Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 7/Verner's Pride - Part 17
VERNER’S PRIDE.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF “EAST LYNNE.”
CHAPTER XXXIII. SHADOWED-FORTH EMBARRASSMENT.
The September afternoon sun streamed into the study at Verner’s Pride, playing with the bright hair of Lionel Verner. His head was bending listlessly over certain letters and papers on his table, and there was a wearied look upon his face. Was it called up by the fatigue of the day? He had been out with some friends all the morning: it was the first day of partridge shooting, and they had bagged well. Now Lionel was home again, had changed his attire, and was sitting down in his study—the old study of Mr. Verner. Or, was the wearied look, were the indented upright lines between the eyes, called forth by inward care?
Those lines were not so conspicuous when you last saw him. Twelve or fourteen months have elapsed since then. A portion of that time only had been spent at Verner’s Pride. Mrs. Verner was restless; ever wishing to be on the wing; living but in gaiety. Her extravagance was something frightful, and Lionel did not know how to check it. There were no children: there had been no signs of any: and Mrs. Verner positively made the lack into a sort of reproach, a continual cause for querulousness.
She had filled Verner’s Pride with guests after their marriage—as she had coveted to do. From that period until early spring she had kept it filled, one succession of guests, one relay of visitors arriving after the other. Pretty, capricious, fascinating, youthful, Mrs. Verner was of excessive popularity in the county, and a sojourn at Verner’s Pride grew to be eagerly sought. The women liked the attractive master; the men bowed to the attractive mistress, and Verner’s Pride was never free. On the contrary, it was generally unpleasantly crammed: and Mrs. Tynn, who was a staid, old-fashioned housekeeper, accustomed to nothing beyond the regular, quiet household maintained by the late Mr. Verner, was driven to the verge of desperation.
“It would be far pleasanter if we had only half the number of guests,” Lionel had said to his wife in the winter. He no longer remonstrated against any: he had given that up as hopeless. “Pleasanter for them, pleasanter for us, pleasanter for the servants.”
“The servants!” ejaculated Sibylla. “I never knew before that the pleasure of servants was a thing to be studied.”
“But their comfort is. At least, I have always considered so, and I hope I always shall. They complain much, Sibylla.”
“Do they complain to you?”
“They do. Tynn and his wife say they are nearly worked to death. They hint at leaving. Mrs. Tynn is continually subjected also to what she calls insults from your French maid. That of course I know nothing of; but it might be as well for you to listen to her on the subject.”
“I cannot have Benoite crossed. I don’t interfere in the household myself, and she does it for me.”
“But, my dear, if you would interfere a little more, just so far as to ascertain whether these complaints have grounds, you might apply a remedy.”
“Lionel, you are most unreasonable! As if I could be worried with looking into things! What are servants for? You must be a regular old bachelor to think of my doing it.”
“Well—to go to our first point,” he rejoined. “Let us try half the number of guests, and see how it works. If you do not find it better, more agreeable in all ways, I’ll say no more about it.”
He need not have said anything, then. Sibylla would not listen to it. At any rate, would not act upon it. She conceded so far as to promise that she would not invite so many next time. But, when that next time came, and the new sojourners arrived, they turned out to be more. Beds had to be improvised in all sorts of impossible places; the old servants were turned out of their chambers and huddled into corners; nothing but confusion and extravagance reigned. Against some of the latter, Mrs. Tynn ventured to remonstrate to her mistress. Fruits and vegetables out of season; luxuries in the shape of rare dishes, many of which Verner’s Pride had never heard of, and did not know how to cook—all of the most costly nature—were daily sent down from London purveyors. Against this expense Mary Tynn spoke. Mrs. Verner laughed good-naturedly at Tynn, and told her it was not her pocket that would be troubled to pay the bills. Additional servants were obliged to be had; and, in short, to use an expression that was much in vogue at Deerham about that time, Verner’s Pride was going the pace.
This continued until early spring. In February Sibylla fixed her heart upon a visit to London; “of course,” she told Lionel, “he would treat her to a season in town.” She had never been to London in her life to stay. For Sibylla to fix her heart upon a thing, was to have it: Lionel was an indulgent husband.
To London they proceeded in February. And there the cost was great. Sibylla was not one to go to work sparingly in any way; neither, in point of fact, was Lionel. Lionel would never have been unduly extravagant; but, on the other hand, he was not accustomed to spare. A furnished house in a good position was taken; servants were imported to it from Verner’s Pride; and there Sibylla launched into all the follies of the day. At Easter she “set her heart” upon a visit to Paris, and Lionel acquiesced. They remained there three weeks: Sibylla laying in a second stock of toilettes for Mademoiselle Benoite to rule over: and then they went back to London.
