had made so strong a remonstrance. He had, indeed, had quite enough of that; but his uncertain step was natural to the Softy, as all the country called him. He went along with his head stooping, his hands in his pockets, his eyes traversing the path as well as his feet, keeping up an inane calculation of the white pebbles, or the brown ones, among the gravel. He had long been in the habit of playing a sort of game with himself in the vacancy of his mind, the brown against the white, counting them all along the level of the road, occasionally cheating himself in the interests of the right side or the left. This occupation had beguiled him over many a mile of road. But it had palled upon him since he had known Patty, or rather, since she had surprised him into that admiration and enthusiasm which had made him determine to marry her, whatever difficulties might be in the way. It was, perhaps, because of the rebuff she had given him that Gervase had again taken to his game with the brown and white pebbles in the road, which, indeed, it was not too easy to distinguish in the whiteness of the moon. He walked along with his head down, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders up to his ears, and the moon was very unhandsome in the matter of shadow, and threw a villainous blotch behind him upon that clear white line of way. There was a light in the front of the house to which Gervase was bound; a sort of querulous light, which shone keen in the expanse of windows, all black and white in the moon, like the eyes of an angry watcher looking out for the return of the prodigal, but not like the father in the parable. It was, indeed, exactly so: the light was in his mother’s window, who would not go to bed till Gervase had come home. It was not late, but it was late for the rural household, which was all closed and shut up by ten o’clock. Sir Giles was an invalid, his wife old, and accustomed to take great care of herself. She sat up in her dressing-gown, angry, though anxious, with all the reproachful dignity of a woman kept up and deprived of her natural rest, ready to step into bed the moment her vigil was over; a large watch ticking noisily and also reproachfully on the table beside her, with a sort of stare in its large white face, seeming to say, late! late! instead of tick, tick – to the young man’s guilty ear.

At least, it had once done so; but Gervase by this time was quite hardened to the watch that said late! and the mother whose tongue in the tschick, tschick! of angry remonstrance, hailed him for want of better welcome when he went in.

He directed himself to a little side door in the shadow, which was often left open for him by the old butler, who had less fear of his plate than of getting the boy, whom, Softy as he was, he loved, into trouble. But sometimes it was not left open; sometimes an emissary from above, his mother’s maid, who loved him not, one of her satellites, turned the key, and Gervase had to ring, waking all the echoes of the house. He thought it was going to be so on this particular night, for when he pushed, it did not yield. Next moment, however, it opened softly, showing a tall shadow in the dimly-lighted passage. “O, Gervase, how late you are!” said a low voice.

“Why, it’s you!” he said.

“Yes, it’s me. My aunt is angry, I don’t know why. And she says you are to go to her before you go to bed.”

“I sha’n’t!” said Gervase.

“Do, there’s a dear boy. She has got something in her head. She will imagine worse than the truth if you don’t go. Oh! why should you be so undutiful? They would be so good to you if you would but let them. Go to your mother, Gervase, and let her see – ”

She paused, looking at him by the faint light as if she were not very sure that Gervase’s mother would see anything satisfactory. There was not, indeed, anything exhilarating to see. His light eyes, which had shone with a certain brightness upon Patty, were opaque now, and had no speculation in them. His under lip hung a little, and was always moist. The sullen look was habitual to his face. “What does she want o’ me?” he said in his throat, running his words into each other.

“She wants of you – what I’m afraid she’ll never get,” said the cousin with a tone of exasperation; “but at least go and say good-night to her, Gervase, and be as pleasant as you can. You may always do that.”

“You’re not one that thinks much o’ my pleasantness, Meg.”

“I’ve always been grateful for it when you’ve showed me any,” she said with a smile. She was a tall woman, older than Gervase, a few years over thirty, at the age which should be the very glory and flush of prime, but which in a woman is usually scoffed at as if it were old age. Gervase frankly thought his cousin an elderly woman who did not count any longer in life. She was very plainly dressed in black, being a widow and poor, and had something of the air of one who is on sufferance in a house to which she does not naturally belong. She kept at a slight distance from her cousin, taking half a step back when he took one in advance: but her voice to him was soft and her meaning kind. She had no great affection, beyond the habitual bond of having known him all his life, for Gervase; but she was a bystander seeing both sides of the question, and she did not think that the treatment adopted in his home was judicious, which made her more or less, as a dependent may be, the partizan of the poor fellow, for whom nobody had any respect, and few people cared at all.

“Come,” she said, in a persuasive tone; “I’ll go with you, Gervase.”

“What good’ll that do?” he said, sullenly.

“Well, not much, perhaps: but you always liked when you were little to have somebody to stand by you: and if my aunt thinks I’m intruding, it will be all the better for you.”

So saying, she led the way upstairs, and knocked lightly at a door on the gallery which went round the hall. “Here he is, aunt,” she said, “quite safe and sound; and now you can get to bed.”

“Who is quite safe and sound? and was there any doubt on that subject?” said a voice within. Lady Piercey sat very upright in an old-fashioned chair of the square high-backed kind, with walls like a house. The candle that looked so querulous in the window had inside a sharp, self-assertive light, as if it had known all about it all the time. She was in a dressing-gown of a large shawl pattern, warm and wadded, and had a muslin cap with goffered frills tied closely round her face. It is a kind of head-dress which makes a benign face still more benign, and a sweet complexion sweeter, and which also stiffens and starches a different kind of countenance. Lady Piercey was high featured, of that type of the human visage which resembles a horse, and her frills quivered with the indignation in her soul.

“I thought you were anxious about Gervase, aunt.”

Mrs. Osborne interfered in this obviously injudicious way, with the object of drawing aside the lightnings upon herself, as it was generally easy to do.