Margaret Oliphant
The Cuckoo in the Nest; vol. 1/2

CHAPTER I

The Seven Thorns was rather an imposing place for a little country inn. It was a long house, not very high, yet containing some good-sized bedrooms on the upper storey, and rooms below calculated for the entertainment of a much greater company than ever appeared now upon the deserted highroad. It had been an old coaching road, and there were stables at the Seven Thorns which could take in half the horses in the county; but that, of course, was all over now. The greater part of these stables were shut up and falling into decay. So was the large dining-room and half of the extensive accommodation downstairs. The great kitchen, and a little room on the other side of the doorway, which was called the parlour, were all that was ever wanted now in the Seven Thorns. Sometimes there would come some excursion parties from the neighbouring town in summer, and then a large table was placed outside, or, on the emergency of a wet day, in the kitchen. This was the only event which ever broke the quiet in these degenerate days.

The usual traffic was confined to the village; to now and then a pedestrian jogging along on foot, sometimes a tramp, sometimes a tourist; or to a farmer going by to market, who remembered the day when the Hewitts of the Seven Thorns were as substantial a family as his own. It was a house which had come down in the world, with a downfall as greatly felt, as much rebelled against, as the fall of the proudest family in the county could have been. The Hewitts had no pretension to be gentry, but they had been yeomen, farming their own land, and giving a large and well-paid hospitality to man and beast, which involved little that was menial to the family itself. The Richard Hewitt of the day had stood with his hands in his pockets, on his own threshold, talking to his guests about public matters, or the affairs of the county, while his ostlers looked after the horses, and his buxom maid, or rough waiter, brought the gentlemen their beer or more potent draught. He did not touch either horse or glass, but admired the one or shared the other, like any other rustic potentate; and if his pretty daughter glanced out of an upstairs window upon the group at the door, Sir Giles himself would take off his cap, and though perhaps there might be a touch of extravagance in the obeisance, which meant, in his intention, that Patty or Polly was not in the least upon his own level, yet the Patty or Polly of the moment remained completely unconscious of that exaggeration, and blushed, and retired from the window with a delighted sensation of being admired by the gentleman who was always so civil. Alas! these fine days were all past: and when Patience Hewitt now swept out the parlour briskly, as she did everything, and threw fresh wholesome sand upon the floor, and brought in the beer which the young squire, loitering upon the forbidden threshold of the great kitchen, had already several times asked for, the sense of that downfall was as strong in her mind as if she had been the old aunt Patty, old as the world itself, the girl thought, to whom old Sir Giles had taken off his cap.

“Patty! Patty! bring us some beer; and be done with that sweepin’, and come, there’s a ducky, and pour it out yourself.”

“Go to the parlour, Mr. Gervase; that’s your place and not here. If you will have beer in the morning, which is so bad for you, I’ll bring it presently; but you know father won’t have you here.”

“If you’ll have me, I don’t mind old Hewitt, not that!” said Gervase, snapping his thumb and forefinger.

“But I do,” said Patience, with a frown. “Old Hewitt is my father, and those that don’t speak respectful of him had better get out of here, and out of there, too. I won’t have a man in the house that don’t know how to behave himself, if he was a dozen times the squire’s son.”

The young man in question was a lanky youth, long and feeble upon his legs, with light hair longer than is usual, and goggle eyes, in which there was no speculation. He was very much cowed by Patty’s energetic disapproval, and looked as if about to cry.

“Don’t go on at me like that, Patty, don’t, now! I’ll swallow old Hewitt, dirty boots and all, before I’ll have you frown. And do, do have done with your sweepin’ and bring us the beer. I never feel right in the morning till I have had my beer.”

“If you didn’t have too much at night, Mr. Gervase, you wouldn’t want it in the morning.”

“Well, and whose fault is that? I’ll drink no more beer. I’ve promised you, if – ”

“If!” said Patty: “it’s a big ‘if.’ If I’ll take you up on my shoulders, that ain’t fit for such a job, and carry you through the world.”

“Come, that’s too bad,” said the young man. “Do you think I can’t take care of my own wife! I never had any intentions that weren’t honourable, and that you well know.”

“You well know,” cried Patty, with a flush of anger, “that the mere saying you hadn’t is enough for me to bundle you neck-and-crop out of this house, and never to speak to you again.”

“Well!” said poor Gervase, “you’re hard to please. If he can’t say that he means well, I don’t know what a fellow may say.”

“If I were in your place, I’d say as little as possible,” said the maid of the inn.

“What a one you are!” cried the young squire, admiringly. “When we’re married I’ll let you do all the talking. You’ll bring round the father and mother a deal sooner than I should. Indeed, they never hearken to me; but, Patty, when you speak – ”

“What happens when I speak?”

“The very rector turns round his head. I’ve seen him do it at the church door.”

“Pooh! the rector!” said Patty. “Tell me something a little fresher than that.”

For, in fact, this young woman scorned the rector as one whom she could turn round her little finger. Had not she, ever since the days when she was the quickest at her catechism, the readiest to understand everything, the sharpest to take any hint, the most energetic in action, been known as the rector’s favourite and ally in all parish matters for miles around?

“Is that all you think of him? but he’s of as good a family as we are; and I shouldn’t wonder,” said the young man, with a giggle, “if Mrs. Bethell were to die, as folk say, that he mightn’t come a-wooing to Patty, of the Seven Thorns, same as me.”

“I should like to know,” said Patty, sharply, “what kind of company you’ve been keeping, where they dare to speak of me as Patty of the Seven Thorns? And I suppose you didn’t knock the fellow down that said it, you poor creature! you’re not man enough for that, though I know some – ” said Patty, with an air of defiance. She had by this time carried out all her operations, and even drawn the beer, and waved off the thirsty customer before her, driving him, as if he had been a flock of geese, into the parlour, with its newly-sanded floor.

“There!” she said, setting down her tray with a little violence; “it’s good stuff enough, but it puts no more heart and strength into you than if you was a mouse. Too much is as bad, or maybe worse, than none at all. And, I tell you, I know some that would no more hear me named disrespectful like that – or any way but Miss Hewitt, Mr. Hewitt of the Seven Thorns’ daughter – than I would demean myself to carrying on like a barmaid with every one that comes for a glass of beer into this house.”

