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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Cuckoo in the Nest," Mrs. Oliphant presents a compelling exploration of familial dynamics, social conventions, and the complexities of identity during the Victorian era. Employing a rich, descriptive prose style interwoven with keen social observations, Oliphant deftly delves into the lives of her characters, revealing the often stifling effects of societal expectations. The novel intertwines humor and pathos, painting a vivid portrait of a family disrupted by personal ambitions and the unsettling presence of an unexpected outsider, akin to the titular cuckoo, who upends their carefully ordered lives. Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, a prolific Victorian novelist and critic, often drew upon her own experiences of loss and societal constraints in her writing. Having faced the challenges of widowhood and financial insecurity, Oliphant's narratives reflect a deep empathy for women navigating complex societal roles. Her insights into the nature of family and belonging, shaped by her own life circumstances, enrich the themes in "The Cuckoo in the Nest," making it a poignant social commentary of her time. This novel is a must-read for those interested in Victorian literature and feminist perspectives. It deftly intertwines humor with tragedy, reflecting the intricacies of human relationships and the often-limited roles assigned to women. Readers will find themselves captivated by Oliphant's sharp wit and emotional depth, making this work both an engaging narrative and a thoughtful reflection on the era's social structures. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Cuckoo in the Nest
Table of Contents
Introduction
An unexpected presence unsettles the careful order of a household, exposing how love, duty, and social expectation collide when belonging itself is contested, and how the quiet rooms of domestic life can become arenas where identity is negotiated, loyalties are tested, and the subtle economies of kindness and power determine who may claim a place, who must yield it, and what it costs a community to defend its sense of itself against the discomfort of change, in a time alert to appearances and anxious about propriety, and where private compromises echo in public judgment and memory alike, shaping futures quietly.
Written by Margaret Oliphant, widely credited as Mrs. Oliphant, The Cuckoo in the Nest is a work of Victorian domestic and social fiction that examines the pressures of respectability in nineteenth-century Britain. Oliphant, a prolific Scottish novelist active from the 1850s to the 1890s, was known for anatomizing middle-class life with moral clarity and understated wit. Composed within the world of circulating libraries and the periodical press that shaped much nineteenth-century reading, this book situates its tensions within everyday rooms, parlors, and neighborhood circles rather than sensational settings, inviting readers to watch how ordinary conventions acquire the force of destiny.
Without leaning on melodrama, the narrative presents a respectable household confronted by an arrival or arrangement that is difficult to absorb, a circumstance that reveals how fragile harmony can be when kinship and obligation pull in different directions. The voice is poised and observant, allowing motives to surface gradually and inviting readers to weigh competing claims with patience. The mood is quietly tense, sometimes rueful, sustained by a calm, reflective pace. Rather than rushing toward climactic shocks, the book builds its meanings through conversations, visits, and small decisions that accumulate into a searching portrait of conscience under social scrutiny.
Its central concerns are belonging and legitimacy—who is recognized as part of a family, what constitutes a rightful place, and how resources, affection, and names are allocated when customs meet inconvenient facts. Oliphant probes class sensibilities, the currency of reputation, and the disciplining power of gossip, but she also attends to tenderness, friendship, and the resilience that ordinary people summon at moments of strain. Questions of gender expectation and generational duty recur, as older and younger ideals disagree over fairness and prudence. Throughout, the book weighs charity against caution, principle against expedience, and asks what justice looks like in practice.
Readers encounter an exacting craft: a lucid perspective that maintains sympathy without surrendering critical distance; dialogue tuned to the idioms of polite society; and scenes arranged with the economy of a writer who trusts the interest of ordinary life. Oliphant’s irony is gentle rather than caustic, sharpening the outline of character without denying anyone their complexity. Secondary figures matter, not as caricatures, but as the social texture within which choices take shape. Descriptive detail—furniture, routines, letters, the choreography of visits—carries moral weight, revealing how structures of habit guide action long before any character names a principle.
For contemporary readers, the novel’s dilemmas feel strikingly current. It probes the ethics of inclusion, the strain of blended or reconfigured families, and the uneasy trade-offs institutions make between compassion and consistency. It shows how rumors travel faster than truth, how good intentions can mask fear, and how material security shapes moral choices. Those interested in cultural history will find a quietly incisive study of everyday authority—how communities enforce norms without laws. Those reading for emotion will find a humane attention to disappointment, hope, and the hesitations that accompany change, rendered without sensational excess and with abiding sympathy.
