of clay. He pulled out his pockets as he spoke, which shed a number of small articles upon the floor, but not a coin. “I have a deal to give – to her or any one,” he said.
“Where do you spend it all?” said the mother; “five shillings I gave you on Monday, and what expenses have you? Kept in luxury, and never needing to put your hand in your pocket. Goodness, Meg, what a smell! Is it a barrel of beer you’ve rolled into my room, or is it – is it my only boy?”
“By – Gosh!” said Gervase. He could not be gentlemanly even in his oaths. He would have said “By George!” or perhaps “By Jove!” even if he had been with Patty, but nothing but this vulgar expletive would come to his lips here.
“I’ve heard of you, sir,” said Lady Piercey; “I’ve heard where you spend your time, and who you spend it with. A common beerhouse, and the woman that serves the beer. Oh, good gracious! good gracious! and to think that should be my son, and that he’s the heir to an old estate and will be Sir Gervase if he lives!”
“Ay,” said Gervase, with a laugh, “and you can’t stop that, old lady, not if you should burst.”
“Don’t you be too sure I can’t stop it,” she cried. “Your father is not much good, but he is more good than you think; and if you suppose there’s no way of putting an idiot out of the line, you’re mistaken. There are plenty of asylums for fools, I can tell you; and if you are such a double-dyed fool as that – ”
Gervase stared and grew pale; but then he took courage and laughed a weak laugh. “I may be a fool,” he said, “you’re always that nice to me, mamma: but there’s them in the world that will stand up for me, and cleverer than you.”
Lady Piercey stared also for a moment; and then turning to Mrs. Osborne, asked, “Meg! what does the ass mean?”
“Oh, have a little patience, aunt! He means – nothing, probably. He has been doing no harm, and he’s vexed to be blamed. Why should he be blamed when he has been doing no harm?”
“Do you call it no harm to bring the smell of an alehouse into my room?” cried Lady Piercey; “you will have to open all the windows to get rid of it, and probably I shall get my death of cold – which is what he would like, no doubt.”
Gervase laughed again, his lower lip more watery than ever. “Trust you for taking care of yourself,” he said. “If that’s all you have got to say, slanging a fellow for nothing, I’ll go to bed.”
“Stop here, when I tell you! and let me know this instant about that woman. Who is she that will have anything to say to you? Perhaps she thinks she will be my lady, and get my place after me – a girl that draws beer for all the ploughmen in the parish!”
“I don’t know who you’re speaking of,” said Gervase. His face grew a dull red, and he clenched his fist. “By Gosh! and if she marries me, so she will, and nobody can stop it,” he said.
“You had better banish this illusion from your mind,” said Lady Piercey, with solemnity. “A woman like that shall never be my lady, and come after me. It’s against – against the laws of this house; it’s against the law of the land. Your father can leave every penny away from you! And as for the name, it’s – it’s forbidden to a common person. The Lord Chancellor will not allow it! – the Queen will not have it! You might as well try to – to bring down St. Paul’s to Greyshott! Do you hear, you fool, what I say?”
Gervase stood with his mouth open: he was confounded with these big names. The Queen and the Lord Chancellor and St. Paul’s! They mingled together in a something stupendous, an authority before which even Patty, with all her cleverness, must fail. He gazed at his mother with the stupid alarm which all his life her denunciations had inspired. St. Paul’s and the Queen! The one an awful shadow, coming down on the moors; the other at the head of her army, as in a fairy story. And the Lord Chancellor! something more alarming still, because Gervase could form no idea of him unless by the incarnation of the police, which even in Greyshott was a name of fear.
“Look here,” said Lady Piercey, “this is what it would mean; you wouldn’t have a penny; you’d have to draw the beer yourself to get your living; you’d be cut off from your father’s will like – like a turnip top. The Lord Chancellor would grant an injunction to change your name; for they won’t have good old names degraded, the great officers won’t. You might think yourself lucky if you kept the Gervase, for that’s your christened name; but it would be Gervase Brown, or Green, or something; – or they might let you for a favour take her name – the beerhouse woman’s; which would suit you very well, for you would be the beerhouse man.”
Gervase’s lip dropped more and more, his face grew paler and paler. Lady Piercey by long experience had grown versed in this kind of argument. She was aware that she could reduce him to absolute vacuity and silence every plea he might bring forth. He had no plea, poor fellow. He was so ignorant that, often as he had been thus threatened, he never had found out the absurdity of these threats. He fell upon himself like a ruined wall, as he stood before her limp and terrified. There was a grim sort of humour in the woman which enjoyed this too, as well as the sense of absolute power she had over him; and when she had dismissed him, which she did with the slight touch of a kiss upon his cheek, but again a grimace at the smell of beer, she burst into a wild but suppressed laugh. “Was there ever such a fool, to believe all I say?” she said to her niece who removed her dressing-gown, and helped her into bed; and then – for this fierce old lady was but an old woman after all – she fell a-whimpering and crying. “And that’s my son! oh Lord! my only child; all that I’ve got in the world.”
CHAPTER IV
Margaret found Gervase waiting for her in the darkness of the corridor, when she left his mother. Lady Piercey was a righteous woman, who would not keep her maid out of bed after ten o’clock; but her niece was a different matter. He caught his cousin by the arm, almost bringing from her a cry of alarm. “Meg,” he said in her ear, “do you think it’s all true?”
“Oh, Gervase, you gave me such a fright!”
“Is it all true?”
“How can I tell you? I don’t know anything about the law,” she said, with a sense of disloyalty to the poor fellow who was so ignorant; but she could not contradict her aunt, and if that was supposed to be for his good —
“If it should be,” said Gervase, with a deep sigh: and then he added, “I couldn’t let her marry me if it wasn’t to be for her good.”
“Oh, Gervase, why can’t you show yourself like that to them?” his cousin said.
“I don’t know what you mean. I make no difference,” he answered dully, as he turned away.
Then there came another disturbance. The door of Sir Giles’ room further on opened cautiously, and his servant, who was also his nurse, looked out with great precaution and beckoned to her. Sir Giles was in bed; an old man with a red face and white hair; his under lip dropped like that of Gervase, though there was still a great deal of animation in his little bright blue eyes. He called her to come to him close to his bedside, as if Dunning, his man, did not know exactly what his master was going to ask.
“Has Gervase come in?” he said.
“Yes, uncle.”
“Is he drunk?”
“Oh, no,” said Margaret eagerly, “nothing of the sort!”
“That’s all right,” said the old gentleman with a sigh of
