Petrick’s Lady

by Thomas Hardy


In the middle of the last century, Stapleford Park was Timothy Petrick's. He had a habit of lending money to the owners of costly homes and then seizing them when his debtors could not repay him. Timothy was a lawyer by profession. It is said that a relative of his, a very deep thinker who was later imprisoned for mistaken ideas about what he could do with wills, taught him much about the law, which Timothy decided never to throw away for the benefit of other people.

However, I have nothing much to say about his early and active days, but rather of the time when, as an old man, he had become the immensely wealthy owner of Stapleford, where he lived. He had many, many other homes. In fact, I can't remember half of them and I don't know that it matters much these days, seeing that he's been dead and gone many years. It is said that when he bought a house he would not pay till he had walked over the whole property with his own two feet, and tested the quality of the soil. He must have been a very fit man even in his old age!

At the time I am speaking of he was a man over eighty and his son was dead. But he had two grandsons and the older one, his namesake, was married and was shortly expecting a child. Just then the grandfather was taken ill and it seemed he would die, considering his age. The old man had decided to leave all his property to his elder grandson and his sons. If he should not have any, his younger grandson and his sons would get it.

While old Timothy Petrick was lying ill, his elder grandson's wife gave birth to a son. Timothy, her husband, though he came from a greedy family, was not greedy himself. He was the only one of the Petricks then living whose heart was moved by feelings other than ambition. Because of this, he had not 'married well', as the saying goes. His wife was the daughter of a professional man. But she was a very pretty woman, by all accounts, and her husband had married her for love, after knowing her for a very short time. He had never found any reason to regret his choice and he was very anxious for her recovery.

She was supposed to be out of danger, and both she and the child were well, when there was a change for the worse, and she sank so quickly that she was soon close to death. When she felt that she was about to leave him, she sent for her husband. She made him swear to take care of the child, whatever might happen, if she died. Of course, he promised. Then, after some hesitation, she told him that she could not die with a lie in her heart; she must tell him something before her lips were closed forever. She said he was not the father of her child.

Timothy Petrick, though a sensitive man, did not show his feelings; and he behaved as heroically as he could at this difficult moment of his life. That same night his wife died, and while she lay dead, and before her funeral, he hurried to the bedside of his sick grandfather and told him everything that had happened - the baby's birth, his wife's lover, and her death, asking the old man to alter his will. Old Timothy, seeing things in the same light as his grandson, made another will, leaving his property to Timothy, his grandson, for life, and his future sons. So the new-born baby, who had been the centre of so many hopes, was cut out of his grandfather's will.

The old man lived only a short time after this. When both his wife and grandfather were buried, Timothy settled down to his usual life, satisfied that he had, by prompt action, protected his family's property and decided to marry a second time as soon as he could find a suitable wife.

But men do not always know themselves. Timothy Petrick now had such a hatred and distrust of women that he could not decide to get married. He was afraid of becoming a husband a second time. "What has happened once may happen again," he said to himself. "I won't risk my name." So he did not marry.

Timothy had scarcely noticed the unfortunate child that his wife had left behind. After arranging for someone to take care of the boy in his house, he hardly saw him. Occasionally, remembering his promise, he went and glanced at the child, saw that he was doing well and again returned to his lonely life. In this way, he and the child lived in Stapleford till two or three years had passed. One day he was walking in the garden and accidentally left his pipe on a bench. When he came back to find it, he saw the little boy standing there; he was using it like a toy, in spite of the sneezing it caused. The man became interested in the little boy continuing to play with the pipe even though it made him sneeze. He looked in the child's face and saw his wife's there, although he did not see his own, and started thinking about the helplessness of childhood.

From that hour, although he tried to stop the feeling, the need to love something or other got the better of him and developed into affectionate concern for the youngster, Rupert. This name had been given to him by his dying mother and her husband had never thought of it as a name of any importance till, about this time, he learned by accident that it was the name of the young Duke of Southwesterland, for whom his wife had warm feelings before her marriage. Remembering some wandering phrases in his wife's last words which he had not understood at the time, he realised at last that this was the person she had meant when talking about little Rupert's father.

He sat in silence for hours with the child, as he was no great speaker at the best of times; but the boy was always ready to chatter when Timothy Petrick had nothing to say. After spending his mornings in this lazy way, Petrick would go to his own room and walk up and down, calling himself the most ridiculous man that ever lived, and promising he would never go near the little boy again. He would continue, perhaps, for a day and then return to the child.

As Rupert grew up, Timothy's feeling for him grew deeper, till he became almost the only object he lived for. There had been enough family ambition in Timothy Petrick for him to feel a little envy when, some time before this date, his brother Edward had become engaged to an aristocrat's daughter; but knowing that Rupert came from an even higher class, those envious feelings speedily disappeared. In fact, the more he considered this, the happier he became. He remembered his wife more warmly, as he thought of the good taste she had shown, although she was only a plain man's daughter, and the justification for his weakness in loving the child was that the boy was by nature, although not by name, from one of the noblest families in England.

"She was a woman of great taste," he said to himself, proudly. "To choose a lord! If he had been common like myself or my relations she would deserve the harsh punishment that I have given her and her child. The man my wife loved was noble, and my boy is noble."