Approached in this spirit, The Cuckoo in the Nest offers a measured, absorbing experience: a domestic drama that treats ordinary circumstances as worthy of the most serious artistic attention. It stands within Mrs. Oliphant’s larger achievement as a chronicler of middle-class life in the Victorian period, and it rewards slow reading, alert to implication as well as incident. Expect a work that raises questions more than it resolves debates, one that trusts readers to judge the pressures it anatomizes. In the quiet contest over who belongs, it leaves a lasting inquiry into conscience, community, and the costs of being counted.
Synopsis (Selection)
Set in a late Victorian provincial town, The Cuckoo in the Nest follows a respectable household whose routines, alliances, and expectations are firmly established. The family prides itself on order, discreet benevolence, and careful management of rank and reputation. Its future seems mapped out through prudent marriages and a clear sense of inheritance. Into this settled world comes an unexpected presence that disturbs assumptions about who belongs and why. The image of a cuckoo laying its egg in another bird’s nest frames the story’s central question: when an outsider slips into a cherished domestic space, what must change, and what must be guarded?
The inciting event is the arrival of a young woman placed under the family’s roof by obligation and circumstance. She comes with uncertain parentage and a tenuous claim to kindness, connected by a chain of distant kinship, favors, or a dying friend’s appeal. Her entrance is explained as a temporary charity, yet it immediately draws the scrutiny of neighbors and the mixed sympathy of relatives. The family, anxious to appear dutiful, agrees to receive her, even as it quietly debates the consequences for reputation, finances, and the delicate arrangements surrounding the children’s prospects and the household’s carefully curated harmony.
The newcomer’s presence unsettles daily life. Her frankness disconcerts those invested in propriety, while her vitality and gratitude win allies among younger or more generous spirits. She is quick to learn the household’s codes yet inadvertently exposes their strains: the pressure of appearances, the unequal footing of dependents, and the thin line between welcome and tolerance. Minor domestic shifts follow—attention is redistributed, routines are altered, and loyalties are tested. Affection develops in unexpected quarters, provoking jealousy or protectiveness. Within this modest domestic drama, Oliphant traces how an additional seat at the table can imperceptibly recast the roles of all who sit there.
Beyond the home, the town’s social machinery whirs to life. Invitations are weighed, visits exchanged, and judgments made by clergy families, old friends, and calculating acquaintances. Practical questions arise about education, dress, and the cost of establishing a young woman’s place. A family adviser or solicitor introduces a troubling possibility: the newcomer may not be merely a guest. If kinship or past promises carry legal weight, existing expectations about money and status could shift. This suggestion deepens the tension, turning quiet doubts into active debate over duty, prudence, and whether charity can coexist with the household’s long-laid plans.
A public occasion becomes the story’s first turning point. At a parish gathering, dinner, or garden fête, the newcomer draws notice for qualities that charm some and alarm others. Her ease may appear a triumph of natural grace, or a lapse in decorum, depending on the viewer. Introductions made there hint at future alliances, and a potential suitor or protector begins to take shape. The evening ends with admiration tinged by gossip, positioning her between approval and suspicion. The family reads the room and recognizes the stakes: this is no longer private benevolence but a visible test of standing, taste, and intentions.
In the aftermath, the narrative turns to origins and claims. Letters, recollections, and testimony bring partial illumination without closing every question. Hints emerge of a past obligation, perhaps a promise never fully discharged, that ties the newcomer to the household more strongly than anyone anticipated. Meanwhile, illness, aging, or an unforeseen loss focuses minds on succession and responsibility. The matriarch’s judgment, long the household’s anchor, is pressed by competing counsel: safeguard reputation, honor duty, or protect the young from entanglements. The possibility that kindness could entail permanent commitment brings moral principle and material caution into uneasy alignment.
Tension peaks with a confrontation about belonging. Proposals circulate: a respectable position, a strategic marriage, or removal to a safer distance. Each path preserves something and sacrifices something else. The established heir or favorite risks displacement, at least in influence if not in title. The newcomer, increasingly aware of her ambiguous standing, contemplates leaving to quiet the storm, even as bonds formed in the house pull her back. Reputation, property, and affection collide. Near-missteps and sharp words bring the family to the edge of a decision that could harden charity into exclusion—or recognize that obligation, once assumed, demands more than appearances.
