The next morning after this, Gerald Piercey found himself in the front
of the Seven Thorns. He had not known what it was: whether a hamlet, or
a farm, or what he actually found it to be, a roadside inn. The aspect
of the place was more attractive than usual. It was lying full in the
morning sunshine; a great country waggon, with its white covering, and
fine, heavily-built, but well-groomed horses, standing before the door,
concentrating the light in its great hood. One of the horses was white,
which made it a still more shining object in the midst of the red-brown
road. The old thorns were full in the sunshine, which softened their
shabby antiquity, and made the gnarled roots and twisted branches
picturesque. The long, low fabric of the house was bathed in the same
light, which pervaded the whole atmosphere with a purifying and
embellishing touch. The west side, looking over the walled garden, which
extended for some distance along the road, though in the shade, showed a
row of open windows, at which white curtains fluttered, giving an air of
inhabitation to that usually-closed-up portion of the place. The visitor
felt, as he looked at it, that it was not a mere village public-house,
that its decadence might have a story, and that it was possible that the
daughter of such a house might not, after all, be a mere rustic
coquette, or, perhaps, so bad a match for the half-witted Gervase.
Colonel Piercey had never once thought of himself as the possible heir
of Greyshott; he did not feel that he had any interest in keeping
Gervase from marrying, and though it was intolerable that the heir of
the Pierceys should marry a barmaid, his feelings softened as he looked
at the old country inn, with its look of long-establishment. Probably
there was a farm connected with it; perhaps there was a certain pride of
family here, too, and the daughter of the house was kept apart from the
drinking and the wayside guests. Meg Piercey might have divined that the
young woman was really the best match that Gervase could hope for, and
this might be the cause of her opposition. (He forgot that he had
supposed it likely that Meg might be bringing the match about for her
own private ends, one hypothesis being just as likely as another.) With
this idea he approached slowly, and took his seat upon the bench that
stood under the window of the parlour. The roads between Greyshott and
the Seven Thorns were dry and dusty, and his boots were white enough to
warrant the idea that he was a pedestrian reposing himself, naturally,
at the place of refreshment on the roadside.
The landlord came to the door with the waggoner, when Colonel Piercey
had established himself there, and his aspect could not be said to be
quite equal to that of his house. Hewitt had a red nose and a watery
eye. His appearance did not inspire respect. He was holding the waggoner
by the breast of his smock, and holding forth, duly emphasising his
discourse by the gesture of the other hand, in which he held a pipe.
“You just ’old by me,” he was saying, “look’ee, Jack; and I’ll ’old by
you, I will. The ’ay’s a good crop; nobody can’t say nothing again that.
But there’s rain a-coming, and Providence, ’e knows what’ll come of it
all in the end. It ain’t what’s grow’d in the fields as is to be trusted
to, but what’s safe in the stacks; and there’s a deal o’ difference
between one and the other. Look’ee here! you ’old by me, and I’ll ’old
by you. And I can’t speak no fairer. I’ve calcilated all round, I
’ave--me and Patty, my girl, as is that good at figures; and if it’s got
in safe, all as I’ve got to say is, that this ’ere will be a dashed
uncommon yeer.”
“It’s mostly the way,” said the waggoner, “I’ll allow, with them dry
Junes. The weather can’t ’old up not for ever.”
“Nor won’t,” said old Hewitt, with assurance; “it stands to reason.
Ain’t this a variable climate or ain’t it not? And a drop o’ rain we
’aven’t seen not for three weeks and more. Then we’ll ’ave a wet July.
You see yourself when I knocked the glass ’ow it went down. And that,”
he added, triumphantly, waving his pipe in the air, “is what settles the
price of the ’ay.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you was right, master,” said the waggoner,
getting under weigh.
Gerald Piercey sat and watched the big horses straining their great
flanks to the work, setting the heavy waggon in motion, with pleasure in
the sight which diverted him for a moment from his chief object of
interest. Coming straight from India and the fine and slender-limbed
creatures which are the patricians of their kind, the great, patient,
phlegmatic English cart-horse filled him with admiration. The big
feathered hoofs, the immense strain of those gigantic hind-quarters, the
steady calm of the rustic, reflected with a greater and more dignified
impassiveness in the face of his beast, was very attractive and
interesting to him.
