Ithas been stated by various persons afflicted with that kind of trouble, that to be enlightened above one’s fellows is a great trial and misery. I don’t know how that may be, but it is certainly a great trouble to be a Softy, to have a fluid brain in which everything gets disintegrated, and floats about in confusion, and never to be able to lay hold upon a subject distinctly either by head or tail, however much it may concern you. This was the case of poor Gervase the morning after he had received that evening address from his mother in her nightcap, which was so well adapted to confuse any little wits the poor fellow had. That his marriage might be forbidden, and his very name taken from him, and himself reduced to draw beer at the Seven Thorns for his living, instead of making a lady of Patty, and lifting her out of all such necessities, overwhelmed his mind altogether. If it was true, he had better, in fact, have nothing more to say to Patty at all. A forlorn sense that it might be well for her in such a case to turn to Roger, who at least would deliver her from drawing beer, lurked in the poor fellow’s breast. Nothing would humiliate Gervase so much as the triumph of Roger, who had always been the one person in the world who pointed the moral of his own deficiencies to the unfortunate young squire; and there swelled in his breast a sort of dull anguish and sense of contrast, in which Roger’s triumphant swing of the bat and kick of the football mingled with his carrying off of the woman whom poor Gervase admired and adored, adding a double piquancy to the act of renunciation which he was slowly spelling out in his own dumb soul. Nobody would try to take away that fellow’s name. He had a cottage of his own that he could take her to, dang him! Gervase was beguiled for a moment into his old indignant thought that such a man playing cricket all over the county would probably come to the workhouse in the end, and that this was where Patty might find herself, if she preferred the athlete to himself; but he threw off the idea in his new evanescent impulse. She was too clever for that! She’d find a way to keep a man straight, whether it was a poor fellow who was not clever, or one that was too good at every kind of diversion. I am no great believer in heredity, and the house of Piercey was by no means distinguished for its chivalrous instincts or tendencies; yet I am glad to think that some vague influence from his ancient race had put this idea of giving up Patty, if he could bring only trouble and no bettering to her, into his dull and aching head. If he had been wiser, he would probably have kept away from her in this new impulse of generosity, but he was not wise at all, his first idea was to go to Patty, and tell her, and receive her orders—which no doubt she would give peremptorily—to go away from her. He never expected anything else. He was capable of giving her up, for her good, if he found himself unable to make a lady of her, in a dull sort of way, as a necessity; but he was not capable of the thought that she might stand by him to her own hurt. It seemed quite natural to him—not a thing to be either blamed or doubted—that as soon as it was proved that he could not make a lady of her, she would send him away.
It was a dull morning, warm but grey, the sky, or rather the clouds hanging low, and the great stretch of the moorland country lying flat underneath, its breadth of turf and thickets of gorse, and breaks of sandy road and broken ground all running into one sombre, greyish, greenish, yellowish colour in the flat tones of the sunless daylight. Such a day in weariness embodied, taking the spring out of everything. The very birds in the big trees behind the Seven Thorns were affected by it and chirruped dejectedly, fathers and mothers swiftly snubbing any young thing that attempted a bit of song. The seven thorns themselves, which were old trees and knocked about by time and weather and the passing of straw-laden carts, and other drawbacks, looked shabbier and older than ever: no place for any lovers’ meeting. Gervase had not the heart to go into the house. He sat down on the bench outside, like any tramp, and neither called to Patty, nor attempted any way of attracting her attention. She had seen him, I need not say, coming over the downs. She had eyes everywhere—not only in the back of her head, as the ostler and the maid at the Seven Thorns said, but at the tips of her fingers, and in the handle of the broom with which she was as usual sweeping briskly out the dust and sand of yesterday, and striking into every corner. The weather did not affect Patty. It needed something more than a grey day to discourage her active spirits. But when she found that her suitor did not come in, did not call her, did not even beat with his knuckles on the rough wooden table outside, to let it be known that he was there, surprise entered her breast; surprise and a little alarm. She had never let it be known by any one that she was moved by Gervase’s suit. In her heart she had always been convinced that the Softy would not be allowed to marry, and her pride would not allow her to run the risk of such a defeat. At the same time there was always the chance that her own spirit might carry him through, and the prospect was too glorious to be altogether thrown away; so that when Patty became aware that he was sitting there outside, with not heart enough to say Boh! to a goose—alarm stole over her, and to contemplate the possible failure of all these hopes, was more than she could calmly bear. She stood still for a minute or two listening, with her head a little on one side, and all her faculties concentrated upon the sounds from the door: but heard nothing except the aimless scrape of his foot against the sandy pebbles outside. Finally she went out, and stood on the threshold, her broom still in her hand.
“Oh! so it is you, Mr. Gervase! I couldn’t think who it could be that stuck there without a word to nobody. You’ve got a headache, as I said you would.”
“No—I’ve got no headache. If I’ve anything, it’s here,” said poor Gervase, laying his hand on what he believed to be his heart.
“Lord, your stomach, then!” said Patty with a laugh—“but folks don’t say that to a lady; though I dare to say it’s very true, for beer is a real heavy thing, whatever you men may say.”
“I am not thinking of beer,” said Gervase. “I wish there was nothing more than that, Patty, between you and me.”
“Between you and me!” she cried with a twirl of her broom along the step, “there’s nothing between you and me. There’s a deal to be done first, Mr. Gervase, before any man shall say as there’s something between him and Miss Hewitt of the Seven Thorns; and if you don’t know that, you’re the only man in the parish as doesn’t. Is there anything as I can do for you? for I’ve got my work, and I can’t stand idling here.”
“Oh, Patty, don’t turn like that at the first word! As if I wasn’t down enough! You told me last night to give it up for your sake, and I meant to; and now you come and tempt me with it! If I must have neither my beer nor you, what is to become of me?” poor Gervase cried.
Patty felt that things were becoming serious. She was conscious of all the pathos of this cry. She leant the broom in a corner, and coming down the steps, approached the disconsolate young man outside. “Whatever’s to do, Mr. Gervase?” she said.
“Patty, I’ll have to give you up!” said the poor fellow, with his head upon his hand, and something very like a sob bursting from his breast.
“Give me up? You’ve never had me, so you can’t give me up,” cried proud Patty. She was, however, more interested by this than by other more flattering methods of wooing. She laughed fiercely. “Sir Giles and my lady won’t hear of it? No, of course they won’t! And this is my fine gentleman that thought nothing in the world as good as me! I told you you’d give in at the first word!” She was very angry, though she had never accepted poor Gervase’s protestations. He raised his head piteously, and the sight of her, flaming, sparkling, enveloping him in a sort of fiery contempt and fury, roused the little spark of gentlemanhood that was in Gervase’s breast.
“If I give in,” he said, “it is because of you, Patty. I’ll not marry you—not if you were ready this moment—to be the wife of a man without a penny that would have to draw beer for his living. I wouldn’t; no, I wouldn’t—unless I was to make you a lady. I wanted—to make a lady of you, Patty!”
