PATTY had a great deal to do before the trial; for it is needless to say that no time was lost in bringing the matter to a trial. It was in some respects an unequal contest, for, clever as she was, she knew no more to whom she should apply, or in whose hands she should place her cause, than any other person of her original position. Mr. Pownceby was the only representative of law with whom she was acquainted, he and the shabby attorney of the village, who was the resort of litigious country folk. And Mr. Pownceby, whom she had insulted, was, as she had foreseen, on the other side. There was no help to be found in Miss Hewitt for any such need, except in so far that after many years’ strenuous reading of all the trials in the papers, the names of certain distinguished advocates in various causes célèbres and otherwise were at that lady’s finger ends. The idea of the two women was to carry their business at once, without any intervention of an intermediate authority, to one of the very greatest of these great men, with whom, indeed, Patty herself managed to obtain an interview, with the boldness of ignorance. The great man was much amused by Patty, but he did not undertake her case. He even suggested to her that it would be a good thing to compromise matters, and agree with her adversary in the way, which did not at all commend itself to Mrs. Piercey. She would rather, she declared, spend to the half of her kingdom than tamely compromise her “rights,” and leave Greyshott to the heir-at-law. The Solicitor-General (I think it was that functionary) was very kind. He was amused by her story, by her youth and good looks, by her fierce determination and her ignorance. It was seldom that he had so genuine a study of human nature before him, and that instinct of human nature which makes our own cause always seem the one that is most just and right. He was moved to advise her to avoid litigation rather from a desire to keep that piquant story for his private gratification, instead of casting it abroad to all the winds, than from any higher motive. And yet he did a great deal for her, telling her who were the solicitors in whose hands she ought to place herself, with a sense that Mrs. Piercey would not be too particular about the means used to secure her success; and suggesting counsel with something of the same idea, and a somewhat malicious amusement and delighted expectation of what would be made of the case by such advocates. He would no more have suggested either the one or the other to Margaret Osborne, than he could have justified himself on moral grounds for recommending them to Mrs. Piercey. Like clients like advisers, he said to himself. He felt that Patty in the witness-box, manipulated by his learned brother, would be a sight for the—— well, not perhaps for the gods, unless it were the gods of the shilling gallery, whom such an advocate would cause to weep over the young widow’s woes—but for the delectation of the observant and cynical spectator. How wicked and wrong this was it is needless to say; and yet in the mingled issues of human concerns it was very kind to Patty, who was not, as he divined, particular about the modes to be employed in her campaign.
I will not enter into all those preparations for the trial which brightened life immensely to Mrs. Piercey, and made her feel that she had scarcely lived before, and that, however the trial might turn out, this crowded hour of glorious life was worth the age without a name which would have been her fate had all been peaceful and undisturbed. She had constant visits from her solicitors or their emissaries; constant correspondence; a necessity often recurring for running up to town, which opened to her many new delights. No expense was spared in these preliminaries, the lawyers, to whom the speculative character of the whole proceedings was clearly apparent, thinking it well (they were, as has been said, not scrupulous members of their class) to make as much out of it in the meantime as possible; and Patty herself having, in a different degree, something of the same feeling. She was ready, as has been said, to sacrifice half of her kingdom in order to win her plea, and, at the same time, she indulged freely in the pleasure of spending, with the idea before her that even in the event of losing, that pleasure could not be taken from her. Whatever she acquired now would, in that respect, be pure gain. Therefore there can be no doubt that she enjoyed her life during this interval. She had committed one or two imprudencies, which her advisers much regretted and gently condemned. She had made an enemy of Dunning for one thing, which they blamed greatly, and she had alienated the sympathies of her neighbours by her behaviour in the first flush of her triumph, which Lady Hartmore did not fail to publish. But if the client were not foolish sometimes, to what good would be the cleverness of her guides and counsellors? Patty, for her part, declared that she had no fear of Dunning. What could Dunning say that could affect her position? He could describe Sir Giles’ hopes, which, it was evident, must have been mistaken; but she could swear, with a good conscience, that she had never said anything about those hopes to Sir Giles. Patty’s modesty, the instinct that had made her really incapable of taking advantage of Sir Giles’ delusion, had, it is to be feared, by this time, by dint of familiarity with the subject, become much subdued. She had shrunk with a blush from any such discussion, even with her old father-in-law; but she was not afraid now of the ordeal of being examined and cross-examined on the subject before all the world. She was not, indeed, at all afraid of the examination which nowadays frightens most people out of their wits. This, no doubt, was partly ignorance, but it was partly also a happy confidence in her own power to encounter and discomfit any man who should stand up to question her. This confidence has been seen in various cases of young women who have encountered jauntily an ordeal in which it is difficult for the strongest not to come to grief; but an ignorant girl often believes in her own sharp answers more than in any inquisition in the world.