The season was prolonged that year. The house sat until August, and it was not until the latter end of that month that Mr. and Mrs. Verner returned to Verner’s Pride. Though scarcely home a week yet, the house was filled again—filled to overflowing: Lionel can hear sounds of talking and laughter from the various rooms, as he bends over his table. He was opening his letters, three or four of which lay in a stack. He had gone out in the morning before the post was in.
Tynn knocked at the door and entered, bringing a note.
“Where’s this from?” asked Lionel, taking it from the salver. Another moment, and he had recognised the hand-writing of his mother.
“From Deerham Court, sir. My lady’s footman brought it. He asks whether there is any answer.”
Lionel opened the note, and read as follows:
“My Dear Lionel,—I am obliged to be a beggar again. My expenses seem to outrun my means in a most extraordinary sort of way. Sometimes I think it must be Decima’s fault, and tell her she does not properly look after the household. In spite of my own income, your ample allowance, and the handsome remuneration received for Lucy, I cannot make both ends meet. Will you let me have two or three hundred pounds?
“Ever your affectionate mother,
“Louisa Verner.”
“I will call on Lady Verner this afternoon, say, Tynn.”
Tynn withdrew with the answer. Lionel leaned his brow upon his hand; the weary expression terribly plain just then.
“My mother shall have it at once—no matter what my own calls may be,” was his soliloquy. “Let me never forget that Verner’s Pride might have been hers all these years. Looking at it from our own point of view, my father’s branch in contradistinction to my uncle’s, it ought to have been hers. It might have been her jointure-house now, had my father lived, and so willed it. I am glad to help my mother,” he continued, an earnest glow lighting his face. “If I get embarrassed, why I must get embarrassed; but she shall not suffer.”
That embarrassment would inevitably come, if he went on at his present rate of living, he had the satisfaction of knowing beyond all doubt. That was not the worst point upon his conscience. Of the plans and projects that Lionel had so eagerly formed when he came into the estate, some were set afloat, some were not. Those that were most wanted—that were calculated to do the most real good—lay in abeyance; others, that might have waited, were in full work. Costly alterations were making in the stables at Verner’s Pride, and the working man’s institute at Deerham, reading-room, club—whatever it was to be—was progressing swimmingly. But the draining of the land near the poor dwellings was not begun, and the families, many of them, still herded in consort—father and mother, sons and daughters, sleeping in one room—compelled to it by the wretched accommodation of the tenements. It was on this last score that Lionel was feeling a pricking of conscience. And how to find the money to make these improvements now, he knew not. Between the building in progress and Sibylla, he was drained.
A circumstance had occurred that day to bring the latter neglect forcibly to his mind. Alice Hook—Hook, the labourer’s eldest daughter—had, as the Deerham phrase ran, got herself into trouble. A pretty child she had grown up amongst them—she was little more than a child now—good-tempered, gay-hearted. Lionel had heard the ill news the previous week on his return from London. When he was out shooting that morning he saw the girl at a distance, and made some observation to his gamekeeper, Broom, to the effect that it had vexed him.
“Ay, sir, it’s a sad pity,” was Broom’s answer; “but what else can be expected of poor folks that’s brought up to live as they do—like pigs in a sty?”
Broom had intended no reproach to his master; such an impertinence would not have crossed his mind; but the words carried a sting to Lionel. He knew how many, besides Alice Hook, had had their good conduct undermined through the living “like pigs in a sty.” Lionel had, as you know, a lively conscience; and his brow reddened with self-reproach as he sat and thought these things over. He could not help comparing the contrast: Verner’s Pride, with its spacious bed-rooms, one of which was not deemed sufficient for the purposes of retirement, where two people slept together, but a dressing-closet must be attached; and those poor Hooks, with their growing-up sons and daughters, and but one room, save the kitchen, in their whole dwelling!
“I will put things on a better footing,” impulsively exclaimed Lionel. “I care not what the cost may be, or how it may fall upon my comforts, do it I will. I declare I feel as if the girl’s blight lay at my own door!”
Again he and his reflections were interrupted by Tynn.
“Roy has come up, sir, and is asking to see you.”
“Roy! Let him come in,” replied Lionel. “I want to see him.”
It frequently happened, when agreements, leases, and other deeds were examined, that Roy had to be referred to. Things would turn out to have been drawn up, agreements made, in precisely the opposite manner to that expected by Lionel. For some of these, Roy might have received sanction; but, for many, Lionel felt sure Roy had acted on his own responsibility. This chiefly applied to the short period of the management of Mrs. Verner: a little, very little, to the latter year of her husband’s life. Matiss was Lionel’s agent during his absences: when at home, he took all management into his own hands.
Roy came in. The same ill-favoured, hard-looking man as ever. The ostensible business which had brought him up to Verner’s Pride, proved to be of a very trivial nature, and was soon settled. It is well to say “ostensible,” because a conviction arose in Lionel’s mind afterwards that it was but an excuse: that Roy made it a pretext for the purpose of obtaining an interview. Though why, or wherefore, or what he gained by it, Lionel could not imagine. Roy merely wanted to know if he might be allowed to put a fresh paper on the walls of one of his two upper rooms. He’d get the paper at his own cost, and hang it at his own leisure, if Mr. Verner had no objection.