The resolution takes shape as compromise rather than triumph. Without detailing final arrangements, the narrative moves toward an accommodation that acknowledges both character and convention. Roles are clarified, prospects secured as far as prudence allows, and the home finds a new equilibrium that neither erases the disruption nor denies its lessons. Public talk subsides to a manageable murmur; private affections settle into steadier forms. The newcomer’s place, once provisional, becomes defined yet not absolute, reflecting the era’s limits and possibilities. The family’s future remains recognizable but altered, its securities tempered by a more conscious practice of responsibility.
The Cuckoo in the Nest ultimately examines the fragility of belonging and the moral weight of hospitality. Through domestic routines and social rituals, it explores how class, gender, and inheritance shape lives, while testing whether kindness can survive calculation. The cuckoo metaphor underscores the fear of displacement but also the truth that households are porous and identities negotiated. Oliphant’s narrative emphasizes duty without sentimentality and sympathy without illusion. The book’s central message, carried by quiet scenes and measured revelations, is that order endures only when it grows to accommodate the claims of character, turning reluctant charity into accountable care.
Historical Context
Mrs. Oliphant situates The Cuckoo in the Nest in the later Victorian decades, in a provincial English milieu where the small town, its drawing rooms, and nearby country houses form an interlocking social world. Railway links, expanding since the 1840s, make movement between London and the provinces routine, yet reputations remain intensely local. The setting assumes the authority of parish life, the social dominance of professionals and lesser gentry, and a household economy dependent on servants. This time and place were marked by intricate legal frameworks governing property, guardianship, and legitimacy, and by a culture of respectability in which family order, inheritance, and name were watched as closely as public office or trade.
Questions of identity, legitimacy, and proof—central to a story about an unexpected child or heir—were shaped by civil registration and related law. England and Wales instituted civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths in 1837; only with the Births and Deaths Registration Act of 1874 did registration become compulsory with penalties for noncompliance, closing gaps common in earlier decades. The Legitimacy Declaration Act of 1858 allowed petitions to the courts to affirm status, while the Bastardy Laws Amendment Act of 1872 improved mothers’ ability to secure maintenance from putative fathers. England and Wales had no legal adoption until the Adoption of Children Act 1926, so nineteenth-century ‘adoptions’ were informal. The novel’s plot leverages precisely this grey zone of papers, guardians, and unverifiable origins.
Victorian reforms to marriage, property, and custody transformed authority inside the home. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 created a civil divorce court, widening access to separation. The Married Women’s Property Act 1870 first allowed wives to control earnings and small inheritances; the landmark 1882 Act enabled married women to own, buy, and sell property as if single, reshaping settlements and dowries. Custody law also shifted: the Custody of Infants Act 1839 granted mothers limited custody rights, expanded in 1873, while the Guardianship of Infants Act 1886 recognized a mother’s equal guardianship on a father’s death. Oliphant’s narrative reflects these recalibrations, exploring how a woman’s legal personhood could protect or endanger a household when a new claimant arrives.
Inheritance structures—primogeniture, strict settlements, and testamentary practice—frame the cultural anxiety a cuckoo-in-the-nest plot exploits. The Wills Act 1837 standardized execution of wills; the Court of Probate Act 1857 secularized probate; and the Settled Land Act 1882 empowered tenants for life to sell settled land, weakening entails. Estate Duty, introduced by the Finance Act 1894, further pressured landed incomes. Public fascination with contested identity surged with the Tichborne case (1871–1874), in which an Australian butcher claimed the Tichborne baronetcy and was exposed as an impostor after sensational trials. Oliphant channels the same atmosphere of skepticism and document-checking: parish registers, family Bibles, and certificates become weapons in domestic struggles over name and property.
The moral economy of poverty and charity under the New Poor Law shaped attitudes toward dependents. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 centralized relief in unions and workhouses, stigmatizing assistance and promoting investigation of claimants. From 1869 the Charity Organisation Society in London coordinated voluntary aid and discouraged indiscriminate giving; Dr Barnardo’s homes, begun in 1866, institutionalized child rescue. The 1889 Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act signaled new state concern for child welfare. The novel mirrors this culture of scrutiny: benevolence is cautious, inquiries are formal, and a child arriving without impeccable credentials is treated as a potential fraud or burden to be managed according to philanthropic rules.