And he wept; the Softy, the poor, silly fellow! Patty had something in her, though she was the veriest little egotist and as hard as the nether millstone, which vibrated in spite of her at this touch. She said, “Lord, bless the man! What nonsense is he talking? Draw beer for his living! Tell me now, Mr. Gervase, there’s a dear, what is’t you mean.”
And then poor Gervase poured out his heart: how he had been threatened with the Lord Chancellor and even with the Queen; how they could take not only every penny but his very name from him, and so make him bring shame upon the girl he loved instead of honour and glory as he had hoped. And how, in these circumstances, he would have to give her up. Better, though it might kill him, that she should marry a man who could keep her up in every thing than one who would be thrown upon her to make his living drawing beer.
Patty listened patiently, and cross-examined acutely to get to the bottom of this mystery. She was a little overawed to hear of the Lord Chancellor, whose prerogatives she could not limit, and who might be able to do something terrible; but gradually her good sense surmounted even the terrors of that mysterious power. “They can’t take your name from you,” she said; “it’s nonsense; not a bit. Your name? Why, you were born to it. It’s not like the estate. Of course your name’s yours, and nobody can’t take it away.”
“Not?” said Gervase, looking up beseechingly into her eyes.
“Not a bit. I, for one, don’t believe it. Nor the property either! I, for one, don’t believe it. They’ve neither chick nor child but you. What! give it away to a dreadful old man, a cousin, and you there, their own child! No, Mr. Gervase, I don’t believe a word of it. They wanted to frighten you bad; and so they have done, and that’s all.”
“They sha’n’t frighten me,” said Gervase, lifting his pale cheek and setting his hat on with a defiant look, “not if you’ll stand by me, Patty.”
“How am I to stand by you,” cried the coquette with a laugh, “if you’re a-going to give me up?”
“It was only for your sake, Patty,” he said. “I’d marry you to-day if I could, you know. That’s what I should like—just to marry you straight off this very day.” He got up and came close to her, almost animated in the fervour of his passion. His dull eyes lighted up, a little colour came to his face. If he could only be made always to look like that, it would be something like! was the swift thought that passed through her mind. She kept him off, retreating a step, and raising both her hands.
“Stand where you are, Mr. Gervase! You say so, I know; but I don’t see as you do anything to prove it, for all your fine words.”
A look of distress, the puzzled distress habitual to it, came over poor Gervase’s face. His under lip dropped once more, “What can I do?” he cried; “if I knew, I’d do it fast enough. Patty, don’t it all stand with you?”
“I never heard yet,” cried Patty, “that it was the lady who took the steps; everybody knows there’s steps that have to be took.”
“What steps, what steps, Patty?” he cried, with a feeble glance at his own feet, and the trace of them on the sandy road. Then a gleam of shame and confusion came over the poor fellow’s face. He knew the steps to be taken could not be like that, and paused eager, anxious, with his mouth open, waiting for his instructions—like a faithful dog ready to start after any stick or stone.
“Oh, you can’t expect me to be the one to tell you,” cried Patty, turning away as if to go back to the house; “the lady isn’t the one to think of all that.”
“Patty! I’m ready, ready to do anything! but how am I to know all of myself? I never had anything of the sort to do.”
“I hope not,” said Patty, with a laugh, “or else you wouldn’t be for me, Mr. Gervase, not if you were a duke—if you had been married before.”
“I—married before! Patty, only tell me what to do!” He looked exactly like Dash, waiting for somebody to throw a stone for him, but not so clever as Dash, alas! with that forlorn look of incapacity in his face, and the wish which was not father to any thought.
“Well, if you’re so pressing, a clergyman has the most to do with it.”
“I’ll go off to the rector directly.” He was like Dash now, when a feint had been made of throwing the stone: off on the moment—yet with a sense that all was not well.
“Oh! stop, you——!” Whatever the noun was, Patty managed to swallow it. “Come back,” she cried, as she might have cried to Dash. “Don’t you see? The rector; he’s the last man in the world.”
“Why?” cried Gervase. “He knows me, and you, and everything.”
“He knows—a deal too much,” said Patty; “he’d go and tell it all at the Hall, and make them send for the Lord Chancellor, or whatever it is.”
Poor Gervase trembled a little. “Couldn’t we run away, Patty, you and me together?” he said humbly; “I know them that have done that.”
“And have all the parish say I’m not married at all, and be treated like a—— wherever I showed my head. No, thank you, Mr. Gervase Piercey. I don’t think enough of you for that.”
“You would think enough of Roger for that,” cried poor Gervase, stung to the heart.
“Roger!” she cried, spinning round upon him with a flush on her face. “Roger would have had the banns up long before this, if I had ever said as much to him.”
“The banns!” cried Gervase. “Ah, now I know! that’s the clerk!” The stone was thrown at last. “They’ll be up,” he said, waving his hand to her as he looked back, “before you know where you are!”
It was all that Patty could do to stop him, to bring him back before he was out of hearing. Dash never rushed more determinedly after his stone.
“Mr. Gervase,” she shouted, “Mr. Piercey; sir! Hi! here! Come back, come back! Oh, come back, I tell you!” stamping her foot upon the ground.
He returned at last, very like the dog still, humbled, his head fallen, and discomfiture showing in the very attitude of his limp limbs.
“Is that not right either?” he said.
“The clerk would be up at the Hall sooner than the rector; the rector would understand a little bit, but the clerk not at all. Don’t you see, Mr. Gervase, if it is to be——”
“It shall be, Patty.”
“It must be in another parish, not here at all; and then you’d have to go to stay there for a fortnight.”
“Go to stay there for a fortnight!” Dismay was in the young man’s face. “How could I do that, Patty, with never having any money, and never allowed to sleep a night from home?”
“Well, for that matter,” she said, “how are you to marry anybody if things are to go on so?”
He made no reply, but looked at her with a miserable countenance, with his under lip dropped, his mouth open, and lack-lustre eyes.
And here Patty made a pause, looking at her lover, or rather gazing in the face of fate, and hesitating for one dread, all-important moment: she was not without a tenderness for him, the poor creature who adored her like Dash; but that was neither here nor there. While she looked at him there rose between him and her a vision of a very different face, strong and sure, that would never pause to be told what to do, that would perhaps master her as she mastered him. Ah! but then there was a poor cottage on one side, with a wife whose husband would be little at home, in too much request for her happiness; and on the other there was the Hall and the chance of being my lady. She looked in the face of fate, and seized it boldly, as her manner was.
“Stop a bit,” she said; “there’s another way.”
“What is it, what is it, Patty?”
“But it wants money; it costs a bit of money—a person has to go to London to get it.”
“Oh, Patty, Patty, haven’t I told you——”
“Stop!” she said; “I’m going to think it over; perhaps it can be done, after all, if you’ll do what I tell you. Don’t come near the Seven Thorns to-night; stay at home and be very good to the old folks; say you’d like to see London and a little life, and you’re tired of here.”
“But that would be a lie!”
“Oh, you softhead, if you’re going to stick at that! Perhaps you don’t want me at all, Mr. Gervase. Give me up; it would be far the best thing for you, far the best thing for you! and then there’s nothing more to be said.”
