Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 7/Verner's Pride - Part 11
VERNER’S PRIDE.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF “EAST LYNNE.”
CHAPTER XXI. NEWS FROM AUSTRALIA.
Lionel Verner could scarcely believe in his own identity. The train, which was to have contained him, was whirling towards London, he, a poor aspirant for future fortune, ought to have been in it; he had counted most certainly to be in it; but here was he, while the steam of that train yet snorted in his ears, walking out of the station a wealthy man, come into a proud inheritance, the inheritance of his fathers. In the first moment of tumultuous thought, Lionel almost felt as if some fairy must have been at work with a magic wand.
It was all true. He linked his arm within Jan’s, and listened to the recital in detail. Jan had found Mrs. Verner, on his arrival at Verner’s Pride, weeping over letters from Australia: one from a Captain Cannonby, one from Sibylla. They contained the tidings that Frederick Massingbird had died of fever, and that Sibylla was anxious to come home again.
“Who is Captain Cannonby?” asked Lionel of Jan.
“Have you forgotten the name?” returned Jan. “That friend of Fred Massingbird’s, who sold out, and was knocking about London: Fred went up once or twice to see him. He went out to the diggings last autumn, and it seems Fred and Sibylla lighted on him at Melbourne. He had laid poor Fred in the grave the day before he wrote, he says.”
“I can scarcely believe it all now, Jan,” said Lionel. “What a change!”
“Ay. You won’t believe it for a day or two. I say, Lionel, Uncle Stephen need not have left Verner’s Pride to the Massingbirds: they have not lived to enjoy it. Neither need there have been all that bother about the codicil. I know what.”
“What?” asked Lionel, looking at him: for Jan spoke significantly.
“That Madam Sibylla would give her two ears now, to have married you, instead of Fred Massingbird.”
Lionel’s face flushed, and he replied coldly, hauteur in his tone. “Nonsense, Jan! you are speaking most unwarrantably. When Sibylla chose Fred Massingbird, I was the heir to Verner’s Pride.”
“I know,” said Jan. “Verner’s Pride would be a great temptation to Sibylla; and I can but think she knew it was left to Fred when she married him.”
Lionel did not condescend to retort. He would as soon believe himself capable of bowing down before the god of gold, in a mean spirit, as believe Sibylla capable of it. Indeed, though he was wont to charm himself with the flattering notion that his love for Sibylla had died out, or near upon it, he was very far off the point when he could think any ill of Sibylla.
“My patients will be foaming,” remarked Jan, who continued his way to Verner’s Pride with Lionel. “They will conclude I have gone off with Dr. West: and I have his list on my hands now, as well as my own. I say, Lionel, when I told you the letters from Australia were in, how little we guessed they would contain this news.”
“Little, indeed!” said Lionel.
“I suppose you won’t go to London now?”
“I suppose not,” was the reply of Lionel. And a rush of gladness illumined his heart as he spoke it. No more toil over those dry old law books! The study had never been to his taste.
The servants were gathered in the hall when Lionel and Jan entered it. Decorously sorry, of course, for the tidings which had arrived, but unable to conceal the inward satisfaction which peeped out: not satisfaction at the death of Fred, but at the accession of Lionel. It is curious to observe how jealous the old retainers of a family are, upon all points which touch the honour or the well-being of the house. Fred Massingbird was an alien; Lionel was a Verner; and now, as Lionel entered, they formed into a double line that he might pass between them, their master from henceforth.
Mrs. Verner was in the old place, the study. Jan had seen her in bed that morning; but, since then, she had risen. Early as the hour yet was, recent as the sad news had been, Mrs. Verner had dropped asleep. She sat nodding in her chair, snoring heavily, breathing painfully, her neck and face all one colour—carmine red. That she looked—as Jan had observed—a very apoplectic subject, struck Lionel most particularly on this morning.
“Why don’t you bleed her, Jan?” he whispered.
“She won’t be bled,” responded Jan. “She won’t take physic; she won’t do anything that she ought to do. You may as well talk to a post. She’ll do nothing but eat and drink, and fall asleep afterwards; and then wake up to eat and drink, and fall asleep again. Mrs. Verner”—exalting his voice—“here’s Lionel.”