“I beg your pardon, Patty,” said the young man; “I meant no harm. When you’re Mrs. Gervase Piercey there’s never one of them will dare mention your name without taking off his hat.”

“Oh, you block!” cried Patty, exasperated. She paused, however, with an evident sense that to make her meaning clear to him would be impossible; yet added, after a moment, “If I can’t be respected as Miss Hewitt, I’ll never seek respect under no man’s name. There’s your beer, Mr. Gervase; and as soon as you’ve drunk it I advise you to go back to your parents, for you’ll get no more here.”

“Oh! Patty, don’t you be so cruel.”

“I’ll be as cruel as I think proper. And I’ll draw father’s beer for them as I think proper, and nobody else. You’re the spoiled child at the Hall, Mr. Gervase, but no one cares that for you here!”

And she, too, snapped her thumb and forefinger, in scorn of any subjection to ordinary prejudices, and shone radiant, in her defiance, in the homely scene to which she gave so much life. Patty was not a beautiful girl, as perhaps you may suppose. She had bright eyes, very well able to flash with indignation when necessary, or even with rage. She had a fine country complexion, with the gift, which is not so usual among the lowly born, of changing colour as her sentiments changed: flashing forth in wrath, and calming down in peace; and when she was excited, with an angry sparkle in her eyes, and the colour rising and falling, there was a faux air of beauty about her, which impressed the minds of those who exposed themselves to any such blaze of resentment. Her features, however, were not very good, and there was a hardness in the lines, which, no doubt, would strengthen in later years. She had a trim figure, a brisk light step, an air of knowing her own mind, and fully intending to carry out all its purposes, which made a great impression upon the shiftless and languid generally, and upon Gervase Piercey in particular. Perhaps Patty had a little too much the air, in her sharp intelligence, of the conventional soubrette, to have charmed a squire’s son of greater intellectual perceptions. But Gervase knew nothing about soubrettes, or any other types, theatrical or otherwise. He knew vaguely what he saw, but no more; and that sharp intelligence, that brisk energy, that air of knowing her own mind, was more captivating to him than anything he had ever seen. He, whom everybody snubbed, who was accustomed to be laughed at, who knew so much as to know that he never knew what to do until somebody told him, and often did not understand what was wanted of him then – threw himself upon Patty with all the heavy weight of his nature. He had never seen anything so admirable, so strong, or so fair. She never was afraid to do whatever she had a mind to. She never stood swaying from one foot to another unable to make up her mind. She was all swiftness, firmness, alertness – ready for anything. He almost liked her to be angry with him, though it sometimes reduced him to abject despair, for the sake of that sparkle, that flush, that exhibition of high spirit. Nobody, Gervase felt, would “put upon him” while Patty was near; nobody would push him aside, bid him to get out of the way. Even his father did this; and, what was still more, his mother too, when exasperated. But they would not, if Patty was there. Gervase was not only in love with her, which he was to the full extent of his abilities in that way, but he felt that his salvation lay in Patty, and that, with her to back him up, nobody would trample upon him any more.

He hoped to find her in a milder humour when he came back in the evening; for in the meantime it was beyond anything he could say or do to charm Patty back into good humour. She went back to her sweeping, making the corners of the kitchen floor ring with the energetic broom that pursued every grain of dust into its last refuge there. She would not stop, even to say good morning to him, when he lounged away. But after he was gone Patty relaxed in her fierce industry. She put away the broom, and stood at the window for a moment, with deep thought upon her brow. What was it she was thinking of, bending those brows, drawing in her upper lip in a way she had when her mind was busy? “To be, or not to be,” that was the question. She was far, very far, from a Hamlet; but that momentous choice was before her, as much as if she had been the mightiest of spirits. When a woman pauses thus upon the threshold of her life, and questions which path she is to take, it is generally easy to guess that the question really is, which man will she marry? Patty was full of ambition as if she had been a princess. And she felt truly as much the child of a fallen house as if Richard Hewitt of the Seven Thorns had been a ruined duke. How far, how very far was she, Patience, the maid of the inn, drawing beer for the customers, compelled to serve every tramp who had twopence to spend – from the state of young Miss Patty at the upstairs window, sitting like a lady, doing vandykes of tape for her new petticoats (for she was informed of every incident of those times of family grandeur), to whom Sir Giles took off his hat. She had heard all her life of these once glorious circumstances, and her spirit burned within her to do something to restore herself that eminence; to achieve something that would make Aunt Patty hold her tongue, and own herself outdone. Ah! and here it was lying in her power. Sir Giles might have bowed to old Patty, but never did she have it in her power to become Lady Piercey, if she chose. Lady Piercey! with Greyshott Manor at her command, and all the grandeur which the very best of the previous Hewitts had only seen by grace of the housekeeper. And Patty might one day be the mistress of the housekeeper if she chose! The possibility was enough to thrill her from head to foot; but she had not yet made up her mind. No, splendid as the prospect was, there was yet a great deal to think of before she could make up her mind. She went to the door and gave a hurried glance out, to see the long, listless figure of Gervase Piercey strolling along across the wide stretch of broken land that lay between him and his home. He paused to look back several times as he went along, but Patty would not gratify him with the sight of her looking after him. He was not a lover to be encouraged by such signs of favour, but to be kept down at her feet until she should choose to hold out a gracious finger. Her thoughts were not flattering to him as she looked after him: the long, lazy, listless, useless being. If he did not care so much for me, beer would be the chief thing that Mr. Gervase would care for; coming here in the morning for his glass, the fool, instead of doing something! A man with horses to ride and carriages to drive, and an estate that he might see to, and save his father money! “Lord! lord!” said Patty to herself, “what fools these men are!” for the only thing he could do with himself, to get through the morning, was to walk across to the Seven Thorns for his morning beer, and then to walk back again. She who had a hundred things to do scorned him for this more than words could say. But yet, “first and foremost, before I settle anything,” said Patty, “I’ll see that he’s cured of that. A man that’s always swilling beer morning and evening, if he was a duke, he is not the man for me.”

