“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.
CHAPTER VIII
But it 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 ’im as you want the thirty pounds for to buy the licence? Tell me straight out, and not a word more.”
“It is him,” 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.
CHAPTER IX
For a few days after Patty’s visit to her aunt, that young lady looked out with some eagerness for the reappearance of Gervase at the Seven Thorns, but looked in vain. At first she scarcely remarked his absence, having many things to think of, for it was not without excitement that she planned out the steps by which she was to enter into a new life. The first evening was filled, indeed, with the events of the day; the mental commotion called forth by the visit of Lady Piercey, and the excitement, almost overwhelming, of her unexpected, enthusiastic reception by Miss Hewitt, and the sudden supply so much above her most daring hopes. Fifty pounds! it was more to Patty than as many thousands would have been to minds more accustomed – much more. For the possession of a great deal of money means only income, and an unknown treasure in somebody else’s hands, whereas fifty pounds is absolute money, which you can change, and spend, and realise, and enjoy down to the last farthing. It gave her a great deal of anxiety how to dispose of it at first. The Seven Thorns was not a place where any thief was likely to come for money; it was not a house worth robbing, which was a point, as Patty with her excellent sense was aware, on which burglars are very particular, taking every care to obtain accurate information. But then, again, money is a thing that betrays itself – a secret that is carried by the birds of the air. Had there been any of these gentry about, he might have divined from the way in which she carried herself, that she had fifty pounds in her pocket. There was a little faint lightness about it, she thought, when she put it in her drawer – a sort of undeveloped halo, showing that something precious was in the old pocketbook which she had found to enshrine it in. Then she took it out of that formal receptacle, and placed it with scientific carelessness in an old envelope. But, immediately, that torn paper covering seemed to become important, too, among the pocket-handkerchiefs and cherished trumpery, beads and brooches in her “locked drawer.” The “girl,” who was the only servant, except the ostler, at the Seven Thorns, had always manifested a great curiosity (taken rather as a compliment to her treasures than as an offence by Patty) concerning the contents of that locked drawer. She had often asked to be shown the “jewellery,” which Patty, indeed, had no objection to show. What if she would be tempted this night of all others to break open the drawer, to refresh her soul with gazing at them, and perhaps to throw the old dirty envelope away? It was highly improbable that poor Ellen, an honest creature, would break open the drawer. But still, everything is possible when you have fifty pounds to take care of. Patty took it out again and placed it first in her pocket – but she soon felt that to be quite too insecure – and then in her bosom under her trim little bodice. She felt it there, while she went about her usual occupations, carrying beer to her father’s customers. Fancy carrying pots of beer to labourers that were not worth so much as the price of them, and thanking the clowns for twopence – a girl who had fifty pounds under the bodice of her cotton frock! She was glad to see that Gervase had obeyed her orders, and did not appear in the parlour among the dull drinkers there.
Next day Patty was much occupied in rummaging out the empty part of the house, the best rooms, once occupied by important guests, when the Seven Thorns was a great coaching establishment, but now vacant, tapestried with dust and cobwebs, rarely opened from one year’s end to the other, except at the spring-cleaning, when it is the duty of every housekeeper to clear out all the corners. She got up very early in the summer mornings, before any one was stirring (and it may be imagined how early that was, for the Seven Thorns was all alert and in movement by six o’clock), and went in to make an inspection while she was secure from any disturbance. The best rooms were in the western end of the long house, quite removed from the bar and the parlour, the chief windows looking out upon the garden, and at a distance upon the retreating line of the high road, and the slope of the heathery downs. Patty’s heart swelled with pleasure as she carefully opened the shutters and looked round at the old faded furniture. There was a good-sized sitting-room, and two or three other rooms communicating with each other, and separated by a long passage from the other part of the house. “A suite of apartments,” she said to herself! for Patty had read novels, and was acquainted with many fine terms of expression. The early sunshine flooded all the silent country, showing a dewy glimmer in the neglected garden, and sweeping along the broad and vacant road, where as yet there was nothing stirring. A few cows in a field, one of which got slowly up to crop a morsel before breakfast, as fine ladies (and fine gentlemen, too) have a cup of tea in bed, startled Patty as by the movement of some one spying upon her unusual operations and wondering what they meant. But there was no other spectator, nothing else awake, except the early birds who were chattering about their own businesses in every tree, talking over their own suites of apartments, and the repairs wanted, before the professional occupations of the day began, and the pipes were tuned up. They were far too busy to pay any attention to Patty, nor did she mind them. Besides, they were all sober, married folks, with the care of their families upon their heads; while she was a young person all thrilling with the excitement of the unknown, and making a secret survey of the possible future nest.