Economic strain from the agricultural depression of 1879–1895 unsettled provincial hierarchies and household budgets. British wheat prices fell from over 50 shillings a quarter in the 1860s to under 30 shillings by the mid-1880s, as American and Argentine grain flooded the market via steamships and the Suez Canal (opened 1869). Landed and semi-landed families retrenched, professional incomes became more vital, and genteel economies tightened. In 1891 roughly 1.3 million women in England and Wales were employed in domestic service, anchoring households whose solvency could be fragile. Such pressures make the arrival of an unexpected dependent combustible: a newcomer might promise inheritance or dowry advantages—or threaten to divide resources and expose financial precarity.
Political and civic reforms altered local power, a quiet backdrop to domestic authority. The Second Reform Act 1867 and the Third Reform Act 1884 expanded the male electorate, while the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 reshaped constituencies. The Local Government Act 1888 created elected county councils; the Local Government Act 1894 established parish and district councils, curbing the old dominance of magistrates and select vestries. These changes rebalanced influence among gentry, professionals, and tradesmen. Oliphant’s provincial world reflects this contested prestige: families guard reputation because it underwrites office-holding and patronage. A dubious heir or dependent, if acknowledged, can redirect alliances and local standing as decisively as a vote or a council appointment.
As social and political critique, the book exposes how respectability is policed by documents, money, and gatekeepers. It shows that law reforms, while expanding women’s property and children’s protections, also created new arenas for contest—marriage settlements, custody petitions, and proofs of birth—through which the weak could be excluded. By staging an interloper within a household, Oliphant tests class boundaries and the moral logic of charity, revealing the anxiety beneath provincial civility. The narrative indicts a system where status depends on paperwork and inheritance rather than character, and where those without perfect credentials risk being sacrificed to preserve lineage, office, and social peace.
The Cuckoo in the Nest
VOLUME 1
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.”
CHAPTER II.
The parlour at the Seven Thorns was, in the evening, turned into a sort of village club, where a select number of the fathers of the hamlet assembled night after night to consume a certain amount of beer, to smoke a certain number of pipes, and then to retire at a not very late hour, not much the worse, perhaps, for their potations. It was not a vicious place, nor was it one of revelry. The talk was slow, like the minds of the talkers, and it was chiefly concerned with local events. If now and then there was a public measure which was wide enough, or descended sufficiently low to reach the level of those rustic folk, there might be occasionally a few heavy words on that subject. But this was of the rarest occurrence, and the humours of the heavy assembly were little perceptible to a superficial observer. What was going on at the Manor was of infinitely less interest to this rustic club than what was going on in the village, and unless Sir Giles had turned out his cottagers, or, what was worse, endeavoured to improve their tumble-down habitations, I cannot see why their minds should have been directed to him or his affairs. It is, perhaps, a delusion of the writer, most interested himself in the Squire’s family, which lends to the rural public the same inclination. It is true that when young Gervase Piercey first began to appear among them, to be placed in the warmest corner, and served first with whatever he called for, the elders of the village took their pipes out of their mouths and stared. “What do he be a-wanting ’ere?” they said to each other with their eyes, and a head or two was shaken, not only over the inappropriateness of his appearance, but because the presence of the young Squire was more or less a check upon their native freedom as well as prolixity of talk. Gervase had been known to interrupt a lingering discussion with a “Speak up, old cock!” or with a silly laugh in the wrong place, which confused the speaker and made him forget whereabouts in his subject he was. It was some time, however, before it occurred to them what the young man’s motive was, which was made plain by several signs: in the first place by the fact that Patty ceased to serve the customers in the parlour, old Hewitt getting up with many grumbles from the settle to supply their wants himself; then by the impatience of the young man, who had at first smoked his pipe contentedly in his corner, interrupting the conversation only by those silly laughs of his, or by an equally foolish question, which, though idiotic in itself, was the cause of discomfiture to a village orator accustomed to have everything his own way; and then it was observed that Gervase let his pipe go out and kept his eyes upon the door, and then that he became very uneasy when the brisk voice of Patty was heard outside, presumably talking with the younger frequenters of the place, who hung about the precincts of the Seven Thorns, or occupied the bench under the window of the parlour. When the young squire at last got up and went out, the sages said little, but they looked at each other or nudged each other, those who were close enough pointing with their long pipes over their shoulders, and finally burst forth into a slow roar, shaking their sides. “Softy if ’e be, ’e knows wat’s wat as well as ere another,” said the “Maestro de chi sanno,” the sage of sages, the Aristotle of the village. This revelation slowly communicated itself over the parish, “The young squire, he be after Patty Hewitt o’ the Seven Thorns; but Patty is one as will keep him in his place, and no mistake,” was the popular verdict. The parish knew, even better than the gentry did, that Gervase—Sir Giles’ only child—was a softy; it knew his habits, and that he was good for nothing, not even to take a hand at cards or field a ball at cricket, so that his dangling after Patty Hewitt caused nobody any anxiety. She knew how to keep him in his own place; no village story of lovely woman stooping to folly was likely to arise in her case. The Softy was a good creature enough, and harmed nobody, except by that exasperating laugh of his, which made the persons interrupted by it furious, but broke no bones, everybody allowed. So that it was more on Gervase’s account than Patty’s that the village concerned itself. “She do be making a fool of ’im,” they said with gratification; for was not this a just revenge for other maidens wronged by other young squires of higher qualities than poor Gervase. Generally there was a slow satisfaction in the triumph of the people over the gentry, as thus exemplified; yet a general wish that Patty should not push that triumph too far.
