“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.
“I don’t know what you had to do with it,” said Lady Piercey, roughly. “If I’m anxious about Gervase, it’s not about life or limb. I’m not a fool, I hope. What did you give her, you block, to make her come and put herself before you like this?”
“I’ve got nothing to give,” said the lout. There had been a trace of manhood, a gleam even of the gentleman in him when he was with Patty. Here, in his mother’s room, he became a mere lump of clay. He pulled out his pockets as he spoke, which shed a number of small articles upon the floor, but not a coin. “I have a deal to give – to her or any one,” he said.
“Where do you spend it all?” said the mother; “five shillings I gave you on Monday, and what expenses have you? Kept in luxury, and never needing to put your hand in your pocket. Goodness, Meg, what a smell! Is it a barrel of beer you’ve rolled into my room, or is it – is it my only boy?”
“By – Gosh!” said Gervase. He could not be gentlemanly even in his oaths. He would have said “By George!” or perhaps “By Jove!” even if he had been with Patty, but nothing but this vulgar expletive would come to his lips here.
“I’ve heard of you, sir,” said Lady Piercey; “I’ve heard where you spend your time, and who you spend it with. A common beerhouse, and the woman that serves the beer. Oh, good gracious! good gracious! and to think that should be my son, and that he’s the heir to an old estate and will be Sir Gervase if he lives!”
“Ay,” said Gervase, with a laugh, “and you can’t stop that, old lady, not if you should burst.”
“Don’t you be too sure I can’t stop it,” she cried. “Your father is not much good, but he is more good than you think; and if you suppose there’s no way of putting an idiot out of the line, you’re mistaken. There are plenty of asylums for fools, I can tell you; and if you are such a double-dyed fool as that – ”
Gervase stared and grew pale; but then he took courage and laughed a weak laugh. “I may be a fool,” he said, “you’re always that nice to me, mamma: but there’s them in the world that will stand up for me, and cleverer than you.”
Lady Piercey stared also for a moment; and then turning to Mrs. Osborne, asked, “Meg! what does the ass mean?”
“Oh, have a little patience, aunt! He means – nothing, probably. He has been doing no harm, and he’s vexed to be blamed. Why should he be blamed when he has been doing no harm?”
“Do you call it no harm to bring the smell of an alehouse into my room?” cried Lady Piercey; “you will have to open all the windows to get rid of it, and probably I shall get my death of cold – which is what he would like, no doubt.”
Gervase laughed again, his lower lip more watery than ever. “Trust you for taking care of yourself,” he said. “If that’s all you have got to say, slanging a fellow for nothing, I’ll go to bed.”
“Stop here, when I tell you! and let me know this instant about that woman. Who is she that will have anything to say to you? Perhaps she thinks she will be my lady, and get my place after me – a girl that draws beer for all the ploughmen in the parish!”
“I don’t know who you’re speaking of,” said Gervase. His face grew a dull red, and he clenched his fist. “By Gosh! and if she marries me, so she will, and nobody can stop it,” he said.
“You had better banish this illusion from your mind,” said Lady Piercey, with solemnity. “A woman like that shall never be my lady, and come after me. It’s against – against the laws of this house; it’s against the law of the land. Your father can leave every penny away from you! And as for the name, it’s – it’s forbidden to a common person. The Lord Chancellor will not allow it! – the Queen will not have it! You might as well try to – to bring down St. Paul’s to Greyshott! Do you hear, you fool, what I say?”
Gervase stood with his mouth open: he was confounded with these big names. The Queen and the Lord Chancellor and St. Paul’s! They mingled together in a something stupendous, an authority before which even Patty, with all her cleverness, must fail. He gazed at his mother with the stupid alarm which all his life her denunciations had inspired. St. Paul’s and the Queen! The one an awful shadow, coming down on the moors; the other at the head of her army, as in a fairy story. And the Lord Chancellor! something more alarming still, because Gervase could form no idea of him unless by the incarnation of the police, which even in Greyshott was a name of fear.
“Look here,” said Lady Piercey, “this is what it would mean; you wouldn’t have a penny; you’d have to draw the beer yourself to get your living; you’d be cut off from your father’s will like – like a turnip top. The Lord Chancellor would grant an injunction to change your name; for they won’t have good old names degraded, the great officers won’t. You might think yourself lucky if you kept the Gervase, for that’s your christened name; but it would be Gervase Brown, or Green, or something; – or they might let you for a favour take her name – the beerhouse woman’s; which would suit you very well, for you would be the beerhouse man.”
Gervase’s lip dropped more and more, his face grew paler and paler. Lady Piercey by long experience had grown versed in this kind of argument. She was aware that she could reduce him to absolute vacuity and silence every plea he might bring forth. He had no plea, poor fellow. He was so ignorant that, often as he had been thus threatened, he never had found out the absurdity of these threats. He fell upon himself like a ruined wall, as he stood before her limp and terrified. There was a grim sort of humour in the woman which enjoyed this too, as well as the sense of absolute power she had over him; and when she had dismissed him, which she did with the slight touch of a kiss upon his cheek, but again a grimace at the smell of beer, she burst into a wild but suppressed laugh. “Was there ever such a fool, to believe all I say?” she said to her niece who removed her dressing-gown, and helped her into bed; and then – for this fierce old lady was but an old woman after all – she fell a-whimpering and crying. “And that’s my son! oh Lord! my only child; all that I’ve got in the world.”
