She walked in thus with flags flying, pale with the effort, which was advantageous to her appearance, and found herself in the great room, with its bookcases on the one hand and the tall portraits on the other. But Patty found here, against her expectations, a far more difficult scene before her. Two or three ladies had come to give Margaret Osborne the support of their presence, on what they called “this trying day,” without in the least realising how trying it was to be. One of them, an old lady, sat in a great chair facing the door, with her eyes fixed upon it. Two others, younger, but scarcely less alarming, were talking to Mrs. Osborne, who in her own sole person had been supposed by Patty with natural enmity to be the chief of her adversaries. They stopped their conversation and stared at Patty, as with a sudden faltering, she came in. Gervase stood against the end window, fully outlined against the light, with his hands in his pockets, and his hat on his head, swaying from one foot to another, his lower lip hanging a little and very moist, his wandering eyes turned towards the door. Patty entering alone under the eyes of these ladies, with a consciousness that much had passed since she had last looked at herself in a glass, and that veil and mantle might easily have got awry—and with the additional excitement of surprise in finding them there when she had looked at the worst only for the presence of Mrs. Osborne—might well have called forth a sympathetic movement in any bosom. And when it is added to this that Gervase, standing there against the light, had probably never in all his life looked so idiotic before, and that he had his hat on his head, last and most dreadful climax of all, it may be dimly imagined what were the sensations of his bride. But there are circumstances in which an unusual exaggeration of trouble brings support. Patty looked for a moment and then rushed upon her husband in horror. “Oh, Gervase! do you know you have got your hat on, and ladies in the room?” she cried, with an almost shriek of dismay.
Gervase put up his hand to his head, took off the hat, and then carefully examined it, as if to find the reason of offence there. “Have I?” he said, with a laugh; “then I never knew it. You should stick by me if you mean me to behave. I don’t think of such things.”
“Then you ought,” she cried, breathless, taking the hat from him with a wife’s familiarity, “and you ought to beg pardon.” She took him by the arm quickly and led him forward a step or two. “Ladies,” she said, “I am sure me and my husband are very glad to see you. He meant no rudeness, I’m sure. He doesn’t think about such little things. I am still,” she added, “a sort of a stranger”—with an insinuating smile which, however, was very tremulous, for Patty’s nerves were strained to the utmost. She paused a moment for breath. “A bride has the feeling that the friends of the family know her husband better than she does; and it’s such a sad occasion to begin. But I’m sure I may say both for him and for me that we are pleased, and will always be pleased, to see old friends here.”
The ladies sat and stared at her speechless. What reply could be made to a woman so manifestly within her rights?
CHAPTER XXIV.
Patty felt, which was surely very natural, that the worst of her troubles were over after this scene; and when Mrs. Osborne went out with the ladies, going with them from sheer inability to know what to do—she threw herself into a great chair, which seemed to embrace and support her, with a sense at once of having earned and fully deserved the repose, and also of having been successful all along the line. She had encountered almost all who were likely to be her adversaries, and they had all given way before her. To be sure, there had not been much said to her: the gentlemen had stood aside to let her in, the ladies had stared and said nothing, only one of them had turned with a little compunction of civility to bow to her as she went away. The old lady, whom Patty knew to be Lady Hartmore, had waddled out, saying: “Well, Meg, we shall say all we have to say another time,” and had not so much as looked again at Patty. Meg Osborne, as Patty had begun to call her, had kept her eyes on the ground, and had accompanied her friends to the door without a word. But still it was Patty who had driven them away, not they who had interfered with Patty. When one of the armies in an engagement encamps upon the field of battle, that belligerent is generally admitted to have won the day. And here was Mrs. Gervase resting in that large deep chair, which was such an one as Patty Hewitt had never seen before, enjoying a moment of well-earned repose in her own house. Was it her own house? Her pulses were all throbbing with the excitement of conflict and the pride of victory; but she was aware that her triumph was not yet assured. Nevertheless, everything was in her favour. This grand house into which she had made her way, and which was even grander than Patty had supposed, was certainly her husband’s home, and she was his wife as legally, as irrevocably as if she had been married with the consent of all the parents in the world. Nothing could part her from her husband, neither force nor law, and though her heart still owned a thrill of alarm and insecurity, she became more at ease as she thought the matter over. Who dared turn her out of the house into which she had so bravely fought her way? Nobody but Sir Giles, who was not equal to the effort, who would not wish to do it, she felt sure. Patty had a conviction in her mind that she only required to be let alone and allowed access to him for a single day to get wholly the upper hand of Sir Giles. And who else had any right to interfere? Not Meg Osborne, who had herself no right to be at Greyshott, except as a humble companion and hanger-on. A niece! what was a niece in the house? Patty herself had a poor cousin who had been taken in at the Seven Thorns, as a sort of inferior servant, out of charity, as everybody said, and whose life Patty well knew had been a very undesirable one. What was Meg Osborne more than Mary Thorne? She had no right to say a word. Neither had the tall gentleman, of whom she was, however, more frightened, whom she had already discovered to be Colonel Piercey, the nearest relation. How persons like Patty do make such discoveries is wonderful, a science which cannot be elucidated or formulated in mere words. She knew by instinct, and she knew also that he could not interfere. The servants were more in Patty’s way, and her hatred of them was sharp and keen—but she had already managed to discredit Dunning, and she was not afraid of the servants. What could they do? What would they venture to do against the son’s wife? All these thoughts were passing through her mind as she rested in the great chair. And yet that repose was not without thorns. Gervase, though he stood still and stared while the ladies withdrew, did not rest as she was doing. He walked to the window, to look out, and stood there fidgetting, and eager to take part in all the commotion outside. “Lord!” he cried, “Hartmore’s carriage is sent round to the stables, and my lord has got to wait, and Stubbins, the little parson, is offering his fly. Oh, I can’t stay here, Patty, I must be in the fun. You can get on very well by yourself without me.”
