This happened on the night when Patty, frightened and dejected, shut herself up in the room which she had meant for her bridal bower, and cried her eyes out because of Gervase’s absence. The poor Softy was thus of as much importance as any hero, turning houses and hearts upside down.
CHAPTER XI.
A whole week, and nothing had been seen or heard of Gervase at the Seven Thorns. Even old Hewitt remarked it, with a taunt to his daughter. “Where’s your Softy, that was never out of the house, Miss Patty, eh? Don’t seem to be always about at your apron string, my lass, as you thought you was to keep him there. Them gentlemen,” said old Hewitt, “as I’ve told you, Softy or not, they takes their own way, and there’s no trust to be put in them. He’s found some one else as he likes better, or maybe you’ve given him the sack, Patty, eh? And that’s a pity, for he was a good customer,” the landlord said.
“Whether I’ve given him the sack or he’s found some one he likes better, don’t matter much to any one as I can see. I’ll go to my work, father, if you’ve got nothing more sensible than that to say.”
“Sensible or not, he’s gone, and a good riddance,” said her father. “I ain’t a fine Miss, thick with the rector and the gentry, like you; but I declare, to see that gaby laughing and gaping at the other side of the table, turned me sick, it did. And I hopes as we’ll see no more of him, nor none of his kind. If you will have a sweetheart, there’s plenty of good fellows about, ’stead of a fool like that.”
Patty did not stamp her foot as she would have liked to do, or throw out her arms, or scream with rage and disappointment. She went on knocking her broom into all the corners, taking it out more or less in that way, and tingling from the bunch of hair fashionably dressed on the top of her head, to the toe of her high-heeled shoes, with suppressed passion. She would not make an exhibition of herself. She would not give Ellen, the maid-servant, closely observing her through the open door of the back kitchen, nor Bob, the ostler, who had also heard every word old Hewitt said as he bustled about with his pail outside the house, any occasion of remark or of triumph over her as a maiden forsaken, whose love had ridden away. They were all on the very tiptoe of expectation, having already made many comments to each other on the subject. “You’re all alike—every one of you,” Ellen had said to Bob. “You’d go and forsake me just the same, if you saw some one as you liked better.” “It’ll be a long day afore I do that,” said the gallant ostler, preserving, however, the privilege of his sex. They were all ready to throw the responsibility of attraction upon the woman. It was more to her credit to keep her hold on the man by being always delightful to him than by any bond of faithfulness on his part. Patty felt this to the bottom of her heart. It was not so much that she blamed her Softy. She blamed herself bitterly, and felt humiliated and ashamed that she had not been able to hold him; that he had found anything he liked better than her society. She swept out every corner, banging her broom as if she were punishing the unknown rivals who had seduced him away from her, and felt, for all her pride, as if she never could hold up her head again before the parish, which would thus know that she had miscalculated her powers. Roger Pearson knew it already, and triumphed. And then Aunt Patience—but that was the most dreadful of all.
Even old Hewitt himself, the landlord of the Seven Thorns, was a little disappointed, if truth were told. He had liked to say to the fathers of the village, “I can’t get that young Piercey out o’ my house. Morning, noon, and night that young fellow is about. And I can’t kick him out, ye see, old Sir Giles bein’ the Lord o’ the Manor.” “I’d kick him out fast enough,” the blacksmith had replied, who never had any chance that way, “if he come sneakin’ after my gell.” “Oh, as for that, my Patty is one that can take care of herself,” it had been Mr. Hewitt’s boast to say. And when he was congratulated ironically by the party in the parlour with a “Hallo, Hewitt! you’ve been and got shut of your Softy,” the landlord did not like it. Softy as Gervase was, to have got him thus fast in the web, old Sir Giles’ only son, was a kind of triumph to the house.