“Of course I can have no objection to it,” replied Lionel. “You need not have lost an afternoon’s work, Roy, to come here to inquire that. You might have asked me when I saw you by the brick-field this morning. In fact, there was no necessity to mention it at all.”
“So I might, sir. But it didn’t come into my mind at the moment to do so. It’s poor Luke’s room, and the missis, she goes on continual about the state it’s in, if he should come home. The paper’s all hanging off it in patches, sir, as big as my two hands. It have got damp through not being used.”
“If it is in that state, and you like to find the time to hang the paper, you may purchase it at my cost,” said Lionel, who was of too just a nature to be a hard landlord.
“Thank ye, sir,” replied Roy, ducking his head. “It’s well for us, as I often says, that you be our master at last, instead of the Mr. Massingbirds.”
“There was a time when you did not think so, Roy, if my memory serves me rightly,” was the rebuke of Lionel.
“Ah, sir, there’s a old saying, ‘Live and learn.’ That was in the days when I thought you’d be a over strict master: we have got to know better now, taught from experience. It was a lucky day for the Verner Pride estate when that lost codicil was brought to light! The Mr. Massingbirds be dead, it’s true, but there’s no knowing what might have happened: the law’s full of quips and turns. With the codicil found, you can hold your own again the world.”
“Who told you anything about the codicil being found?” demanded Lionel.
“Why, sir, it was the talk of the place just about the time we heard of Mr. Fred Massingbird’s Massingbird’s death. Folks said, whether he had died, or not, you’d have come in all the same. T’other day, too, I was talking of it to Lawyer Matiss, and he said what a good thing it was, that that there codicil was found.”
Lionel knew that such a report, of the turning up of the codicil, had travelled to Deerham. It had never been contradicted. But he wondered to hear Roy say that Matiss had spoken of it. Matiss, himself, Tynn and Mrs. Tynn, were the only persons who could have testified that the supposed codicil was nothing but a glove. From the finding of that, the story had originally got wind.
“I don’t know why Matiss should have spoken to you on the subject of the codicil,” he remarked to Roy.
“It’s not much that Matiss talks, sir,” was the man’s answer. “All he said was as he had got the codicil in safe keeping under lock and key. Just put to Matiss the simplest question, and he’ll turn round and ask what business it is of yours.”
“Quite right of him, too,” said Lionel. “Have you any news of your son yet, Roy?”
Roy shook his head.
“No, sir. I’m a beginning to wonder now whether there ever will be news of him.”
After the man had departed, Lionel looked at his watch. There was just time for a ride to Deerham Court before dinner. He ordered his horse, and mounted it, a cheque for three hundred pounds in his pocket.
He rode quickly, musing upon what Matiss had said about the codicil—as stated by Roy. Could the deed have been found?—and Matiss forgotten to acquaint him with it. He turned his horse down the Belvedere Road, telling his groom to wait at the corner; and stopped before the lawyer’s door. The latter came out.
“Matiss, is that codicil found?” demanded Lionel, bending down his head to speak.
“What codicil, Mr. Verner?” returned Matiss, looking surprised.
"The codicil. The one that gave me the estate. Roy was with me just now, and he said you stated to him that the codicil was found—that it was safe under lock and key.”
The lawyer’s countenance lighted up with a smile.
“What a meddler the fellow is! To tell you the truth, sir, it rather pleases me to mislead Roy; to put him on the wrong scent. He comes pumping here, trying to get what he can out of me: asking this, asking that, fishing out anything there is to fish. I recollect he did say something about the codicil, and I replied ‘Ay, it was a good thing it was found, and safe under lock and key.’ He tries at the wrong handle when he comes pumping me.”
“What is his motive for pumping at all?” returned Lionel.
“There’s no difficulty in guessing at that, sir. Roy would give his two ears to get into place again: he’d like to fill the same post to you that he did to the late Mr. Verner. He thinks if he can hang about here and pick up any little bit of information, that may be let drop, and carry it to you, that it might tell in his favour. He would like you to discover how useful he could be. That is the construction I put upon it.”
“Then he wastes his time,” remarked Lionel, as he turned his horse. “I would not put power of any sort into Roy’s hands, if he paid me in diamonds to do it. You can tell him so if you like, Matiss.”
Arrived at Deerham Court, Lionel left his horse with his groom, and entered. The first person to greet his sight in the hall was Lucy Tempest. She was in white silk: a low dress, somewhat richly trimmed with lace, and pearls in her hair. It was the first time that Lionel had seen her since his return from London. He had been at his mother’s once or twice, but Lucy did not appear. They met face to face. Lucy’s turned crimson, in spite of herself.
“Are you quite well?” asked Lionel, shaking hands, his own pulses beating. “You are going out this evening, I see?”
