The Cuckoo in the Nest, v. 2/2

by Mrs. Oliphant

“I am much obliged to you,” said Patty. “If there’s any reward you’d take——”

“Meaning money?” he said, with a suppressed roar of a laugh. “No, I won’t take no money. I might say something nasty to you after that, but I won’t neither. It ain’t very nice for you, poor girl, to have your man brought home in that state by your old sweetheart. I feel for you; but you always had a sharp tongue, and you never would give in. I advise you to take more care of the Softy now you’ve got him back,” he said as he went away.

Patty shut and locked the door with an energy of rage and humiliation which almost overcame the horror of being heard. And then she went into the library and sat beside her husband till he had sufficiently recovered from his stupor to be taken upstairs. What hours of vigil! All the sins of her triumph might have been expiated while she sat there and shivered through the miserable night.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Patty had thoughts enough, surely, to occupy her that night, but it is doubtful whether there were any that came into her mind with the same reality—repeated again and again, as if by accident the recollection had been blown back upon her by a sudden wind—as those careless words uttered by Pearson when he had described how he had found Gervase: “I had been at a little hop at Coulter’s Mill;” he said ’op, but though Patty had never used that manner of speech herself it did not hurt her. A little hop at Coulter’s Mill. Such things were going on while she was shut up in the dismal grandeur of Greyshott. Girls were whirling round with their partners, receiving their attentions, which, though they might be rough and not very refined, were all that Patty knew of those delights of youth; while she, Patty, whom they all envied, who was now so far above them, sat and played backgammon with an old dotard, or watched half the night for her Softy’s return. There were still such things, and Roger Pearson went to them! Patty had a soft place in her heart for Roger; she wished him no harm, and it might very well have been, had not Gervase and ambition come across her path, that she should have been his wife; and though she wished him nothing but good, Patty did hope that she had more or less broken his heart. She thought he would never have wished to go to those sort of places again, where every tune that was played and every dance would remind him of her. His careless speech took her, therefore, full in the breast, with a stupefying surprise. And he did not say it as if it was anything wonderful, but only as the calm ordinary of life, “I’d been at a little ’op at Coulter’s Mill.” And he was returning about two o’clock in the morning, which showed that he had amused himself well. Could such things be, and she out of them all? Every time this thought crossed her mind it gave her a new shock. It seemed almost impossible that such things could be.

But at all events, it was a comfort that Gervase at last was roused and got safely to his room before the servants were stirring, which it had been Patty’s fear would not be possible. She had made up her story what to say in case she had been surprised by the early housemaid. She meant to keep the door closed, and to say that Mr. Piercey had been ill in the night and could not sleep, and now had fallen asleep on the sofa, and must not be disturbed. Happily, however, it was not necessary to burden her conscience with this additional fib. She got him upstairs safely, and to bed, and lay down herself upon the sofa with great relief. What a night! while all the girls who had been at the dance at Coulter’s Mill would still be sleeping soundly, and if they ever thought of Patty, would think of her with such envy! Poor Patty, she was very brave. She snatched a little sleep, and was refreshed before Jerningham came to the door with that early cup of tea, which Patty understood all the fine ladies took in the morning. For once she was glad of that unnecessary refreshment. She told Jerningham that Mr. Piercey had been ill, and that she feared he had taken a bad cold; and then Patty closed the door upon the maid, who guessed, if she did not already know exactly, the character of the illness, and began to think steadily what she should do. She would tell Gervase that another night, if it happened again, he would be brought in dead, not alive. He would die, she would tell him, on the roadside like a dog. His was not a mind that could take in milder imaginations, but he would understand that. And Patty made up her mind to have another conversation with her father equally trenchant. She would tell him that if anything happened to Gervase she would have him tried for manslaughter. There would be abundant evidence, which she would not hesitate to bring forth, that the victim was half-witted, that he had been taken advantage of, and that the man who plied him with drink and then turned him out, his poor brain more clouded than ever, to find his way home, was his murderer and nothing else. Patty said to herself that she did not mind what scandals she would raise in such circumstances. If Richard Hewitt were brought to the scaffold she would not mind, though he was her father. She would tell him that she would drag him there with her own hands. She set here fierce little teeth, and vowed to herself that she would ruin him were he ten times her father, rather than let this go on. She would frighten Gervase to death; but before she was done she would set her foot on the ruins of the Seven Thorns.