CHAPTER II

The parlour at the Seven Thorns was, in the evening, turned into a sort of village club, where a select number of the fathers of the hamlet assembled night after night to consume a certain amount of beer, to smoke a certain number of pipes, and then to retire at a not very late hour, not much the worse, perhaps, for their potations. It was not a vicious place, nor was it one of revelry. The talk was slow, like the minds of the talkers, and it was chiefly concerned with local events. If now and then there was a public measure which was wide enough, or descended sufficiently low to reach the level of those rustic folk, there might be occasionally a few heavy words on that subject. But this was of the rarest occurrence, and the humours of the heavy assembly were little perceptible to a superficial observer. What was going on at the Manor was of infinitely less interest to this rustic club than what was going on in the village, and unless Sir Giles had turned out his cottagers, or, what was worse, endeavoured to improve their tumble-down habitations, I cannot see why their minds should have been directed to him or his affairs. It is, perhaps, a delusion of the writer, most interested himself in the Squire’s family, which lends to the rural public the same inclination. It is true that when young Gervase Piercey first began to appear among them, to be placed in the warmest corner, and served first with whatever he called for, the elders of the village took their pipes out of their mouths and stared. “What do he be a-wanting ’ere?” they said to each other with their eyes, and a head or two was shaken, not only over the inappropriateness of his appearance, but because the presence of the young Squire was more or less a check upon their native freedom as well as prolixity of talk. Gervase had been known to interrupt a lingering discussion with a “Speak up, old cock!” or with a silly laugh in the wrong place, which confused the speaker and made him forget whereabouts in his subject he was. It was some time, however, before it occurred to them what the young man’s motive was, which was made plain by several signs: in the first place by the fact that Patty ceased to serve the customers in the parlour, old Hewitt getting up with many grumbles from the settle to supply their wants himself; then by the impatience of the young man, who had at first smoked his pipe contentedly in his corner, interrupting the conversation only by those silly laughs of his, or by an equally foolish question, which, though idiotic in itself, was the cause of discomfiture to a village orator accustomed to have everything his own way; and then it was observed that Gervase let his pipe go out and kept his eyes upon the door, and then that he became very uneasy when the brisk voice of Patty was heard outside, presumably talking with the younger frequenters of the place, who hung about the precincts of the Seven Thorns, or occupied the bench under the window of the parlour. When the young squire at last got up and went out, the sages said little, but they looked at each other or nudged each other, those who were close enough pointing with their long pipes over their shoulders, and finally burst forth into a slow roar, shaking their sides. “Softy if ’e be, ’e knows wat’s wat as well as ere another,” said the “Maestro de chi sanno,” the sage of sages, the Aristotle of the village. This revelation slowly communicated itself over the parish, “The young squire, he be after Patty Hewitt o’ the Seven Thorns; but Patty is one as will keep him in his place, and no mistake,” was the popular verdict. The parish knew, even better than the gentry did, that Gervase – Sir Giles’ only child – was a softy; it knew his habits, and that he was good for nothing, not even to take a hand at cards or field a ball at cricket, so that his dangling after Patty Hewitt caused nobody any anxiety. She knew how to keep him in his own place; no village story of lovely woman stooping to folly was likely to arise in her case. The Softy was a good creature enough, and harmed nobody, except by that exasperating laugh of his, which made the persons interrupted by it furious, but broke no bones, everybody allowed. So that it was more on Gervase’s account than Patty’s that the village concerned itself. “She do be making a fool of ’im,” they said with gratification; for was not this a just revenge for other maidens wronged by other young squires of higher qualities than poor Gervase. Generally there was a slow satisfaction in the triumph of the people over the gentry, as thus exemplified; yet a general wish that Patty should not push that triumph too far.

On the evening of the day on which this story begins, he had kept in the parlour as long as his patience lasted, always looking for the moment when she should appear; for the mind of Gervase worked very slowly, and he had not yet begun to understand as a rule, what all the parish already knew, that Patty now entered the parlour no more in the evening. Gervase knew that he had not seen her for night after night, but he had no faculty for putting this and that together, and he did not draw the natural conclusion that she had so settled it with her father. Nor had he found much advantage in going out to the door, in following the sound of her voice, which seemed to flicker about like a will-o’-the-wisp, now sounding close at hand, now from a distance. When Patty was visible she was generally in close conversation with some one – Roger Pearson as often as not, was an antagonist whom Gervase had sense enough not to encounter. And, accordingly, it was the most rare thing in the world when he had any nearer view of the object of his admiration than the dim outline of her, in the dark, flitting about in front of the house with her tray, and not to be interrupted; or perhaps strolling off beyond the seven thorns which gave their name to the house, with another tall figure beside her. Roger Pearson was the athlete of the village. It was he who commanded the eleven got up between Greyshott and Windyhill, which had beaten almost every eleven that had met them, and certainly every other eleven in the county; and he was a leading volunteer, a great football player, everything that it is most glorious in English country life to be. Gervase did not venture to contest openly the favour of Patty with this stalwart fellow. He stood on the threshold with his mouth open, and his heart rung, and watched them stroll away together in the moonlight, losing sight of them in the shadow of the thorns: waiting till they emerged beyond upon the great flat of the moorland country among the furze bushes. Poor Softy! to see the lady of his love thus taken away from him by a stronger than he, was very hard upon him. Though he was a Softy, there was in Gervase so much of that feeling of the gentleman, which can be transmitted by blood and by the atmosphere of an ancient house – as made him aware that to make his possible wife the object of a brawl was not to be thought of, even had he felt any confidence in his own courage and muscles as against those of Roger. So that both these reasons held him back: the instinct of the weakling, and the instinct of the gentleman too. If he could have fought with and overthrown Roger on any other argument, how he would have rejoiced! He planned in his dreams a hundred ways of doing so, but never in his waking moments ventured to cross that hero’s path: and he would not make a row over Patty. No! no! even if he could have seized Roger by the collar and pitched him to the other side of the moor, as Roger, he was convinced, would do to him if the opportunity ever arose, he would not have done it to bring in Patty’s name and make her talked about. No! no! He said this to himself as he stood at the door and watched them with his mouth open and watering, and his heart sore. Poor Gervase; there was something in it, even if not so much as he thought.