He made the remark as a question, noticing her dress; and Lucy, gathering her senses about her, and relapsing into her calm composure, looked somewhat surprised.
“We are going to dinner to Verner’s Pride; I and Decima. Did you not expect us?”
“I—did not know it,” he was obliged to answer. “Mrs. Verner mentioned that some friends would dine with us this evening, but I was not aware that you and Decima were part of them. I am glad to hear it.”
Lucy continued her way, wondering what sort of a household it could be where the husband remained in ignorance of his wife’s expected guests. Lionel passed on to the drawing-room.
Lady Verner sat in it. Her white gloves on her delicate hands as usual, her essence bottle and laced handkerchief beside her. Lionel offered her his customary fond greeting, and placed the cheque in her hands.
“Will that do, mother mine?”
“Admirably, Lionel. I am so much obliged to you. Things get behind-hand in the most unaccountable manner, and then Decima comes to me with a long face, and says here’s this debt and that debt. It is quite a marvel to me how the money goes. Decima would like to put her accounts into my hands that I may look over them. The idea of my taking upon myself to examine accounts! But how it is she gets into such debt, I cannot think.”
Poor Decima knew only too well. Lione knew it also; though, in his fond reverence, he would not hint at such a thing to his mother. Lady Verner’s style of living was too expensive, and that was the cause.
“I met Lucy in the hall, dressed. She and Decima are coming to dine at Verner’s Pride, she tells me.”
“Did you not know it?”
“No. I have been out shooting all day. If Sibylla mentioned it to me, I forgot it.”
Sibylla had not mentioned it. But Lionel would rather take any blame to himself, than suffer a shade of it to rest upon her.
“Mrs. Verner called yesterday, and invited us. I declined for myself. I should have declined for Decima, but I did not think it right to deprive Lucy of the pleasure, and she could not go alone. Ungrateful child!” apostrophised Lady Verner.
“When I told her this morning I had accepted an invitation for her to Verner’s Pride, she turned the colour of scarlet, and said she would rather remain at home. I never saw so unsociable a girl; she never cares to go out, as it seems to me. I insisted upon it for this evening.”
“Mother, why don’t you come?”
Lady Verner half turned from him.
“Lionel, you must not forget our compact. If I visit your wife now and then, just to keep gossiping tongues quiet, from saying that Lady Verner and her son are estranged, I cannot do it often.”
“Were there any cause why you should show this disfavour to Sibylla—”
“Our compact, our compact, my son! You are not to urge me upon this point, do you remember? I rarely break my resolutions, Lionel.”
“Or your prejudices either, mother.”
“Very true,” was the equable answer of Lady Verner.
Little more was said. Lionel found the time drawing on, and left. Lady Verner’s carriage was already at the door, waiting to convey Decima and Lucy Tempest to the dinner at Verner’s Pride. As he was about to mount his horse, Peckaby passed by, rolling a wheel before him. He touched his cap.
“Well,” said Lionel, “has the white donkey arrived yet?”
A contraction of anger, not, however, unmixed with mirth, crossed the man’s face.
“I wish it would come, sir, and bear her off on’t!” was his hearty response. “She’s more a fool nor ever over it, a whining and a pining all day long, ’cause she ain’t at New Jerusalem. She wants to be in Bedlam, sir; that’s what she do! it ’ud do her more good nor t’other.”
Lionel laughed, and Peckaby struck his wheel with such impetus that it went off at a tangent, and he had to follow it on the run.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE YEW-TREE ON THE LAWN.
The rooms were lighted at Verner’s Pride: the blaze from the chandeliers fell on gay faces and graceful forms. The dinner was over, its scene “a banquet hall deserted;” and the guests were filling the drawing-rooms.
The centre of an admiring group, its chief attraction, sat Sibylla, her dress some shining material that glimmered in the light, and her hair confined with a band of diamonds. Inexpressibly beautiful by this light she undoubtedly was, but she would have been more charming had she less laid herself out for attraction. Lionel, Lord Garle, Decima, and young Bitterworth—he was generally called young Bitterworth, in contradistinction to his father, who was “old Bitterworth”—formed another group; Sir Rufus Hautley was talking to the Countess of Elmsley: and Lucy Tempest sat apart near the window.
Sir Rufus had but just moved away from Lucy, and for the moment she was alone. She sat within the embrasure of the window, and was looking on the calm scene outside. How different from the garish scene within! See the pure moonlight, side by side with the most brilliant light we earthly inventors can produce, and contrast them! Pure and fair as the moonlight looked Lucy, her white robes falling softly round her, and her girlish face wearing a thoughtful expression. It was a remarkably light night: the terrace, the green slopes beyond it, and the clustering trees far away, all standing out clear and distinct in the moon’s rays. Suddenly her eye rested on a particular spot: she possessed a very clear sight, and it appeared to detect something dark there; which dark something had not been there a few moments before.