“What do you want with fun the day of your mother’s funeral?” she said severely. “They’ll all think a deal more of you if you stay quiet here.”
Gervase’s countenance fell at the suggestion of his mother’s funeral. No doubt, had he been at home, had his dull mind acquainted itself with the preliminaries, he would have been more or less moved. But it was too great an effort of mind for him to connect the ceremony in the churchyard, the grave and the flowers, with Lady Piercey, whom he had left in her usual health, deciding everything in her usual peremptory way. He had a strong impression that she would presently appear on the scene as usual and settle everything; and a sort of alarm came over his face, and his spirit was overawed for a moment by the mention of her name. There succeeded accordingly, for about a minute, silence in the room, which left Patty time to go over the question again. Who could interfere with her? Nobody! Not Meg Osborne, not Colonel Piercey, not a mere housekeeper or butler. Oh dear no! Nobody but Sir Giles himself! Patty settled herself more and more comfortably in her chair. The funeral had been at an unusually late hour, and it was now almost evening. She thought that after a little interval she would ring the bell for tea. If any one had need of refreshment after the labour of the day, it was she. And after that there were many things to think of, both small things and great things. What should she do about dinner, for instance? Meg Osborne, no doubt, had got a full wardrobe of mourning, day dress and evening dress (at her, Patty’s, expense!), while Mrs. Gervase Piercey had only the gown which she had on, an old dress plastered with crape. Should she wear this for dinner? The thought of going down to dinner, sitting down with a footman behind her chair, and all the etiquette involved, was almost too much for Patty, and took away her breath. Should she brush the skirt, and smarten up the neck and wear this? Or should she send down to the Seven Thorns for her black silk, and explain that she had not had time to get proper mourning? Gervase had begun to fidget again while she carried on this severe course of thought. She could hear him laughing to himself at the window, making occasional exclamations. “Oh, by Jove!” he called out at last. “There’s lots more coming, one on the top of another. I’m going to see after them.” She was so deep in her meditations, that he was gone before she could interfere. And thus she was left in the great silent library, a room such as she had never seen before, overawing her with the sight of the bookcases, the white marble faces looking down upon her of the busts that stood high up here and there, the full-length portraits that stared upon her from the other side. Many people, quite as little educated as Patty—or less so, for the sixth standard necessarily includes many things—had come and gone lightly enough, and thought nothing of the books or the ancestors. I doubt much whether Margaret Osborne had half so much general information as Patty had; but, then, their habits of mind were very different. Mrs. Gervase, when she was left alone, could not help being a little overawed by all she saw. Her husband was not much to hold on by, but yet he “belonged there,” and she did not. Patty had felt increasingly, ever since the day on which she married him, how very little her husband was to be depended upon. She had fully recognised that before the marriage, and had decided that she should not mind. But now it seemed a grievance to Patty that he could not defend her and advise her; that she had nobody but herself to look to; that quite possibly he might even abandon her at the most critical moment. “There is never any calculating,” she said to herself bitterly, “what a fool may do;” in which sentiment Patty echoed, without knowing it, all the philosophies of the subject. Who could have thought he would have slid away from her, on her first entrance into a house where she would have to fight her way step by step, for nothing at all—for the first novelty that caught his wandering eye?
Patty was tired, and she cried a little at this crisis, feeling that her fate was hard. To acquire a husband with so much trouble, and to find out at once how little help to her he was. He was very fond of her, she knew. Still, now he was used to her, and took her for granted as a part of the order of things, he could not keep his mind fixed even on his wife. He was only a Softy after all, nothing more! Patty roused herself briskly, however, from this line of thought, which was evidently not one to encourage, and rang the bell. It remained a long time unanswered; and then she rang again. This time the footman who had turned his back upon her at the carriage-door, came, looked in, said “Oh!” when he saw her sitting alone, and went away. Patty’s fury was indescribable. Oh that dolt John Simpson, what a fate he was making for himself! While she waited, growing more and more angry, Mrs. Osborne came in again, with hesitation. She was still in her outdoor dress, and looked disturbed and embarrassed.
“The servants—— have told me—— that you had rung the bell,” she said, faltering considerably. “Is there—— anything—— I can order for you?”