“Oh, Patty!” cried the poor fellow; “oh, Patty! when you know I’d give up my life for you.”
“Then do as I say, and mind everything I say, and I’ll see if it can’t be done.”
Gervasewent home as she had told him, not bounding after the stone like a dog who has got its heart’s desire, but steadily, a little heavily, somewhat disappointed, yet full of expectation, and always faithful. Something was going to be done for him that would result in Patty’s standing by him for ever, and helping him to all he wanted. He did not know what it was; he was by no means sure that he would understand what it was were he told; but she did, and that was enough. It was going to be done for him, while he had no trouble and would only reap the results. That was how it was going to be all the rest of the time. Patty would take the responsibility. She would face everything for him. She would stand between him and his mother’s jibes and his father’s occasional roar of passion. Gervase was dimly sensible that his people were ashamed of him, that they thought him of little account. But Patty did not feel like that. She, too, jibed at him, it is true; but then she jibed at everybody, even Roger. It was different, and she would let no one else jibe. She would take all the responsibility; with her beside him, standing by him, or perhaps in front of him, standing between him and all that was disagreeable, he should escape all the ills of life. He should not be afraid of any one any more. He went back to the hall determined to carry out his orders. For her sake he would make a martyr of himself all that evening; he would sit with the old folks and do his best to please them. He would talk about London and how he wished to see it. He would say he was tired of the country—even that, since Patty told him to do so. To be sure, if there was no Patty, he would be tired of it; if the Hall meant the country, yes, indeed, he was tired enough of that. He went home not in the least knowing what to do with himself; but faithful, faithful to his orders. Dash, when commanded to give up the wild delights of a run and watch a coat, or a stick, did it resignedly with noble patience, and so did Gervase now: he had, so to speak, to watch Patty’s coat while she went and did the work; it is the natural division of labour when one of two is the faithful dog rather than the man.
He began, three or four times, as he went along, that game with the white pebbles against the brown, and then remembered that it was silly, and pulled himself up. He would not like Patty to know that he had a habit of doing that. He was aware, instinctively, that it would seem very silly to her. Three, four, and five; and a great big one that ought to count three at least for the right hand man. No; he wouldn’t do it; it was silly; it was like a child, not a man. What, he wondered, was she going to do? Not go to the rector, because she had herself objected to that. Another way—he wondered what other way there could be—that dispensed with both parson and clerk? But that, thank Heaven, was Patty’s affair, and she had promised that she would do it. Seven brown ones in a row; such luck for the left-hand man! But no, no; he would not pay any attention to that. Patty would think him a fool for his pains. What was she doing—she that knew exactly what it was best to do? What a woman she was, up to everything; seeing with one look of her eye what he never would have found out, that it was not the right thing to speak to the rector, nor to the clerk, who was still worse than the rector. How much better it was that it should be all in her hands! How was a man to know, who had never been married himself, who knew nothing about such things, how to put up banns? What were banns? He had heard people asked in church, but he was not sure about the other name. Was it something, perhaps, to hang up like a picture? These thoughts did not pass through Gervase’s mind in so many words, but floated after each other vaguely, swimming in a dumb sort of consciousness. He had, perhaps, never had so many all turning round and crossing each other before. Generally it was only the pebbles he thought of as he walked unless when it was Patty. It gave him a strange sort of bewildering sense of life to feel how many things he was thinking of—such a crowd of different things.
In the beech avenue, going up and down in his chair, pushed by Dunning, and with Osy capering upon a stick before him, Gervase came upon his father taking his morning “turn.” He remembered what Patty said about being agreeable to the old folks, and he also had a certain pleasure in wheeling his father’s chair. So he stopped and pushed the servant away. “You go and take a rest, Dunning. I’ll take Sir Giles along,” he said. “You mustn’t play any tricks, Mr. Gervase,” said the man, resisting a little. “What tricks should I play? I can take care of my father as well as any one, I hope,” cried Gervase, taking with energy the back of the chair. It went along a little more quickly perhaps, but Sir Giles did not mind that. “Young legs go faster than ours, Dunning,” he said to his servant; “but stand you by, old man, in case Mr. Gervase gets tired.” “Oh, I’ll stand by. I’ll not leave that Softy in charge of my master,” Dunning said to himself. “Oh, I’ll not get tired, father,” said Gervase aloud. This was quite a delightful way of uniting obedience to Patty’s commands with pleasure to himself. “I’ll take you all round the grounds, father. Ain’t you tired of this beastly little bit of an avenue? I’ll take you faster, as fast as the carriage if you like.” “No, my boy, this’ll do,” said Sir Giles; “fair and softly goes the furthest.” Dunning came on behind shaking his head.
“You tan’t ride so fast as me, Uncle Giles,” cried little Osy, prancing upon his wooden steed.
“Can’t he, though, you little beggar. He’d soon run you out of breath, if I was to put on steam!”
“Oh, tome on, tome on!” cried Osy, flourishing his whip; and off Gervase tore, sweeping the chair along, with Dunning after him panting and exclaiming, and Sir Giles laughing, but shaking with the wild progress of the vehicle which usually went so quietly. The old gentleman rather liked it than otherwise, though when Gervase stopped with a sudden jerk and jar, he was thrown back upon his pillows, and seized with a fit of coughing. “You see you cannot do everything, little ’un; there’s some that can beat you,” cried Gervase, waving his long arms, and drawing up his sleeves. Osy had been thrown quite behind, and came up panting, his little countenance flushed, and his little legs twisting as he ran, the child no longer making any pretence to be a prancing steed. “Are you game for another run?”
“Yes, I’m dame,” cried little Osy, making a valorous struggle for his breath.
“No, no, that’s enough,” cried Sir Giles, coughing and laughing, “that’s enough, Gervase. No harm done, Dunning—you need not come puffing like a steam engine; but halt, Gervase, no more, no more.”
“Uncle Giles, I’m dame, tome on; Uncle Giles, I’m dame,” shouted Osy flourishing his little cap.
This scene was seen from my lady’s chamber with extremely mingled feelings. Lady Piercey sat in the recess of the window, where, in the evening, that querulous light had burned, waiting till Gervase came home. She had an old-fashioned embroidery frame fixed there, and worked at it for half an hour occasionally, with Margaret Osborne in attendance to thread her needles. Parsons had long since declared that her eyes were not equal to it, but with Mrs. Osborne there could be no such excuse. Lady Piercey had forgotten all about her work in watching. “There is my boy Gervase wheeling his father,” she said; “look out, look out, Meg. Whatever you may say, that boy is full of feeling. Look! He has taken it out of Dunning’s hands. See how pleased your uncle is; and little Osy acting outrider, bless him. Oh!” cried Lady Piercey with a shriek. Her terror made her speechless. She fell back in her chair with passionate gesticulations, grasped Margaret, and pulled her to the window, then thrust her away, pointing to the door. “Go! go!” she cried with a great effort, in a choked voice—which Parsons heard, and came flying from the next room.