Except these advisers-at-law, however, and her aunt, whom she by no means permitted to be always with her, Patty had actually no supporters or sympathisers. She lived in her great house alone: nobody entering it save one of these advisers; nobody sitting at her table with her; nobody taking any share in the excitement of her life. She had indeed waylaid the rector one day, and compelled him to come to her carriage door to speak to her, which he did with great reluctance, being openly and avowedly on the other side. “What have I ever done to you that you should be against me?” she said; “you used to be my friend once——”
“I hope I am everybody’s friend—who does well,” said the rector.
“And haven’t I done well? If to nurse old Sir Giles night and day, and lay myself out in everything to please him wasn’t doing well, why, then I must have been taught my duty very badly, for I thought it was ‘I was sick and ye—— ’ ”
“Oh! that is how people force a text and put their own meaning to it,” said the rector, with a gesture of impatience. “But,” he added, in a more subdued tone, “nobody denies, Mrs. Piercey, that you were kind to the old man.”
“And wasn’t that my duty?” said Patty, triumphantly; but though she silenced her spiritual instructor she did not convince him that it was his duty to support her. No text about the wrongs of the widow had any effect upon him. He stood and looked down at the summer dust in which his feet were planted, and shook his head. It is a great thing to have the enthusiasm of a cause to prop you up, and to have lawyers coming and going from town, and a great deal of business on hand; but to have nobody to speak to, nobody to give you either help or sympathy at home, is hard. When Patty came home from London, after one of the expeditions in which she had been more or less enjoying herself, the blank of the house, in which there was not a soul who cared whether she won or lost, whether she lived or died, was sometimes more than she could bear. One evening, late in July, she went out for a walk, which was a very unusual thing with her, upon the great stretch of common land which lay outside the beech avenue. Patty had begun by this time to grow so much accustomed to the use of a carriage, that she no longer felt it the most delightful mode of conveyance. She had at first, when she came into the possession of that luxury, felt it impossible to walk half a dozen steps without her carriage at her heels; but now she became a little bored by the necessity of a daily drive, and loved to escape for a little walk. She had been in town all day, and it had been hot and uncomfortable. Patty had nowhere to go to in town for a little lunch and refreshment, as ladies have generally. It seemed a wrong to her that ladies had that; that they went in twos and threes enjoying their shopping and their little expedition, laughing and talking to each other, as some did who had gone to town in the same carriage with her, and again had travelled with her coming down, full of news and chatter and purchases. Patty had no one to go with her—there was no house in town where there were friends who expected to see her at lunch; and when she came back, though she might have bought the most charming things in the world, though there might be diamonds in her little bag, there was nobody to wish to see them, to exclaim over their beauty, and envy their happy possessor. These ladies sometimes spoke to her when they did not know her, but often looked askance and whispered to each other; and anyhow, the contrast they made with herself inflamed her very soul with anger. They could wander out, too, in the cool of the evening, still talking, laughing over their adventures, while she was always alone. It was soothing to see that many of them drove home from the station in a bit of a pony carriage or shabby little waggonette with one horse, while her carriage waited for her in lonely grandeur. Sometimes, even, they walked, carrying their parcels, while Patty looked down upon them with immeasurable contempt. But a carriage is not good for everything, and Patty sometimes strayed out alone, thinking the exercise would be good for her, but in reality hoping to escape a little from herself.
It was seldom that she met any one on that lonely moor, but on this particular evening there came towards her, with the glow behind him of the setting sun, a figure, which Patty felt to be, somehow, familiar; though as she did not expect to meet with any one here equal to her quality, she was not at all curious, but even contemptuous of any pedestrian who was not, like herself, walking for pleasure, but might probably be obliged to walk. He carried a long cricket-bag in his hand, and was in white flannels, which made a little brightening in the dimness of the evening, and had a light cap of a bright colour on his head. A well-made, manly figure, slim but strong, and a long swinging step clearing the intervening distance swiftly, made Patty think of some one who had been like that, who would not have let her, in other days, be alone if he could have helped it. She remembered very clearly who that was, and with a little shiver how she had last seen him, and the dance he had been to, and how the thought of that dance moved her to the depths. But this could not be Roger. He had always been fond of cricket—too fond, the village said—liking that better than steady work. But to be dressed like this, in flannels, and a cap of a “colour,” was not for common men like him; that was the dress gentlemen put on for the play which was their only work to so many. Indeed, Patty was close upon him before she saw that it was indeed Roger, who took off his cap when he saw her, and would have passed on with that respectful salutation had, not Patty stopped almost without meaning it, in the start of recognition. “Is it you?” she said in her surprise, upon which Roger took off his cap again.
“Seems as if I’d risen in the world,” he said, “but it’s more seeming than fact. I’ve been playing for the county,” he added, with scarcely concealed pride. “It don’t do a man much good, perhaps, but we’re pleased enough all the same.”
“It’s a long time since I have seen you,” said Patty, scarcely knowing what she said. “I—I took you for one of the gentlemen.”