But this evening, by a happy chance, Roger was not there. Gervase found Patty standing alone, wholly indifferent to the two or three vague figures which were dimly visible on the bench beneath the lighted window of the parlour. It was such a chance for Gervase as had never happened before. He whistled softly, but Patty took no notice; he called her by her name in a whisper, but she never turned her head. Was she regretting the other man, the fellow who had nothing to offer her but a cottage, and who was far too busy with his cricket matches and things ever to earn much money, or even to stay at home with his wife? Gervase ventured upon a great step. He came up behind her and seized Patty’s hand, which was akimbo, firmly placed upon her side.

“Who’s that?” she cried, throwing off the touch; “and what are you wanting here?”

“You know well enough who it is – it’s Gervase come to have a word – ”

“Oh!” said Patty, disdainfully, “it’s the young gentleman from the Manor as has no right to be here.”

“Yes, it is me,” said Gervase, not quick enough to take up the scorn in her speech. “Come, Patty, let’s take a little turn round the Thorns: do, now! – there’s nobody else coming to-night.”

“Much I care for any one coming! I can take my walk alone, thank you, Mr. Gervase, and you had better go home. I can’t abide to see you spending your time here morning and night.”

“Why shouldn’t I come here, Patty? It is the nicest place in all the world to me.”

“But it oughtn’t to be,” cried Patty; “your place is in Greyshott Manor, and this is only a little inn upon the edge of the downs. What pleasure can you find in this parlour, with all their pipes going, and the smoke curling about your head, and the silly talk about Blacksmith John at the smithy, and how he shod Farmer George’s mare?”

“Well, if I don’t object to the talk; and what reason have you against it? It’s always good for trade.”

“It’s not even good for trade,” said the girl. “Do you think they like you to be here, these men? No; not even father don’t, though it’s to his profit, as you say. It stops the talk: for there’s things they wouldn’t say before you: and it makes them think and ask questions. It ain’t pleasant for me when they takes to ask each other, ‘What’s the young squire after for ever down here?’ ”

“Well, you can tell them,” said Gervase, with his foolish laugh; “I make no secret of it. Patty’s what I’m after, and she knows – ”

They had gone down upon the open ground where the seven thorns, which gave the house it’s name, stood in a cluster, ghostly in the white moonlight, some of them so old that they were propped up by staves and heavy pieces of wood. Patty had moved on in the fervour of her speech, notwithstanding that she angrily rejected his request to take a turn. With the blackness of that shade between them and the house, they might have been miles, though they were but a few yards, from the house, with its murmuring sound of voices and its lights.

“Look here!” said Patty, quickly. “No man shall ever come after me that goes boozing like you do at beer from morning to night.”

Patty, though she generally spoke very nicely, thanks to the Catechism and the rector’s favour, was after all not an educated person, and if she said “like you do,” it was no more than might be expected from her ignorance. She flung away the arm which he had stolen round her, and withdrew to a distance, facing him with her head erect. “You’re a dreadful one for beer, Mr. Gervase,” she said; “it’s that you come to our house for, it isn’t for me. If there was no Patty, you’d want a place to sit and soak in all the same.”

“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.

“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.”

“And the dear child is as straight as a rush, my lady,” said Parsons, who was, as so often, arranging Lady Piercey’s work. She, too, was grateful beyond measure to little Osy for not repeating the talk of the servants’ hall.

“And what are you now, Osy,” cried Sir Giles, with a great laugh, “if you’re no longer a lickle, lickle boy?”

“I’m the king of the castle,” said Osy, tilting at Dunning with the old gentleman’s stick. “Bedone, you dirty rascal; let’s play at you being the castle, Uncle Giles, and I’ll drive off the enemy. Bedone, you dirty rascal; – det away from my castle. I’ll be the sentry on the walls,” said the child, marching round and round with the stick over his shoulder for a gun, “and I’ll call out ‘Who does there?’ and ‘What’s the word’ – and I’ll drive off all the enemy. But there must be a flag flying.” He called it a flap, but that did not matter. “Mamma, fix a flap upon my big tower. Here,” he cried, producing from his little pocket a crumpled rag of uncertain colour, “this hankechif will do.”

“But that’s a flag of truce, Osy; are you going to give me up then?” said the old gentleman.

“We’ll not have no flaps of truce,” said Osy, seizing Sir Giles’ red bandana, “for I means fightin’ – and they sha’n’t come near you, but over my body. Here! Tome on, you enemy!” Osy’s thrusts at Dunning, who retreated outside a wider and a wider circle as the little soldier made his rounds, amused the old gentleman beyond measure. He laughed till, which was not very difficult, the water came to his eyes.

“I do believe that mite would stand up for his old uncle if there was any occasion,” said Sir Giles, nodding his old head across at his wife, and trying in vain to recover the bandana to dry his old eyes.

These were the sort of games that went on in the afternoon, especially in winter, when the hours were long between lunch and tea. When the weather was fine, Osy marched by Sir Giles’ garden chair, and made him the confidant of all his wonderings. “What do the leaves fall off for, and where do they tome from when they tome again? Does gardener go to the market to buy the new ones like mamma goes to buy clothes for me? How do the snowdrops know when it’s time to come up out of the told, told ground?” Fortunately, he had so many things to ask that he seldom paused for an answer. Sir Giles laid up these questions in his heart, and reported them to my lady. “He asked me to-day if it hurt the field when the farmers ploughed it up? I declare I never thought how strange things were before, and the posers that little ’un asks me!” cried the old man. Lady Piercey smiled with a superior certainty, based upon Mangnall’s Questions and other instructive works, that she was not so easily posed by Osy. She had instructed him as to where tea and coffee came from, and taught him to say, “Thank you, pretty cow,” thus accounting for his breakfast to the inquisitive intelligence. But there was one thing that brought a spasm to Lady Piercey’s face, especially when, as now and then happened, she hid the little truant from his mother, and saved Osy from a scolding, as he nestled down amid her voluminous skirts and lifted up a smiling, rosy little face, in great enjoyment of the joke and the hiding place. Sometimes as she laid her hand upon his curly head with that sensation of half-malicious delight in coming between the little sinner and his natural governor, which is common to the grand-parent, there would come a sudden contraction to her face, and a bitter salt tear would spring to her eye. If Gervase had a child like that to be his father’s heir! Why was not that delightful child the child of Gervase, instead of being born to those who had nothing to give him? It was upon Margaret, who had not a penny, that this immeasurable gift was bestowed. And no woman that could be the mother of such a boy would ever marry Gervase! Oh! no, no – a barmaid, to give him a vulgar brat, who, perhaps – . But the thoughts of angry love and longing are not to be put into words.