“Fine horses, these,” he said, half to Hewitt at the door, half to the
waggoner, who grinned with a slow shamefacedness, as if it were himself
who was being praised.
“Ay, sir,” said Hewitt, “and well took care of, as ever beasts was. Jack
Mason there--though I say it as shouldn’t--is awfull good to his team.”
“And why shouldn’t you say it?” said Colonel Piercey. “It’s clear
enough.”
“He’s a relation, that young man is, and it’s a country saying, sir, as
you shouldn’t speak up for your own. But I ain’t one as pays much ’eed
to that, for, says I, you knows them that belong to you better nor any
one else does. There’s my girl Patty, now; there ain’t one like her
betwixt Guildford and Portsmouth, and who knows it as well as me?”
“That’s a very satisfactory state of things,” said the visitor, “and, of
course, you must know best. But I fear you won’t be able to keep Miss
Patty long to yourself if she’s like that.”
At this Patty’s father began to laugh a slow, inward laugh. “There’s
’eaps o’ fellows after ’er, like bees after a ’oney ’ive. But, Lord
bless you! she don’t think nothing o’ them. She’s not one as would take
up with a country ’Odge. She’s blood in her veins, has my girl. We’ve
been at the Seven Thorns, off and on, for I don’t know ’ow many ’undred
years: more time,” said Hewitt, waving his pipe vaguely towards
Greyshott, “than them folks ’as been at the ’All.”
“Ah, indeed! That’s the Pierceys, I suppose?”
“And a proud set they be. But ’Ewitts was ’ere before ’em, only they
won’t acknowledge it. I’ve ’eard my sister Patience, ’as ’ad a terrible
tongue of ’er own, tell Sir Giles so to his face. ’E was young then, and
father couldn’t keep ’im out o’ this ’ouse. After Patience, to be sure;
but he was a terrible cautious one, was Sir Giles, and it never come to
nought.” The landlord laughed with a sharp hee-hee-hee. “I reckon,” he
said, “it runs in the blood.”
“What runs in the blood?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the innkeeper, pausing suddenly, “if you’ve
called for anything? I can’t trust neither to maid nor man to attend to
the customers now Patty’s away.”
“If you have cider, I should like a bottle, and perhaps you’ll help me
to drink it,” said Colonel Piercey. “I’m sorry to hear that Miss Patty’s
away.”
“In London,” said Hewitt; “but only for a bit. She ’as a ’ead, that chit
’as! Them rooms along there, end o’ the ’ouse, ’asn’t been lived in not
for years and years. She says to me, she does, ‘Father, let’s clear ’em
out, and maybe we’ll find a lodger.’ I was agin it at first. ‘What’ll
you do with a lodger? There ain’t but very little to be made o’ that,’ I
says. ‘They don’t come down to the parlour to drink, that sort doesn’t,
and they’re more trouble nor they’re worth.’ ‘You leave it to me,
father,’ she says. And, if you’ll believe it, she’s found folks for them
rooms already! New-married folks, she says, as will spend their money
free. And coming in a week, for the rest of the summer or more. That’s
Patty’s way!” cried the landlord, smiting his thigh. “Strike while it’s
’ot, that’s ’er way! Your good ’ealth, sir, and many of ’em. It ain’t my
brewing, that cider. I gets it from Devonshire, and I think, begging
your pardon, sir, as it’s ’eady stuff.”
“But how,” said Colonel Piercey, “will you manage with your visitors,
when your daughter is away?”
“Oh, bless you, sir, she’s a-coming with ’em, she says in her letter, if
not before. Patty knows well I ain’t the one for lodgers. I sits in my
own parlour, and I don’t mind a drop to drink friendly-like with e’er a
man as is thirsty, or to see a set of ’orses put up in my stables, or
that; but Richard ’Ewitt of the Seven Thorns ain’t one to beck and bow
afore folks as thinks themselves gentry, and maybe ain’t not ’alf as
good as ’er and me. No, sir; I wasn’t made, nor was my father afore me
made, for the likes of that.”
“It is very good of you, I’m sure, Mr. Hewitt, to sit for half an hour
with me, who may be nobody, as you say.”
“Don’t mention it, sir,” said Hewitt, with a wave of the pipe which he
still carried like a banner in his hand: “I ’ope I knows a gentleman
when I sees one; and as I said, I sits at my own door and I takes a
friendly drop with any man as is thirsty. That ain’t the same as bowing
and scraping, and taking folks’s orders, as is nothing to me.”