Mrs. Verner partially woke up. Her eyes opened sufficiently to observe Jan; and her mind apparently grew awake to a confused remembrance of facts. “He’s gone to London,” said she to Jan. “You won’t catch him:” and then she nodded again.
“I did catch him,” shouted Jan. “Lionel’s here.”
Lionel sat down by her, and she woke up pretty fully.
“I am grieved at this news for your sake, Mrs. Verner,” he said in a kind tone, as he took her hand. “I am sorry for Frederick.”
“Both my boys gone before me, Lionel!” she cried, melting into tears. “John first; Fred next. Why did they go out there to die?”
“It is indeed sad for you,” replied Lionel. “Jan says Fred died of fever.”
“He has died of fever. Don’t you remember when Sibylla wrote, she said he was ill with fever? He never got well. He never got well! I take it that it must have been a sort of intermittent fever—pretty well one day, down ill the next—for he had started for the place where John died—I forget its name, but you’ll find it written there. Only a few hours after quitting Melbourne, he grew worse and died.”
“Was he alone?” asked Lionel.
“Captain Cannonby was with him. They were going together up to—I forget, I say, the name of the place—where John died, you know. It was nine or ten days’ distance from Melbourne, and they had travelled but a day of it. And I suppose,” added Mrs. Verner, with tears in her eyes, “that he’d be put into the ground like a dog!”
Lionel, on this score, could give no consolation. He knew not whether the fact might be so, or not. Jan hoisted himself on to the top of a high bureau, and sat in comfort.
“He’d be buried like a dog,” repeated Mrs. Verner. “What do they know about parsons and consecrated ground out there? Cannonby buried him, he says, and then he went back to Melbourne to carry the tidings to Sibylla.”
“Sibylla? was Sibylla not with him when he died?” exclaimed Lionel.
“It seems not. It’s sure not, in fact, by the letters. You can read them, Lionel. There’s one from her and one from Captain Cannonby.
“It’s not likely they’d drag Sibylla up to the diggings,” interposed Jan.
“And yet—almost as unlikely that her husband would leave her alone in such a place as Melbourne appears to be,” dissented Lionel.
“She was not left alone,” said Mrs. Verner. “If you’d read the letters, Lionel, you would see. She stayed in Melbourne with a family; friends, I think she says, of Captain Cannonby’s. She has written for money to be sent out to her by the first ship, that she may pay her passage home again.”
This item of intelligence astonished Lionel more than any other.
“Written for money to be sent out for her passage home!” he reiterated. “Has she no money?”
Mrs. Verner looked at him.
“They accuse me of forgetting things in my sleep, Lionel; but I think you must be getting worse than I am. Poor Fred told us in his last letter that he had been robbed of his desk, and that it had got his money in it.”
“But I did not suppose it contained all—that they were reduced so low as for his wife to have no money left for a passage. What will she do there, until some can be got out?”
“If she is with comfortable folks, they’d not turn her out,” cried Jan.
Lionel took up the letters, and ran his eyes over them. They told him little else of the facts; though more of the details. It appeared to have taken place pretty much as Mrs. Verner said. The closing part of Sibylla’s letter ran as follows:
“After we wrote to you, Fred met Captain Cannonby. You must remember, dear aunt, how often Fred would speak of him. Captain Cannonby has relatives out here, people in very good position—if people can be said to be in a position at all in such a horrid place. We knew Captain Cannonby had come over, but thought he was at the Bendigo diggings. However, Fred met him; and he was very civil and obliging. He got us apartments in the best hotel—one of the very places that had refused us, saying they were crowded. Fred seemed to grow a trifle better, and it was decided that they should go to the place where John died, and try and get particulars about his money, &c., which in Melbourne we could hear nothing of. Indeed, nobody seemed to know even John’s name. Captain Cannonby (who has really made money here in some way; trading, he says; and expects to make a good deal more) agreed to go with Fred. Then Fred told me of the loss of his desk and money, his bills of credit, and that; whatever the term may be. It was stolen from the quay, the day we arrived, and he had never been able to hear of it; but, while there seemed a chance of finding it, he would not let me know the ill news. Of course, with this loss upon us, there was all the more necessity for our getting John’s money as speedily as might be. Captain Cannonby introduced me to his relatives, the Eyres, told them my husband wanted to go up the country for a short while, and they invited me to stay with them. And here I am, and very kind they are to me in this dreadful trouble.
