The week had been a very long week to Gervase. To him, poor fellow,
there was no limit of time; no thought that his obedience was intended,
nay, desired to stop at a certain point. He went on dully, keeping at
home, keeping indoors, trying in his fatuous way to please his parents.
It was a very dull round to him who had known the livelier joys of the
Seven Thorns, the beer and the tobacco in the parlour, and Patty
flitting about, throwing him a word from time to time. It seemed but a
poor sort of paradise to sit among the slow old topers in the smoky
room and imbibe the heavy beer; but it is unfortunately a kind of
enjoyment which many young men prefer to the fireside at home, even
without any addition of a Patty; and the poor Softy was not in this
respect so very much inferior to the best and cleverest. The fireside at
home, it must be allowed, was not very exciting. To be sure, the room
itself was a very different room from that of the Seven Thorns. It was
not the drawing-room in which the Piercey family usually sat in the
evening, for the drawing-room was upstairs, and Sir Giles could not be
taken up without great difficulty in his wheeled chair. It was the
library, a large long room, clothed with the mellow tones and subdued
gilding of old books, making a background which would have been quite
beautiful to an artist. There was a row of windows on one side veiled in
long curtains, and between these windows a series of family portraits
almost as long as the windows, full length, not very visible in the dim
light, affording a little glimpse of colour, and a face here and there
looking out from that height upon the little knot of living people
below; but the Pierceys of the past were not remarkable any more than
the present Pierceys. A shaded lamp was suspended by a very long chain
from the high roof, which was scarcely discernible going up so far, with
those glimmers of bookcases and tall old portraits leading towards the
vague height above; beneath it was a small round table, at which Lady
Piercey sat in a great chair with her bright-coloured work; on the other
side was Sir Giles among his cushions, with his backgammon board on a
stand beside him, where sometimes Margaret, sometimes Dunning played
with him till bedtime. Parsons, on the other hand, was so frequently in
attendance on her mistress that the two old servants might be taken as
part of the family circle. When Margaret took her place at the
backgammon board, Dunning had an hour’s holiday, and retired to the much
brighter atmosphere of the servants’ hall or the housekeeper’s room. And
when Dunning played with Sir Giles, Margaret attended upon Lady Piercey
to thread her needles, and select the shades of the silk, and Parsons
was set free. The one who was never set free was Mrs. Osborne, whose
evenings in this dim room between the two old people were passed in an
endless monotony which sometimes made her giddy. The dull wheel of life
went round and round for her, and never stopped or had any difference in
it. From year to year the routine was the same.
Now, whether this scene, or the parlour at the Seven Thorns, where the
sages of the village opened their mouths every five minutes or so to
emit a remark or a mouthful of smoke, or to take in a draught of beer,
was the most--or rather the least--enlivening, it would be hard to say.
The sages of the village are sometimes dull and sometimes wise in a
book. They were full of humour and character in George Eliot’s
representation of them, and they are very quaint in Mr. Hardy’s. But I
doubt much if they ever say such fine things in reality, and I am sure,
if they did, that Gervase Piercey was not capable of understanding them.
The beer and the tobacco and the sense of freedom and of pleasing
himself--also of being entirely above his company, and vaguely respected
by them--made up the charms of the humbler place to Gervase. And
Patty--Patty had got by degrees to be the soul of all; but even before
Patty’s reign began he had escaped with delight from these home evenings
to the Seven Thorns. Why? For Sir Giles, even in his enfeebled state,
was better company than old Hewitt and his cronies; and Lady Piercey’s
sharp monologue on things in general was more piquant than anything the
old labourers found to say; and Mrs. Osborne was a great deal handsomer
than Patty, and would willingly have exerted herself for the amusement
of her cousin. But this is a problem to which there is no answer. Far
better and cleverer young men than Gervase make this same choice every
day, or rather every evening; and no one can tell why.
But Gervase had turned over a new leaf. He went out to the door and took
a few whiffs of his pipe, turning his back to the road which led to the
Seven Thorns, that the temptation might not be too much for him, and
repeating dully to himself what Patty had said to him. And then he went
into the library, where they were all assembled, and pushed Dunning
away, who was just arranging the board for Sir Giles’ game. “Here! look
out; I’m going to play with you, father,” Gervase said. The old
gentleman had been delighted the first night, pleased more or less the
second, fretful the third. “You don’t understand my play, Gervase,” he
said.