“And Miss Patty, you say, is in London? London’s a big word: is she east
or west, or----”
“It’s funny,” said Hewitt, “the interest that’s took in my Patty since
she’s been away. There’s been Sally Ferrett, the nurse up at Greyshott,
asking and asking, where is she, and when did she go, and when she’s
coming back? I caught her getting it all out of ’Lizabeth the girl. What
day did she go, and what train, and so forth? ’Lizabeth’s a gaby. She
just says ‘Yes, Miss,’ and ‘No, Miss,’ to a wench like that, as is only
a servant like herself. I give it ’em well, and I give Miss her answer.
‘What’s their concern up at Greyshott with where my Patty is?”
“That’s true,” said Colonel Piercey, “and what is my concern? You are
quite right, Mr. Hewitt.”
“Oh, yours, sir? that’s different: you ask out o’ pure idleness, you do,
to make conversation; I understand that. But between you and me I
couldn’t answer ’em, not if I wanted to. For my Patty is one as can take
very good care of ’erself, and she don’t give me no address. She’ll be
back with them young folks, or maybe, afore ’em, next week, and that’s
all as I want to know. I wants her then, for I’ll not have nothing to do
with ’em, and ’Lizabeth, she’s a gaby, and not to be trusted. Lodgers in
my opinion is more trouble than they’re any good. So Patty will manage
them herself, or they don’t come here.”
“The family at Greyshott takes an interest in your daughter, I presume,
from what you say,” said Colonel Piercey.
Upon this Hewitt laughed low and long, and winked over and over again
with his watery eye. “There’s one of ’em as does,” he said. “Oh, there’s
one of ’em as does! If so be as you know the family, sir, you’ll know
the young gentleman. Don’t you know Mr. Gervase?--eh, not the young ’un,
sir, as is Sir Giles’s heir? Oh, Lord, if you don’t know him you don’t
know Greyshott Manor, nor what’s going on there.”
“I have never seen the young gentleman,” said Gerald; “I believe he is
not very often at home.”
“I don’t know about ’ome, but ’e’s ’ere as often as ’e can be. ’E’d be
’ere mornin’, noon, and night if I’d ’a put up with it; but I see ’im,
what ’e was after, and I’ll not ’ave my girl talked about, not for the
best Piercey as ever trod in shoe-leather. And ’e ain’t the best, oh,
not by a long chalk ’e ain’t. Sir Giles is dreadful pulled down with the
rheumatics and that, but ’e was a man as was something like a man. Lord
bless you, sir, this poor creature, ’e’s a Softy, and ’e’ll never be no
more.”
“What do you mean by a Softy?” said Gerald, quickly; then he added with
a sensation of shame, “Never mind, I don’t want you to tell me. Don’t
you think you should be a little more careful what you say, when a young
man like this comes to your house?”
“What should I be careful for?” said Hewitt; “I ain’t noways beholdin’
to the Pierceys. They ain’t my landlords, ain’t the Piercey’s, though
they give themselves airs with their Lords o’ the Manor, and all that.
Hewitts of the Seven Thorns is as good as the Pierceys, and not
beholdin’ to them, not for the worth of a brass fardin--oh, no! And I
wouldn’t have the Softy about my house, a fool as opens ’is mouth and
laughs in your face if you say a sensible word to ’im; not for me!
Richard Hewitt’s not a-going to think twice what he says for a fool like
’im. Softy’s ’is name and Softy’s ’is nature: ask any man in the village
who the Softy is, and they’ll soon tell you. Lord, it don’t matter a
bit what I say.”
“Still, I suppose,” said Colonel Piercey, feeling a little nettled in
spite of himself, “it is, after all, the first family in the
neighbourhood.”
“First family be dashed,” cried Hewitt; “I’m as good a family as any of
’em. And I don’t care that, no, not that,” he cried, snapping his
fingers, “for the Pierceys, if they was kings and queens, which they
ain’t, nor no such big folks after all. Old Sir Giles, he’s most gone
off his head with rheumatics and things; and my lady, they do say, she
’ave ’ad a stroke, and serve her right for her pride and her pryin’. And
Mr. Gervase, he’s a Softy, and that’s all that’s to be said. They ain’t
much for a first family when you knows all the rights and the wrongs of
it,” Hewitt said.