“It’s nothing, aunt; see, they’ve stopped. It’s all right, Uncle Giles is laughing.”
“Go! go!” cried the old lady, pointing passionately to the door.
“Go, for goodness gracious sake, Mrs. Osborne. My lady will have a fit.”
“There is nothing—absolutely nothing, aunt. They’ve stopped. Dunning has taken his place again; there’s no need for interfering. Ah!” Margaret gave just such a cry as Lady Piercey had done, and flinging down her little sheaf of silks upon the frame, turned and flew from the room, leaving the old lady and her maid exchanging glances of consternation. And yet the cause of Mrs. Osborne’s sudden change of opinion was not far to seek; it was that Gervase had seized little Osy and swung him up to his shoulder, where the child sat very red and uneasy, but too proud to acknowledge that he was afraid.
“Put down my child this moment!” cried Margaret, descending like a thunderbolt in the midst of the group.
“He’s as right as a trivet. I’m going to give him a ride. I haven’t given him a ride for a long time. Hi! Osy, ain’t you as right as a trivet, and got a good seat?”
“Yes, tousin Gervase,” said the boy with a quaver in his voice, but holding his head high.
“Put him down this moment!” cried Margaret, stamping her foot and seizing Gervase by the arm.
“I’ll put him down when he’s had his ride. Now, old Dunning, here’s for it. We’ll race you for a sovereign to the gate. Sit tight, Osy, or your horse will throw you—he’s as wild as all the wild horses that ever were made.”
“Div me my whip first,” cried the child. He was elated though he was afraid. “And I won’t ride you if you haven’t a bit in your mouff.” Once more the little grimy pocket-handkerchief was brought into service. “Here’s the bit, and I’m holding you in hand. Now, trot!”
Margaret stood like a ghost, while the wild pair darted along the avenue, Gervase prancing with the most violent motion, little Osy sitting very tight, holding on to his handkerchief with the tightness of desperation, his cheeks blazing and throbbing with the tumultuous colour of courage, excitement, and fright. They are things which consist with each other. The child was afraid of nothing, but very conscious that he had once before been thrown from Gervase’s shoulder, and that the prospect was not a pleasant one. As for the spectators, Sir Giles in his chair and his wife at the window, they were in a ferment of mingled feeling, afraid for their pet, but excited by this new development on the part of their son. “Mr. Gervase is really taking great care,” gasped Lady Piercey to her maid. “Don’t you see? He’s got the child quite tight—not like that other time; Master Osy is quite enjoying it.”
“Oh yes, my lady,” said Parsons, doubtfully; “he’s got such a spirit.”
“And his cousin is so kind, so kind. There’s nobody,” said the old lady, with a sob and a gasp, “so good to children as my Gervase. There! thank Heaven, he’s put him down. Miss Meg—I mean Mrs. Osborne is making a ridiculous fuss about it,” said Lady Piercey, now running all her words into one in the relief of her feelings, “as if there was any fear of the child!”
Little Osy had swung down through the air with a sinking whirl as if he had shot Niagara, but once on firm ground, being really none the worse, tingled to his fingers’ ends with pride and triumph. He gave a smack of his little whip with his right hand, while with the other he clutched his mother’s dress, trembling and glowing. “Dood-bye, dood horse; I’ll—I’ll wide you again another time,” he shouted, with a slight quaver in his voice.
Sir Giles was half-weeping, half-laughing, in the excitement of his age and weakness. Now that the child was safe, he, too, was delighted and proud. “Good’un to go, ain’t he, Osy?” he cried. “But I say, lad, you oughtn’t to caper like that; he’s a deal too fresh, Dunning, eh? wants to have it taken out of him.”
“Yes, Sir Giles,” said Dunning. (“And I’d just like to take it out of him with a cart whip,” he murmured, between his closed teeth.)
Lady Piercey was weeping a little, too, at her window, calming down from her excitement. “How strong he is, bless him, and well-made when he holds himself straight; and wouldn’t harm the child not for the world, or any one that trusts him. Oh, Parsons, what a joyful family we’d be if Master Osy had been my son’s boy!”
“Bless you, my lady, he’s too young to have a boy as big as that.”
“So he is, the dear. If I could live to see him with an heir, Parsons!”
“And why not, my lady? You’re not to call old, and with proper care and taking your medicines regular—one of these days he’ll be bringing home some nice young lady.” (“Some poor creature as will be forced to take ’im, or else Patty of the Seven Thorns,” was Parsons’ comment within herself.)
“And then that poor little darling!” said Lady Piercey, regretfully. “But,” she added with a firmer tone, “Meg spoils the boy to such a degree that he’ll be ruined before he’s a man. Look at her petting him as if he’d been in any danger; but she never had an ounce of sense. Get me my things, Parsons; I’ll go down and sit in the air a bit and talk to my boy.”
Gervase had fallen out of his unusual liveliness before his mother succeeded in reaching the beech avenue, but he came forward at her call, and permitted her to take his arm. “I like to see you in spirits,” the old lady said, “but you mustn’t shake about your father like that. Dunning’s safest for an old man.”
“I’ll drive you out in the phaeton, mother, if you like, this afternoon.”
“No, my dear; I feel safest in the big carriage with the cobs, and old Andrews; but it’s a pleasure to see you in such spirits, Gervase; you’re like my own old boy.”
“You see,” said Gervase, with his imbecile, good-humoured smile, “I’ve promised to do all I can to please you at home.”
“Ah!” cried the old lady, “and who might it be that made you promise that? and why?”
Gervase broke into a laugh. “Wouldn’t you just like to know?” he said.
“Osy,” said Mrs. Osborne, “you mustn’t let cousin Gervase get hold of you like that again.”
“He’s a dood horse,” said the little boy, “when I sit tight. I have to sit vewey tight; but next time I’ll get on him’s both shoulders, and hold him like a real horse. He’s dot a too narrow back, and too far up from the ground.”
“But listen to me, Osy. It makes me too frightened. You mustn’t ride him again.”
“I’ll not wide him if I can help it,” said Osy, reddening with mingled daring and terror, “but he takes me up before I can det far enough off, and I tan’t run away, mamma.”
“But you must run away, Osy, when I tell you.”
The child looked up at her doubtfully. “It was you that told me gemplemens don’t run away.”
“Not before an enemy, or that,” said Margaret, taking refuge in the vague, “but when it’s only for fun, Osy.”
“Fun isn’t never serous, is it, mamma?”
“It would be very serious if you fell from that fo——, from Cousin Gervase’s shoulder, Osy. Go out for a walk this afternoon, dear, with nurse.”
“I don’t like nurse. I like Uncle Giles best. And I’m the outwider, telling all the people he’s toming.”
“You see Uncle Giles has got something else to do.”