The result was inevitable, and it soon came. "Rather than cutting off his child from his inheritance, as I have done, I should have been pleased that he'd get my money! He is of aristocratic blood on one side at least."

Because he was a man who still believed in the power of royal blood, the more he considered the case, the more strongly his poor wife's behaviour in improving the blood of the Petrick family impressed him. He considered what ugly, lazy, hard-drinking people many of his own relations had been and the probability that some of their bad qualities would come out in his own child, to make him sad in his old age, turn his black hair grey, his grey hair white and cut down every tree in his fields. At last, this man every night and morning thanked God that he was not like other fathers.

It was strange how Timothy's satisfaction grew. The Petricks adored the nobility even while they cheated them. To torture and to love simultaneously is strange, but possible.

So, when Timothy's brother Edward said one day that Timothy's son was alright but that he had nothing but shops and offices in his background, while his own children, if he had any, would be very different because they had a noble mother, Timothy was delighted he could contradict that statement if he chose.

He was so interested in his boy and his aristocratic blood that he now began reading about the famous family of the Dukes of Southwesterland, from their very beginnings till his own time. He noted their gifts from royalty, lands, intermarriages and buildings; more particularly their political and military achievements, which had been great, and their successes in the arts and literature. He studied portraits of that family, and then, like a scientist watching a specimen, he began to examine young Rupert's face for those historic shapes and shades that the painters had put into their art.

When the boy reached the most interesting age of childhood and his shouts of laughter rang through Stapleford House from end to end, Timothy's regret was endless. Of all people in the world this Rupert was the one he wished to inherit his land; yet Rupert, by Timothy's own plan at the time of his birth, could not inherit it, and, as he did not plan to remarry, the lands would pass to his brother and his brother's children.

If only he hadn't spoken to Rupert's grandfather!

He thought constantly about the new and the old will, both of which still existed, and the first, the cancelled one, was in his own house. Night after night, when the servants were all in bed, he looked at that first will and wished it had been the second.

The crisis came at last. One night, after enjoying the boy's company for hours, he could no longer accept that his beloved Rupert should not inherit, and he altered the date of the earlier will to a fortnight after, which made it seem later than the one that cut Rupert out. He then announced the first will as the second.

His brother Edward agreed to what seemed a far more reasonable will of their grandfather than the other; because, like many others, he had been surprised at the other one, having no idea why Rupert was cut out.

The years moved on. Rupert had not yet shown the expected signs which should point to the political abilities of his aristocratic family when, one day, Timothy met a well-known doctor who had been the medical adviser and friend of his wife's family for many years, though after his marriage and move to Stapleford, he had not seen him again. Timothy was impressed by the knowledge the doctor showed of the family. As they talked, the doctor mentioned a form of hallucination which his mother-in-law and her mother had suffered from. They believed certain dreams were realities. He politely asked if Timothy had ever noticed anything like this in his wife during her lifetime. The doctor had imagined that he saw the same illness in Timothy's wife when he was her doctor in her childhood. One explanation came after another, till Timothy Petrick was persuaded that his wife had never known the Duke of Southwesterland.

"You look miserable!" said the doctor, pausing.

"It is unexpected," said Timothy.

Thinking it best to be open with the doctor, he told him the whole story which, till now, he had never told anybody except his dying grandfather. To his surprise, the doctor told him that such a delusion was precisely what he expected.

Petrick asked questions elsewhere; and the result was that a comparison of dates and places showed his poor wife's deathbed confession could not possibly be true. The young Duke she said she had loved was a very religious man and had gone abroad the year before he married his wife and had not returned until after her death. The young girl's love for him had been a dream - nothing more.

Timothy went home and the boy ran out to meet him. However, a strange depression took control of him. After all, then, there was only common blood in Rupert's veins. To be sure, Rupert was his son; but that history and connection he believed him to have inherited, had gone forever; he could no longer read history in the boy's face.

His behaviour towards his son grew colder and colder from that day; and it was with bitterness that he noticed the characteristics of the Petricks in his boy. Instead of the knife-like nose, so typical of the Dukes of Southwesterland, there began to appear on his face the wide nose of his grandfather Timothy. No great line of politicians was promised in his blue eyes; and, instead of the mouth which had excited Parliament with speeches, there were the thick lips of that uncle of his who had the misfortune with the signature on a gentleman's will, and had been imprisoned.

To think how he too had broken the law in the same way! Even the boy's first name was a lie! Of course, now he knew that the boy was his own at least; but he could not help complaining, "Why can't my son be my own and somebody else's at the same time?"

The Duke was shortly afterwards in the neighbourhood of Stapleford and Timothy Petrick met him and looked at his noble face. The next day, when Petrick was in his room, somebody knocked at the door.

"Who's there?"

"Rupert."

"Don't say Rupert! Say, only common Petrick!" his father replied. "Why didn't you have a voice like the Duke I saw yesterday?" he continued, as the lad came in. "Why haven't you got his looks?"

"Why? How can you expect it, father, when I'm not related to him?"

"Then you should be!"complained his father.