On the evening of the day on which this story begins, he had kept in the parlour as long as his patience lasted, always looking for the moment when she should appear; for the mind of Gervase worked very slowly, and he had not yet begun to understand as a rule, what all the parish already knew, that Patty now entered the parlour no more in the evening. Gervase knew that he had not seen her for night after night, but he had no faculty for putting this and that together, and he did not draw the natural conclusion that she had so settled it with her father. Nor had he found much advantage in going out to the door, in following the sound of her voice, which seemed to flicker about like a will-o’-the-wisp, now sounding close at hand, now from a distance. When Patty was visible she was generally in close conversation with some one—Roger Pearson as often as not, was an antagonist whom Gervase had sense enough not to encounter. And, accordingly, it was the most rare thing in the world when he had any nearer view of the object of his admiration than the dim outline of her, in the dark, flitting about in front of the house with her tray, and not to be interrupted; or perhaps strolling off beyond the seven thorns which gave their name to the house, with another tall figure beside her. Roger Pearson was the athlete of the village. It was he who commanded the eleven got up between Greyshott and Windyhill, which had beaten almost every eleven that had met them, and certainly every other eleven in the county; and he was a leading volunteer, a great football player, everything that it is most glorious in English country life to be. Gervase did not venture to contest openly the favour of Patty with this stalwart fellow. He stood on the threshold with his mouth open, and his heart rung, and watched them stroll away together in the moonlight, losing sight of them in the shadow of the thorns: waiting till they emerged beyond upon the great flat of the moorland country among the furze bushes. Poor Softy! to see the lady of his love thus taken away from him by a stronger than he, was very hard upon him. Though he was a Softy, there was in Gervase so much of that feeling of the gentleman, which can be transmitted by blood and by the atmosphere of an ancient house—as made him aware that to make his possible wife the object of a brawl was not to be thought of, even had he felt any confidence in his own courage and muscles as against those of Roger. So that both these reasons held him back: the instinct of the weakling, and the instinct of the gentleman too. If he could have fought with and overthrown Roger on any other argument, how he would have rejoiced! He planned in his dreams a hundred ways of doing so, but never in his waking moments ventured to cross that hero’s path: and he would not make a row over Patty. No! no! even if he could have seized Roger by the collar and pitched him to the other side of the moor, as Roger, he was convinced, would do to him if the opportunity ever arose, he would not have done it to bring in Patty’s name and make her talked about. No! no! He said this to himself as he stood at the door and watched them with his mouth open and watering, and his heart sore. Poor Gervase; there was something in it, even if not so much as he thought.
But this evening, by a happy chance, Roger was not there. Gervase found Patty standing alone, wholly indifferent to the two or three vague figures which were dimly visible on the bench beneath the lighted window of the parlour. It was such a chance for Gervase as had never happened before. He whistled softly, but Patty took no notice; he called her by her name in a whisper, but she never turned her head. Was she regretting the other man, the fellow who had nothing to offer her but a cottage, and who was far too busy with his cricket matches and things ever to earn much money, or even to stay at home with his wife? Gervase ventured upon a great step. He came up behind her and seized Patty’s hand, which was akimbo, firmly placed upon her side.
“Who’s that?” she cried, throwing off the touch; “and what are you wanting here?”
“You know well enough who it is—it’s Gervase come to have a word——”
“Oh!” said Patty, disdainfully, “it’s the young gentleman from the Manor as has no right to be here.”
