“How do you know,” cried Patty, “that I have no friends?” and then, after a moment’s struggle to keep her self-command, she burst into a violent storm of tears. “Oh, don’t say anything to me!” she cried, “don’t say anything to me! I haven’t had a kind word from a soul, nor known what it was to have an easy heart or a bit of pleasure, not since the night you came to the little door, Roger Pearson—no, nor long before.”
There was a silence, broken only by her passionate sobs and the sound of the weeping which she could not control, until Roger moved from his chair and went up to the sofa on which she had thrown herself, hiding her tears and flushed face upon the cushions. He laid his hand upon her shoulder with a caressing touch, and said, softly, “Don’t now, don’t now, Patty dear. Don’t cry, there’s a love.”
“And when you think all I’ve gone through,” said Patty, among her sobs, “and how I’ve given up everything to do my duty! When you said to me that night you had been at a dance—Oh! and me never seeing a soul, never anything but waiting on them, and serving them, and nursing them, or playing nonsense games from morning to night! And then when the old gentleman died and left me what I never asked him for, then everybody taking up against me as if I had committed a sin; and never one coming near me, never, never one, but Meg in London coming to speak out of charity, because I was alone. Yes, and I was alone,” said Patty, raising herself up, drying her eyes hastily, with a nervous hand, “and I’ll be alone all my life; but I’ll never take charity as if I was some poor creature, from her or from him!”
“You needn’t be alone a moment more than you like, Patty,” said Roger. “I was always fond of you, you well know. You jilted me to marry 'im, poor fellow, but I’ll not say a word about that. You’re not ’appy in this great ’ouse, and you know it, nor you’ll never be. I’m not saying anything one way or another about them ladies and swells: maybe they might have been a little kinder and done no ’arm. But you’re an interloper among them, you know you are; and I’m not one as ’olds with putting another man’s nose out of joint, or taking his ’ouse over ’is ’ead. I wouldn’t, if it was a bit of a cottage, or your father’s old place at the Seven Thorns; and no more would I here. There ain’t no blessing on it, that’s my opinion.”
“I don’t know, Roger Pearson, that your opinion was ever asked,” Patty said.
“It wasn’t asked; but you wouldn’t cry like that before anybody but me, nor own as you were in trouble. Now, ’ere’s my ’and, if you’ll have it, Patty; I’ll not come ’ere to sit down at another man’s fireside, but I’ll stand by you through thick and thin; and I’m making a pretty bit of money myself, and neither me nor you—we don’t need to be beholdin’ to nobody. Let’s just set up a snug place of our own, and I’d like to see the man—the biggest swell in the world—or woman either, that would put a slight upon my wife.”
“What!” said Patty, with a smile that was meant to be satirical, “give up Greyshott and my position and all as I’ve struggled so hard for, for you, Roger Pearson? Why, who are you? nobody! a man as is a good cricketer; and that’s the whole when all’s said.”
“Well,” said Roger, good-humouredly, “it’s not a great deal, perhaps, but it’s always something; and it’s still me if I never touched a bat. You wouldn’t marry my cricketing any more than you’d marry his parliamenteering, or sporting, or what not, if you did get a swell; and you take my word, Patty, you’ll never get on with a swell like you would do with me. We’ve been brought up the same, and we understand each other. I know how you’re feeling, just exactly, my poor little girl: you’d like to be ’appy, and then pride comes in. You say, ‘I’ve worked hard for it and I’ll never give it up.’ ”
“If you mean I’ll not give up being Mrs. Piercey of Greyshott, with the finest house in the county, to go to a cottage with you——”
“Don’t now, don’t,” said Roger, protesting, yet without excitement; “I never said a cottage, did I? What I said was a ’andsome ’ouse, with all the modern improvements and furnished to your fancy, instead of this old barrack of a place, and a spanking pair of ’osses, a deal better than them old fat beasts, as goes along like snails; and some more in the stable, a brougham, and a victoria, and a dogcart for me; that’s my style. I don’t call that love in a cottage. I call it love very well to do, with everything comfortable. Lord! if you like this better, this old place—full of ghosts and dead folks’ pictures, I don’t agree with your taste, my dear, and that’s all I’ve got to say.”