THIS was about Osy’s last performance in the house which was the only home he had ever known. He did not know what he was cheering for, but only that it was delightful to make a noise, and that his old uncle’s tremulous bass, soon lost in an access of sobs and laughter, was very funny. Osy would willingly have gone on for half an hour with this novel amusement; but it must be allowed that when he found the great boxes standing about in the room that had been his nursery, and began to watch the mysteries of the packing, his healthy little soul was disturbed by no trouble of parting, but jumped forward to the intoxicating thought of a journey and a new place with eager satisfaction and wonder. Everything was good to Osy, whether it was doing exactly the same thing to-day as he had done every day since he was born, or playing with something that he had never done or known before. He was much more perplexed to be kept upstairs after dinner, and not allowed to go down to the library, than he was by the removal from everything he had ever known. And when next morning he was driven away in the big carriage to the railway station, he was as ready to cheer for the delight of the outset as he had been, without knowing why, for Uncle Giles’ mysterious burst of self-gratulation. All things were joyful to the little new soul setting out upon the world.
Patty, however, was by no means delighted with Margaret’s prompt withdrawal. She felt herself forestalled, which was painful, and the power of the initiative taken from her. She had intended to play for a little, as the cat plays with the mouse, with this fine lady, who had once been so far above Patty Hewitt, and to whom, in her schoolgirl days, she had been expected to curtsey as to the Queen. Patty’s heart had swelled with the thought of bringing down pride (a moral process, as everybody knows), and teaching the woman who had no money, and therefore no right to set herself up above others, her proper place; and it vexed her that this fine rôle should be taken from her.
“Oh, you are going, are you?” she said. “I hope it isn’t on my account. When I married Gervase I knew all that there was to put up with, and more than has turned out. I knew I shouldn’t have my house to myself, like most new married ladies, and I had made up my mind to all that. I wouldn’t have turned you out, not for the world—however you might have been in my way.”
“I am afraid I have a strong objection,” said Margaret, “to be in anybody’s way.”
“Ah, that’s your pride,” said Patty, “which I must say I wonder at in a person of your age, and that knows she has nothing to keep it up on. You’ve got a pension, haven’t you, that’s enough to live on? It’s a fine thing having money out of all our pockets to spend as you please; but I never heard that a pension was much to trust to, and if you were to marry again you would lose it all. And your boy to bring up, too. My father-in-law has a tremendous idea of your boy. I think it’s good for him, in one way, that you are taking him away; for it’s ridiculous to bring up a poor child like that, who hasn’t a penny, to think that he’s as good as the heir, and treated by everybody as if he was really a gentleman’s son, you know, with a good fortune at his back.”
Margaret smothered with difficulty the indignation that rose to her lips, but she said quietly, “You must disabuse your mind of any such idea. Osy never could be my uncle’s heir. The heir of Greyshott after Gervase—and, of course, Gervase’s children—is not Osy, but Gerald Piercey, our cousin who has just gone away.”
Though this was precious information to Patty, she received it with a toss of her head.
“I hope,” she said, “I know a little about the family I’ve married into; but I can tell you something more, and that is, that it’ll never be your fine Colonel’s, for all so grand as he thinks himself; for it’s all in father-in-law’s power, and rather than let him have it he’ll leave it all away. I wouldn’t see a penny go to that man that gives himself such airs, not if I were to make the will myself to take it away.”
“I hope,” said Margaret, with an effort, “that there will be natural heirs, and that there need be no question on that point.”
“Oh, you will stand up for him, of course!” cried Patty; “but I’d like you to know, if you’re making up the match on that score, that it’ll never come to pass. Me and Gervase is both against him, and father-in-law won’t go against us both, not when he gets used to me. I’d rather see it all go to an ’ospital than to that man. I can’t bear that man, looking down upon those that are better than himself, as if he was on stilts!” Patty grew red and hot in her indignation. Then she shook out her dress airily, as if shaking away the subject and the objectionable person. “Oh yes,” she said, “natural heirs!” with a conscious giggle. “It’s you that has gone and put that in father-in-law’s old head. But I told him it was early days. Dear old man. It’s a pity he is silly. I don’t think he ever can have been much in his head, any more than——. Do you?”
“My uncle is in very bad health. He is ill, and his nerves are much affected. But he has always been a man quite—quite able to manage his own affairs. A man,” cried Margaret, faltering a little with indignation and distress, “of very good sense and energy, not at all like—not at all——”
“Well, well,” said Patty, “time shows everything, you know, and he’s quite safe with me and Gervase; at all events, whatever comes after, his only son comes first, don’t he? And me and Gervase will see that the dear old man isn’t made a cat’s-paw of, but kept quite square.”