CHAPTER IV
Margaret found Gervase waiting for her in the darkness of the corridor, when she left his mother. Lady Piercey was a righteous woman, who would not keep her maid out of bed after ten o’clock; but her niece was a different matter. He caught his cousin by the arm, almost bringing from her a cry of alarm. “Meg,” he said in her ear, “do you think it’s all true?”
“Oh, Gervase, you gave me such a fright!”
“Is it all true?”
“How can I tell you? I don’t know anything about the law,” she said, with a sense of disloyalty to the poor fellow who was so ignorant; but she could not contradict her aunt, and if that was supposed to be for his good —
“If it should be,” said Gervase, with a deep sigh: and then he added, “I couldn’t let her marry me if it wasn’t to be for her good.”
“Oh, Gervase, why can’t you show yourself like that to them?” his cousin said.
“I don’t know what you mean. I make no difference,” he answered dully, as he turned away.
Then there came another disturbance. The door of Sir Giles’ room further on opened cautiously, and his servant, who was also his nurse, looked out with great precaution and beckoned to her. Sir Giles was in bed; an old man with a red face and white hair; his under lip dropped like that of Gervase, though there was still a great deal of animation in his little bright blue eyes. He called her to come to him close to his bedside, as if Dunning, his man, did not know exactly what his master was going to ask.
“Has Gervase come in?” he said.
“Yes, uncle.”
“Is he drunk?”
“Oh, no,” said Margaret eagerly, “nothing of the sort!”
“That’s all right,” said the old gentleman with a sigh of satisfaction. “Now I’ll go to sleep.”
Thus the whole household, though it was not to be called a sensitive or a loving household, held its watch over the poor lad who, in his patent stupidity, was its only hope.
Margaret Osborne went away to the end of the corridor to her own room where her little boy was sleeping. She was a few years over thirty, as I have said, and therefore was one of those whose day is supposed to be over. She would have said so herself from other reasons, with complete good faith. For was she not a widow, thrown back as wrecks are upon the shore, out of the storms and hurricanes of life? She might have added that she was cast upon a desert island, after a very brief yet sharp acquaintance with all those stirring adventures and hair-breadth escapes which sometimes make life a stormy voyage. She had married a soldier, and gone with him from place to place during a course of troubled years. They had been poor, and their marriage was what is called an imprudent one; but it was so much worse than that, that Captain Osborne had by no means intended it to be imprudent, but had remained convinced till the last moment that Sir Giles Piercey’s niece must bring something substantial with her to the common stock. He had been warned over and over again, but he had not believed the warning; and when he found himself with a wife on his hands, whose utmost endowment was a very small allowance; enough, with economy, to dress her in the simplest manner, but no more – while he himself had little more than his pay to depend on, the disappointment was grievous. Captain Osborne was a gentleman, though not a very high-minded one, and he did his best to keep the knowledge of this shock from his wife, and to look as if he shared that joy in life and intoxicating delight of freedom with which Margaret, the unconsidered orphan of Greyshott, stepped forth into the fulness of existence with the man she loved. He was able to keep that up quite a long time, his despondencies and occasional irritabilities being attributed by Margaret to anything but the real cause of them; but at the last, in an unguarded moment, the secret slipped from him. Not anything to leave an indelible mark on her memory; not that he had married her with the intention of increasing his income, which would not have been true; but only an unintentional revelation of the disappointment which had been in his mind from the very day of their marriage – the failure of a prospect upon which his thoughts were bent. “I thought I should have been able to do you more justice, Meg; but if we’ve grubbed on in a poor way, you must remember it’s that old curmudgeon of an uncle of yours that’s to blame.” She had asked what he meant, with a startled look, and gradually had elicited the story of his disappointment, which sunk into her heart like a stone. Not that she misjudged him or believed that he had married her for that only. Oh! no, no; but to think, when you have supposed your husband to be satisfied with your society as you with his; to find in you the fulfilment of all his hopes of happiness as you in him; and then to discover that from your very marriage day he has gone forth with a disappointment, with a grudge; with an unsaid reflection, “If I had but known!” – Margaret forgot it ’mid the many events that filled her existence, forgot even the bitter thought that, had he known, he need not have been subjected to those slights and scorns and forced self-denials that befall the poor; forgot everything but love and sorrow in those last sad scenes which have this one compensation – that they obliterate all that is not love from the mourner’s heart. But, nevertheless, the mark that had been made on her life was always there. We may have forgotten when, and how, and even by whose hand we got the wound, but the scar remains, and the smoothness of the injured surface can never be restored.