“Oh! yes, I understand your play, father: Dunning lets you win, and
that’s why you like Dunning to play with you; but I’m better, for I wake
you up, and you’ve got to fight for it when it’s me.”
“Dunning does nothing of the sort,” cried Sir Giles, angrily, “Dunning
plays a great deal better than you, you booby. Do you let me win,
Dunning? It’s all he knows!”
“I ought to be good, Sir Giles, playin’ with a fine player like you; but
I never come up to you, and never will, for I haven’t the eddication you
have, Sir Giles, which stands to reason, as I’m only a servant,” Dunning
said.
“There! You hear him: go and play something with Meg; you’re never still
with those long legs of yours, and I like a quiet game.”
“I’ll keep as quiet as pussy,” said Gervase. “Which’ll you have,
father, black or white? and let’s toss for the first move.”
Now, everybody knew that Sir Giles always played with the white men and
always had the first move. Once again the old gentleman had to resign
himself to the noisy moves and shouts of his son over every new
combination, and to the unconscious kicks which the restlessness of
Gervase’s long limp legs inflicted right and left. Dunning stood behind
his master’s chair, with a stern face of disapproval, yet trying hard by
winks and nods to indicate the course which ought to be pursued, until
Gervase threw himself back in his chair, almost kicking over the table
with the corresponding movement of his legs, and bursting into a loud
laugh. “What d’ye mean, ye old fool, making faces at me over father’s
shoulder? Do you mean I’m to give him the game, like you do? Come on,
father, let’s fight it out.”
“I never said a word, Sir Giles! I hope as I knows my place,” cried
Dunning, alarmed.
“Hold your tongue, you big gaby,” cried Sir Giles; but presently the old
gentleman thrust the board away, overturning it upon his son’s long
legs. “I’ll not play any more,” he said: “I’ve had enough of it. I
think I was never so tired in my life. Backgammon’s a fine game, but one
can’t go on for ever. Fetch me my drink, Dunning; I think I’ll go to
bed.”
“It’s all because he’s losing his game,” cried Gervase, with a loud ha!
ha! He had something like the manners of a gentleman at the Seven
Thorns, but at home his manners were those of the public-house. “The old
man don’t like to be beaten; he likes to have everything his own way.
And Dunning’s an old humbug, and lets you have it. But it ain’t good for
you to have too much of your own way. I’ve been told _that_ since I was
a little kid like Osy; and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the
gander, father, don’t you know.”
“Gervase, how dare you speak so to your papa? Come over here, sir, and
leave him a little in peace. Where did you learn to laugh so loud, and
make such a noise? Come here, you riotous boy. You always were a noisy
fellow, making one’s head ache to hear you. Sit down, for goodness’
sake, and be quiet. Meg, can’t you find something to amuse him? I dare
say he’d like a game at cards. How can I tell you what game? If you
can’t, at your time of life, find something that will occupy him and
keep him quiet----! Here, Gervase, hold this skein of silk while
Parsons winds it, and Meg will go and get the cards, and perhaps you’d
like a round game.”
“I don’t want a game, mother, not for Meg’s sake, who doesn’t count. I
want to be pleasant to you---- and to father, too,” said Gervase,
standing up against the fireplace, which, of course, was vacant this
summer night.
Sir Giles was so far from appreciating the effort of his son, that he
sat fuming in his chair, while Dunning collected the scattered “men,”
muttering indistinct thunders, and pettishly putting away with his stick
the pieces of the game. “Make haste! can’t you make haste, man?” he
mumbled; “I want my drink, and I’m going to bed. And I won’t have my
evening spoiled like this again. I won’t, by George, not for anything
you can say. Four nights I’ve been a martyr to that cub, and I don’t see
that you’ve done much to keep him in order, my lady! It all falls upon
me, as everything does, and, by George, I won’t have it again. Can’t you
make haste, you old fool, and have done with your groping? You’re losing
your eyesight, I believe. Have one of the women in to find them, and
get me my drink, for I’m going to bed.”