“And it’s a long time since I’ve seen you—and I’d like to say that I’m sorry, Pa——, Mrs. Piercey, for all that’s happened—and for the trouble, if it is a trouble, you’re in now.”
“It is no trouble,” said Patty, hotly. “I’m going to defend my rights, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, I hope that’s what it is,” said Roger, “but I don’t like to hear of any one I care for beginning with the law. It just skins you alive and wastes good money that might be spent far better—bring you in a deal more pleasure, I mean.”
“You don’t know very much, Roger, about the pleasure money brings in!”
“Oh, don’t I, Patty! Well, if one of us remembers the old days the other must, too. Cricketing about all over the place as I’m doing, runs through a good lot, I can tell you, if it didn’t bring a little more in.”
“Don’t you do anything but cricket, nowadays?” she said.
“Not much; but it pays well enough,” said Roger, pushing back his cap from his forehead.
The evening, it is true, was getting a little dim, though not dark; but didn’t he look a gentleman! No one would have guessed he wasn’t a gentleman, was the thought that passed through Patty’s mind like a dart.
“And I live a lot among the swells, now,” he said, “and I hear what they say; I don’t want to offend you, Patty, far from it—but ain’t it a bore living all by yourself in that big lonesome house, with all the deaths and things that have happened in it?”
“You forget it’s my home,” said Patty, drawing herself up.
“Well, is it your home? All right if it had been your husband’s or if there had been an heir; but I don’t hold myself with a place going out of the family like that—that has been in it for hundreds of years. I don’t like the thoughts of the Seven Thorns even going out o’ the name of ’Ewitt. It’s no concern of mine, but I don’t.”
“Perhaps you think I should go back there, out of my own place, and keep it up!”
“I don’t say as I meant that,” said Roger, turning his cap, which he had taken off, round and round in his hands, “but I wouldn’t be the one to take it out of the family if it was me. I’d say, Look here now, what’ll you give me? You be happy in your way, and I’ll be happy in mine.”
“Well, I shall take your advice, Mr. Pearson. I’ll be happy in my own way. It’s not yours, and never will be. But that don’t matter, seeing we’ve nothing on earth to do with each other, and are in quite different ranks of life. I wish you good-night, and I hope the cricketing business will be a good one and pay, or else I might say, ‘Mind, there’s the winter coming on'—if a lady could take upon her to give advice to a sporting man.”
“Patty,” he cried, calling after her, “don’t part with a fellow like this; I didn’t mean to offend you—far from it. I only thought I’d warn you what folks said.”
“Folks is fools for the most part,” cried Patty fiercely, using a much-cited sentiment, which she had never heard of, by the light of nature, “and I don’t want to hear what they say. Mr. Pearson, I wish you good-night.”
“There! I’ve been and put my foot in it—I knew I should,” Roger said. He stood, the image of despondency, in the middle of the moor, his white figure standing out against the western light as Patty turned at a sharp angle to go home. She could see him with the corner of her eye without looking at him. He stood there silent for a moment, and then dashed his fist into the air with a profane exclamation. “That’s not what I meant at all,” he said, and lifted his cricket-bag and sped away.
What was it that went out of the evening with him, when Patty, venturing to glance round, saw the landscape empty of the man who had offended her so deeply, who had ventured to blame her—her a lady so far above him—Mrs. Piercey of Greyshott, while he was only a cricketer, an idle fellow about the country, no good, as even the village people said? But yet a dreariness settled down upon the world; night came on and that loneliness which seemed now Patty’s fate. Well, she said to herself, what did she care? She had her fine estate, her name that was as good as the best, her grand house, as much money to spend as she chose, and nobody to dictate to her what she should do—no, nobody to dictate to her—nobody even to advise, to say, “That’s right, Patty!” Her Aunt Patience did that, it was true, but then Aunt Patience’s approval, save in the very extremity of having nobody else, did not count for much. She hurried in; but it was lonely, lonelier even than the moor—nobody to speak to, nobody to break the long row of chairs and sofas which were there with the intention of accommodating half the county, but now had nobody to sit down upon them but Patty’s self, moving from one to another with a futile feeling of breaking the solitude. But nothing was to be had to break that solitude except Aunt Patience. Mrs. Piercey of Greyshott rang the bell, and ordered the carriage to be sent at once to the village to fetch Miss Hewitt immediately, without a minute’s delay! That she could do—send out her carriage, and her horses, and her secretly-swearing servants for any caprice at any moment. For Miss Hewitt! It was what might be called an anti-climax, if Patty had known what that meant. She did know what it meant deeply to the bottom of her heart, though she was not acquainted with the word. To go through all that she had gone through, to do all she had done, for the sake of having the company of Miss Hewitt and her sympathy and encouragement! could there be a greater drop of deepest downfall from the highest heights than this?
But the trial was coming on, and soon all England would be ringing with Patty’s name and story and fortunes. She would have crowds of people to admire and wonder at her. She would win her cause in the sight of all England. She would be the heroine of the day, in everybody’s mouth. Surely there would be some compensation in that.