But she had her little boy, who was her estate, her endowment, her dowry, whatever else might be lacking; and who had come to be the delight of the house in which she was received after her widowhood – oh! not unkindly – with a quite genuine compassion and friendliness, if not love. They were not a family of delicate mind; they did not think it necessary to spare a dependent any of those snubs or small humiliations which belong to her lot. They took her in frankly because she had nowhere else to go to, with an occasional complaint of their hard fate in having to receive and support other people’s children, and an occasional gibe at the poor relations who were always a drag upon the head of the family. I do not say that she had not felt this, for she had a high spirit; and, perhaps, if she had been a woman educated as women are beginning to be now, she might have felt herself capable of achieving independence and throwing off the sore weight of charity which is so good for those who give, but generally so hard upon those who receive. But after many a weary thought she had given up the hope of this. She had not boldness enough to venture on any great and unusual undertaking, and there were no means for a woman of earning her living then, except in the way of teaching (which, at all times, must be the chief standby), for which she was not capable, having had no education herself. So that she had to accept the humiliations, to hear herself described as “my niece, you know, who has had to come back, poor thing, left without a penny. If she had not had her uncle’s house to come back to, Heaven knows what would have become of her”; and to witness the visitor’s pressure of Lady Piercey’s hand, and admiring exclamation, “How good you are!” And it was true – they were very good. She had not a moment she could call her own, but was running their errands the whole day. She was sick-nurse, lady’s maid, secretary, and reader, all in one. Sir Giles had moments when he remembered that to have such an invalid master was hard upon Dunning, and that so valuable a servant must have, now and then, an afternoon to himself; and Lady Piercey was very considerate of her maid, Parsons, and insisted, as we have seen, that she should always get to bed by ten o’clock. But to both of these good people it seemed quite natural that Meg should take the place thus vacated, and support the gouty old gentleman, and put the old lady to bed. Their own flesh and blood! like the daughter of the house! of course, it was she who came in naturally to fulfil all their needs. And Margaret never made an objection – scarcely felt one; was glad to be always busy, always at their service; but now and then, perhaps, in an idle moment, wondered, with a smile, how they could get on without her; felt a little indignation against Dunning and Parsons, who never showed any gratitude to her for the many fatigues she spared them – and thought within herself that the story of the niece, poor thing, who had come back without a penny, might be less frequently told.
But there had come into her life a great revenge – a thing which no one had thought of, unintentional, indeed undesired. The little boy, the baby, whom every one had called poor little thing! – as of the most unprotected and defenceless of God’s creation – that little boy, Osy, such a burden on the poor niece who had not a penny! had become the king of the house! It was such a revolution as had never entered into any mind to conceive. Osy, who understood nothing about his proper place or his position, as entirely dependent on Sir Giles’ charity, but did understand very well that everybody smiled upon him, delighted even in his very naughtiness, obeyed his lightest wish, fulfilled all his little caprices, took his little place as prince, as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. From old Sir Giles, by whom he sat on his little stool, patting the old gentleman’s gouty foot, with the softest feather-touch of his little hand, and babbling with all manner of baby talk profound questions that could have no answer, and shrills of little laughter, while even Dunning, on the other side of the old man’s chair, smiled indulgent, and declared that nothing do amuse master or take him out of himself like that child; and Lady Piercey, to whom he would run, hiding among her ample robes with full connivance on her part, when it was time to put him to bed – while Parsons stood delighted by, alleging that children was allays so when they was happy, and that the little ’un was fond of her ladyship, to be sure – there was but one thought little of Osy. He was a darling, he was, the housekeeper said, who was grim to Mrs. Osborne, and resented much being obliged occasionally to take my lady’s orders from the poor niece without a penny. Gervase was the only one in the family who did not idolise Osy. He had liked him well enough at first, when he mounted the little thing on his shoulder to Margaret’s terror, holding the child, who had twice his energy and spirit, with a limp arm in which there was no security. But after the time when Osy, with a fling, threw himself from his cousin’s nervous hold, and broke his little head and plunged the house into a panic of alarm, all such pranks had been forbidden, and Gervase took no more notice of the child, who had already begun to share the contempt of the household for him.
“Why doesn’t Cousin Gervase ’list for a soldier?” Osy had asked one day as he sat by Sir Giles. “Why should he ’list for a soldier?” asked the old gentleman; though Dunning grew pale, and Lady Piercey looked up with a sharp “Eh?” not knowing what treason was to follow. Dunning knew what had been said on that subject in the servants’ hall, and divined that the child had heard and would state his authorities without hesitation. “Because – ” said Osy – but then he made a pause – his mother’s eye was upon him, and, perhaps, though he had not the least idea what she feared and probably in childish defiance would have done that precisely had he known, yet this glance did give him pause; and he remembered that he had been told not to repeat what the servants said. The processes in a child’s mind are no less swift than those of a more calculating age. “Because,” said the boy, lingering, beginning to enjoy the suspense on all these faces, “because – it would make his back straight. Mamma says my back’s straight because the sergeant drilled me when I was a lickle, lickle boy.”