The Cuckoo in the Nest. Volume 2/2

“Oh, Mr. Piercey: that’s what you call the Softy now!” cried Miss Hewitt, in high scorn.

“It’s what I always called him, and it’s his name and mine too. I’m Mrs. Piercey, as the heir’s wife, and not Mrs. Gervase. My father-in-law says so, and he ought to know.”

“Oh, your father-in-law,” cried Miss Hewitt, with extreme bitterness; “you’ve changed all your relations, I see. When it comes to a person to disown their debts and their folks – ”

“I do neither the one nor the other,” cried Patty. “You shall have every penny of your fifty pounds – and interest, if you like, with that. And everybody knows my folks,” she cried, with a toss of her head. “Oh, no fear that they’ll ever be forgotten. Father’s been here with the smell of beer about him like to knock you down, and when I told him I couldn’t bear it, what does he do but fling out of the house cursing and swearing, and letting everybody see.”

“Well, your father is a trial,” Miss Hewitt allowed candidly. “I don’t wonder, Patty, as you were hurt; but so was he, and he won’t come back no more, won’t Richard. You can’t, anyhow, my pet, have the same objections to me.”

Miss Hewitt held her head aloft, and her golden flowers nodded and rustled. The complacency of her smile, and the confidence that in her there was nothing to find fault with, was too much even for Patty. She could not say the words that came to her lips.

“Well, Aunt Patience,” she said, in subdued tones, “I am treating you just the same as if you were Lady Hartmore.”

“And no more than is my due, Patty. I might have been my lady many and many’s the year if I’d had an Aunt Patience as would have done for me as I’ve done for you. Has she been to call already? She’s one as always respects the rising sun.”

“No,” said Patty, still more subdued, “she has not been yet – but that’s easy explained, where there’s been so lately a death in the house.”

“And a good thing for you, too! If ever there was a tyrant of a woman – But I see you’re in deep crape, Patty, to show your grief.”

“I hope I know better than to show any want of respect to my mother-in-law. And I think, Aunt Patience, you might have known better than to come to a house that’s in such mourning with all these colours on your head.”

“My bonnet!” cried Miss Hewitt. She caught sight of herself in a glass, and bridled and smiled at herself, instinctively arranging the bow of red ribbon that was tied under her chin. “I never had such a becoming bonnet in my life; and as for mourning, there’s nobody could expect me to put on black for her.”

“No,” said Patty, “and that’s why I hadn’t expected even a call from you, Aunt Patience, during the mourning – not being in any way a real connection of the house.”

Miss Hewitt fixed her eyes very wide open upon those of her niece, and the two maintained a silent combat by that method for at least a minute. It was the elder who gave in the first. “If that’s how you’re going to treat your own relations,” she said, “Patty, you’ll not see much of me. And I can tell you, as well as if it had happened already, you won’t see much of other folks. There’s none of the grand people as you’re looking for that will come near the place. The rector’ll call because he’s bound to, and because you was once his show girl at the Sunday School; and the new curate will call to see if he can get a subscription for something, but, mark you my words: nobody else – no, not a soul! and when you’ve bundled everybody belonging to you out of your doors, then you’ll see who you’ll have to speak to. I’m sorry for you, Patty, I am indeed.”

“Are you, Aunt Patience?” cried Patty, with defiance. “When it comes to that, I’ll send for you back.”

“It’s a deal easier,” said Miss Hewitt sententiously, “to whistle folks away than to bring them back.”

But after this there was a cessation of hostilities, and in the end Miss Hewitt was taken over the house to see all its splendours, which, as much as possible, she depreciated. She was the only witness of her elevation whom Patty had as yet had, and though some sacrifice of pride and spirit was necessary, a natural longing to impress and dazzle her world, through the means of some spectator, was still stronger. Patty went so far as to offer her aunt some of those pairs of silk stockings which Parsons had been counting when her new mistress fell upon her. “They’re such good stockings,” Patty said, “but miles too big for me.” “If you think I’ll wear her old cast-off things!” cried Miss Hewitt, purple with rage, flinging them back into the drawers from which Patty had taken them. “And my foot, if anything, is a little smaller than yours,” she added, with angry satisfaction. But when the visitor lingered and at last betrayed her desire to be asked to stay for “dinner” – a word which came out unadvisedly, and which she immediately corrected, with a blush – “Lunch, I suppose you call it,” – Patty assumed very high ground.