Gervase was still in the foreground of the picture, carrying out hisconsigne. The servant had brought out upon the terrace at the other side of the house a box containing a game of which, in former days, Sir Giles had been fond. It was Gervase who had proposed this diversion to-day. “I’ll play father a game at that spinner thing,” he had said, after the large heavy luncheon, which was Sir Giles’ dinner. “I’d like that, lad,” the old man cried with delight. It was a beautiful afternoon, and nothing could be more charming than the shady terrace on the east side of the house which in these hot July days was always cool. The sunshine played on the roof of the tall house, and fell full on the turf and the shrubs, and the flower garden at the south corner, but on the terrace all was grateful shade. The game was brought out, and many experiments were made to see at what angle Sir Giles could best throw the ball with which it was played—an experiment in which Dunning took more or less interest, seeing it saved him another weary promenade through the grounds, pushing his master’s chair. The carriage was waiting round the corner, and Lady Piercey came sailing downstairs with Parsons behind her carrying a large cloak. “Meg! do you know I’m ready to go out?” cried Lady Piercey, in the tone of that king who had once almost been made to wait. “May I bring Osy, aunt?” cried Margaret. “No,” was the peremptory answer. “I’ll go without you if you don’t be quick.”
“And I don’t want to go, mover,” said Osy. “I’m doing to play with Uncle Giles.”
“Come along, little duffer,” cried Gervase; “I’ll give you another ride when we’ve done playing.”
“Meg, come this moment!” cried Lady Piercey; and Margaret, with agonised visions, was compelled to go. Bitter is the bread of those who have to run up and down another man’s stairs, and be as the dogs under his table. “Oh!” Margaret Osborne said to herself, “if I had but the smallest cottage of my own! If I could but take in needlework or clear starching, and work for my boy!” Perhaps the time might come when that prayer should be fulfilled, and when it would not seem so sweet as she thought.
Lady Piercey took her usual drive in a long round through the familiar roads which she had traversed almost every day for the last thirty years. She knew not only every village, but every cottage in every village, and every tree, and every clump of wild honeysuckle or clematis flaunting high upon the tops of the hedges. By dint of long use, she had come to make that frequent, almost daily, progress without seeing anything, refreshed, it is to be supposed, by the sweep of the wide atmosphere and all the little breezes that woke and breathed about her as she went over long miles and miles of green country, all monotonously familiar and awakening no sensation in her accustomed breast. She thought of her own affairs as she made these daily rounds, which many a poorer woman envied the old lady, thinking how pleasant it would be to change with her, and see the world from the luxurious point of vantage of a landau with a pair of good horses, and a fat coachman and agile footman on the box. But Lady Piercey thought of none of these advantages, nor of the beautiful country, nor the good air, but only of her own cares, which filled up all the foreground of her life, as they do with most of us. After a while, being forced by the concatenation of circumstances, she began to discuss these cares with Margaret, which was her custom when Parsons, who knew them all as well as her ladyship, was out of the way. Mrs. Osborne was made fully aware that it was because there was no one else near, that she was made the confidant of her aunt’s troubles; but she listened, nevertheless, very dutifully, though to-day with a somewhat distracted mind, thinking of her child, and seeing an awful vision before her of Osy tossed from Gervase’s shoulder and lying stunned on the ground, with nobody but Dunning and Sir Giles to look after him. This made her perhaps less attentive than usual to all Lady Piercey’s theories as to what would be the making of Gervase, and save him from all difficulties and dangers. The old lady was not deceived in respect to her son; she was very clear-sighted, although in a moment of excitement, as on that morning, she might be ready to credit him with ideal virtues; on ordinary occasions nothing could be more clear than her estimate, or more gloomy than her forecast, of what his future might be.
“I am resolved on one thing,” said Lady Piercey, “that we must marry him by hook or crook. I hate the French: they’re a set of fools, good for nothing but dancing and singing and making a row in the world; but I approve their way in marrying. They would just look out a suitable person, money enough, and all that, and he’d have to marry her whether he liked it or not. Are you listening, Meg? If your uncle had done that with you, now, what a much better thing for you than pleasing your fancy as you did and grieving your heart!”
“I’m not worth discussing, aunt, and all that’s over and gone long ago.”
“That’s true enough; but you’re an example, and if I think proper, I’ll use it. I dare say Captain Osborne thought you had a nice bit of money when he first began to think of you, and was a disappointed man when he knew——”
“Aunt, I cannot have my affairs discussed.”
“You shall have just what I please and nothing else,” said the grim old lady. “I have had enough of trouble about you to have a right to say what I please. And so I shall do, whatever you may say. A deal better it would have been for you if we had just married you, as I always wished, to a sensible man with a decent income, who never would have left you to come back upon your family, as you have had to do. That’s a heavy price to pay, my dear, for the cut of a man’s moustache. And I’d just like to manage the same for my own boy, who is naturally much more to me than you. But then there’s the girl to take into account; girls are so much indulged nowadays, they take all kinds of whimseys into their heads. Now I should say, from my point of view, that Gervase would make an excellent husband; if she was sensible, and knew how to manage, she might turn him round her little finger. What do you say? Oh, I know you are never likely to think of anything to the advantage of my boy.”
“I think my cousin Gervase has a great many good qualities, aunt; whether you would be doing right in making him marry, is another matter.”
“Oh, you think so! it would be better to leave him unmarried, and then when we die Osy would have the chance? For all so clever as you are, Meg, I can see through you there. But Osy has no chance, as you ought to know. There’s the General, and his son, Gerald—a new name in the family, as if the Gileses and the Gervases were not good enough for a younger branch! If it was Osy, bless the child, I don’t know that I should mind so much,” the old lady said in a softened tone, with a tear suddenly starting in the corner of her eye.
“Thank you for thinking that,” said Margaret, subdued. “I know very well it could never be Osy.”
“But there might be another Osy,” said Lady Piercey, putting away that tear with a surreptitious finger. “There never was a brighter man than your uncle, and I’m no fool; and yet you see Gervase—— What’s to hinder Gervase from having a boy like his father if the mother of it was good for anything? A girl, if she had any sense, might see that. What’s one person in a family? The family goes on and swamps the individual. You may be surprised at me using such words; but I’ve thought a deal about it—a great deal about it, Meg. A good girl of a good race, that is what he wants; and, goodness gracious, if she only knew how to set about it, what an easy time she might have!”
To this, Margaret, being probably of another opinion, made no reply; and Lady Piercey, after an expectant and indignant pause, burst forth—“You don’t think so, I suppose? You think the only thing he’s likely to get, or that is fit for him, is this minx at the Seven Thorns?”
“I never thought so,” cried Margaret, “nor believed in that at all—never for a moment.”
“That shows how much you know,” said the old lady, with a snort of anger. “I believe in it, if you don’t. Who is he staying at home to-day and trying to please, the booby! that hadn’t sense enough to keep that quiet? Don’t you see he’s under orders from her? Ah, she knows what’s what, you may be sure. She sees all the ways of it, and just how to manage him. The like of you will not take the trouble to find out, but that sort of minx knows by nature. Oh, she has formed all her plans, you may be sure! She knows exactly how she is going to do it and baffle all of us; but I shall put a spoke in my lady’s wheel. My lady!” cried Lady Piercey, with the irritation of one who feels her own dearest rights menaced; “she is calculating already how soon she’ll get my name and make me the dowager! I know it as well as if I saw into her; but she is going a bit too fast, and you’ll see that I’ll put a spoke in her wheel! John! you can turn back now, and drive to the place I told you of. I want to ask about some poultry at that little inn. You know the name of it.”