In the afternoon, however, Patty resolved to take a walk. It was an indulgence which she permitted to herself periodically—that her best things and her hat with the roses, her light gloves and her parasol might not spoil for want of use. She put on all this finery, however, with a sinking at her heart. The last time she had worn them she had been all in a thrill with excitement, bent upon the boldest step she had ever taken in her life. And the high tension of her nerves and passion of her mind had been increased by the unexpected colloquy with Lady Piercey at the carriage-door. But that was a day of triumph all along the line. She had baffled the old lady, and she had roused her own aunt to a fierce enthusiasm of interest, which had reacted upon herself and increased her determination, and the fervour of her own. When she had walked back that evening with the fifty pounds, she had felt herself already my lady, uplifted to a pinnacle of grandeur from which no fathers or mothers could bring her down. But now! Gervase himself had not seemed a very important part of that triumph a little while ago. He had been a chattel of hers, a piece of property as much her own as her parasol. And if he had emancipated himself, if he had escaped out of her net, if his mother had obtained the mastery of him, or sent him away, Patty felt as if she must die of rage and humiliation. To take back that fifty pounds to Aunt Patience and allow that the use she had got it for was no longer possible; to submit to be asked on all sides, by Roger in triumph, by everybody else in scorn, what had become of him? was more than she could bear. She would rather run away and go to service in London. She would rather—— there was nothing in the world that Patty did not feel herself capable of doing rather than bear the brunt of this disappointment and shame.
It must be added that the value of Gervase individually was enormously enhanced by this period of doubt and alarm. The prize that is on the point of being lost is very different from that which falls naturally, easily into your hands. Patty thought of the Softy no longer as if he were a piece of still life; no more—indeed, not so much—a part of the proceedings which were to end eventually in making her my lady as the marriage-licence which would cost such a deal of money. All that was changed now. Poor fellow! he who had never been of much importance to anybody had become of the very greatest consequence now. She would never, never be my lady at all, unless he took a principal part in it—the great fool, the goose, the gaby! But though her feelings broke out once or twice in a string of such reproaches under her breath, Gervase was too important a factor now to be thought of or addressed by contemptuous epithets. He could spoil it all; he could make all her preparations useless. He could shame her in the eyes of Aunt Patience, and even before the whole of her little world, although nobody knew how far things had gone. Therefore it was with an anxious heart that Patty made a turn round by the outskirts of the village as if she were going to pay a visit to her Aunt Patience—the last place in the world where she desired to go—and then directed her steps towards the Manor, meaning to make a wide round past the iron gate and the beech-tree avenue, which were visible to any passenger walking across the downs. She gave a long look, as she passed, at the great house, with all its windows twinkling in the afternoon sun, and the two long processions of trees on either side. Her heart rose to her mouth at the thought that all this might, yet might never, be her own. Might be! it had seemed certain a week ago; and yet might never be if that fool—oh, that imbecile, that ridiculous, vacant, gaping Softy—should take it into his foolish head to draw back now.
The road lay close under the wall of the park beyond the iron gate. Patty had got so anxious, so terrified, so horribly convinced that her chances of meeting him were small, and that, except in an accidental way, she could not hope to lay hands on him again, that her stout heart almost failed her as she went on. It was a very warm day, and she was flushed and heated with her walk, as well as with the suspense and alarm of which her mind was full, so that she was aware she was not looking her best, when suddenly, without warning, she came full upon him round the corner, almost striking him with her outstretched parasol in the suddenness of the encounter. Gervase did not see her at all. He was coming on with his head bent, his under-lip hanging, his hands in his pockets, busy with his old game—six white ones all in a heap. What a jump for the right-hand man! and hallo, hallo! a little brown fellow slipping along on the other side, driven by somebody’s foot! He made a mental note of that before looking to see who the somebody was, which was of so much less importance. And then Patty’s little cry of surprise and “Oh! Mr. Gervase!” went through him like a shot at his ear. He gave a shout like the inarticulate delight of a dog, and flew towards her as if he had been Dash or Rover, roused by the ecstatic sound of their master’s voice.