“My dear Aunt! if we were by ourselves of course it would not matter; but dear papa always takes his luncheon along with us.”

“And who’s dear papa?” asked Miss Hewitt, with natural derision.

“I mean Sir Giles, of course; he’s in very delicate health, and we have to be very careful.”

“Sir Giles,” said Miss Hewitt grimly, “has seen me before.”

“Yes – he said so when he heard my name – he said, Where have I heard that name before?”

“Patty, you’re a little devil; he knows a deal more than that of me.”

“Ah, well, perhaps once, Aunt; but his memory’s gone now; and to bring in a stranger to the luncheon table! Perhaps you don’t remember,” said Patty severely, “that my poor dear mother-in-law has not yet been a fortnight in her grave.”

Miss Hewitt was thus got rid of, though not without trouble; but Patty did not find it easy to forget what she had said, especially when it came true to the letter; for week after week went by and not a step, except that of the doctor, crossed the threshold of Greyshott. Patty took her place in the drawing-room every afternoon, with everything arranged very cleverly, and looking as like as an imitation could be to the little mise en scène of a young lady waiting for her guests; but no guests ever came. At length, after much waiting, there appeared – exactly as Aunt Patience had said – the rector! accompanied by his young daughter, for he was a widower. The rector called her Patty in the first moment of meeting, and though he amended that in a confused manner, and gave her finally her full honours as Mrs. Piercey, it was difficult to get over that beginning, which threw his young companion into utter discomfiture. And then, to make matters worse, he delivered a little lecture upon the responsibilities of her new position and the difficulty of the duties that would come upon her. “You must not let your mind dwell on your disadvantages,” he said kindly; “everybody, after a while, will make allowances for you.” “You are quite mistaken if you think I want to have allowances made for me,” said Patty, provoked. And what could the rector reply? He said, “Oh!” thus showing the poverty of the English language, and how little a man in such a predicament can find to say for himself; and then he began hurriedly to talk parish talk, and ask Mrs. Piercey’s patronage for various charities – charities by which Patty Hewitt might almost have been in a position to benefit so short a time ago. “That’s well over,” he said to his daughter, wiping his forehead, when they went out of the gates of Greyshott. And he did not come again, nor she – not even the girl. And nobody came; and of all the difficult things in the world Mrs. Gervase Piercey found nothing so difficult as to explain to her grand maid how it was that no visitor was ever seen at Greyshott. The thing itself was bad enough, but to explain it to Jerningham was still worse. “You see we are still in deep mourning,” Mrs. Piercey said. “Yes, ma’am,” said Jerningham, with a sniff of polite scepticism. For a lady who, however deep her mourning might be, had not a single friend to come to see her, was more than Jerningham could understand. And Patty sat alone in her fine drawing-room, and walked about her great house, and spoke to nobody but old Sir Giles and her own Softy; and thought many times, with a kind of alarm, of what Aunt Patience had said. Had it not already come true?

CHAPTER XXXIV

This, however, was after all but a small matter; it was not actual misfortune. Patty, indeed, felt it much, partly on account of Jerningham and the other servants, who she felt must triumph in this non-recognition of her claims; and also a little for herself, for it was an extraordinary change from the perpetual coming and going of the Seven Thorns, and all the admiration and respect which she had there, the jokes, and the laughter and the talk, which if not refined, were good enough for Patty Hewitt – to the condition of having no one to speak to, not a soul – except old Sir Giles and her own Softy, whose conversation clever Patty could not be said to have enjoyed at any time. It was very dull work going on from day to day with nothing better than poor old Sir Giles’ broken talk, which was about himself and his affairs – not about her, naturally the most interesting subject to Patty. Many times she was tempted to go upstairs and sit with Jerningham to unbosom herself and relieve her mind of all the unspoken talk, and make a companion and confidante of her maid. Jerningham was a person much better trained and educated than Patty. She could have instructed her in many of the ways of the fine ladies which Mrs. Piercey could only guess at, or painfully copy out of novels; but perhaps, if her mistress had yielded to this impulse it would have been Jerningham who would have held back, knowing her place and desiring no confidences. Patty, however, also knew her place, and that to confide in a servant was a fatal thing, so that she never yielded to this temptation. But how dull it was! It is a fine thing to be the mistress of a great house, to have a large household under your orders, to be served hand and foot, as Patty herself would have said; but never to have a gossip, never a jest with any one, she for whom every passer-by had once had a cheerful word, to have nobody to admire either herself or her dresses, to envy her good fortune, to wonder at her grandeur! that takes the glory out of any victory. Would Cæsar have cared to come back with all the joy and splendour of a triumphal procession had there been nobody to look at him? Patty had succeeded to the extent of her highest dreams, but, alas! there was nobody to see.

