In the meantime, however, this glory was still at a distance, and the first thing to do was to prepare a shelter for the young couple who would have to inhabit, for lack of other habitation, these rooms in the west end of the Seven Thorns. Patty interviewed her father on the subject as soon as he had eaten his breakfast. She told him that to leave these beautiful rooms unoccupied was a sin and shame, and that it was his plain duty to do them up and look out for a lodger for next summer. “Indeed, I’m not sure but we might hear of somebody this season still, if they were ready,” she said. She showed him all the capabilities of the place, and how a disused garden door might be arranged so as to form a separate entrance, “for gentry won’t come in by a public-house door. It ain’t likely,” she explained. “What do I care about gentry, and what do you know about ’em?” said her father. “I’ll never spend my money on such nonsense.” “But you like to see the colour of theirs,” said Patty, “and it would be good for trade, too. For suppose you gave them their board for a fixed rate, there would always be a good profit. It would keep us going and them, too, so as we should pay nothing for our living, and that in addition to the rent: don’t you see, father?” “I don’t believe in them profits,” said the old man; “gentry, as you call ’em, don’t eat the same things as I likes.” “But they’d have to, father,” said Patty, softly, “if they couldn’t get nothing else.” This struck Mr. Hewitt’s sense of humour, and he allowed that it might be possible so, with a chuckle of democratic enjoyment. “I’d like to see ’em sit down with their mincin’ ways to beans and fat bacon,” he confessed. Patty was very sure that it was not on beans and fat bacon that she would feed the future Sir Gervase and Lady Piercey; but she made no remark on this point, and ere the week was over, she had all her plans in operation – the new entrance by the garden, the rods put up for the new muslin curtains, the old rooms scrubbed and polished, and dusted till they shone again. “I think I’ll take a run up to London, and buy two or three little things out of my own little bit of money,” she said cautiously. And though her father demanded what little bit of money she had to spend, he made no objection to the expedition. Patty was very well to be trusted to look after herself, as well as the interests of the family. And thus she prepared, in every respect, the way.
But Gervase never appeared. Morning and night she looked out for him, pleased and half-amused, at first, with the faithfulness with which he obeyed her. But after a time Patty became a little anxious. She had, indeed, forbidden him to come to the Seven Thorns. But she had not intended this self-sacrifice to be of such long duration. What if his mother had got hold of him? What if he had been frightened into giving up his love? The old lady had looked very masterful, very full of power to do mischief. What if they had shut him up? Patty grew more and more anxious as day followed day. The fifty pounds which she had sewn up in a little bag, and wore suspended by a ribbon round her neck, began to lie like a blister upon her pretty white skin underneath her bodice. What would Aunt Patience say if all her plans came to nothing, if no licence was necessary, and no bridegroom forthcoming? Patty felt her heart sink, sink into unimaginable depths. The old woman would reclaim her money with a sneer enough to drive any girl mad. She would laugh out at the fool that had fancied the Softy was in love with her. His father, as had all his wits about him, might take a person in; but Lord bless us, the Softy! Patty knew exactly what her aunt would say. Miss Hewitt had given her the money, not for love of her, but that she might triumph over the great people, and avenge the wrongs of the other Patty who had gone before her. Patty grew hot and grew cold, as she stood at the door looking out along the road, and seeing nobody; her heart sickened at every footstep, and leaped at every shadow on the way. One night, when she stood there with her face turned persistently in one direction, just as the soft summer twilight was stealing over the landscape, and everything was growing indistinct, a voice close to her made Patty jump. She had not even observed – so great was her preoccupation – another figure coming round the other corner. Roger Pearson had seated himself on the bench under the parlour window, and yet she had taken no notice. He broke the silence by a laugh of mockery, that seemed to Patty the beginning of the ridicule and scorn of the whole parish. “Looking out for some one, eh?” said the voice; “but he ain’t coming, not to-night.”
“Who is not coming, Mr. Pearson?” said Patty, commanding herself with a great effort; “some one you were expecting to meet?”
“You can’t come over me like that, Patty,” said Roger. “Lord, a nice lass like you that might have the best fellow in the village – a-straining and a-wearing your eyes looking after a Softy! and him not coming neither – not a step! They knows better than that.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Pearson,” said Patty, feeling herself enveloped from head to foot in a flush of rage and shame. “I don’t know as I ever was known as one that looked after Softies – meaning poor folks that have lost their wits, I suppose. You’re one of them, anyhow, that speaks like that to me.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said the young man, in his deep voice – “a fellow that’s not fit to tie your shoe, though he may be the squire’s son. Don’t you think that’ll ever come to any good. They’ll never let you be my lady; don’t you think it. They’ll turn him out o’ doors, and they’ll cut him off with a shilling; and then you’ll find yourself without a penny and a fool on your hands instead of a man.”