It was with a sensation half of disappointment, yet more than half of satisfaction, that Patty found herself next morning alone in what she called so confidently her own house. Alone, for Sir Giles, of course, was in his own room, and was much better there, she felt, and Gervase, so long as he was kept in good humour, was not very troublesome. To be sure, it cost a good deal of exertion on her part to keep him in good humour. He felt, as so many a wooer of his simple mind has done, the want of the employment of courtship, which had so long amused and occupied him. He could no longer go to the Seven Thorns in the evening, a resource which was entirely cut off from his vacant life, from the fact of having Patty always with him, without the exercise of any endeavour on his own part. The excitement of keeping free of his mother’s scrutiny; the still greater excitement of fishing furtively for Patty’s attention, making her see that he was there, persuading her by all the simple wiles of which he was master to grant him an interview; the alarm of getting home, with all the devices which had to be practised in order to get in safely, without being called to account and made to say where he had been—and inspected, to see what he had been doing: all this took a great deal of the salt out of poor Gervase’s life. He did not know, now that he had settled down again at home, and all the annoying sensations of the crises were over, what to do with himself in the evenings. Patty and he alone were rather less lively than it had used to be when Sir Giles and Lady Piercey sat in their great chairs, and the game of backgammon was going on, and Meg about, and the child rampaging in all the corners. Even to have so many more people in the room gave it to him an air of additional animation. Patty told him it was the library that looked so dull. “Such a room for you all to sit in,” she said, “so gloomy and dark, with these horrid old pictures, and miles of books. Wait till I have the drawing-room in order.” But it didn’t amuse Gervase to watch all the alterations Mrs. Patty was making, nor how she was having the white and gold of the great drawing-room furbished up. The first night they sat in that huge room, with all the lamps lit, and the two figures lost among all the gilding and the damask, and reflected over and over again, till they were tired of seeing themselves in the big mirrors, Gervase felt more lonely than ever. Never had Patty found so hard a task before her,—not when she had to attend to all the customers alone, and keep their accounts separate in her head, and to chalk up as much as was safe to the score of one toper, and cleverly avoid hearing the call of another who had exceeded the utmost range of possible solvability. Never, when she had all that to do, had she found it so heavy upon her as it was to amuse Gervase. She invented noisy games for him, she plied him with caresses when other methods failed, she endeavoured to revive the old teasings and elusions of the courtship; but as Gervase’s imagination had never had much to do with his love-making, these attempts to return to an earlier stage were generally futile. He could not be played with—made miserable by a frown, brought back again by a smile, as had once been the case. And Patty had more than the labours of a Hercules in keeping her Softy in order. There was no one to defend him from now, no tyrannical mother to be defied, to make him feel the force of the wife’s protection. When Sir Giles was well enough to come to the drawing-room after dinner, the task was quite beyond the powers of any woman; for it was needful to please the old gentleman, to give up everything for him, to represent to him that his company was always a delight to his children. Poor old Sir Giles had winked and blinked in the many lights of the great drawing-room. He had been dazzled, but he had not been ill-pleased.
“We never used this, you know, in your mother’s time but for company,” he said. It was Gervase whom he seemed to address, but it was Patty who replied.
“I thought it would be a little change for you,” she said. “A change is always good, and there’s more light and more air. You should always have plenty of air, and not the associations that are in the other room.”
“Perhaps you are right, my dear,” the old gentleman said with a sigh. It was she who was “my dear” now; and, indeed, she was very attentive to Sir Giles, never neglecting him, doing everything she could think of for his pleasure. It was on one of the evenings when she was devoting herself to him, playing the game he loved, and allowing him to win in the cleverest way, that Gervase, who was strolling about the room with his hands in his pockets, half jealous of his father, calling her, now in whispers, now loudly, to leave that and come to him, at last disappeared before the game was finished. Patty went on hurriedly with the backgammon, but she was on thorns all the while. She had established the habit of sending off Dunning, whom she was slowly undermining, less for any serious reason than because he was a relic of the past régime; and, therefore, she was now helpless; could not leave Sir Giles; could not interrupt the process of amusing and entertaining him. Where had the Softy gone? to prowl about the house looking for something that might amuse him; to fling himself dissatisfied upon his bed and fall asleep in the utter vacancy of his soul? An uneasy sense that something worse than this was possible oppressed Patty as she sat and played out the game of backgammon. Then there ensued another dreadful interval, during which Sir Giles talked and wondered what had become of his son. “He has gone to sleep somewhere, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Patty; “the nights are growing long, and poor dear Gervase wants a little amusement. I was thinking of suggesting, dear papa (this was the name she had fixed upon Sir Giles, who had resisted at first, then laughed, and finally accepted the title with the obedience of habit), that we should both play, he and I, against you. You are worth more than the two of us, you know.”
