You are Patty, that used to come out so well in the examinations, Lady Piercey said, with a breathlessness which showed what excitement existed on her side.
I am Patience Hewitt, my lady, if that is what youre pleased to ask.
Margaret sat looking on trembling at these two belligerents: her aunt, who overbore her, Margaret, without any trouble silenced all her arguments and shut her mouth; and this girl of the village and public-house, the Sunday-school child whom she remembered, the pet of the rector, the clever little monitor and ringleader Patty, of the Seven Thorns, something between a housemaid and a barmaid, and Lady Piercey of Greyshott! The looker-on, acknowledging herself inferior to both of them, felt that they were not badly matched.
Ah! said Lady Piercey, yes, thats what I asked. Youre Robert Hewitts daughter, I suppose, who keeps the public-house on our property?
Begging your pardon, my lady, the old inn of the Seven Thorns is my fathers property, and has been his and his familys for I dont know how many hundred years.
Oh! cried Lady Piercey with a stare, you speak up very bold, young woman; yet youve been bred up decently, I suppose, and taught how you ought to conduct yourself in that condition in which God has placed you.
If you wish to know about my character, my lady, the rector will give it you; though I dont know why you should trouble about it, seeing as I am not likely to wish a place under your ladyship, or under anybody, for that matter.
No, cried Lady Piercey, exasperated into active hostilities; you would like to climb up over our heads, thats what you would like to do.
Patty replied to the excited stare with a look of candid surprise. How could I climb over anybodys head, I wonder? me that manages everything for father, and keeps house at the Seven Thorns?
You look very mild and very fine, said Lady Piercey, leaning over the side of the carriage, and emphasising her words with look and gesture, but Ive come here expressly to let you understand that I know everything, and that what youre aiming at shant be! Dont look at me as if you couldnt divine what I was speaking of! I know every one of your plots and plans every one! and if you think that you, a bit of a girl in a public-house, can get the better of Sir Giles and me, the chief people in the county, I can tell you youre very far mistaken. Lady Piercey leant over the side of the carriage and spoke in a low voice, which was much more impressive than if she had raised it. She had the fear of the coachman before her eyes, who was holding his very breath to listen, growing redder and redder in the effort, but in vain. Lady Piercey projected her head over the carriage door till it almost touched the young head which Patty held high, with all the flowers and feathers on her fine hat thrilling. Look you here! she said, with that low, rolling contralto which sounded like bass in the girls very ears, weve ways and means you know nothing about. Were the great people of this county, and youre no better than the dust under our feet: do you hear? do you hear?
Oh yes, I hear very well, my lady, said Patty, loud out, which was a delight to the coachman, but perhaps I am not of that opinion. There was, however, a little quaver of panic in her voice. Lady Piercey was right so far that a person of the people, when uneducated, finds it difficult to free him-, and especially herself, from a superstition as to what the little great, the dominant class can do.
Opinion or no opinion, said the old lady, just you understand this, Miss Polly, or whatever your name is: You dont know what people like us can do and will do if were put to it. We can put a man away within stone walls that is going to disgrace himself: we can do that as easy
as look at him; and we can ruin a designing family. That we can! ruin it root and branch, so that everything will have to be sold up, and those that offend us swept out of the country. Do you hear? Everything I say I can make good. Well ruin you all if you dont mind. Well sweep you away your name and everything, and will shut him up that you are trying to work upon, so that you shall never hear of him again. Do you understand all that? Now, if you like to think you can fight me and Sir Giles, a little thing like you, a little nobody, you can just try it! And whatever happens will be on your own head. Oh, are you back already, John? What haste you have made! Good-bye, Patty; I hope you understand all Ive said to you. Those chickens, I can tell you, will never be hatched. John home!
Patty stood looking after the carriage with her breast heaving and her nostrils dilating. The old lady had judged truly. She was frightened. Panic had seized her. She believed in these unknown miraculous powers. What could the Seven Thorns do against the Manor House? Patty Hewitt against Sir Giles and Lady Piercey? It was a question to freeze the very blood in the veins of a poor little country girl.
CHAPTER VIII
However, presently her drooping crest began to rise. If Lady Piercey had but known the errand upon which Patty was going, the intention with which she had dressed herself in all her Sunday clothes, taken her gloves from their box, and her parasol out of its cover! The consciousness of what that object had been returned to Pattys mind in a moment, and brought back the colour to her cheeks. Ah, my lady! you think its something far off, as youve got time to fight against, and shut him up and take him away! If you but knew that it may happen to-morrow, or day after to-morrow, and Patty Hewitt become Mrs. Gervase Piercey in spite of you! This thought filled Patty with new energy. It would be still sweeter to do it thus, under their very nose, as it were, after they had driven away triumphant, thinking they had crushed Patty. It was perhaps natural, that in the heat of opposition and rising pugnaciousness, the girl should have turned her bitterest thought upon the spectator sitting by, who had not said a word, and whose sympathies were, if not on her side, at least not at all on that of the other belligerent. That white-faced maypole of a thing! Patty said to herself with a virulence of opposition to the dependent which exists in both extremes of society. The old lady she recognised as having a right to make herself as disagreeable as she pleased, but the bystander, the silent spectator looking on, the cousin, or whatever she was what had she to do with it? Patty clenched her hand, in which she had been limply holding her parasol, and vowed to herself that that Mrs. Osborne should know who was who before they had done with each other, or she, Patty, would know the reason why. Poor Margaret! who had neither wished to be there, nor aided and abetted in any way Pattys momentary