“Is this something out of a story book, or is it out of his own head?” said Patty looking round her as if consulting an impartial audience, – “anyway, it has nothing to say to me. I’ll send Ellen to you for your orders, Mr. Pearson, for I’ve got a lot to do to-night, and I can’t stand here to listen to your romancing. Ellen,” she cried, “just see to that gentleman.” She went off with all the honours of war, but Patty’s heart was likely to burst. She marched upstairs with a candle to the rooms she had been arranging so carefully, and locked the door, and sat down upon the sofa and gave way to a torrent of tears. Was it all to come to nothing, after all her splendid dreams? She knew as well as any one that he was a fool and could be persuaded into anything. How did she know that his mother, if she tried, could not turn him round her little finger, as she, Patty, had been certain she could do? How could she tell, in the battle between Lady Piercey of Greyshott and Patty of the Seven Thorns, that it was she who would triumph and not the great lady? It was all Patty could do not to shriek out her exasperation, her misery and rage; not to pull down the curtains and dash the furniture to pieces. She caught her handkerchief with her teeth and tore it to keep herself quiet – and the fifty pounds in the bag burnt her breast like a blister. What if it was to come to nothing, after all?
CHAPTER X
The week had been a very long week to Gervase. To him, poor fellow, there was no limit of time; no thought that his obedience was intended, nay, desired to stop at a certain point. He went on dully, keeping at home, keeping indoors, trying in his fatuous way to please his parents. It was a very dull round to him who had known the livelier joys of the Seven Thorns, the beer and the tobacco in the parlour, and Patty flitting about, throwing him a word from time to time. It seemed but a poor sort of paradise to sit among the slow old topers in the smoky room and imbibe the heavy beer; but it is unfortunately a kind of enjoyment which many young men prefer to the fireside at home, even without any addition of a Patty; and the poor Softy was not in this respect so very much inferior to the best and cleverest. The fireside at home, it must be allowed, was not very exciting. To be sure, the room itself was a very different room from that of the Seven Thorns. It was not the drawing-room in which the Piercey family usually sat in the evening, for the drawing-room was upstairs, and Sir Giles could not be taken up without great difficulty in his wheeled chair. It was the library, a large long room, clothed with the mellow tones and subdued gilding of old books, making a background which would have been quite beautiful to an artist. There was a row of windows on one side veiled in long curtains, and between these windows a series of family portraits almost as long as the windows, full length, not very visible in the dim light, affording a little glimpse of colour, and a face here and there looking out from that height upon the little knot of living people below; but the Pierceys of the past were not remarkable any more than the present Pierceys. A shaded lamp was suspended by a very long chain from the high roof, which was scarcely discernible going up so far, with those glimmers of bookcases and tall old portraits leading towards the vague height above; beneath it was a small round table, at which Lady Piercey sat in a great chair with her bright-coloured work; on the other side was Sir Giles among his cushions, with his backgammon board on a stand beside him, where sometimes Margaret, sometimes Dunning played with him till bedtime. Parsons, on the other hand, was so frequently in attendance on her mistress that the two old servants might be taken as part of the family circle. When Margaret took her place at the backgammon board, Dunning had an hour’s holiday, and retired to the much brighter atmosphere of the servants’ hall or the housekeeper’s room. And when Dunning played with Sir Giles, Margaret attended upon Lady Piercey to thread her needles, and select the shades of the silk, and Parsons was set free. The one who was never set free was Mrs. Osborne, whose evenings in this dim room between the two old people were passed in an endless monotony which sometimes made her giddy. The dull wheel of life went round and round for her, and never stopped or had any difference in it. From year to year the routine was the same.