Gervase, however, was too ill to be threatened the day after that dreadful vigil. He had caught cold lying out upon the moor, and he was very ill and in a high fever, quite unable to get up, or to have anything but nursing and kindness. Patty had the confidence of a woman well acquainted with the consequences of a debauch, that this would wear off in a short time and leave no particular results. She gave him beef-tea and gruel and kept him quiet, and told him, like a child, that he would be better to-morrow. “Gervase has caught a bad cold,” she told Sir Giles, “but you must not be anxious, dear papa. I am keeping him in his warm bed, and he’ll be all right to-morrow.” “Right, right, my dear,” said Sir Giles. “Bed is the best place. There is nothing like taking a cold in time, nothing like it. And we must remember he was always delicate. There’s no stamina in him, no stamina.” “He’ll be all right to-morrow,” Patty said, and she kept running up and down between the games to see if he was asleep, if he was comfortable, if he wanted anything. “Good creature!” said Sir Giles, half to himself, half to Dunning, who silently but consistently refused to appreciate Mrs. Piercey. “Now, what would you and I have done with the poor boy if he had been ill, and no wife on the spot to look after him?” “Maybe he wouldn’t have had the same thing the matter with him,” said Dunning, significantly. “Eh, what do you mean? What’s the matter with him? He’s got a bad cold,” cried Sir Giles. “There are colds and colds,” said the enigmatical Dunning. But Patty came back at the moment, saying that Gervase was quite quiet and asleep, and resumed her place for the second game. It was a longer game than usual, and Patty played badly, wishing her dear papa we will not venture to say how far off. But it came to an end at last, as everything does. “I hope you’ll have a good night, my dear, and not be disturbed with him,” the old gentleman said kindly. “Oh, I feel sure,” cried Patty, “he’ll be better to-morrow.” But, as a matter of fact, she was not at all sure. The fumes of the drink ought to have died off by that time, but the fever had not died off. He was ill, and she was frightened and did not know what to do. And instead of being better in the morning, poor Gervase was worse, and the doctor had to be sent for, to whom, after various prevarications, poor Patty was obliged to confess the truth. Impossible to look more grave than the doctor did when he heard of this. “It was enough to kill him,” he said. Patty understood (with a private reserve of vengeance against her father, who had been the cause of it) that Gervase was really ill and had escaped something still worse. But she was confident in her own powers of nursing, and did not take fright. She was really an excellent nurse, having a great deal of sense, and the habit of activity, and no fear of giving herself trouble. She devoted herself to her husband quite cheerfully, and even during the two first nights went down in a very pretty dressing-gown to play his game with Sir Giles. “We must not look for any change just yet, the doctor says, but he’ll soon be well, he’ll soon be well,” she said; and believed it so thoroughly that Sir Giles, too, was quite cheerful, notwithstanding that Dunning, in the background, shook his head. Dunning would have shaken his head whatever had been the circumstances. It was part of his position to take always the worst view. And the household in general also took the worst view. Nobody had said anything about that fatal lying out on the moor. Mrs. Gervase certainly had not said a word (except to the doctor), and Roger Pearson had resisted every temptation to betray his share in the matter; yet everybody knew. How did they know? It is impossible to tell. The butler shook his head like Dunning, and so did the cook. “He have no constitution,” they said.

But it was not till some days after that Patty began to take fright. She said “He’ll be better to-morrow,” even after she saw that the doctor looked grave—and resisted the aid of a nurse as long as she could, declaring that for a day or two longer she could hold out. “For he’s not going to be long ill,” she said, cheerfully. “Perhaps not,” the doctor replied, with a tone that was exasperating in its solemnity. What did he mean? “You must remember, Mrs. Piercey,” he continued, “that your husband has no constitution. Fortunately he has had no serious illness before, but he has always been delicate. It’s common in—in such cases. He never had any stamina. You cannot expect him to throw off an attack such as this like any other man.”

“Why not like any other man?” cried Patty. She was so familiar with Gervase that she had forgotten his peculiarities. Except when she thought of it as likely to serve her own purpose with her father, she had even forgotten that he was the Softy. He was her husband—part of herself, about whom, assuredly, there was no fibre of weakness. “Why shouldn’t he shake it off like any other man?” she cried angrily.

The doctor gave her a strange look. “He has no constitution,” he said.