Margaret went to the end of the gallery to her own room, where her child’s soft breath was just audible as he slept. She went and looked at him in his little crib, a little head like an angel’s, upon the little white pillow. But it was not only in a mother’s tender adoration that she stood and looked at her child. To hurt any one was not in Margaret Osborne’s heart, but there had come into it for some time back a dart of ambition, a gleam of hope: little Osy, too, was of the Piercey blood. She herself was a Piercey, much more a Piercey than Gervase, poor fellow. If an heir was wanted, who so fit as her boy? Far more fit than old General Piercey, whom nobody knew. Oh! not for worlds, not for anything that life could give, would she harm poor Gervase, or any man. But the barmaid and her possible progeny were as odious to Margaret as to Lady Piercey: and where, where could any one find an heir like Osy, the little prince, who had conquered and taken possession of the great house?

CHAPTER V

It has been stated by various persons afflicted with that kind of trouble, that to be enlightened above one’s fellows is a great trial and misery. I don’t know how that may be, but it is certainly a great trouble to be a Softy, to have a fluid brain in which everything gets disintegrated, and floats about in confusion, and never to be able to lay hold upon a subject distinctly either by head or tail, however much it may concern you. This was the case of poor Gervase the morning after he had received that evening address from his mother in her nightcap, which was so well adapted to confuse any little wits the poor fellow had. That his marriage might be forbidden, and his very name taken from him, and himself reduced to draw beer at the Seven Thorns for his living, instead of making a lady of Patty, and lifting her out of all such necessities, overwhelmed his mind altogether. If it was true, he had better, in fact, have nothing more to say to Patty at all. A forlorn sense that it might be well for her in such a case to turn to Roger, who at least would deliver her from drawing beer, lurked in the poor fellow’s breast. Nothing would humiliate Gervase so much as the triumph of Roger, who had always been the one person in the world who pointed the moral of his own deficiencies to the unfortunate young squire; and there swelled in his breast a sort of dull anguish and sense of contrast, in which Roger’s triumphant swing of the bat and kick of the football mingled with his carrying off of the woman whom poor Gervase admired and adored, adding a double piquancy to the act of renunciation which he was slowly spelling out in his own dumb soul. Nobody would try to take away that fellow’s name. He had a cottage of his own that he could take her to, dang him! Gervase was beguiled for a moment into his old indignant thought that such a man playing cricket all over the county would probably come to the workhouse in the end, and that this was where Patty might find herself, if she preferred the athlete to himself; but he threw off the idea in his new evanescent impulse. She was too clever for that! She’d find a way to keep a man straight, whether it was a poor fellow who was not clever, or one that was too good at every kind of diversion. I am no great believer in heredity, and the house of Piercey was by no means distinguished for its chivalrous instincts or tendencies; yet I am glad to think that some vague influence from his ancient race had put this idea of giving up Patty, if he could bring only trouble and no bettering to her, into his dull and aching head. If he had been wiser, he would probably have kept away from her in this new impulse of generosity, but he was not wise at all, his first idea was to go to Patty, and tell her, and receive her orders – which no doubt she would give peremptorily – to go away from her. He never expected anything else. He was capable of giving her up, for her good, if he found himself unable to make a lady of her, in a dull sort of way, as a necessity; but he was not capable of the thought that she might stand by him to her own hurt. It seemed quite natural to him – not a thing to be either blamed or doubted – that as soon as it was proved that he could not make a lady of her, she would send him away.

It was a dull morning, warm but grey, the sky, or rather the clouds hanging low, and the great stretch of the moorland country lying flat underneath, its breadth of turf and thickets of gorse, and breaks of sandy road and broken ground all running into one sombre, greyish, greenish, yellowish colour in the flat tones of the sunless daylight. Such a day in weariness embodied, taking the spring out of everything. The very birds in the big trees behind the Seven Thorns were affected by it and chirruped dejectedly, fathers and mothers swiftly snubbing any young thing that attempted a bit of song. The seven thorns themselves, which were old trees and knocked about by time and weather and the passing of straw-laden carts, and other drawbacks, looked shabbier and older than ever: no place for any lovers’ meeting. Gervase had not the heart to go into the house. He sat down on the bench outside, like any tramp, and neither called to Patty, nor attempted any way of attracting her attention. She had seen him, I need not say, coming over the downs. She had eyes everywhere – not only in the back of her head, as the ostler and the maid at the Seven Thorns said, but at the tips of her fingers, and in the handle of the broom with which she was as usual sweeping briskly out the dust and sand of yesterday, and striking into every corner. The weather did not affect Patty. It needed something more than a grey day to discourage her active spirits. But when she found that her suitor did not come in, did not call her, did not even beat with his knuckles on the rough wooden table outside, to let it be known that he was there, surprise entered her breast; surprise and a little alarm. She had never let it be known by any one that she was moved by Gervase’s suit. In her heart she had always been convinced that the Softy would not be allowed to marry, and her pride would not allow her to run the risk of such a defeat. At the same time there was always the chance that her own spirit might carry him through, and the prospect was too glorious to be altogether thrown away; so that when Patty became aware that he was sitting there outside, with not heart enough to say Boh! to a goose – alarm stole over her, and to contemplate the possible failure of all these hopes, was more than she could calmly bear. She stood still for a minute or two listening, with her head a little on one side, and all her faculties concentrated upon the sounds from the door: but heard nothing except the aimless scrape of his foot against the sandy pebbles outside. Finally she went out, and stood on the threshold, her broom still in her hand.