“The Seven Thorns, my lady?” said John, turning round on the box, with his hand at his hat, and his face red with suppressed laughter, made terrible by fear of his mistress—as if he and the coachman had not been perfectly well aware, when the order was given, what kind of wildfowl was that pretended poultry which took Lady Piercey to the Seven Thorns!
“So it is; that was the name,” said the old lady. “You can take the first turning, and get there as quick as possible. You’ll just see how I shall settle her,” she added, nodding her head as soon as the man’s back was turned.
“Do you mean to see the girl, aunt?” cried Margaret, in surprise and alarm.
“What’s so wonderful in that? Of course I mean to see her. I shall let her know that I understand all her little plans, and mean to put a stop to them. She is not to have everything her own way.”
“But, aunt, do you think a girl of that kind will pay any attention?—don’t you think that perhaps it will do more harm than——”
“I know that you have always a fine opinion of your own people, Meg Piercey! and of me especially, that am only your aunt by marriage. You think there’s nothing I can do that isn’t absurd—but I think differently myself, and you shall just see. Attention? Of course she will pay attention. I know these sort of people; they believe what you tell them in a way you wouldn’t do: they know no better. They’re far cleverer than you in some things, but in others they’ll believe just what you please to tell them,” said Lady Piercey, with a fierce toss of her head, “if you speak strong enough; and I promise you I sha’n’t fail in that!”
The carriage swept along with an added impulse of curiosity and expectation which seemed to thrill through from the men on the box, who formed an impatient and excited gallery, eager to see what was going to happen, to the calm, respectable horses, indifferent to such mere human commotions, who probably were not aware why they were themselves made to step out so much more briskly. The carriage reached the Seven Thorns at an hour in the afternoon which was unusually quiet, and which had been selected by Patty on that account for an expedition which she had to make. She was coming out of her own door, when the two cobs drew up with that little flourish which is essential to every arrival, even at a humble house like that of the Seven Thorns, and stood there for a moment transfixed, with a sudden leap of excitement in all her pulses at the sight of the heavy old landau, which she, of course, knew as well as she knew any cart in the village. Was it possible that it was going to stop? It was going to stop! She stood on her own threshold almost paralysed, stupefied—though at the same time tingling with excitement and energy and wonder. My lady in her carriage, the great lady of the district! the potentate whom Patty of the Seven Thorns, audacious, meant to succeed, if not to supersede! The effect upon her for the first moment was to make her knees tremble, and her strength fail; for the next, to brace her up to a boldness unknown to her, though she had never before been timid at any time.
“If you please, my lady,” said John, obsequious, yet with his eyes dancing with excitement and curiosity, at the carriage door, “that is Miss Hewitt of the Seven Thorns on the doorstep, if it is her your ladyship wants. Shall I say your ladyship wishes to——”
“Look here! you’ve got to go off to the post-office at once to get me some stamps. I’ll manage the rest for myself,” said Lady Piercey, thrusting two half-crowns into the man’s hand. Poor John! with the drama thus cut short at its most exciting moment! She waited till he had turned his back, and then she waved her hand to Patty, still standing thunderstricken on the threshold. “Hi!—here!” cried Lady Piercey, who did not err in her communications with the country people round her on the civil side.
If it had not been for overpowering excitement, curiosity, and the desire for warfare, which is native to the human breast, Patty would have stood upon her dignity, disregarded this peremptory call, and marched away. She almost tried to do so, feeling more or less what an immense advantage it would have given her, but her instinct was too strong—a double and complicated instinct which moved her as if she had not been at all a free agent: first, the impulse to obey my lady, which was a thing that might have been overcome, but second, the impulse to fight my lady, which was much less easy to master, and, last of all, an overpowering, dizzying, uncontrollable curiosity to know what she could have to say. She stepped down from her own door deliberately, however, and with all the elegance and eloquence she could put into her movements, and went slowly forward to the carriage door. She was in her best dress, which was not, perhaps, so becoming to Patty as the homelier attire, which was more perfect of its kind than the second-rate young ladyhood of her Sunday frock. Her hat was very smart with flowers and bows of velvet, which happened to be the fashion of the time, and she carried a parasol covered with lace, and wore a pair of light gloves, which were not in harmony with the colour of her dress—neither, indeed, were Lady Piercey’s own gloves in harmony with her apparel, but that was a different matter. The old lady’s keen glance took in every article of Patty’s cheap wardrobe, with a comment on the way these creatures dress! as she came forward with foolish deliberation, as if to allow herself time to be examined from head to foot.
“You are Patty, that used to come out so well in the examinations,” Lady Piercey said, with a breathlessness which showed what excitement existed on her side.
“I am Patience Hewitt, my lady, if that is what you’re pleased to ask.”
Margaret sat looking on trembling at these two belligerents: her aunt, who overbore her, Margaret, without any trouble silenced all her arguments and shut her mouth; and this girl of the village and public-house, the Sunday-school child whom she remembered, the pet of the rector, the clever little monitor and ringleader—Patty, of the Seven Thorns, something between a housemaid and a barmaid, and Lady Piercey of Greyshott! The looker-on, acknowledging herself inferior to both of them, felt that they were not badly matched.
“Ah!” said Lady Piercey, “yes, that’s what I asked. You’re Robert Hewitt’s daughter, I suppose, who keeps the public-house on our property?”
“Begging your pardon, my lady, the old inn of the Seven Thorns is my father’s property, and has been his and his family’s for I don’t know how many hundred years.”
“Oh!” cried Lady Piercey with a stare, “you speak up very bold, young woman; yet you’ve been bred up decently, I suppose, and taught how you ought to conduct yourself in that condition in which God has placed you.”
“If you wish to know about my character, my lady, the rector will give it you; though I don’t know why you should trouble about it, seeing as I am not likely to wish a place under your ladyship, or under anybody, for that matter.”
“No,” cried Lady Piercey, exasperated into active hostilities; “you would like to climb up over our heads, that’s what you would like to do.”
Patty replied to the excited stare with a look of candid surprise. “How could I climb over anybody’s head, I wonder? me that manages everything for father, and keeps house at the Seven Thorns?”
“You look very mild and very fine,” said Lady Piercey, leaning over the side of the carriage, and emphasising her words with look and gesture, “but I’ve come here expressly to let you understand that I know everything, and that what you’re aiming at sha’n’t be! Don’t look at me as if you couldn’t divine what I was speaking of! I know every one of your plots and plans—every one! and if you think that you, a bit of a girl in a public-house, can get the better of Sir Giles and me, the chief people in the county, I can tell you you’re very far mistaken.” Lady Piercey leant over the side of the carriage and spoke in a low voice, which was much more impressive than if she had raised it. She had the fear of the coachman before her eyes, who was holding his very breath to listen, growing redder and redder in the effort, but in vain. Lady Piercey projected her head over the carriage door till it almost touched the young head which Patty held high, with all the flowers and feathers on her fine hat thrilling. “Look you here!” she said, with that low, rolling contralto which sounded like bass in the girl’s very ears, “we’ve ways and means you know nothing about. We’re the great people of this county, and you’re no better than the dust under our feet: do you hear? do you hear?”
