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.”