“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.”

“And have all the parish say I’m not married at all, and be treated like a – wherever I showed my head. No, thank you, Mr. Gervase Piercey. I don’t think enough of you for that.”

“You would think enough of Roger for that,” cried poor Gervase, stung to the heart.

“Roger!” she cried, spinning round upon him with a flush on her face. “Roger would have had the banns up long before this, if I had ever said as much to him.”

“The banns!” cried Gervase. “Ah, now I know! that’s the clerk!” The stone was thrown at last. “They’ll be up,” he said, waving his hand to her as he looked back, “before you know where you are!”

It was all that Patty could do to stop him, to bring him back before he was out of hearing. Dash never rushed more determinedly after his stone.

“Mr. Gervase,” she shouted, “Mr. Piercey; sir! Hi! here! Come back, come back! Oh, come back, I tell you!” stamping her foot upon the ground.

He returned at last, very like the dog still, humbled, his head fallen, and discomfiture showing in the very attitude of his limp limbs.

“Is that not right either?” he said.

“The clerk would be up at the Hall sooner than the rector; the rector would understand a little bit, but the clerk not at all. Don’t you see, Mr. Gervase, if it is to be – ”

“It shall be, Patty.”

“It must be in another parish, not here at all; and then you’d have to go to stay there for a fortnight.”

“Go to stay there for a fortnight!” Dismay was in the young man’s face. “How could I do that, Patty, with never having any money, and never allowed to sleep a night from home?”

“Well, for that matter,” she said, “how are you to marry anybody if things are to go on so?”

He made no reply, but looked at her with a miserable countenance, with his under lip dropped, his mouth open, and lack-lustre eyes.

And here Patty made a pause, looking at her lover, or rather gazing in the face of fate, and hesitating for one dread, all-important moment: she was not without a tenderness for him, the poor creature who adored her like Dash; but that was neither here nor there. While she looked at him there rose between him and her a vision of a very different face, strong and sure, that would never pause to be told what to do, that would perhaps master her as she mastered him. Ah! but then there was a poor cottage on one side, with a wife whose husband would be little at home, in too much request for her happiness; and on the other there was the Hall and the chance of being my lady. She looked in the face of fate, and seized it boldly, as her manner was.

“Stop a bit,” she said; “there’s another way.”

“What is it, what is it, Patty?”

“But it wants money; it costs a bit of money – a person has to go to London to get it.”

“Oh, Patty, Patty, haven’t I told you – ”

“Stop!” she said; “I’m going to think it over; perhaps it can be done, after all, if you’ll do what I tell you. Don’t come near the Seven Thorns to-night; stay at home and be very good to the old folks; say you’d like to see London and a little life, and you’re tired of here.”

“But that would be a lie!”

“Oh, you softhead, if you’re going to stick at that! Perhaps you don’t want me at all, Mr. Gervase. Give me up; it would be far the best thing for you, far the best thing for you! and then there’s nothing more to be said.”

“Oh, Patty!” cried the poor fellow; “oh, Patty! when you know I’d give up my life for you.”

“Then do as I say, and mind everything I say, and I’ll see if it can’t be done.”

CHAPTER VI

Gervase went home as she had told him, not bounding after the stone like a dog who has got its heart’s desire, but steadily, a little heavily, somewhat disappointed, yet full of expectation, and always faithful. Something was going to be done for him that would result in Patty’s standing by him for ever, and helping him to all he wanted. He did not know what it was; he was by no means sure that he would understand what it was were he told; but she did, and that was enough. It was going to be done for him, while he had no trouble and would only reap the results. That was how it was going to be all the rest of the time. Patty would take the responsibility. She would face everything for him. She would stand between him and his mother’s jibes and his father’s occasional roar of passion. Gervase was dimly sensible that his people were ashamed of him, that they thought him of little account. But Patty did not feel like that. She, too, jibed at him, it is true; but then she jibed at everybody, even Roger. It was different, and she would let no one else jibe. She would take all the responsibility; with her beside him, standing by him, or perhaps in front of him, standing between him and all that was disagreeable, he should escape all the ills of life. He should not be afraid of any one any more. He went back to the hall determined to carry out his orders. For her sake he would make a martyr of himself all that evening; he would sit with the old folks and do his best to please them. He would talk about London and how he wished to see it. He would say he was tired of the country – even that, since Patty told him to do so. To be sure, if there was no Patty, he would be tired of it; if the Hall meant the country, yes, indeed, he was tired enough of that. He went home not in the least knowing what to do with himself; but faithful, faithful to his orders. Dash, when commanded to give up the wild delights of a run and watch a coat, or a stick, did it resignedly with noble patience, and so did Gervase now: he had, so to speak, to watch Patty’s coat while she went and did the work; it is the natural division of labour when one of two is the faithful dog rather than the man.

He began, three or four times, as he went along, that game with the white pebbles against the brown, and then remembered that it was silly, and pulled himself up. He would not like Patty to know that he had a habit of doing that. He was aware, instinctively, that it would seem very silly to her. Three, four, and five; and a great big one that ought to count three at least for the right hand man. No; he wouldn’t do it; it was silly; it was like a child, not a man. What, he wondered, was she going to do? Not go to the rector, because she had herself objected to that. Another way – he wondered what other way there could be – that dispensed with both parson and clerk? But that, thank Heaven, was Patty’s affair, and she had promised that she would do it. Seven brown ones in a row; such luck for the left-hand man! But no, no; he would not pay any attention to that. Patty would think him a fool for his pains. What was she doing – she that knew exactly what it was best to do? What a woman she was, up to everything; seeing with one look of her eye what he never would have found out, that it was not the right thing to speak to the rector, nor to the clerk, who was still worse than the rector. How much better it was that it should be all in her hands! How was a man to know, who had never been married himself, who knew nothing about such things, how to put up banns? What were banns? He had heard people asked in church, but he was not sure about the other name. Was it something, perhaps, to hang up like a picture? These thoughts did not pass through Gervase’s mind in so many words, but floated after each other vaguely, swimming in a dumb sort of consciousness. He had, perhaps, never had so many all turning round and crossing each other before. Generally it was only the pebbles he thought of as he walked unless when it was Patty. It gave him a strange sort of bewildering sense of life to feel how many things he was thinking of – such a crowd of different things.