That, however, was merely negative, and there was always the hope that it might not last. She took her seat in the drawing-room every day with perennial expectation, still believing that somebody must come; and, no doubt, in the long run, her expectation would have come true. But Patty soon had actual trouble far more important than any mere deprivation. She had been afraid of Sir Giles, over whom her victory had been easy, and she had been afraid of the servants, whom she had now completely under her foot; but she never had any fear about the Softy, her husband, who had been her dog – a slave delighted with his chains – who had desired nothing better than to do what she told him, and to follow her about wherever she went. That Gervase should become the only rebel against her, that he should escape her authority and influence, and take his own way in opposition to hers, was a thing which had not entered into any of her calculations – Gervase, whose devotion had been too much, who had wearied her out with his slavish dependence on her, how had he emancipated himself? It was inconceivable to Patty. She had felt sure that whatever happened she could always control him, always keep him in subjection, guide him with a look, be absolute mistress of his mind and all his wishes. The first revelation of something more in Softy which she had not calculated upon had come when she first found the difficulty of amusing him in the long evenings (lit with so many wax candles, surrounded with so many glories!). Then it was revealed to Patty that she was not enough even for that fool. Then it began to dawn upon her faintly that the Seven Thorns itself had something to do with the attraction, and the excitement of the suspense, and the restraint and expectation in which she had held him: all these adjuncts were over now; he had Patty all his own, and he did not find Patty enough. Was that possible? could it be true?

Perhaps there was something in the very ease of Patty’s triumph that had to do with this. Had his mother lived, and had Gervase experienced that protection of having a wife to stand by him, which he had anticipated, it is very likely that this result would have been long delayed, if, indeed, it had ever appeared at all. But there was nobody now against whom Gervase required to be protected. His father had never opposed him, and now that Sir Giles was, like everybody else in the house, under Patty’s sway, not even the faint excitement of a momentary struggle with him chequered the Softy’s well-being. The consequence was that he, as well as Patty, found it dull. He had no one to play with him, he longed for the movement of the alehouse, the sound of the carts and carriages, the slow jokes in the parlour, the smoke and the fun – also the beer; and perhaps that most of all. It was hard work even when Patty was devoted to his constant amusement, for the Softy had no intervals; he wanted to be entertained all the time: and when she flagged for a moment, he became sullen and tugged at his chain. But when Sir Giles came on the scene, and Patty’s attention was distracted and her cares given to the old man, offence and sullen disgust arose in the mind of Gervase. He would not join in the game, as Patty called him to do; neither father nor son indeed wanted a third in the game: and Gervase, duller than ever and angry too, went to sleep for a night or two, tried to amuse himself another evening or two with cat’s cradle or the solitaire board – then flung these expedients aside in impatience, and finally strolled off, through the soft, warm darkness of the night, to the Seven Thorns. The Seven Thorns! it was poetic justice upon Patty, but that made it only the harder to bear.

Then there came upon Patty one of those curses of life which fall upon women with a bitterness and horror of which probably the inflictors of the pain are never fully aware. It would have been bad enough if this had befallen her in her natural position as the wife of a country tradesman or small farmer. Domestic misery is the same in one class as in another; yet it would be vain to deny the aggravations that a higher position adds to primitive anguish of this kind. The cottager is not so much ashamed of her husband’s backslidings. In many cases they are the subject of the long monologue of complaint that runs through her life. They cannot be hid, and they become a sort of possession, the readiest excuse for every failing of her own. But that the young master should stumble night after night up to Greyshott; that he should be seen by all the neighbourhood drinking among the dull rustics at the Seven Thorns; that a crowd of servants should listen and peep to hear his unsteady step, and his boisterous laugh, and the stammerings of excuse or explanations, or worse still, of noisy mirth, bursting from him in the middle of the quiet night – was something more terrible still. Patty – on that first occasion, when, long after every one else was in bed, she stole downstairs to admit him by that little door near the beech avenue, to which his unsteady footsteps naturally turned – was horrified and angry beyond description; but she did not doubt she could put a stop to it. Not for a moment did she hesitate as to her power. It should never happen again, she said to herself. Once was nothing. Henceforward she would be on her guard. He should not escape from her another time. She did not even upbraid Gervase – it was her own fault, who had never thought of that, taken no precautions; but it should never, never, she said to herself, with, perhaps unnecessary asseverations, happen again.

