The Cuckoo in the Nest. Mrs. Oliphant

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,