The English Library
No. 156
THE CUCKOO IN THE NEST
BY MRS. OLIPHANT
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
_OTHER VOLUMES BY THE SAME AUTHOR PUBLISHED IN_
The English Library
77. 78. THE RAILWAY MAN AND HIS CHILDREN 2 Vols.
95. 96. THE MARRIAGE OF ELINOR 2 Vols.
(_In the Press_)
THE VICTORIAN AGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
DIANA.
_Copyright Edition_
THE CUCKOO
IN THE NEST
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF
“_WITHIN THE PRECINCTS_,” “_THE RAILWAY MAN AND HIS CHILDREN_,”
“_AT HIS GATES_,” “_THE MARRIAGE OF ELINOR_,” _ETC._
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOLUME I.
LEIPZIG
HEINEMANN AND BALESTIER
_LIMITED, LONDON_
1892
THE CUCKOO IN THE NEST
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.”