Gervase, upbraided as in sport by his laughing wife for forsaking her, as if he had been a naughty child, did nothing but laugh and triumph in reply. “Weren’t they just astonished to see me!” he said: “your father opened his mouth like this,” opening his own large mouth with the moist hanging under-lip. “You should ha’ seen him, you should ha’ seen him, Patty – like I was a ghost! ‘Hallo!’ said he, and ‘Hallo!’ said I, ‘here I am, you see.’ There wasn’t one of them could say a word; but afterwards I stood treat, and we had a jolly night.”

“And, oh, how you did smell of beer, you naughty fellow, when you came in!”

“Did I? Well, not without reason, neither,” said Gervase, with his loud laugh; “a set of jolly old cocks when you set them going. We only wanted you there in your old blue dress and your apron.”

“That you will never see again, I can tell you; and it isn’t very nice of you, Gervase, wishing your wife in such a place.”

“It’s a good enough place, and it’s where you came from,” said Gervase. “But I told ’em,” he said, nodding his head, “what an awful swell you have grown – nothing good enough for you. Didn’t the old fellows laugh and nod their old heads. Ho, ho! He, he!”

“Gervase, dear,” said his wife, “you won’t go there again? you won’t go and leave me all by myself, longing and wondering when you’d come back? I thought you’d gone and fallen asleep somewhere. I thought every minute you’d come into the room. You won’t go again, Gervase, dear, and leave your poor Patty alone?”

“Why, you had father,” Gervase said.

“Oh, papa; yes, dear, and I kept on playing to amuse him, dear old gentleman, and to keep it from him that you had gone out. If he had known where you were, it would have vexed him sadly, you know it would.”

“It vexed them both,” said Gervase, “when I went there after you; but I didn’t mind – nor you either, Patty.”

“A young single man has to have his liberty,” said Patty, “but when he’s married – You wouldn’t have gone off and left me – your Patty, whom you said you were so fond of – in those days?”

“Ah,” said the Softy, with the wisdom of his kind, “but I’ve got you now fast, Patty, at home waiting for me; so I can take my pleasure a bit, and have you all the same.” He looked at her with a cynical light in his dull eyes. He, and she also, felt the strength of the argument. No need to please her now, and conciliate her in her own ideas about beer and the parlour of the Seven Thorns. She could no longer cast him off, or leave him in the lurch. Consequently, Gervase felt himself free to indulge his tastes in his own way, whatever Patty might think. She was struck silent by that new light in his eyes. He was not capable of argument, or of anything but sticking to what he had once said, with all the force of his folly. She looked at him, and, for the first time, saw what was before her. It had never occurred to her before that he had the strength to resist her, or that she could not call him to her like a dog when her better sense saw it to be necessary. A docile fool is sometimes contemptible enough; but a fool resistant, a being whom reason cannot teach, who has no power of being convinced! Patty felt a cold dew come over her forehead. She saw what was before her with momentary giddiness, as if she had looked over the edge of a precipice. But she did not lose hope. She sent next day an imperative note to her father requiring his attendance: that he either should resist or refuse her call did not come into her mind. “Come up to Greyshott,” she wrote, “at once, for I have something to say to you;” as she might have written to one of her servants. But Richard Hewitt was not a man who could be defied with impunity. He never appeared in obedience to her summons; he took no notice of it. He replied only by that silence which is the most terrible of all kinds of resistance. And it was not long before Gervase disappeared again. After the second catastrophe, Patty swept down upon the Seven Thorns in her carriage – an imposing figure in her silk and crape. But Hewitt was not impressed even by the sight of her grandeur. “I’ll not refuse no customer for you – there! and you needn’t think you can come over me,” he cried. “By George! to order me about – what I’m to do and whom I’m to have in this house. It’s like your impudence; but I tell you, Miss, I’ll see you d – d first,” the angry man roared, bringing his clenched fist down upon the table, and making all the glasses ring. Patty was cowed, and had not a word to say.