Now, whether this scene, or the parlour at the Seven Thorns, where the sages of the village opened their mouths every five minutes or so to emit a remark or a mouthful of smoke, or to take in a draught of beer, was the most – or rather the least – enlivening, it would be hard to say. The sages of the village are sometimes dull and sometimes wise in a book. They were full of humour and character in George Eliot’s representation of them, and they are very quaint in Mr. Hardy’s. But I doubt much if they ever say such fine things in reality, and I am sure, if they did, that Gervase Piercey was not capable of understanding them. The beer and the tobacco and the sense of freedom and of pleasing himself – also of being entirely above his company, and vaguely respected by them – made up the charms of the humbler place to Gervase. And Patty – Patty had got by degrees to be the soul of all; but even before Patty’s reign began he had escaped with delight from these home evenings to the Seven Thorns. Why? For Sir Giles, even in his enfeebled state, was better company than old Hewitt and his cronies; and Lady Piercey’s sharp monologue on things in general was more piquant than anything the old labourers found to say; and Mrs. Osborne was a great deal handsomer than Patty, and would willingly have exerted herself for the amusement of her cousin. But this is a problem to which there is no answer. Far better and cleverer young men than Gervase make this same choice every day, or rather every evening; and no one can tell why.
But Gervase had turned over a new leaf. He went out to the door and took a few whiffs of his pipe, turning his back to the road which led to the Seven Thorns, that the temptation might not be too much for him, and repeating dully to himself what Patty had said to him. And then he went into the library, where they were all assembled, and pushed Dunning away, who was just arranging the board for Sir Giles’ game. “Here! look out; I’m going to play with you, father,” Gervase said. The old gentleman had been delighted the first night, pleased more or less the second, fretful the third. “You don’t understand my play, Gervase,” he said.
“Oh! yes, I understand your play, father: Dunning lets you win, and that’s why you like Dunning to play with you; but I’m better, for I wake you up, and you’ve got to fight for it when it’s me.”
“Dunning does nothing of the sort,” cried Sir Giles, angrily, “Dunning plays a great deal better than you, you booby. Do you let me win, Dunning? It’s all he knows!”
“I ought to be good, Sir Giles, playin’ with a fine player like you; but I never come up to you, and never will, for I haven’t the eddication you have, Sir Giles, which stands to reason, as I’m only a servant,” Dunning said.
“There! You hear him: go and play something with Meg; you’re never still with those long legs of yours, and I like a quiet game.”
“I’ll keep as quiet as pussy,” said Gervase. “Which’ll you have, father, black or white? and let’s toss for the first move.”
Now, everybody knew that Sir Giles always played with the white men and always had the first move. Once again the old gentleman had to resign himself to the noisy moves and shouts of his son over every new combination, and to the unconscious kicks which the restlessness of Gervase’s long limp legs inflicted right and left. Dunning stood behind his master’s chair, with a stern face of disapproval, yet trying hard by winks and nods to indicate the course which ought to be pursued, until Gervase threw himself back in his chair, almost kicking over the table with the corresponding movement of his legs, and bursting into a loud laugh. “What d’ye mean, ye old fool, making faces at me over father’s shoulder? Do you mean I’m to give him the game, like you do? Come on, father, let’s fight it out.”
“I never said a word, Sir Giles! I hope as I knows my place,” cried Dunning, alarmed.
“Hold your tongue, you big gaby,” cried Sir Giles; but presently the old gentleman thrust the board away, overturning it upon his son’s long legs. “I’ll not play any more,” he said: “I’ve had enough of it. I think I was never so tired in my life. Backgammon’s a fine game, but one can’t go on for ever. Fetch me my drink, Dunning; I think I’ll go to bed.”
“It’s all because he’s losing his game,” cried Gervase, with a loud ha! ha! He had something like the manners of a gentleman at the Seven Thorns, but at home his manners were those of the public-house. “The old man don’t like to be beaten; he likes to have everything his own way. And Dunning’s an old humbug, and lets you have it. But it ain’t good for you to have too much of your own way. I’ve been told that since I was a little kid like Osy; and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, father, don’t you know.”
“Gervase, how dare you speak so to your papa? Come over here, sir, and leave him a little in peace. Where did you learn to laugh so loud, and make such a noise? Come here, you riotous boy. You always were a noisy fellow, making one’s head ache to hear you. Sit down, for goodness’ sake, and be quiet. Meg, can’t you find something to amuse him? I dare say he’d like a game at cards. How can I tell you what game? If you can’t, at your time of life, find something that will occupy him and keep him quiet – ! Here, Gervase, hold this skein of silk while Parsons winds it, and Meg will go and get the cards, and perhaps you’d like a round game.”
“I don’t want a game, mother, not for Meg’s sake, who doesn’t count. I want to be pleasant to you – and to father, too,” said Gervase, standing up against the fireplace, which, of course, was vacant this summer night.