“Oh yes, I hear very well, my lady,” said Patty, loud out, which was a delight to the coachman, “but perhaps I am not of that opinion.” There was, however, a little quaver of panic in her voice. Lady Piercey was right so far that a person of the people, when uneducated, finds it difficult to free him-, and especially herself, from a superstition as to what the little great, the dominant class can do.
“Opinion or no opinion,” said the old lady, “just you understand this, Miss Polly, or whatever your name is: You don’t know what people like us can do—and will do if we’re put to it. We can put a man away within stone walls that is going to disgrace himself: we can do that as easy as look at him; and we can ruin a designing family. That we can! ruin it root and branch, so that everything will have to be sold up, and those that offend us swept out of the country. Do you hear? Everything I say I can make good. We’ll ruin you all if you don’t mind. We’ll sweep you away—your name and everything, and will shut him up that you are trying to work upon, so that you shall never hear of him again. Do you understand all that? Now, if you like to think you can fight me and Sir Giles, a little thing like you, a little nobody, you can just try it! And whatever happens will be on your own head. Oh, are you back already, John? What haste you have made! Good-bye, Patty; I hope you understand all I’ve said to you. Those chickens, I can tell you, will never be hatched. John—home!”
Patty stood looking after the carriage with her breast heaving and her nostrils dilating. The old lady had judged truly. She was frightened. Panic had seized her. She believed in these unknown miraculous powers. What could the Seven Thorns do against the Manor House? Patty Hewitt against Sir Giles and Lady Piercey? It was a question to freeze the very blood in the veins of a poor little country girl.
Butit was not for nothing that Patty had put on her best things: quivering and excited as she was, she would not go in again, however discouraged, and take them off and return to the usual occupations, which were so very little like the occupations of the great folks of the Manor. She went on a little way towards the village very slowly, with all her fine feathers drooping, dragging the point of her lace-covered parasol along the sandy road. She was genuinely frightened by old Lady Piercey, whom all her life she had been brought up to regard as something more terrible than the Queen herself. For Her Majesty is known to be kind, and there are often stories in the newspapers about her goodness and charity; whereas Lady Piercey, with her deep voice and the tufts of hair on her chin, had an alarming aspect, and notwithstanding her Christmas doles and official charities, was feared and not loved in her parish and district. How was Patty to know how much or how little that terrible old lady could do? She was much discouraged by the interview, in which she felt that she had been cowed and overborne, and had not stood up with her usual spirit to her adversary. Had Patty known beforehand that Gervase’s mother was to come to her thus, she would have proudly determined that Lady Piercey should “get as good as she gave.” But she had been taken by surprise, and the old lady had certainly had the best of it. She was of so candid a spirit, that she could not deny this; certainly Lady Piercey had had the best of it. Patty herself had felt the ground cut from under her feet; she had not had a word to throw at a dog. She had allowed herself to be frightened and silenced and set down. It was a very unusual experience for Patty, and for the moment she could not overcome the feeling of having lost the battle.
However, presently her drooping crest began to rise. If Lady Piercey had but known the errand upon which Patty was going, the intention with which she had dressed herself in all her Sunday clothes, taken her gloves from their box, and her parasol out of its cover! The consciousness of what that object had been returned to Patty’s mind in a moment, and brought back the colour to her cheeks. “Ah, my lady! you think it’s something far off, as you’ve got time to fight against, and shut him up and take him away! If you but knew that it may happen to-morrow, or day after to-morrow, and Patty Hewitt become Mrs. Gervase Piercey in spite of you!” This thought filled Patty with new energy. It would be still sweeter to do it thus, under their very nose, as it were, after they had driven away triumphant, thinking they had crushed Patty. It was perhaps natural, that in the heat of opposition and rising pugnaciousness, the girl should have turned her bitterest thought upon the spectator sitting by, who had not said a word, and whose sympathies were, if not on her side, at least not at all on that of the other belligerent. “That white-faced maypole of a thing!” Patty said to herself with a virulence of opposition to the dependent which exists in both extremes of society. The old lady she recognised as having a right to make herself as disagreeable as she pleased, but the bystander, the silent spectator looking on, the cousin, or whatever she was—what had she to do with it? Patty clenched her hand, in which she had been limply holding her parasol, and vowed to herself that that Mrs. Osborne should know who was who before they had done with each other, or she, Patty, would know the reason why. Poor Margaret! who had neither wished to be there, nor aided and abetted in any way Patty’s momentary discomfiture; but it frequently happens that the victim of the strife is a completely innocent person, only accidentally concerned.
Stimulated by this corrective of despondency, Patty resumed all her natural smartness, flung up her head, so that all her artificial flowers thrilled again, raised and expanded her parasol, and marched along like an army with banners, taking up with her own slim person and shadow the whole of the road. Humbler passersby, even the new curate, who was not yet acquainted with the parishioners, got out of her way, recognising her importance, and that sentiment as if of everything belonging to her that was in her walk, in her bearing, and, above all, in the parasol, which was carried, as is done still in Eastern countries, as a symbol of sovereignty. Mr. Tripley, the curate, stumbled aside upon the grassy margin of the road in his awe and respect, while Patty swept on; though there was something in her members—that love of ancient habit, scientifically known as a survival—which made the impulse to curtsey to him almost more than she could resist. She did get over it, however, as wise men say we get over the use of a claw or a tail which is no longer necessary to us. Patty went along the high-road as far as the entrance to the village street, and then turned down to where, at the very end of it, there stood a little house in a little garden which was one of the ornaments of the place. It was a house to a stranger somewhat difficult to characterise. It was not the doctor’s or even the schoolmaster’s, still less the curate’s, unless he had happened (as was the case) to be an unmarried young man, who might have been so lucky as to attain to lodgings in that well-cared-for dwelling. But, no; it was to well cared for to take lodgers, or entertain any extraneous element; it was, in short, not to be diffuse, the house of Miss Hewitt, the sister of Richard Hewitt of the Seven Thorns, and aunt to Patty; the very Miss Hewitt in her own person, who had sat at the window upstairs making the vandyke in tape for her new petticoat, and to whom Sir Giles, in the days of his youth, and all the gentlemen had taken off their hats. Those had been the palmy days of the Seven Thorns, and the Hewitt of those times had been able to leave something to his daughter, which, along with a bit of money which she was supposed to have inherited from her mother, had enabled Miss Hewitt to establish herself in great comfort, not to say luxury, in Rose Cottage. It was a small slice of a house, which looked as if it had been cut off from a row and set down alone there. Its bricks were redder than any other bricks in the village, indeed they were reddened with paint as high up as the parlour window; the steps were whiter, being carefully whitened every day; the door was very shiny and polished, almost like the panel of a carriage, in green; the window of the parlour, at the side of the door, was shielded by hangings of spotless starched muslin, and had a small muslin blind secured across the lower half of it by a band of brass polished like gold. The door had a brass handle and a brass knocker. There was not a weed in the garden, which presented a brilliant border of flowers, concealing the more profitable wealth of a kitchen garden behind. Several great rose bushes were there, justifying the name of the cottage; but Miss Hewitt had taken down those which clustered once upon the walls, as untidy things which could not be kept in order. Rose Cottage was the pride, if also in some respects the laughing-stock, of the village; but it was the object of a certain adoration to the members of the clan of Hewitt, who considered it a credit to them and proof of their unblemished respectability far and near.