Patty inspected these rooms with a careful and a practised eye. Any young couple in the land, she felt, might be proud to possess this suite of apartments. She examined the carpets to see whether they would do, whether they would bear a thorough beating, which they required, and whether by judicious application of gall, or other restoring fluid, the colour might be brought back to the part which had been most trodden; or whether it would be better to buy one of those new-fashioned rugs which were spread upon the matting in the Rectory – a poor sort of substitute for a carpet, Patty had always thought – but as it was the fashion, it might be adopted to cover deficiencies; or a nice round table with a cover might be placed upon that weak spot. Curtains would be necessary, but thin white muslin is cheap and could be easily supplied. Patty pulled the old furniture about, as the rector’s wife had done on her first arrival, to give it a careless look, which does not suit the stern angles of early Victorian mahogany and haircloth; but Patty had great confidence in crochet and frilled muslin to cover a multitude of sins. She stood at the window and looked out upon the garden which was quite retired and genteel – as refined a view as could have been had in the Manor itself. The cow in the field had lain down again to finish her night’s rest after that early cup of tea. It was so quiet: the morning’s sunshine almost level in long rays on the grass, the sleek coat of the brown cow glistening, nobody stirring. It almost overawed Patty to look out upon that wonderful silence before the world was awake. There was no telling what might happen in that new day; there was no telling what might come to her in the new life upon the margin of which she stood. She did not, I need scarcely say, think of the ideal excellencies of her future husband, or of love, or any of the usual enchantments that brighten the beginning of life. She thought of the Manor; of the old people who would soon die and be out of the way; of Lady Piercey’s carriage, which would be hers; of the coachman and John on the box, whom she had been at school with (John at least), and whom she would make to tremble before her when her turn came to be my lady. My lady! Patty’s head turned round and round. She put her head upon the window-frame to support herself, turning giddy with the thought. Your ladyship! She could hear people say it reverentially who had called, as if she had been their servant, for Patty at the Seven Thorns.
This was the thought that filled her mind with something of that ineffable elation and delight in her own happiness which is supposed to be peculiar to people who are in love. Patty was in love; but it would be putting a scorn upon her intelligence to suppose that she was in love with Gervase. Poor Gervase, the Softy! Patty was resolved to be very good to him – she had even a kind of affection for him as being her own to do what she pleased with. He should never have any reason to regret her ownership. She would be good to him in every way, deny him nothing, consider all his silly tastes as well as his serious interests. But what Patty was in love with was the Manor, and the carriage, and the rents, and the ladyship. Lady Piercey! The thought of that tingled to her very feet; it turned her head like wine. The old people, of course, would make themselves very disagreeable. It would be their part to do so. Patty felt that she would think no worse of them for fighting against her, tooth and nail. But they would have to give in at the end; or still better, they would die and get out of her way, which was the most probable thing. Young people generally think of the death of old people without compunction; it is their business to die, just as it is the business of their successors to live. It is the course of nature. Patty no more doubted they would die than that Christmas would come in six months, whatever happened. What she would have chosen for pleasure and to enhance her triumph to the utmost, was that old Sir Giles should die, and the old lady survive to be called the Dowager, and to see Patty bearing the title of Lady Piercey. This was what would be most sweet; and it was very likely to come to pass, for everybody knew that Sir Giles was a great invalid, whereas nobody knew that Lady Piercey had been attacked last year by a little, very little premonitory “stroke” – nobody, at least, except Parsons and Margaret Osborne and the doctor, with none of whom Patty had any communication. The greatest triumph she could think of was to see the Dowager bundled off to her dower-house, while she, Patty, the regnant Lady Piercey, took her place. She was not an ill-natured person on the whole, but she felt that there was here awaiting her a poignant joy.