“Nonsense, you little flatterer. You’ve a very pretty notion of the game. I had to fight for it that last round. I had, indeed. I had to fight for my life.”
“Ah, dear papa!” said Patty, shaking her head at him. “You are worth far more than the two of us! but it would keep us all together, all the family together.”
“I don’t like Gervase to play with me,” said Sir Giles fretfully. “He’s too noisy, and he has no sense; he can’t understand a refined game. I shouldn’t wonder if he had gone out to some of his old haunts that his poor mother couldn’t bear. The Seven——. I beg your pardon, my dear, I am sure,” the old gentleman cried, colouring up to his eyes.
“Dear papa, why should you beg my pardon? But oh, no! Gervase has not gone to the Seven Thorns. He went there for me. That makes all the difference. Why should he go back now?”
“My dear,” said Sir Giles again, “I must beg your pardon. I didn’t intend to make any insinuation. Of course it was for you. But it’s a dangerous thing to acquire a habit, especially for one that—for one that doesn’t, don’t you know, take in many ideas at a time.”
“I know him better than that. I know where he is, the lazy boy. But, dear papa, fancy, it is ten o’clock; your bedtime. Oh, how soon ten comes when we have a pleasant game, and in such good company! I suppose I must ring for Dunning now.”
“Yes, you had better ring for Dunning. If I am a little bit late, and should have a headache or anything, he throws it in my teeth. We have had a very pleasant game, and I must say that for you, my dear, that you know how to make the time pass. Well, Dunning, here I am, ready you see, ready to the minute, thanks to Mrs. Gervase, who is a great deal more careful of me than you are, you surly old beggar. Good night, my dear; but tell Gervase from me that it isn’t good manners to break up the party; but he never was renowned for good manners, poor boy,” the old gentleman said, shaking his head as he was wheeled away.
And then Patty had a bitter moment. She went to the library, where he sometimes took refuge, falling asleep upon the old sofa, where he had lain and kicked his heels as a child; and then to his room, where he sometimes went when he was dull, to throw himself upon his bed. But Gervase was not to be found in either place. He came stumbling to the old door which opened on the yew avenue, late at night, and she herself ran downstairs to admit him—angry, yet subduing herself. He had resumed his old habit, as his father had guessed: the habit which had been formed for Patty, and which she had so sharply shaken him out of with a power and mastery which she no longer possessed. Patty felt in that moment the first drawback of that unexampled elevation which she had attained with such unexpected ease. Had she married in her own class, the publican’s daughter would not have been very deeply wounded by her husband’s return on an occasion in such a plight. But when she stole down through the sleeping house and admitted the future master of Greyshott, and led him upstairs, hushing his broken speech and stumbling gait, that nobody might hear, Patty learned something which no other manner of instruction could have conveyed to her. She found that there were things that were harder upon a lady (such as she flattered herself she had become) than on a village woman. She coaxed and soothed him to bed, like a nurse with a child, that nobody should suspect what had happened; and she ground her teeth and vowed vengeance upon her father, who had dared to take the Softy in and treat him like this. And thus there arose before Patty a prospect which appalled even her brisk and courageous spirit. What if she should not be able to put this down summarily and with the strong hand? Then what would become of her hopes of winning a place in the county, and being acknowledged by all the great people as worthy to make her entrance among them? After the first unexpected triumph of becoming mistress of a great house and a number of servants, her ambition had risen to higher flights; and this was what that over-vaulting ambition aimed at. But what would become of that hope, or of many others, if the Softy, startled out of himself for a moment by his marriage, should fall back into the beerhouse society which suited him best? Patty fell from the height of her dreams when she saw that sight which is always a pitiful one for a young wife. She felt the burden of “the honour unto which she was not born” come down for the first time with a crushing weight upon her. Oh, it was not so simple after all—so easy, so pleasant to be a lady! She had begun already to forget that it was to Gervase she owed her advancement, and to feel the burden of keeping him amused and employed. Now she felt that the Softy had it in his power to mar that advancement still. She had cleared every hostile influence out of the house; she had got rid of every rival. She had conquered Sir Giles, and gained possession of the keys, and become the acknowledged mistress of Greyshott. What a great thing, what a wonderful thing, for Patty Hewitt! And yet she felt, in the bitterness of her heart, that it might be better to be still Patty Hewitt, with all the world before her, than to be Mrs. Piercey, of Greyshott, with that Softy to drag her down.
This was the first big thorn that pierced Patty’s foot, and reminded her that she was mortal, as she was marching on in her victorious way.