In the beech avenue, going up and down in his chair, pushed by Dunning, and with Osy capering upon a stick before him, Gervase came upon his father taking his morning “turn.” He remembered what Patty said about being agreeable to the old folks, and he also had a certain pleasure in wheeling his father’s chair. So he stopped and pushed the servant away. “You go and take a rest, Dunning. I’ll take Sir Giles along,” he said. “You mustn’t play any tricks, Mr. Gervase,” said the man, resisting a little. “What tricks should I play? I can take care of my father as well as any one, I hope,” cried Gervase, taking with energy the back of the chair. It went along a little more quickly perhaps, but Sir Giles did not mind that. “Young legs go faster than ours, Dunning,” he said to his servant; “but stand you by, old man, in case Mr. Gervase gets tired.” “Oh, I’ll stand by. I’ll not leave that Softy in charge of my master,” Dunning said to himself. “Oh, I’ll not get tired, father,” said Gervase aloud. This was quite a delightful way of uniting obedience to Patty’s commands with pleasure to himself. “I’ll take you all round the grounds, father. Ain’t you tired of this beastly little bit of an avenue? I’ll take you faster, as fast as the carriage if you like.” “No, my boy, this’ll do,” said Sir Giles; “fair and softly goes the furthest.” Dunning came on behind shaking his head.

“You tan’t ride so fast as me, Uncle Giles,” cried little Osy, prancing upon his wooden steed.

“Can’t he, though, you little beggar. He’d soon run you out of breath, if I was to put on steam!”

“Oh, tome on, tome on!” cried Osy, flourishing his whip; and off Gervase tore, sweeping the chair along, with Dunning after him panting and exclaiming, and Sir Giles laughing, but shaking with the wild progress of the vehicle which usually went so quietly. The old gentleman rather liked it than otherwise, though when Gervase stopped with a sudden jerk and jar, he was thrown back upon his pillows, and seized with a fit of coughing. “You see you cannot do everything, little ’un; there’s some that can beat you,” cried Gervase, waving his long arms, and drawing up his sleeves. Osy had been thrown quite behind, and came up panting, his little countenance flushed, and his little legs twisting as he ran, the child no longer making any pretence to be a prancing steed. “Are you game for another run?”

“Yes, I’m dame,” cried little Osy, making a valorous struggle for his breath.

“No, no, that’s enough,” cried Sir Giles, coughing and laughing, “that’s enough, Gervase. No harm done, Dunning – you need not come puffing like a steam engine; but halt, Gervase, no more, no more.”

“Uncle Giles, I’m dame, tome on; Uncle Giles, I’m dame,” shouted Osy flourishing his little cap.

This scene was seen from my lady’s chamber with extremely mingled feelings. Lady Piercey sat in the recess of the window, where, in the evening, that querulous light had burned, waiting till Gervase came home. She had an old-fashioned embroidery frame fixed there, and worked at it for half an hour occasionally, with Margaret Osborne in attendance to thread her needles. Parsons had long since declared that her eyes were not equal to it, but with Mrs. Osborne there could be no such excuse. Lady Piercey had forgotten all about her work in watching. “There is my boy Gervase wheeling his father,” she said; “look out, look out, Meg. Whatever you may say, that boy is full of feeling. Look! He has taken it out of Dunning’s hands. See how pleased your uncle is; and little Osy acting outrider, bless him. Oh!” cried Lady Piercey with a shriek. Her terror made her speechless. She fell back in her chair with passionate gesticulations, grasped Margaret, and pulled her to the window, then thrust her away, pointing to the door. “Go! go!” she cried with a great effort, in a choked voice – which Parsons heard, and came flying from the next room.

“It’s nothing, aunt; see, they’ve stopped. It’s all right, Uncle Giles is laughing.”

“Go! go!” cried the old lady, pointing passionately to the door.

“Go, for goodness gracious sake, Mrs. Osborne. My lady will have a fit.”

“There is nothing – absolutely nothing, aunt. They’ve stopped. Dunning has taken his place again; there’s no need for interfering. Ah!” Margaret gave just such a cry as Lady Piercey had done, and flinging down her little sheaf of silks upon the frame, turned and flew from the room, leaving the old lady and her maid exchanging glances of consternation. And yet the cause of Mrs. Osborne’s sudden change of opinion was not far to seek; it was that Gervase had seized little Osy and swung him up to his shoulder, where the child sat very red and uneasy, but too proud to acknowledge that he was afraid.

“Put down my child this moment!” cried Margaret, descending like a thunderbolt in the midst of the group.

“He’s as right as a trivet. I’m going to give him a ride. I haven’t given him a ride for a long time. Hi! Osy, ain’t you as right as a trivet, and got a good seat?”

“Yes, tousin Gervase,” said the boy with a quaver in his voice, but holding his head high.

“Put him down this moment!” cried Margaret, stamping her foot and seizing Gervase by the arm.

“I’ll put him down when he’s had his ride. Now, old Dunning, here’s for it. We’ll race you for a sovereign to the gate. Sit tight, Osy, or your horse will throw you – he’s as wild as all the wild horses that ever were made.”

“Div me my whip first,” cried the child. He was elated though he was afraid. “And I won’t ride you if you haven’t a bit in your mouff.” Once more the little grimy pocket-handkerchief was brought into service. “Here’s the bit, and I’m holding you in hand. Now, trot!”