Lucy strained her eyes, and shaded them, and gazed again. Presently she turned her head, and glanced at Lionel. An expression in her eyes seemed to call him, and he advanced.
“What is it, Lucy? We must have a set of gallant men here to-night, to leave you alone like this!”
The compliment fell unheeded on her ear. Compliments from him! Lionel only so spoke to hide his real feelings.
“Look on the lawn, right before us,” said Lucy to him, in a low tone. “Underneath the spreading yew tree. Do you not fancy the trunk looks remarkably dark and thick?”
“The trunk remarkably dark and thick!” echoed Lionel. “What do you mean, Lucy?” For he judged by her tone that she had some hidden meaning.
“I believe that some man is standing there. He must be watching us.”
Lionel could not see it. His eyes had not been watching so long as Lucy’s, consequently objects were less distinct. “I think you must be mistaken, Lucy,” he said. “No one would be at the trouble of standing there to watch us. It is too far off to see much, whatever may be their curiosity.”
Lucy held her hands over her eyes, gazing attentively from beneath them. “I feel convinced of it now,” she presently said. “There is some one, and it looks like a man, standing behind the trunk, as if hiding himself. His head is pushed out on this side, certainly, as if he were watching these windows. I have seen the head move twice.”
Lionel placed his hands in the same position, and took a long gaze. “I do think you are right, Lucy!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I saw something move then. What business has anyone to plant himself there?”
He stepped impulsively out as he spoke: the windows opened to the ground: crossed the terrace, descended the steps, and turned on the lawn, to the left hand. A minute, and he was up at the tree.
But he gained no satisfaction. The spreading tree, with its imposing trunk—which trunk was nearly as thick as a man’s body—stood all solitary on the smooth grass, no living thing being near it.
“We must have been mistaken, after all,” thought Lionel.
Nevertheless, he stood under the tree, and cast his keen glances around. Nothing could he see; nothing but what ought to be there. The wide lawn, the sweet flowers closed to the night, the remoter parts where the trees were thick, all stood cold and still in the white moonlight. But of human disturber there was none.
Lionel went back again, plucking a white geranium blossom and a sprig of sweet verbena on his way. Lucy was sitting alone, as he had left her.
“It was a false alarm,” he whispered. “Nothing’s there, but the tree.”
“It was not a false alarm,” she answered; “I saw him move away as you went on to the lawn. He drew back towards the thicket.”
“Are you sure?” questioned Lionel, his tone betraying that he doubted whether she was not mistaken.
“Oh yes, I am sure,” said Lucy. “Do you know what my old nurse used to tell me when I was a child?” she asked, lifting her face to his. “She said I had the Indian sight, because I could see so far and so distinctly. Some of the Indians have the gift greatly, you know. I am quite certain that I saw the object—and it looked like the figure of a man—go swiftly away from the tree across the grass. I could not see him to the end of the lawn, but he must have gone into the plantation. I daresay he saw you coming towards him.”
Lionel smiled.
“I wish I had caught the spy. He should have answered to me for being there. Do you like verbena, Lucy?”
He laid the verbena and geranium on her lap, and she took them up mechanically.
“I do not like spies,” she said, in a dreamy tone. “In India they have been known to watch the inmates of a house in the evening, and to bowstring one of those they were watching, before the morning. You are laughing! Indeed, my nurse used to tell me tales of it.”
“We have no spies in England—in that sense, Lucy. When I used the word spy, it was with no meaning attached to it. It is not impossible but it may be a sweetheart of one of the maid-servants, come up from Deerham for a rendezvous. Be under no apprehension.”
At that moment, the voice of his wife came ringing through the room.
“Mr. Verner!”
He turned to the call. Waiting to say another word to Lucy, as a thought struck him.
“You would prefer not to remain at the window, perhaps. Let me take you to a more sheltered seat.”
“Oh no, thank you,” she answered impulsively. “I like being at the window. It is not of myself that I was thinking.” And Lionel moved away.
“Is it not true that the fountains at Versailles played expressly for me?” eagerly asked Sibylla, as he approached her. “Sir Rufus won’t believe that they did. The first time we were in Paris, you know.”
Sir Rufus Hautley was by her side then, looked at Lionel.
“They never play for private individuals, Mr. Verner. At least, if they do, things have changed.”
“My wife thought they did,” returned Lionel, with a smile. “It was all the same.”
“They did, Lionel; you know they did, vehemently asserted Sibylla. “De Coigny told me so: and he held authority in the Government.”
“I know that De Coigny told you so, and that you believed him,” answered Lionel, still smiling. “I did not believe him.”
Sibylla turned her head away petulantly from her husband.
“You are saying it to annoy me. I’ll never appeal to you again. Sir Rufus, they did play expressly for me.”