Patty knew too well to invade the virginal purity of the front door, the white step, or the brass knocker; but went round through the garden to the back, where her aunt was busy preparing fruit for the jam, for which Miss Hewitt was famous, with the frightened little girl, who was her maid-of-all-work, in attendance. All the little girls who succeeded each other in Miss Hewitt’s service had a scared look; but all the same they were lucky little girls, and competed for by all the housekeepers round when they attained an age to be handed on to other service as certain to be admirably trained. She was a trim old lady, a little taller than Patty, and stouter, as became her years, but with all the vivacity and alertness which distinguished the women of that ancient house. She was a person of discernment also, and soon perceived that this was not a mere visit of ceremony, but that there was matter for advice in Patty’s eye, and not that interest in the fruit, and its exact readiness for preserving, which would have been natural to a young woman in Patty’s position had there been no other object in her mind. Miss Hewitt accordingly, though with regret, suspended her important operations, breathing a secret prayer that the delay might not injure the colour of her jam, and led the way into the parlour. To describe that parlour would occupy me gratefully for at least a couple of pages, but I forbear. The reader may perhaps be able to fill up the suggestion; if not, he (she?) will probably hear more about it later on.
“Well,” said Miss Hewitt, placing herself in her high-backed chair, which no one else presumed to occupy, “what is to do? I could see as you’d something to tell me of before you were up to the kitchen door.”
“I’ve more than something to tell you. I’ve something to ask you,” said Patty.
“I dare say: the one mostly means the other; but you know as I’m not foolish, nor even to say free with my money, if that’s it, knowing the valley of it more than the likes of you.”
“I know that,” said Patty; “and it ain’t for anything connected with the house or the business that I’d ever ask you, auntie; but this is for myself, and I sha’n’t go about the bush or make any explanations till I’ve just told you frank; it’s a matter of thirty pounds.”
“Thirty pounds! the gell is out of her senses!” Miss Hewitt cried.
“Or thereabouts. I don’t know for certain; but you, as knows a deal more than me, may. It’s for a marriage-licence,” said Patty, looking her aunt full in the face.
“A marriage-licence!” Miss Hewitt repeated again, in tones of consternation; “and what does the fool want with a licence as costs money, when you can put up the banns, as is far more respectable, and be married the right way.”
“I don’t know as there’s anything that ain’t respectable in a licence, and anyway it’s the only thing,” said Patty, “for him and me. If I can’t get it, I’ll have to let it alone, that’s all. A marriage as mightn’t be anything much for the moment, but enough to make the hair stand upright on your head, Aunt Patience, all the same!”
“What kind of marriage would that be?” said the old lady, sceptical yet interested; “that fine Roger of yours, maybe, as is probable to be made a lord for his battin’ and his bowlin’. Lord! Patty, how you can be such a fool, a niece of mine!”
“I ain’t such a fool,” said Patty, growing red, “though it might be better for me if I was. But anyhow I am your niece, as you say, and I can’t—be that kind of fool; maybe I’m a bigger fool, if it’s true as that old witch at the Manor says.”
“What old witch?” cried the other old witch in the parlour, pricking up her ears.
“Aunt Patience,” cried Patty, “you as knows: can they lock up in a madhouse a young man as isn’t mad, no more than you or me; but is just silly, as any one of us might be? Can they put him out of his property, or send for the Lord Chancellor and take everything from him to his very name? Oh, what’s the use of asking who he is? Who could he be? there ain’t but one like that in all this county, and you know who he is as well as I do. Mr. Gervase Piercey. Sir Giles’ son and heir! and they’ve got neither chick nor child but him!”
“Patty,” said the elder woman, laying a grip like that of a bird with claws upon her niece’s arm, “is it’imas you want the thirty pounds for to buy the licence? Tell me straight out, and not a word more.”
“It ishim,” said Patty, in full possession of her h’s, and with a gravity that became the importance of the occasion. Miss Hewitt did not say a word. She rose from her chair, and, proceeding to the window, pulled down the thick linen blind. She then placed a chair against the door. Then she took from the recess near the fireplace an old workbox, full to all appearance, when she opened it with a key which she took out of her purse, with thread and needles of various kinds. Underneath this, when she had taken the shelf completely out, appeared something wrapt in a handkerchief half-hemmed, with a threaded needle stuck in it—as if it had been a piece of work put aside—which proved to be an old pocketbook. She held this in her hand for a moment only, gave Patty a look, full of suspicion, scrutiny, yet subdued enthusiasm; then she opened it and took out carefully three crisp and crackling notes, selecting them one by one from different bundles. Then with great deliberation she put notes, pocketbook, the covering shelf, of the workbox, and the box itself back into the place where it had stood before.
“Mind, now you’ve seen it, I’ll put it all into another place,” Miss Hewitt said; “so you may tell whoever you like, they won’t find it there.”
“Why should I tell?” said Patty; “it’s more for my interest you should keep it safe.”
“You think you’ll get it all when I die,” said the elder woman, sitting down opposite to her niece with the notes in her hand.
“I think, as I hope, you’ll never die, Aunt Patience! but always be here to comfort and help a body when they’re in trouble, like me.”
“Do you call yourself in trouble? I call you as lucky as ever girl was. I’d have given my eyes for the chance when I was like you; but his father was too knowing a one, and never gave it to me. Here! you asked for thirty, and I’ve give you fifty. Don’t you go and put off and shilly-shally, but strike while the iron’s hot. And there’s a little over to go honeymooning upon. Of course he’s got no money—the Softy: but I know ’im; he’s no more mad than you or me.”
She ended with a long, low laugh of exultation and satisfaction which made even Patty, excited and carried away by the tremendous step in her life thus decided upon, feel the blood chilled in her veins.
“You think there’s no truth, then, in what Lady Piercey said: that they could take everything from him, even to his name?” It was the hesitation of this chill and horror which brought such a question to Patty’s lips.
Miss Hewitt laughed again. “The Manor estate is all entailed,” she said, “and the rest they’ll never get Sir Giles to will away—never! All the more if there’s a chance of an heir, who ought to have all his wits about him, Patty, from one side of the house. Get along with you, girl! You’re the luckiest girl as ever I knew!”
But, nevertheless, it was with a slower step and a chill upon all her thoughts that Patty went back, without even putting up her parasol, though the sun from the west shone level into her eyes, to the Seven Thorns.