“I’ll find them, father,” cried Gervase cheerfully, plunging down upon
the carpet on his hands and knees, and pushing the old gentleman’s stick
back into his face.
“For goodness’ sake, Meg, find something for him to do! and take that
boy off his father, or Sir Giles will have a fit,” cried Lady Piercey in
Mrs. Osborne’s ear.
“Get out o’ my way, you young ass!” Sir Giles thundered, raising the
stick and bestowing an angry blow upon his son’s shoulders. Gervase sat
up on his knees like a dog, and stared for a moment angrily, with his
hand lifted as if he would have returned the blow. Then he opened his
mouth wide and gave forth a great laugh. Poor old Sir Giles caught at
Dunning’s arm, clutching him in an ecstasy of exasperation. “Get me off,
man, can’t you? Get me out of sight of him; take me to bed,” the old
father cried, in that wretchedness of miserable perception which only
parents know. His son--his only son! His heir, the last of the
Piercey’s!--this Softy sitting up like a dog upon the floor!
Lady Piercey fell back also in her chair, and whimpered a little
piteously, like the poor old woman she was, as Sir Giles was wheeled out
of the room. The backgammon board, overturned, lay on the floor, with
the pieces scattered over the carpet, and Gervase scrambling after them,
for Dunning had been too tremulous and frightened to pick more than half
of them up. “Oh! my poor, silly boy! oh! you dreadful, dreadful fool!”
the old lady cried. “Will you never learn any better? Can’t you wake up
and be a man?” She cried over this, for a little, very bitterly, with
that terrible sense of the incurable which turns the poor soul back upon
itself--and then she flung round in her big chair towards her niece, who
stood silent and troubled, not knowing what part to take. “It’s all
your fault,” she cried in a fierce whisper, “for not finding something
for him to do. Why didn’t you find something for him to do? You might
have played something to him, or sung something with him, or got him to
look at pictures, or---- anything! And now you’ve let your poor uncle go
off in a rage, which may bring on a fit as likely as not, and me worse,
for I can’t give in like him. Oh, Meg, what an ungrateful, selfish thing
you are to stand there and never interfere when you might have found him
something to do!”
When Lady Piercey’s procession streamed off afterwards to bed, my lady
leaning heavily on Parsons’ arm and Margaret following with the work,
Gervase was left still picking up the pieces, sprawling over the carpet
and laughing as he followed the little round pieces of ivory and wood
into the corners where they had rolled. Margaret went back to the
library after being released by her aunt, and found him still there
making a childish game of this for his own amusement, and chuckling to
himself as he raced them over the carpet. He scrambled up, however, a
little ashamed when he heard her voice asking, “What are you doing,
Gervase?” “Oh, nothing,” he said with his foolish laugh, stuffing the
“men” into his pockets. She put her hand upon his shoulder kindly.
“Gervase, dear, you’re quite grown up, don’t you know; quite a man now.
You mustn’t be so mischievous, just like a boy. Poor Uncle Giles, you
must not play tricks upon him; he likes a quiet game.”
“Don’t you be a fool, Meg. Why, that was what I was doing all the night,
playing his quiet game. Poor old father, he got into a temper, but bless
you ’twasn’t my fault. It’s that old ass, Dunning, that’s always getting
in everybody’s way.”
“Of course he would like you best, Gervase,--but Dunning knows all his
ways. Your game might be better fun----”
“I should think so,” said the poor Softy. “My game _is_ the game, and
Dunning spoils everything. It ain’t my fault, though every one of you
gets into a wax with me,”--Gervase’s lip quivered a little as if he
might have cried,--“and me giving up everything only to please them!” he
said.
“I am sure they are pleased to see you always indoors and not spending
your time in that dreadful place.”
“What dreadful place? That is all you know--I’d never have come home
any more but for them that’s there. It was _she_ that sent me to please
the old folks. But I shan’t go on much longer if you all treat me like
this. I’ve tried my best to make the time pass for them, Meg, to give
them a laugh and that. And they huff me and cuff me as if I was a fool.
Why do they always call me a fool,” cried the poor fellow with a passing
cloud of trouble, “whatever I do?”