Margaret stood like a ghost, while the wild pair darted along the avenue, Gervase prancing with the most violent motion, little Osy sitting very tight, holding on to his handkerchief with the tightness of desperation, his cheeks blazing and throbbing with the tumultuous colour of courage, excitement, and fright. They are things which consist with each other. The child was afraid of nothing, but very conscious that he had once before been thrown from Gervase’s shoulder, and that the prospect was not a pleasant one. As for the spectators, Sir Giles in his chair and his wife at the window, they were in a ferment of mingled feeling, afraid for their pet, but excited by this new development on the part of their son. “Mr. Gervase is really taking great care,” gasped Lady Piercey to her maid. “Don’t you see? He’s got the child quite tight – not like that other time; Master Osy is quite enjoying it.”

“Oh yes, my lady,” said Parsons, doubtfully; “he’s got such a spirit.”

“And his cousin is so kind, so kind. There’s nobody,” said the old lady, with a sob and a gasp, “so good to children as my Gervase. There! thank Heaven, he’s put him down. Miss Meg – I mean Mrs. Osborne is making a ridiculous fuss about it,” said Lady Piercey, now running all her words into one in the relief of her feelings, “as if there was any fear of the child!”

Little Osy had swung down through the air with a sinking whirl as if he had shot Niagara, but once on firm ground, being really none the worse, tingled to his fingers’ ends with pride and triumph. He gave a smack of his little whip with his right hand, while with the other he clutched his mother’s dress, trembling and glowing. “Dood-bye, dood horse; I’ll – I’ll wide you again another time,” he shouted, with a slight quaver in his voice.

Sir Giles was half-weeping, half-laughing, in the excitement of his age and weakness. Now that the child was safe, he, too, was delighted and proud. “Good’un to go, ain’t he, Osy?” he cried. “But I say, lad, you oughtn’t to caper like that; he’s a deal too fresh, Dunning, eh? wants to have it taken out of him.”

“Yes, Sir Giles,” said Dunning. (“And I’d just like to take it out of him with a cart whip,” he murmured, between his closed teeth.)

Lady Piercey was weeping a little, too, at her window, calming down from her excitement. “How strong he is, bless him, and well-made when he holds himself straight; and wouldn’t harm the child not for the world, or any one that trusts him. Oh, Parsons, what a joyful family we’d be if Master Osy had been my son’s boy!”

“Bless you, my lady, he’s too young to have a boy as big as that.”

“So he is, the dear. If I could live to see him with an heir, Parsons!”

“And why not, my lady? You’re not to call old, and with proper care and taking your medicines regular – one of these days he’ll be bringing home some nice young lady.” (“Some poor creature as will be forced to take ’im, or else Patty of the Seven Thorns,” was Parsons’ comment within herself.)

“And then that poor little darling!” said Lady Piercey, regretfully. “But,” she added with a firmer tone, “Meg spoils the boy to such a degree that he’ll be ruined before he’s a man. Look at her petting him as if he’d been in any danger; but she never had an ounce of sense. Get me my things, Parsons; I’ll go down and sit in the air a bit and talk to my boy.”

Gervase had fallen out of his unusual liveliness before his mother succeeded in reaching the beech avenue, but he came forward at her call, and permitted her to take his arm. “I like to see you in spirits,” the old lady said, “but you mustn’t shake about your father like that. Dunning’s safest for an old man.”

“I’ll drive you out in the phaeton, mother, if you like, this afternoon.”

“No, my dear; I feel safest in the big carriage with the cobs, and old Andrews; but it’s a pleasure to see you in such spirits, Gervase; you’re like my own old boy.”

“You see,” said Gervase, with his imbecile, good-humoured smile, “I’ve promised to do all I can to please you at home.”

“Ah!” cried the old lady, “and who might it be that made you promise that? and why?”

Gervase broke into a laugh. “Wouldn’t you just like to know?” he said.

CHAPTER VII

“Osy,” said Mrs. Osborne, “you mustn’t let cousin Gervase get hold of you like that again.”

“He’s a dood horse,” said the little boy, “when I sit tight. I have to sit vewey tight; but next time I’ll get on him’s both shoulders, and hold him like a real horse. He’s dot a too narrow back, and too far up from the ground.”

“But listen to me, Osy. It makes me too frightened. You mustn’t ride him again.”

“I’ll not wide him if I can help it,” said Osy, reddening with mingled daring and terror, “but he takes me up before I can det far enough off, and I tan’t run away, mamma.”

“But you must run away, Osy, when I tell you.”

The child looked up at her doubtfully. “It was you that told me gemplemens don’t run away.”

“Not before an enemy, or that,” said Margaret, taking refuge in the vague, “but when it’s only for fun, Osy.”

“Fun isn’t never serous, is it, mamma?”

“It would be very serious if you fell from that fo – , from Cousin Gervase’s shoulder, Osy. Go out for a walk this afternoon, dear, with nurse.”

“I don’t like nurse. I like Uncle Giles best. And I’m the outwider, telling all the people he’s toming.”

“You see Uncle Giles has got something else to do.”

Gervase was still in the foreground of the picture, carrying out his consigne. The servant had brought out upon the terrace at the other side of the house a box containing a game of which, in former days, Sir Giles had been fond. It was Gervase who had proposed this diversion to-day. “I’ll play father a game at that spinner thing,” he had said, after the large heavy luncheon, which was Sir Giles’ dinner. “I’d like that, lad,” the old man cried with delight. It was a beautiful afternoon, and nothing could be more charming than the shady terrace on the east side of the house which in these hot July days was always cool. The sunshine played on the roof of the tall house, and fell full on the turf and the shrubs, and the flower garden at the south corner, but on the terrace all was grateful shade. The game was brought out, and many experiments were made to see at what angle Sir Giles could best throw the ball with which it was played – an experiment in which Dunning took more or less interest, seeing it saved him another weary promenade through the grounds, pushing his master’s chair. The carriage was waiting round the corner, and Lady Piercey came sailing downstairs with Parsons behind her carrying a large cloak. “Meg! do you know I’m ready to go out?” cried Lady Piercey, in the tone of that king who had once almost been made to wait. “May I bring Osy, aunt?” cried Margaret. “No,” was the peremptory answer. “I’ll go without you if you don’t be quick.”

“And I don’t want to go, mover,” said Osy. “I’m doing to play with Uncle Giles.”

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