The Cuckoo in the Nest, v. 2/2

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Well, well,” said Patty, “time shows everything, you know, and he’s quite safe with me and Gervase; at all events, whatever comes after, his only son comes first, don’t he? And me and Gervase will see that the dear old man isn’t made a cat’s-paw of, but kept quite square.”

It was with a sensation half of disappointment, yet more than half of satisfaction, that Patty found herself next morning alone in what she called so confidently her own house. Alone, for Sir Giles, of course, was in his own room, and was much better there, she felt, and Gervase, so long as he was kept in good humour, was not very troublesome. To be sure, it cost a good deal of exertion on her part to keep him in good humour. He felt, as so many a wooer of his simple mind has done, the want of the employment of courtship, which had so long amused and occupied him. He could no longer go to the Seven Thorns in the evening, a resource which was entirely cut off from his vacant life, from the fact of having Patty always with him, without the exercise of any endeavour on his own part. The excitement of keeping free of his mother’s scrutiny; the still greater excitement of fishing furtively for Patty’s attention, making her see that he was there, persuading her by all the simple wiles of which he was master to grant him an interview; the alarm of getting home, with all the devices which had to be practised in order to get in safely, without being called to account and made to say where he had been—and inspected, to see what he had been doing: all this took a great deal of the salt out of poor Gervase’s life. He did not know, now that he had settled down again at home, and all the annoying sensations of the crises were over, what to do with himself in the evenings. Patty and he alone were rather less lively than it had used to be when Sir Giles and Lady Piercey sat in their great chairs, and the game of backgammon was going on, and Meg about, and the child rampaging in all the corners. Even to have so many more people in the room gave it to him an air of additional animation. Patty told him it was the library that looked so dull. “Such a room for you all to sit in,” she said, “so gloomy and dark, with these horrid old pictures, and miles of books. Wait till I have the drawing-room in order.” But it didn’t amuse Gervase to watch all the alterations Mrs. Patty was making, nor how she was having the white and gold of the great drawing-room furbished up. The first night they sat in that huge room, with all the lamps lit, and the two figures lost among all the gilding and the damask, and reflected over and over again, till they were tired of seeing themselves in the big mirrors, Gervase felt more lonely than ever. Never had Patty found so hard a task before her,—not when she had to attend to all the customers alone, and keep their accounts separate in her head, and to chalk up as much as was safe to the score of one toper, and cleverly avoid hearing the call of another who had exceeded the utmost range of possible solvability. Never, when she had all that to do, had she found it so heavy upon her as it was to amuse Gervase. She invented noisy games for him, she plied him with caresses when other methods failed, she endeavoured to revive the old teasings and elusions of the courtship; but as Gervase’s imagination had never had much to do with his love-making, these attempts to return to an earlier stage were generally futile. He could not be played with—made miserable by a frown, brought back again by a smile, as had once been the case. And Patty had more than the labours of a Hercules in keeping her Softy in order. There was no one to defend him from now, no tyrannical mother to be defied, to make him feel the force of the wife’s protection. When Sir Giles was well enough to come to the drawing-room after dinner, the task was quite beyond the powers of any woman; for it was needful to please the old gentleman, to give up everything for him, to represent to him that his company was always a delight to his children. Poor old Sir Giles had winked and blinked in the many lights of the great drawing-room. He had been dazzled, but he had not been ill-pleased.

“We never used this, you know, in your mother’s time but for company,” he said. It was Gervase whom he seemed to address, but it was Patty who replied.

“I thought it would be a little change for you,” she said. “A change is always good, and there’s more light and more air. You should always have plenty of air, and not the associations that are in the other room.”

“Perhaps you are right, my dear,” the old gentleman said with a sigh. It was she who was “my dear” now; and, indeed, she was very attentive to Sir Giles, never neglecting him, doing everything she could think of for his pleasure. It was on one of the evenings when she was devoting herself to him, playing the game he loved, and allowing him to win in the cleverest way, that Gervase, who was strolling about the room with his hands in his pockets, half jealous of his father, calling her, now in whispers, now loudly, to leave that and come to him, at last disappeared before the game was finished. Patty went on hurriedly with the backgammon, but she was on thorns all the while. She had established the habit of sending off Dunning, whom she was slowly undermining, less for any serious reason than because he was a relic of the past régime; and, therefore, she was now helpless; could not leave Sir Giles; could not interrupt the process of amusing and entertaining him. Where had the Softy gone? to prowl about the house looking for something that might amuse him; to fling himself dissatisfied upon his bed and fall asleep in the utter vacancy of his soul? An uneasy sense that something worse than this was possible oppressed Patty as she sat and played out the game of backgammon. Then there ensued another dreadful interval, during which Sir Giles talked and wondered what had become of his son. “He has gone to sleep somewhere, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Patty; “the nights are growing long, and poor dear Gervase wants a little amusement. I was thinking of suggesting, dear papa (this was the name she had fixed upon Sir Giles, who had resisted at first, then laughed, and finally accepted the title with the obedience of habit), that we should both play, he and I, against you. You are worth more than the two of us, you know.”

“Nonsense, you little flatterer. You’ve a very pretty notion of the game. I had to fight for it that last round. I had, indeed. I had to fight for my life.”

“Ah, dear papa!” said Patty, shaking her head at him. “You are worth far more than the two of us! but it would keep us all together, all the family together.”

“I don’t like Gervase to play with me,” said Sir Giles fretfully. “He’s too noisy, and he has no sense; he can’t understand a refined game. I shouldn’t wonder if he had gone out to some of his old haunts that his poor mother couldn’t bear. The Seven——. I beg your pardon, my dear, I am sure,” the old gentleman cried, colouring up to his eyes.

“Dear papa, why should you beg my pardon? But oh, no! Gervase has not gone to the Seven Thorns. He went there for me. That makes all the difference. Why should he go back now?”

“My dear,” said Sir Giles again, “I must beg your pardon. I didn’t intend to make any insinuation. Of course it was for you. But it’s a dangerous thing to acquire a habit, especially for one that—for one that doesn’t, don’t you know, take in many ideas at a time.”