“Oh, Gervase!” cried Margaret, full of pity. “But why did she want you
so particularly to please them just now?”
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed and nodded his head. “You’d
just like to know!” he said, “but she didn’t mean me to be nice to
_you_, Meg; for she’s always afraid I’ll be driven to marry you--though
a man must not marry his grandmother, you know.”
Margaret repented in a moment of the flush of anger that flew over her.
“You can make her mind easy on that point,” she said gravely; “but oh,
Gervase, I am afraid it will make them very unhappy if you go on with
this fancy; they would never let you bring her here.”
“Fancy!” he cried, “I’m going to marry her. You can’t call that a fancy;
and if you think you can put me off it, or the whole world!--Get along
Meg, _I_ don’t want to talk to you any more.”
“But I want very much to talk to you, Gervase.”
Gervase looked at her with a smile of foolish complacency. “I dare say
you think me silly,” he cried, “but here’s two of you after me. Get
along, Meg; whatever I do I’m not going to take your way.”
“You must do as you please, then,” said Margaret in despair; “but
remember, Gervase,” she said, turning back before she reached the door,
“your father is old, and you might drive him into a fit if you go on as
you did to-night--and where would you be then?” she added, with an
appeal to the better feeling in which she still believed.
“Why, I’d be in his place, and she’d be my lady,” cried the young man,
with a gleam of cruel cunning, “and nobody could stop me any more,
whatever I liked to do.”
But next evening there seemed to be in his mind some lingering regard
for what she had said. Gervase left his father alone, and devoted
himself to his mother, who was more able to take care of herself. He
offered to wind her silks, and entangled them hopelessly with delighted
peals of laughter. He took her scissors to snip off the ends for her,
and put the sharp points through the canvas, until Lady Piercey, in her
exasperation, gave him a sudden cuff on his cheek.
“You great fool!” she cried--“you malicious wretch! Do you want to spoil
my work as well as everything else? I wish you were little enough to be
whipped, I do; and I wish I had whipped you when you were little, when
it might have done you some good. Margaret, what do you mean sitting
quiet there, enjoying yourself with a book and me driven out of my
senses? That’s what he wants to do, I believe--to drive us mad and get
his own way; to make us crazy, both his poor father and me.”
“No, I don’t,” cried Gervase, “and you oughtn’t to hit me--I’ll hit back
again if you do it again. It hurts--you’ve got a fist like a butcher,
though you’re such an old lady.” He rubbed his cheek for a moment
dolefully, and then again burst out laughing. “You look like old Judy in
the show, mamma, when she hits her baby: only you’re so fat you could
never get into it, and your voice is gruff like the old showman’s--not
squeaky, like Mrs. Punch. I’ve cut all the silks into nice lengths for
you to work with--ain’t you obliged to me? Look here,” he said, holding
out his work. Poor Lady Piercey clapped her fat hands together loudly in
sheer incapacity of expression. It made a loud report like a gun fired
off to relieve her feelings, and Sir Giles looked up from his quiet game
with Dunning, not without a subdued amusement that she should now be
getting her share.
“What’s the matter, what’s the matter, my lady? Is that cub of yours
playing some of his pranks? It’s your turn to-night, it appears, and
serves you right, for you always back him up.”
“Oh, you fool, you fool, you fool!” cried the old lady in her passion.
And then she turned her fiery eyes on her husband with a look of
contempt and fury too great for words. “Meg!” she cried, putting out her
hand across the table and grasping Mrs. Osborne’s arm, “If you’re ever
driven wild like me, never you look for sympathy to a man! when they see
you nearly mad with trouble they give you a look, and chuckle! that’s
what they always do. Put down the scissors, you, you, you----”
“Oh, and to think,” she cried wildly, “that that’s my only son! Oh,
Giles, how can you play your silly games, and sit and see him--the only
one we have between us, and he’s a born fool! And me, that was so
thankful to see him stay at home, and give up going out to his low
company! And now I can’t abide him. I can’t abide to see him here!”
This happened on the night when Patty, frightened and dejected, shut
herself up in the room which she had meant for her bridal bower, and
cried her eyes out because of Gervase’s absence. The poor Softy was thus
of as much importance as any hero, turning houses and hearts upside
down.