“It may be bad taste, but I’d rather see the waterworks at St. Cloud than at Versailles,” observed a Mr. Gordon, some acquaintance that they had picked up in town, and to whom it had been Sibylla’s pleasure to give an invitation. “Cannonby wrote me word last week from Paris—”
“Who?” sharply interrupted Sibylla.
Mr. Gordon looked surprised. Her tone had betrayed something of eager alarm, not to say terror.
“Captain Cannonby, Mrs. Verner. A friend of mine just returned from Australia. Business took him to Paris as soon as he landed.”
“Is he from the Melbourne port? Is his Christian name Lawrence?” she reiterated, breathlessly.
“Yes—to both questions,” replied Mr. Gordon.
Sibylla shrieked, and lifted her handkerchief to her face. They gathered round her in consternation. One offering smelling-salts, one running for water. Lionel gently drew the handkerchief from her face. It was white as death.
“What ails you, my dear?” he whispered.
She seemed to recover her equanimity as suddenly as she had lost it, and the colour began to come into her cheeks again.
“His name—Cannonby’s—puts me in mind of those unhappy days,” she said, not in the low tone used by her husband, but aloud—speaking, in fact, to all around her. “I did not know Captain Cannonby had returned. When did he come, Mr. Gordon?”
“About eight or nine days ago.”
“Has he made his fortune?”
Mr. Gordon laughed.
“I fancy not. Cannonby was always of a roving nature. I expect he got tired of the Australian world before fortune had time to find him out.”
Sibylla was soon deep in her flirtations again. It is not erroneous to call them so. But they were innocent flirtations—the result of vanity. Lionel moved away.
Another commotion. Some great, long-legged fellow, without ceremony or warning, came striding in at the window close to Lucy Tempest. Lucy’s thoughts had been buried—it is hard to say where, and her eyes were strained to the large yew-tree upon the grass. The sudden entrance startled her, albeit she was not of a startlish temperament. With Indian bow-strings in the mind, and fancied moonlight spies before the sight, a scream was inevitable.
Who should it be but Jan! Jan, of course. What other guest would be likely to enter in that unceremonious fashion? Strictly speaking, Jan was not a guest—at any rate, not an invited one.
“I had got a minute to spare this evening, so thought I’d come up and have a look at you,” proclaimed unfashionable Jan to the room, but principally addressing Lionel and Sibylla.
And so Jan had come, and stood there without the least shame in drab trousers and a loose, airy coat, shaking hands with Sir Rufus, shaking hands with anybody who would shake hands with him. Sibylla looked daggers at Jan, and Lionel cross. Not from the same cause. Sibylla’s displeasure was directed to Jan’s style of evening costume; Lionel felt vexed with him for alarming Lucy. But Lionel never very long retained displeasure, and his sweet smile stole over his lips as he spoke.
“Jan, I shall be endorsing Lady Verner’s request—that you come into) a house like a Christian—if you are to startle ladies in this fashion.”
“Whom did I startle?” asked Jan.
“You startled Lucy.”
“Nonsense! Did I, Miss Lucy?”
“Yes, you did a little, Jan,” she replied.
“What a stupid you must be!” retorted gallant Jan. “I should say you want doctoring, if your nerves are in that state. You take—”
“Oh, Jan, that will do,” laughed Lucy. “I am sure I don’t want medicine. You know how I dislike it.”
They were standing together within the large window, Jan and Lionel, Lucy sitting close to them. She sat with her head a little bent, scenting her verbena.
“The truth is, Jan, I and Lucy have been watching some intruder who had taken up his station on the lawn, underneath the yew-tree,” whispered Lionel. “I suppose Lucy thought he was bursting in upon us.”
“Yes, I did really think he was,” said Lucy, looking up with a smile.
“Who was it?” asked Jan.
“He did not give us the opportunity of ascertaining,” replied Lionel. “I am not quite sure, mind, that I did see him; but Lucy is positive upon the point. I went to the tree, but he had disappeared. It is rather strange who it could be, and why he was watching.”
“He was watching this room attentively,” said Lucy, “and I saw him move away when Mr. Verner went on the lawn. I am sure he was a spy of some sort.”
“I can tell you who it was,” said Jan. “It was Roy.”
“Roy!” repeated Lionel. “Why do you say this?”
“Well,” said Jan, “as I turned in here, I saw Roy cross the road to the opposite gate. I don’t know where he could have sprung from, except from these grounds. That he was neither behind me nor before me as I came up the road, I can declare.”
“Then it was Roy!” exclaimed Lionel. “He would have had about time to get into the road, from the time we saw him under the tree. That the fellow is prying into my affairs and movements, I was made aware of to-day: but why he should watch my house I cannot imagine. We shall have an account to settle, Mr. Roy!”
Decima came up, asking what private matter they were discussing, and Lionel and Lucy went over the ground again, acquainting her with what had been seen. They stood together in a group, conversing in an under-tone. By and by, Mrs. Verner passed, moving from one part of the room to another, on the arm of Sir Rufus Hautley.
