“My dear, my dear, I’ll send for Pownceby to-morrow. You must not upset yourself—you mustn’t, indeed. What should I do, and everybody, if—if anything was to happen?” Sir Giles cried. And he became so excited in his anxiety to calm her, that Patty was compelled to conquer herself and regain her self-command. She looked up with a mournful smile from her pocket-handkerchief. “Dear papa,” she said, “we are two of us that mustn’t do that. If you get upset it will upset me, and that will upset you still more; so we must each hold up for the sake of the other. Suppose we have another game?”
“You always know exactly what I want,” said the old gentleman, his sob turning into a laugh, as his laugh so often turned into a sob. There was not, in fact, much difference between the two; and the rest of the evening was passed as usual in admiring exclamations on Patty’s part as to his wonderful play and wonderful luck, so that even Dunning did not suspect that there had been anything more.
Patty reminded her father-in-law next morning when she went to him, as she had begun to make a practice of doing, to see if he wanted any letters written, that he had spoken of some Mr. Pownceby who was to be written to. “I don’t know who Mr. Pownceby is, but you said something about him, dear papa!” And the result was that in a day or two Mr. Pownceby came, the family solicitor, whom Patty indeed did not know, but of whose faculties and position in the matter she had a shrewd guess. She had to entertain the little gentleman to luncheon after he had been closeted with Sir Giles all the morning; and Mr. Pownceby was much impressed by Mrs. Piercey’s dignified air, and her crape and her widow’s cap. “I suppose it’s within the range of possibilities that a girl in that position might be fond even of a poor fellow like Gervase Piercey,” he said to himself doubtfully; and he made himself very agreeable to the young widow. He informed her that he had received instructions to charge the estate with an annuity of a thousand pounds a year for her, of which the payments were to begin at once. “A very proper arrangement,” he said, and he was impressed by the composure with which Patty received the information. She was not indeed at all elated by it. A thousand pounds a year was a great thing for Patty Hewitt of the Seven Thorns. She would have thought it a princely revenue when she became Gervase Piercey’s wife; but a few months’ familiarity with the expenditure of Greyshott had made a great change in Patty’s views. To descend into a small house like the Rectory, for instance (she had once thought the Rectory a palace), and to do without a carriage, was far from an agreeable prospect. “How shall I ever do without a carriage?” Patty said to herself, and she thought with scorn of the little basket-work pony-chaise which was all the rector could afford. Was it possible that she should ever come down to that? Mr. Pownceby, when he went away, held her hand for a moment, and asked whether a very old friend of the family, who had known poor dear Gervase from his birth, might be permitted to say how pleased and thankful he was that there were hopes——? which made Sir Giles so very happy, poor old gentleman? “And I fear, I fear, my dear old friend has not many days before him,” the lawyer said; “he’s quite clear in his mind, but it was not to be expected that a worn-out constitution could bear all those shocks one after another. We’ll not have him long, Mrs. Piercey, we’ll not have him long!”
“Does the doctor say so?” asked Patty.
“My dear lady, the doctor says he has the best of nursing; and everything so much the better for a lady in the house.” It was with this douceur that the solicitor took his leave, being a man that liked to please everybody. And there can be no doubt that a softened feeling arose in the whole neighbourhood about Patty, who was said to be such a good daughter to Sir Giles. “Thrown over her own people altogether—no crowd of barbarians about the house, as one used to fear; and quite gives herself up to her father-in-law; plays backgammon with him half the day, which can’t be lively for a young woman; and expects——” These last were the most potent words of all.
Patty was, indeed, very good to her father-in-law, and that not altogether for policy, but partly from feeling; for he had been kind to her, and she was grateful. The winter was dreary and long, and there were sometimes weeks together when Sir Giles could not get out, even into the garden, for that forlorn little drive of his in the wheeled chair. Patty gave herself up to his service with a devotion which was above all praise. She bore his fretfulness when weakness and suffering made the old man querulous. She was always at hand, whatever he wanted. She looked after his food and his comfort, often in despite of Dunning and to the great offence of the cook, but both these functionaries had to submit to Patty’s will. Had she not carried everything with a very high hand, it is possible that her footing might not have been so sure; for the women soon penetrated the fiction, which was not indeed of Patty’s creation, and Dunning even ventured upon hints to Sir Giles that all was not as he thought. The old gentleman, however, got weaker day by day; one little indulgence after another dropped from him. March was unusually blustery, and April very wet. These were good reasons why he should not go out; that he was more comfortable in his chair by the fire. Then he got indifferent to the paper, which Dunning always read to him in the morning, and only took an interest in the scraps of news which Patty repeated to him later on.
“Why did not Dunning read me that, if it is in the paper? The fellow gets lazier and lazier; he never reads the paper to me now! He thinks I forget!” When Dunning would have remonstrated Patty checked him with a look.
“You must never contradict Sir Giles!” she said to him aside.
“And he says I’m never to contradict her!” Dunning said indignantly in the housekeeper’s room, where he went for consolation; “between them a man ain’t allowed to say a word!”
The women all cried out with scorn that Sir Giles would find out different from that one o’ these days.