And then there began for the triumphant young woman an ordeal enough to daunt the stoutest heart. It was true that she had not, like many a wife in such circumstances, the anguish of love to give a sting to everything. Patty had used the Softy partly as the instrument of her own elevation; but his folly had not disgusted or pained her as it might have done under other circumstances. She had a sober affection for him even, as her own property, a thing that belonged to her, and felt strongly the impulse of protecting him from scandal and injury: more, he was so involved still in all her hopes of advancement, that she was as much alarmed for the betrayal of his bad behaviour, as if (like so many) she had feared the loss of a situation or work which brought in the living of the family. And it must be added for Patty that she did her very best to keep all knowledge of Gervase’s conduct from his father. She sat and played his game of backgammon, inventing almost every evening a new excuse. “Isn’t he a lazy boy? He’s gone to sleep again,” was at first the easiest explanation. But Patty felt that would not do always. “What do you think, dear papa? Gervase has taken to reading,” she said; “I gave him a nice novel, all hunting and horses, and he got so interested in it.” “He never was any good outside a horse himself,” Sir Giles said, with a little grumble. But he was easily satisfied. He asked nothing more than to have his mind relieved from that care for Gervase which Lady Piercey had always insisted he should share. “He’s got his wife to look after him, now,” Sir Giles said, when Dunning hinted a doubt that Mr. Gervase was sometimes out of an evening. He was thankful to wash his hands of all responsibility. That apparent selfishness of old age, which consists very much of weariness and conscious inability to bear the burden, came over him more and more every day. Had such a thing been possible as that Gervase should have married a girl in his own position, and made her miserable, the good in Sir Giles would have been roused to support and uphold the victim. But Patty knew very well what she was doing. Patty had accepted all the responsibilities. She was able to take care of herself. He had his wife to take care of him, and to keep him off his father. Patty accepted her share of that tacit bargain honestly; and, as for Sir Giles, it must be said that he was easily satisfied – received her explanations, and gave her as little trouble as possible. He nodded his head, and went on with his game. Perhaps, if truth had been told, it was a relief to the old man when the Softy – strolling about restlessly from place to place, interfering with the play, calling off his wife’s attention, always troublesome and always ungainly – was not there.

CHAPTER XXXV

Patty had been married only about four months, when an incident happened that brought this period of humiliation and trouble after her triumph to a climax. The summer had gone, the dark days and long nights of early winter had come back, and Gervase’s almost nightly visits to the Seven Thorns were complicated by the storms and rains of the season, which, however, were rarely bad enough to keep him indoors. Had Patty been free to keep a constant watch upon him, it was her opinion that she could have prevented his continual escape into the night. She could have made him so comfortable at home. By moments she had visions of what she could do to reclaim her husband and satisfy him, if the dreadful restraint of the old man and his nightly game were withdrawn. Once or twice, when Sir Giles was indisposed, she had, indeed, managed to do this. She had brewed him hot and fragrant drinks to take the place of the beer, and exhausted herself in talk to amuse him. Poor Patty! she thought to herself that surely she must, at least, be as amusing as the old fellows in the parlour at the Seven Thorns. Many a woman has thought the same: a brilliant young creature, full of knowledge and spirit, and wit and pleasantness, might not she think herself as attractive as the dull gossip of the club? But it is a dangerous conflict to enter into, and the race is certainly not to the swift nor the battle to the strong in this respect. And Patty was not an amusing conversationalist. She knew the methods of rustic flirtation, and how to hold off and call on a provoked and tantalised lover; and she could be very lively in talk about herself and what she meant to do; but the first was no longer a method to be employed with Gervase, who was now brutally conscious of being Patty’s proprietor; and he was not even so much interested in what she meant to do as he once had been. He much preferred the heavy jokes, the great guffaw, the half-mocking attention that was paid to himself in the parlour at the Seven Thorns. He was not in the least aware that the big laugh that went round, and in which he himself joined with a sensation of truly enjoying himself, was chiefly at him and his folly. And his freedom to do what he liked, to drink as much as he liked, and babble and maunder at his pleasure, was very sweet to Gervase: he liked it better than anything else in the world; perhaps not better than Patty if there had been a conflict between the two – but then, as he said, he had Patty all the same whatever he might do, and why shouldn’t he enjoy himself when it was so entirely in his power?