Margaret Oliphant - The Cuckoo in the Nest. Volume 1/2

“Oh! so it is you, Mr. Gervase! I couldn’t think who it could be that stuck there without a word to nobody. You’ve got a headache, as I said you would.”

“No – I’ve got no headache. If I’ve anything, it’s here,” said poor Gervase, laying his hand on what he believed to be his heart.

“Lord, your stomach, then!” said Patty with a laugh – “but folks don’t say that to a lady; though I dare to say it’s very true, for beer is a real heavy thing, whatever you men may say.”

“I am not thinking of beer,” said Gervase. “I wish there was nothing more than that, Patty, between you and me.”

“Between you and me!” she cried with a twirl of her broom along the step, “there’s nothing between you and me. There’s a deal to be done first, Mr. Gervase, before any man shall say as there’s something between him and Miss Hewitt of the Seven Thorns; and if you don’t know that, you’re the only man in the parish as doesn’t. Is there anything as I can do for you? for I’ve got my work, and I can’t stand idling here.”

“Oh, Patty, don’t turn like that at the first word! As if I wasn’t down enough! You told me last night to give it up for your sake, and I meant to; and now you come and tempt me with it! If I must have neither my beer nor you, what is to become of me?” poor Gervase cried.

Patty felt that things were becoming serious. She was conscious of all the pathos of this cry. She leant the broom in a corner, and coming down the steps, approached the disconsolate young man outside. “Whatever’s to do, Mr. Gervase?” she said.

“Patty, I’ll have to give you up!” said the poor fellow, with his head upon his hand, and something very like a sob bursting from his breast.

“Give me up? You’ve never had me, so you can’t give me up,” cried proud Patty. She was, however, more interested by this than by other more flattering methods of wooing. She laughed fiercely. “Sir Giles and my lady won’t hear of it? No, of course they won’t! And this is my fine gentleman that thought nothing in the world as good as me! I told you you’d give in at the first word!” She was very angry, though she had never accepted poor Gervase’s protestations. He raised his head piteously, and the sight of her, flaming, sparkling, enveloping him in a sort of fiery contempt and fury, roused the little spark of gentlemanhood that was in Gervase’s breast.

“If I give in,” he said, “it is because of you, Patty. I’ll not marry you – not if you were ready this moment – to be the wife of a man without a penny that would have to draw beer for his living. I wouldn’t; no, I wouldn’t – unless I was to make you a lady. I wanted – to make a lady of you, Patty!”

And he wept; the Softy, the poor, silly fellow! Patty had something in her, though she was the veriest little egotist and as hard as the nether millstone, which vibrated in spite of her at this touch. She said, “Lord, bless the man! What nonsense is he talking? Draw beer for his living! Tell me now, Mr. Gervase, there’s a dear, what is’t you mean.”

And then poor Gervase poured out his heart: how he had been threatened with the Lord Chancellor and even with the Queen; how they could take not only every penny but his very name from him, and so make him bring shame upon the girl he loved instead of honour and glory as he had hoped. And how, in these circumstances, he would have to give her up. Better, though it might kill him, that she should marry a man who could keep her up in every thing than one who would be thrown upon her to make his living drawing beer.

Patty listened patiently, and cross-examined acutely to get to the bottom of this mystery. She was a little overawed to hear of the Lord Chancellor, whose prerogatives she could not limit, and who might be able to do something terrible; but gradually her good sense surmounted even the terrors of that mysterious power. “They can’t take your name from you,” she said; “it’s nonsense; not a bit. Your name? Why, you were born to it. It’s not like the estate. Of course your name’s yours, and nobody can’t take it away.”

“Not?” said Gervase, looking up beseechingly into her eyes.

“Not a bit. I, for one, don’t believe it. Nor the property either! I, for one, don’t believe it. They’ve neither chick nor child but you. What! give it away to a dreadful old man, a cousin, and you there, their own child! No, Mr. Gervase, I don’t believe a word of it. They wanted to frighten you bad; and so they have done, and that’s all.”

“They sha’n’t frighten me,” said Gervase, lifting his pale cheek and setting his hat on with a defiant look, “not if you’ll stand by me, Patty.”

“How am I to stand by you,” cried the coquette with a laugh, “if you’re a-going to give me up?”

“It was only for your sake, Patty,” he said. “I’d marry you to-day if I could, you know. That’s what I should like – just to marry you straight off this very day.” He got up and came close to her, almost animated in the fervour of his passion. His dull eyes lighted up, a little colour came to his face. If he could only be made always to look like that, it would be something like! was the swift thought that passed through her mind. She kept him off, retreating a step, and raising both her hands.

“Stand where you are, Mr. Gervase! You say so, I know; but I don’t see as you do anything to prove it, for all your fine words.”

A look of distress, the puzzled distress habitual to it, came over poor Gervase’s face. His under lip dropped once more, “What can I do?” he cried; “if I knew, I’d do it fast enough. Patty, don’t it all stand with you?”

“I never heard yet,” cried Patty, “that it was the lady who took the steps; everybody knows there’s steps that have to be took.”

“What steps, what steps, Patty?” he cried, with a feeble glance at his own feet, and the trace of them on the sandy road. Then a gleam of shame and confusion came over the poor fellow’s face. He knew the steps to be taken could not be like that, and paused eager, anxious, with his mouth open, waiting for his instructions – like a faithful dog ready to start after any stick or stone.

“Oh, you can’t expect me to be the one to tell you,” cried Patty, turning away as if to go back to the house; “the lady isn’t the one to think of all that.”

“Patty! I’m ready, ready to do anything! but how am I to know all of myself? I never had anything of the sort to do.”

“I hope not,” said Patty, with a laugh, “or else you wouldn’t be for me, Mr. Gervase, not if you were a duke – if you had been married before.”

“I – married before! Patty, only tell me what to do!” He looked exactly like Dash, waiting for somebody to throw a stone for him, but not so clever as Dash, alas! with that forlorn look of incapacity in his face, and the wish which was not father to any thought.

“Well, if you’re so pressing, a clergyman has the most to do with it.”

“I’ll go off to the rector directly.” He was like Dash now, when a feint had been made of throwing the stone: off on the moment – yet with a sense that all was not well.

“Oh! stop, you – !” Whatever the noun was, Patty managed to swallow it. “Come back,” she cried, as she might have cried to Dash. “Don’t you see? The rector; he’s the last man in the world.”

“Why?” cried Gervase. “He knows me, and you, and everything.”

“He knows – a deal too much,” said Patty; “he’d go and tell it all at the Hall, and make them send for the Lord Chancellor, or whatever it is.”

Poor Gervase trembled a little. “Couldn’t we run away, Patty, you and me together?” he said humbly; “I know them that have done that.”