Sir Giles was so far from appreciating the effort of his son, that he sat fuming in his chair, while Dunning collected the scattered “men,” muttering indistinct thunders, and pettishly putting away with his stick the pieces of the game. “Make haste! can’t you make haste, man?” he mumbled; “I want my drink, and I’m going to bed. And I won’t have my evening spoiled like this again. I won’t, by George, not for anything you can say. Four nights I’ve been a martyr to that cub, and I don’t see that you’ve done much to keep him in order, my lady! It all falls upon me, as everything does, and, by George, I won’t have it again. Can’t you make haste, you old fool, and have done with your groping? You’re losing your eyesight, I believe. Have one of the women in to find them, and get me my drink, for I’m going to bed.”
“I’ll find them, father,” cried Gervase cheerfully, plunging down upon the carpet on his hands and knees, and pushing the old gentleman’s stick back into his face.
“For goodness’ sake, Meg, find something for him to do! and take that boy off his father, or Sir Giles will have a fit,” cried Lady Piercey in Mrs. Osborne’s ear.
“Get out o’ my way, you young ass!” Sir Giles thundered, raising the stick and bestowing an angry blow upon his son’s shoulders. Gervase sat up on his knees like a dog, and stared for a moment angrily, with his hand lifted as if he would have returned the blow. Then he opened his mouth wide and gave forth a great laugh. Poor old Sir Giles caught at Dunning’s arm, clutching him in an ecstasy of exasperation. “Get me off, man, can’t you? Get me out of sight of him; take me to bed,” the old father cried, in that wretchedness of miserable perception which only parents know. His son – his only son! His heir, the last of the Piercey’s! – this Softy sitting up like a dog upon the floor!
Lady Piercey fell back also in her chair, and whimpered a little piteously, like the poor old woman she was, as Sir Giles was wheeled out of the room. The backgammon board, overturned, lay on the floor, with the pieces scattered over the carpet, and Gervase scrambling after them, for Dunning had been too tremulous and frightened to pick more than half of them up. “Oh! my poor, silly boy! oh! you dreadful, dreadful fool!” the old lady cried. “Will you never learn any better? Can’t you wake up and be a man?” She cried over this, for a little, very bitterly, with that terrible sense of the incurable which turns the poor soul back upon itself – and then she flung round in her big chair towards her niece, who stood silent and troubled, not knowing what part to take. “It’s all your fault,” she cried in a fierce whisper, “for not finding something for him to do. Why didn’t you find something for him to do? You might have played something to him, or sung something with him, or got him to look at pictures, or – anything! And now you’ve let your poor uncle go off in a rage, which may bring on a fit as likely as not, and me worse, for I can’t give in like him. Oh, Meg, what an ungrateful, selfish thing you are to stand there and never interfere when you might have found him something to do!”
When Lady Piercey’s procession streamed off afterwards to bed, my lady leaning heavily on Parsons’ arm and Margaret following with the work, Gervase was left still picking up the pieces, sprawling over the carpet and laughing as he followed the little round pieces of ivory and wood into the corners where they had rolled. Margaret went back to the library after being released by her aunt, and found him still there making a childish game of this for his own amusement, and chuckling to himself as he raced them over the carpet. He scrambled up, however, a little ashamed when he heard her voice asking, “What are you doing, Gervase?” “Oh, nothing,” he said with his foolish laugh, stuffing the “men” into his pockets. She put her hand upon his shoulder kindly.
“Gervase, dear, you’re quite grown up, don’t you know; quite a man now. You mustn’t be so mischievous, just like a boy. Poor Uncle Giles, you must not play tricks upon him; he likes a quiet game.”
“Don’t you be a fool, Meg. Why, that was what I was doing all the night, playing his quiet game. Poor old father, he got into a temper, but bless you ’twasn’t my fault. It’s that old ass, Dunning, that’s always getting in everybody’s way.”
“Of course he would like you best, Gervase, – but Dunning knows all his ways. Your game might be better fun – ”
“I should think so,” said the poor Softy. “My game is the game, and Dunning spoils everything. It ain’t my fault, though every one of you gets into a wax with me,” – Gervase’s lip quivered a little as if he might have cried, – “and me giving up everything only to please them!” he said.
“I am sure they are pleased to see you always indoors and not spending your time in that dreadful place.”