“Yes, it is me,” said Gervase, not quick enough to take up the scorn in her speech. “Come, Patty, let’s take a little turn round the Thorns: do, now!—there’s nobody else coming to-night.”
“Much I care for any one coming! I can take my walk alone, thank you, Mr. Gervase, and you had better go home. I can’t abide to see you spending your time here morning and night.”
“Why shouldn’t I come here, Patty? It is the nicest place in all the world to me.”
“But it oughtn’t to be,” cried Patty; “your place is in Greyshott Manor, and this is only a little inn upon the edge of the downs.[1q] What pleasure can you find in this parlour, with all their pipes going, and the smoke curling about your head, and the silly talk about Blacksmith John at the smithy, and how he shod Farmer George’s mare?”
“Well, if I don’t object to the talk; and what reason have you against it? It’s always good for trade.”
“It’s not even good for trade,” said the girl. “Do you think they like you to be here, these men? No; not even father don’t, though it’s to his profit, as you say. It stops the talk: for there’s things they wouldn’t say before you: and it makes them think and ask questions. It ain’t pleasant for me when they takes to ask each other, ‘What’s the young squire after for ever down here?’ ”
“Well, you can tell them,” said Gervase, with his foolish laugh; “I make no secret of it. Patty’s what I’m after, and she knows——”
They had gone down upon the open ground where the seven thorns, which gave the house it’s name, stood in a cluster, ghostly in the white moonlight, some of them so old that they were propped up by staves and heavy pieces of wood. Patty had moved on in the fervour of her speech, notwithstanding that she angrily rejected his request to take a turn. With the blackness of that shade between them and the house, they might have been miles, though they were but a few yards, from the house, with its murmuring sound of voices and its lights.
“Look here!” said Patty, quickly. “No man shall ever come after me that goes boozing like you do at beer from morning to night.”
Patty, though she generally spoke very nicely, thanks to the Catechism and the rector’s favour, was after all not an educated person, and if she said “like you do,” it was no more than might be expected from her ignorance. She flung away the arm which he had stolen round her, and withdrew to a distance, facing him with her head erect. “You’re a dreadful one for beer, Mr. Gervase,” she said; “it’s that you come to our house for, it isn’t for me. If there was no Patty, you’d want a place to sit and soak in all the same.”
“That’s a lie!” said the young man; “and I don’t take more than I want when I’m thirsty. It’s only you that are contrary. There’s that Roger; you let him have as much as you like——”
“What Roger?” cried Patty, with a flash of her eyes, which was visible even in the moonlight. “If it’s Mr. Pearson you mean, he never looks at beer except just to stand pots round for the good of the house——”
“If that’s what pleases you, Patty, I’ll—I’ll stand anything—to anybody—as long as—as long as——” Poor Gervase thrust the hand which she would not permit to hold hers, into his pocket, searching for the coin that he had not. At which his tormentor laughed.
“As long as you’ve anything to pay it with,” she said. “And you have not—and that makes all the difference. Roger Pearson—since you’ve made so bold as to put a name to him—has his pockets full. And you’re running up a pretty high score, Mr. Gervase, I can tell you, for nobody but yourself.”
“I don’t know how he has his pockets full,” Gervase said, with a growl; “it isn’t from the work he does—roaming the country and playing in every match——”
“You see he can play,” said Patty, maliciously; “which some folks couldn’t do, not if they was to try from now to doomsday.”
“But it don’t get him on in his business, or make money to keep a wife,” said the young man with a flash of shrewdness, at which Patty stared with astonishment, but with a touch of additional respect.
“Well, Mr. Gervase,” she said, making a swift diversion; “I shall always say it’s a shame keeping you as short as you are of money; and you the heir of all.”
“Isn’t it?” cried Sir Giles Piercey’s heir. “Not a penny but what’s doled out as if I were fifteen instead of twenty-five—or I’d have brought you diamonds, before now, Patty, to put round your neck.”
“Would you, now, Mr. Gervase? And what good would they have been to me at the Seven Thorns? You can’t wear diamonds when you’re drawing beer,” she added, with a laugh.
“I can’t abide you to be drawing beer,” cried the young man: “unless when it is for me.”
“And that’s the worst I can do,” said Patty, quickly. “Here’s just how it is: till you give up all that beer, Mr. Gervase, you’re not the man for me. It’s what I begun with, and you’ve brought me round to it again. Him as I’ve to do with shall never be like that. Father sells it—more’s the pity; but I don’t hold with it. And, if I had the power, not a woman in the country would look at a man that was fond of it: more than for his meals, and, perhaps, a drop when he’s thirsty,” she added, in a more subdued tone.