“Quite a family conclave!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “Decima, however much you may wish for attention, it is scarcely fair to monopolise that of Mr. Verner in his own house. If he forgets that he has guests present, you should not help him in the forgetfulness.”
“It would be well if all wished for attention as little as does Miss Verner,” exclaimed Lord Garle. His voice rung out to the ends of the room, and a sudden stillness fell upon it: his words may have been taken as a covert reproof to Mrs. Verner. They were not meant as such. There was no living woman of whom Lord Garle thought so highly as he thought of Decima Verner; and he had spoken in his mind’s impulse.
Sibylla believed he had purposely flung a shaft at her. And she flung one again—not at him, but at Decima. She was of a terribly jealous nature, and could bear any reproach to herself, better than that another woman should be praised beside her.
“When young ladies find their charms have been laid out in vain, wasted on the desert air, they naturally do covet attention, although it be but a brother’s. Poor Decima’s growing into an old maid: of course she cannot help the neglect, and may be excused for being sore upon the point.”
Perhaps the first truly severe glance that Lionel Verner ever gave his wife he gave her then. Disdaining any defence of his sister, he stood, haughty, impassive, his lips drawn in, his eyes fixed sternly on Sibylla. Decima remained quiet under the insult, save that she flushed scarlet. Lord Garle did not. Lord Garle spoke up again, in the impetuosity of his open, honest nature.
“I can testify that Miss Verner might have ceased to be Miss Verner long ago, had she so willed it. You are mistaken in your premises, Mrs. Verner.”
The tone was pointedly significant, the words were unmistakably clear, and the room could not but become enlightened to the fact that Miss Verner might have been Lady Garle. Sibylla laughed a little laugh of disbelief, as she went onwards with Sir Rufus Hautley; and Lionel remained enshrined in his terrible mortification. That his wife should so have forgotten herself!
“I must be going off,” cried Jan, good naturedly interrupting the unpleasant silence.
“You have not long come,” said Lucy.
“I didn’t leave word where I was coming, and somebody may be going dead while they are scouring the parish for me. Good-night to you all; good-night, Miss Lucy.”
With a nod to the room, away went Jan as unceremoniously as he had come; and, not very long afterwards, the first carriage drew up. It was Lady Verner’s. Lord Garle hastened to Decima, and Lionel took out Lucy Tempest.
“Will you think me very foolish if I say a word of warning to you?” asked Lucy in a low tone, as they reached the terrace.
“A word of warning to me, Lucy!” Lionel repeated. “Of what nature?”
“That Roy is not a good man. He was greatly incensed at your putting him out of his place when you succeeded to Verner’s Pride, and it is said that he cherishes vengeance. He may have been watching to-night for an opportunity to injure you. Take care of him.”
Lionel smiled as he looked at her. Her upturned face looked pale and anxious in the moonlight. Lionel could not receive the fear at all: he would as soon have thought to dread the most improbable thing imaginable, as to dread this sort of violence, whether from Roy, or from any one else.
“There’s no fear whatever, Lucy.”
“I know you will not see it for yourself, and that is the reason why I am presumptive enough to suggest the idea to you. Pray be cautious! pray take care of yourself!”
He shook his head laughingly as he looked down upon her.
“Thank you heartily all the same for your consideration, Lucy,” said he, and for the very life of him he could not help pressing her hand warmer than was needful as he placed her in the carriage.
They drove away. Lord Garle returned to the room; Lionel stood against one of the outer pillars, looking forth on the lovely moonlight scene. The part played by Roy—if it was Roy—in the night’s doings disturbed him not; but that his wife had shown herself so entirely unlike a lady did disturb him. Bitterly did she stand out that night to his mind, in contrast to Lucy. He turned away, after some minutes, with an impatient movement, as if he would fain throw remembrance and vexation from him. Lionel had himself chosen his companion in life, and none knew better, than he, that he must abide by it: none could be more firmly resolved to do his full duty by her in love. Sibylla was standing outside the window alone. Lionel approached her, and gently laid his hand upon her shoulder.
“Sibylla, what caused you to show agitation when Cannonby’s name was mentioned?”
“I told you,” answered Sibylla. “It is dreadful to be reminded of that miserable time. It was Cannonby, you know, who buried my husband.”
And before Lionel could say more, she had shaken his hand from her shoulder, and was back amidst her guests.
Jan had said somebody might be going dead while the parish was being scoured for him: and, in point of fact, Jan found, on reaching home, that that undesirable consummation was not unlikely to occur. But we must leave Jan, and make an evening call upon Mrs. Duff.
Mrs. Duff stood behind her counter, sorting silks. Not rich piece silks that are made into gowns; Mrs. Duff’s shop did not aspire to that luxurious class of goods; but humble skeins of mixed sewing-silks, that were kept tied up in a piece of wash-leather. Mrs. Duff’s head and a customer’s head were brought together over the bundle, endeavouring to fix upon a skein of a particular shade, by the help of the one gas-burner which flared away over head.