“What dreadful place? That is all you know – I’d never have come home any more but for them that’s there. It was she that sent me to please the old folks. But I shan’t go on much longer if you all treat me like this. I’ve tried my best to make the time pass for them, Meg, to give them a laugh and that. And they huff me and cuff me as if I was a fool. Why do they always call me a fool,” cried the poor fellow with a passing cloud of trouble, “whatever I do?”
“Oh, Gervase!” cried Margaret, full of pity. “But why did she want you so particularly to please them just now?”
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed and nodded his head. “You’d just like to know!” he said, “but she didn’t mean me to be nice to you, Meg; for she’s always afraid I’ll be driven to marry you – though a man must not marry his grandmother, you know.”
Margaret repented in a moment of the flush of anger that flew over her. “You can make her mind easy on that point,” she said gravely; “but oh, Gervase, I am afraid it will make them very unhappy if you go on with this fancy; they would never let you bring her here.”
“Fancy!” he cried, “I’m going to marry her. You can’t call that a fancy; and if you think you can put me off it, or the whole world! – Get along Meg, I don’t want to talk to you any more.”
“But I want very much to talk to you, Gervase.”
Gervase looked at her with a smile of foolish complacency. “I dare say you think me silly,” he cried, “but here’s two of you after me. Get along, Meg; whatever I do I’m not going to take your way.”
“You must do as you please, then,” said Margaret in despair; “but remember, Gervase,” she said, turning back before she reached the door, “your father is old, and you might drive him into a fit if you go on as you did to-night – and where would you be then?” she added, with an appeal to the better feeling in which she still believed.
“Why, I’d be in his place, and she’d be my lady,” cried the young man, with a gleam of cruel cunning, “and nobody could stop me any more, whatever I liked to do.”
But next evening there seemed to be in his mind some lingering regard for what she had said. Gervase left his father alone, and devoted himself to his mother, who was more able to take care of herself. He offered to wind her silks, and entangled them hopelessly with delighted peals of laughter. He took her scissors to snip off the ends for her, and put the sharp points through the canvas, until Lady Piercey, in her exasperation, gave him a sudden cuff on his cheek.
“You great fool!” she cried – “you malicious wretch! Do you want to spoil my work as well as everything else? I wish you were little enough to be whipped, I do; and I wish I had whipped you when you were little, when it might have done you some good. Margaret, what do you mean sitting quiet there, enjoying yourself with a book and me driven out of my senses? That’s what he wants to do, I believe – to drive us mad and get his own way; to make us crazy, both his poor father and me.”
“No, I don’t,” cried Gervase, “and you oughtn’t to hit me – I’ll hit back again if you do it again. It hurts – you’ve got a fist like a butcher, though you’re such an old lady.” He rubbed his cheek for a moment dolefully, and then again burst out laughing. “You look like old Judy in the show, mamma, when she hits her baby: only you’re so fat you could never get into it, and your voice is gruff like the old showman’s – not squeaky, like Mrs. Punch. I’ve cut all the silks into nice lengths for you to work with – ain’t you obliged to me? Look here,” he said, holding out his work. Poor Lady Piercey clapped her fat hands together loudly in sheer incapacity of expression. It made a loud report like a gun fired off to relieve her feelings, and Sir Giles looked up from his quiet game with Dunning, not without a subdued amusement that she should now be getting her share.
“What’s the matter, what’s the matter, my lady? Is that cub of yours playing some of his pranks? It’s your turn to-night, it appears, and serves you right, for you always back him up.”
“Oh, you fool, you fool, you fool!” cried the old lady in her passion. And then she turned her fiery eyes on her husband with a look of contempt and fury too great for words. “Meg!” she cried, putting out her hand across the table and grasping Mrs. Osborne’s arm, “If you’re ever driven wild like me, never you look for sympathy to a man! when they see you nearly mad with trouble they give you a look, and chuckle! that’s what they always do. Put down the scissors, you, you, you – ”
“Oh, and to think,” she cried wildly, “that that’s my only son! Oh, Giles, how can you play your silly games, and sit and see him – the only one we have between us, and he’s a born fool! And me, that was so thankful to see him stay at home, and give up going out to his low company! And now I can’t abide him. I can’t abide to see him here!”
This happened on the night when Patty, frightened and dejected, shut herself up in the room which she had meant for her bridal bower, and cried her eyes out because of Gervase’s absence. The poor Softy was thus of as much importance as any hero, turning houses and hearts upside down.