“That’s just my case, Patty,” said Gervase; “a drop when I’m thirsty—and most often I am thirsty——”
“That’s not what I mean, neither. If you were up and down from morning to night getting in your hay, or seeing to your turnips, or riding to market—well, then I’d allow you a drink, like as I would to your horse, only the brute has the most sense, and drinks good water; but roaming up and down, doing nothing as you are—taking a walk for the sake of getting a drink, and then another walk to give you the excuse to come back again, and nothing else in your mind but how soon you can get another; and then sitting at it at night for hours together till you’re all full of it—like a wet sponge, and smelling like the parlour does in the morning before the windows are opened—Faugh!” cried Patty, vigorously pushing him away, “it is enough to make a woman sick!”
Personal disgust is the one thing which nobody can bear; even the abject Gervase was moved to resentment. “If I make you sick, I’d better go,” he said sullenly, “and find another place where they ain’t so squeamish.”
“Yes, do; there are plenty of folks that don’t mind: neither for your good nor for their own feelings. You can go, and welcome. And I’m going back to the house.”
“Oh, stop a moment, Patty! Don’t take a fellow up so quick! It isn’t nice to hear a girl say that, when you worship the ground she stands on——”
“The smell of beer,” said Patty, sniffing audibly with her nostrils in the air, “is what I never could abide.”
“You oughtn’t to mind it. If it wasn’t for beer——”
“Oh, taunt me with it, do!” cried Patty. “If it wasn’t for beer, neither Richard Hewitt of the Seven Thorns, nor them that belongs to him, that once had their lands and their farms as good as any one, and more horses in their stables than you have ever had at the Manor, couldn’t get on at all, nor pay their way—Oh, taunt me with it! It’s come to that, and I can’t gainsay it. I draw beer for my living, and I ought to encourage them that come. But I can’t abide it, all the same,” cried Patty, stamping her foot on the dry and sandy turf; “and I won’t look at a man, if he was a prince, that is soaking and drinking night and day!”
She turned and walked off towards the house with her quick, springy step, followed by the unhappy Gervase, who called “Patty! Patty!” by intervals, as he went after humbly. At last, just before they came into sight of the loungers about the door, he ventured to catch at her sleeve.
“Patty! Patty! just for one moment! Listen—do listen to me!”
“What were you pleased to want, sir?” said Patty, turning upon him. “Another tankard of beer?”
“Oh, Patty,” said the young man, “if I was to give it up, and never touch another blessed drop again——”
“It would be real good for you—the very best thing you could do.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that. Would you be a little nice to me, Patty? Would you listen to me when I speak?—would you——?”
“I always listen to them that speaks sense, Mr. Gervase.”
“I know I ain’t clever,” said the poor fellow; “and whether this is sense I don’t know: but you shall be my lady when father dies, if you’ll only listen to me now.”
Patty’s eyes danced, and her pulses beat with a thrill which ran through her from head to foot. But she said:
“I’ll never listen to any man, if he would make me a queen, so long as he went on like that with the beer!”
CHAPTER III.
Greyshott Manor, to which Gervase directed his steps after the interview above recorded, was a large red brick mansion, no earlier than the reign of Anne; though there were traces in various parts of the house of a much older lineage. The front, however, which you could see through the wonderful avenue of beeches, which was the pride of the place, bore a pediment and twinkled with rows of windows, two long lines above the porticoed and pillared door, which also had a small pediment of its own. It looked old-fashioned, but not old, and was in perfect repair. When the sun shone down the beech avenue, which faced to the west, it turned the old bricks of the house into a sort of glorified ruddiness, blended of all the warmest tones—red and russet, and brown and orange, with a touch of black relieving it here and there. The effect in autumn, when all those warm tints which, by the alchemy of nature, bring beauty out of the chilly frost and unlovely decay—was as if all the colours in the rainbow had been poured forth; but all so toned and subdued by infinite gradation that the most violent notes of colour were chastened into harmony. It was not autumn, however, at this moment, but full summer—the trees in clouds and billows of full foliage, dark on either side of that glory of the moon, which poured down like a silver river between, and made all the windows white with the whiteness of her light. The avenue was a wonderful feature at Greyshott, and even the mere passer-by had the good of it, since it was closed only by a great gate of wrought iron, which would also have been worth looking at had the spectator been a connoisseur. The fault of the avenue was that it was a short one—not above a quarter of a mile long—and it was now used only by foot-passengers, who had a right of way through the little postern that flanked the big gate. Important visitors drove up on the other side, through what was called the Avenue, which was just like other avenues; but the Beeches were the pride of Greyshott. To think that the one slim shadow that came into the moonlight in the midst of them, with a wavering gait and stooping shoulders, should be the future lord and master of all those princely older inhabitants, with the power of life and death in his hands! A few years hence, when old Sir Giles had come to the end of his existence, his son could cut them down if he pleased. He could obliterate the very name of the great trees, so much more dignified and splendid members of society than himself, which stood in close ranks on either side of the path: he so little and they so great, and yet this confused and bewildered mortal the master of all!
