“No, no,” said Sir Giles, pushing the table away; “I don’t want any game. I’m a sad, lonely old man, and I want somebody to talk to. Gervase, sit down there and talk to me. Where have you been all this long time, and your mother, your poor mother, wanting you? What have you been doing? You can go, Dunning; I don’t want you now. I want to talk to my boy. Gervase, what have you been doing, and why didn’t you come home?”
“I’ve been—getting married, father,” said Gervase, grinning from ear to ear. “I would have told you, but she wouldn’t let me tell you. She thought you might have put a stop to it. A fellow wants to be married, father, when he’s my age.”
“And who has married you?” said the father, going on beating with his tremulous fingers as though keeping time to some music. “Who has married you, my poor boy? It can’t be any great match, but we couldn’t expect any great match. I saw—a young woman: I thought she was—that I had somehow seen her before.”
“Well, she’s—why, she’s just married to me, father. She’s awful proud of her new name. She signed her letter—for I saw it—Mrs. Gervase Piercey, as if she hadn’t got any other name.”
“She shouldn’t do that, though,” said the old man, “she’s Mrs. Piercey, being the son’s wife, the next heir. If Gerald had a wife, now, she’d be Mrs. Gerald, but not yours. I’m afraid she can’t know much about it. Gervase, your poor mother was struck very suddenly. She always feared you were going to do something like that, and she had somebody in her mind, but she was never able to tell me who it was. Gervase, I hope it is somebody decent you have married, now your poor mother isn’t here.”
“Oh, yes, father; awfully decent,” said Gervase, with his great laugh. “She would have given it to any one that wasn’t civil. She was one that kept you on and kept you off, and as clever as Old Boots himself, and up to——”
Patty had listened to this discussion till her patience was quite worn out. She had waited for a favourable moment to introduce herself, but she could not stand and hear this description, so far beneath her merits as she felt it to be. She came in with a little rush of her skirts, not disagreeable to the old man, who looked up vaguely expectant, to see her sweep round the corner of the large screen that shielded him from the draught. “I must come and tell you myself who I am, Sir Giles,” she said. “I’m Patience; and though, perhaps, I shouldn’t say it, I’m one that will take care of that, and take care of the house, and see that you are not put upon by your servants, nor made to wait for anything, but have whatever you wish. And I’ll be a very good daughter to you, if you’ll let me, Sir Giles,” she said.
The old gentleman had passed a miserable week. First his wife’s illness, so dreadful and beyond all human commiseration, and then her death, and the gloom of the house, and the excitement of the funeral, and the neglect of everything that made life bearable to him. It is true, that his soup and his wine and whatever food was allowed to him were supplied regularly, and no actual breach of his comforts had occurred. But his room had been darkened, and his backgammon had been stopped, and there had been no cheerful faces round him. Even little Osy’s company had been taken away. The child had been stated to be “too much” for him. Parsons and Dunning had held him in their hands and administered him, and they were both determined that he should do and say nothing that was not appropriate to his bereaved condition. The old man was not insensible to his wife’s death. It brought into his mind that sense of utter desolation, that chill sensation of an approaching end, which is, alas! not more palatable in many cases to an old man than to a young one. And Parsons and Dunning both thought it the most appropriate thing for him to sit alone and think of his latter end. But Sir Giles was not of that opinion. His old life was strong in him, though it was hampered with so many troubles. He wanted, rather, to forget that death was waiting for him, too, round the next corner. Who could tell how far off that next corner might be? He wanted to forget, not to be shut up helplessly with that thought alone. And Mrs. Osborne, with all the prejudices and bonds of the household upon her, had not had courage to break through the lines which had been formed around her uncle. She had believed, as it was the law of the family to believe, that Sir Giles’ faithful attendant knew best. And thus it was, that when the young woman who was Gervase’s wife came boldly in—a young person who was not afraid of Dunning, a stranger bringing a little novelty, a little stir of something unaccustomed into his life—he looked up with a kind of light in his dull eye, and relief in his mind. “Oh! you are Patience, are you?” he said. “Patience! it is a queer sort of a name, and I think I remember to have heard it before.”
Oh, poor Miss Hewitt, in her red and yellow bonnet! If she had but known that this faint deposit of recollection was all that remained in her old lover’s mind!
“But I should like you to call me Patty, Sir Giles.” She went down on her knees at his feet, while the old gentleman looked on in wonder, not knowing what was going to happen. “You have not got that bandage quite straight,” she said, “and I’m sure you’re not so comfortable as you ought to be. I can put it on better than that. Look you here, Gervase, hold the candle, and in a minute I’ll settle it all right.”