“Drat the silk!” said Mrs. Duff at length. “One can’t tell which is which, by candle-light. The green looks blue, and the blue looks green. Look at them two skeins, Polly: which is the green?”
Miss Polly Dawson, a showy damsel with black hair and a cherry-coloured net at the back of it,—one of the family that Roy was pleased to term the ill-doing Dawsons, took the two skeins in her hand.
“Blest if I can tell!” was her answer. “It’s for doing up mother’s green silk bonnet, so it won’t do to take blue. You be more used to it nor me, Mrs. Duff.”
“My eyes never was good for sorting silks by this light,” responded Mrs. Duff. “I’ll tell you what, Polly; you shall take ’em both. Your mother must take the responsibility of fixing on it herself, or let her keep ’em till the morning and fix on the right, then. She should have sent by daylight. You can bring back the one you don’t use to-morrow; but mind you keep it clean.”
“Wrap ’em up,” curtly returned Miss Polly Dawson.
Mrs. Duff was proceeding to do so, when some tall thin form, bearing a large bundle, entered the shop in a fluster. It was Mrs. Peckaby. She sat herself down on the only stool the shop contained, and let the bundle slip to the floor.
“Give a body leave to rest a bit, Mother Duff! I be turned a’most inside out.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Mrs. Duff, while Polly Dawson surveyed her with a stare.
“There’s a white cow in the pound. I can’t tell ye the turn it give me, coming sudden upon it. I thought nothing less, at first glance, but it was the white quadruple.”
“What! hasn’t that there white donkey come yet?” demanded Polly Dawson; who, in conjunction with sundry others of her age and sex in the village, was not sparing of her free remarks to Mrs. Peckaby on the subject, thereby aggravating that lady considerably.
“You hold your tongue, Polly Dawson, and don’t be brazen, if you can help it,” rebuked Mrs. Peckaby. “I was so took aback for the minute, that I couldn’t neither stir nor speak,” she resumed to Mrs. Duff. “But when I found it was nothing but a old strayed wretch of a pounded cow, I a’most dropped with the disappointment. So I thought I’d come back here and take a rest. Where’s Dan?”
“Dan’s out,” answered Mrs. Duff.
“Is he? I thought he might have took this parcel down to Sykes’s, and saved me the sight o’ that pound again and the deceiver in it. It’s just my luck!”
“Dan’s gone up to Verner’s Pride,” continued Mrs. Duff. “That fine French madmizel, as rules there, come down for some trifles this evening, and took him back with her to carry the parcel. It’s time he was back, though, and more nor time. ’Twasn’t bigger neither nor a farthing bun, but ’twas too big for her. Isn’t it a getting the season for you to think of a new gownd, Mrs. Peckaby?” resumed Mother Duff, returning to business. “I have got some beautiful winter stuffs in.”
“I hope the only new gownd as I shall want till I gets to New Jerusalem, is the purple one I’ve got prepared for it,” replied Mrs. Peckaby. “I don’t think the journey’s far off. I had a dream last night as I saw a great crowd o’ people dressed in white, a coming out to meet me. I look upon it as it’s a token that I shall soon be there.”
“I wouldn’t go out to that there New Jerusalem if ten white donkeys come to fetch me!” cried Polly Dawson, tossing her head with scorn. “It is a nice place, by all that I have heard! Them saints—”
A most appalling interruption. Snorting, moaning, sobbing, his breath coming in gasps, his hair standing up on end, his eyes starting, and his face ghastly, there burst in upon them Master Dan Duff. That he was in the very height of terror, there could be no mistaking. To add to the confusion, he flung his arras out as he came in, and his hand caught one of the side panes of glass in the bow window and shattered it, the pieces falling amongst the displayed wares. Dan leaped in, caught hold of his mother with a spasmodic howl, and fell down on some bundles in a corner of the small shop.
Mrs. Duff was dragged down with him. She soon extricated herself, and stared at the boy in very astonishment. However inclined to play tricks, out of doors, Mr. Dan never ventured to do it, in. Polly Dawson stared. Susan Peckaby, forgetting New Jerusalem for once, sprang off her stool and stared. But that his terror was genuine, and Mrs. Duff saw that it was, Dan had certainly been treated then to that bugbear of his domestic life—a “basting.”
“What has took you now?” sharply demanded Mrs. Duff, partly in curiosity, partly in wrath.
“I see’d a dead man,” responded Dan, and he forthwith fell into convulsions.
They shook him, they pulled him, they pinched him. One laid hold of his head, another of his feet; but, make nothing of him, could they. The boy’s face was white, his hands and arms were twitching, and froth was gathering on his lips. By this time the shop was full.
“Run across, one of you,” cried the mother, turning her face to the crowd, “and see if you can find Mr. Jan Verner.”