If Gervase walked with a wavering gait, it was not because of the beer against which Patty had made so strong a remonstrance. He had, indeed, had quite enough of that; but his uncertain step was natural to the Softy, as all the country called him. He went along with his head stooping, his hands in his pockets, his eyes traversing the path as well as his feet, keeping up an inane calculation of the white pebbles, or the brown ones, among the gravel. He had long been in the habit of playing a sort of game with himself in the vacancy of his mind, the brown against the white, counting them all along the level of the road, occasionally cheating himself in the interests of the right side or the left. This occupation had beguiled him over many a mile of road. But it had palled upon him since he had known Patty, or rather, since she had surprised him into that admiration and enthusiasm which had made him determine to marry her, whatever difficulties might be in the way. It was, perhaps, because of the rebuff she had given him that Gervase had again taken to his game with the brown and white pebbles in the road, which, indeed, it was not too easy to distinguish in the whiteness of the moon. He walked along with his head down, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders up to his ears, and the moon was very unhandsome in the matter of shadow, and threw a villainous blotch behind him upon that clear white line of way. There was a light in the front of the house to which Gervase was bound; a sort of querulous light, which shone keen in the expanse of windows, all black and white in the moon, like the eyes of an angry watcher looking out for the return of the prodigal, but not like the father in the parable. It was, indeed, exactly so: the light was in his mother’s window, who would not go to bed till Gervase had come home. It was not late, but it was late for the rural household, which was all closed and shut up by ten o’clock. Sir Giles was an invalid, his wife old, and accustomed to take great care of herself. She sat up in her dressing-gown, angry, though anxious, with all the reproachful dignity of a woman kept up and deprived of her natural rest, ready to step into bed the moment her vigil was over; a large watch ticking noisily and also reproachfully on the table beside her, with a sort of stare in its large white face, seeming to say, late! late! instead of tick, tick—to the young man’s guilty ear.
At least, it had once done so; but Gervase by this time was quite hardened to the watch that said late! and the mother whose tongue in the tschick, tschick! of angry remonstrance, hailed him for want of better welcome when he went in.
He directed himself to a little side door in the shadow, which was often left open for him by the old butler, who had less fear of his plate than of getting the boy, whom, Softy as he was, he loved, into trouble. But sometimes it was not left open; sometimes an emissary from above, his mother’s maid, who loved him not, one of her satellites, turned the key, and Gervase had to ring, waking all the echoes of the house. He thought it was going to be so on this particular night, for when he pushed, it did not yield. Next moment, however, it opened softly, showing a tall shadow in the dimly-lighted passage. “O, Gervase, how late you are!” said a low voice.
“Why, it’s you!” he said.
“Yes, it’s me. My aunt is angry, I don’t know why. And she says you are to go to her before you go to bed.”
“I sha’n’t!” said Gervase.
“Do, there’s a dear boy. She has got something in her head. She will imagine worse than the truth if you don’t go. Oh! why should you be so undutiful? They would be so good to you if you would but let them. Go to your mother, Gervase, and let her see——”
She paused, looking at him by the faint light as if she were not very sure that Gervase’s mother would see anything satisfactory. There was not, indeed, anything exhilarating to see. His light eyes, which had shone with a certain brightness upon Patty, were opaque now, and had no speculation in them. His under lip hung a little, and was always moist. The sullen look was habitual to his face. “What does she want o’ me?” he said in his throat, running his words into each other.
“She wants of you—— what I’m afraid she’ll never get,” said the cousin with a tone of exasperation; “but at least go and say good-night to her, Gervase, and be as pleasant as you can. You may always do that.”
“You’re not one that thinks much o’ my pleasantness, Meg.”