“Aunt Verner, I thought I should have died when, a day or two after they started, I saw Captain Cannonby come back alone, with a long sorrowful face. I seemed to know in a moment what had happened: I had thought at the time they started, that Fred was too ill to go. I said to him, ‘my husband is dead!’ and he confessed that it was so. He had been taken ill at the end of the first day, and did not live many hours.
“I can’t tell you any more, dear Aunt Verner; I am too sick and ill. And if I filled ten sheets with the particulars, it would not alter the dreadful facts. I want to come home to you; I know you will receive me, and let me live with you always. I have not any money. Please send me out sufficient to bring me home by the first ship that sails. I don’t care for any of the things we brought out; they may stop here or be lost in the sea, for all the difference it will make to me: I only want to come home. Captain Cannonby says he will take upon himself now to look after John’s money, and transmit it to us, if he can get it.
“Mrs. Eyre has just come in. She desires me to say that they are taking every care of me, and are all happy to have me with them: she says I am to tell you that her own daughters are about my age. It is all true, dear aunt, and they are exceedingly kind to me. They seem to have plenty of money, are intimate with the governor’s family, and with what they call the good society of the colony. When I think what my position would have been now, had I not met with them, I grow quite frightened.
“I have to write to papa, and must close this. I have requested Captain Cannonby to write to you himself, and give you particulars about the last moments of Frederick. Send me the money without delay, dear aunt. The place is hateful to me now he is gone, and I’d rather be dead than stop in it.
“Sibylla Massingbird.”
Lionel folded the letter musingly. “It would almost appear that they had not heard of your son’s accession to Verner’s Pride,” he remarked to Mrs. Verner. “It is not alluded to, in any way.”
“I think it is sure they had not heard of it,” she answered. “I remarked so to Mary Tynn. The letters must have been delayed in their passage. Lionel, you will see to the sending out of the money for me.”
“Immediately,” replied Lionel.
“And when do you come home?”
“Do you mean—do you mean when do I come here?” returned Lionel.
“To be sure I mean it. It is your home. Verner’s Pride is your home, Lionel, now; not mine. It has been yours this three or four months past, only we did not know it. You must come home to it at once, Lionel.”
“I suppose it will be right that I should do so,” he answered.
“And I shall be thankful,” said Mrs. Verner. “There will be a master once more, and no need to bother me. I have been bothered, Lionel. Mr. Jan”—turning to the bureau—“it’s that which has made me feel ill. One comes to me with some worry or other, and another comes to me: they will come to me. The complaints and tales of that Roy fidget my life out.”
“I shall discharge Roy at once, Mrs. Verner.”
Mrs. Verner made a deprecatory movement of the hands, as much as to say that it was no business of hers. “Lionel, I have only one request to make of you: never speak of the estate to me again, or of anything connected with its management. You are its sole master, and can do as you please. Shall you turn me out?”
Lionel’s face flushed. “No, Mrs. Verner,” he almost passionately answered. “You could not think so.”
“You have the right. Had Fred come home, he would have had the right. But I’d hardly reconcile myself to any other house now.”
“It is a right which I should never exercise,” said Lionel.
“I shall mostly keep my room,” resumed Mrs. Verner. “Perhaps wholly keep it: and Mary Tynn will wait upon me. The servants will be yours, Lionel. In fact, they are yours: not mine. What a blessing! to know that I may be at peace from henceforth: that the care will be upon another’s shoulders! My poor Fred! My dear sons! I little thought I was taking leave of them both for the last time.”
Jan jumped off his bureau. Now that the brunt of the surprise was over, and plans began to be discussed, Jan bethought himself of his impatient sick list, who were doubtlessly wondering at the non-appearance of their doctor. Lionel rose to depart with him.
“But, you should not go,” said Mrs. Verner. “In five minutes I vacate this study; resign it to you. This change will give you plenty to do, Lionel.”
“I know it will, dear Mrs. Verner. I shall be back soon; but I must go and acquaint my mother.”
“You will promise not to go away again, Lionel. It is your lawful home, remember.”
“I shall not go away again,” was Lionel’s answer. And Mrs. Verner breathed freely. To be emancipated from what she had regarded as the great worry of life, was felt to be a relief. Now she could eat and sleep all day, and never need be asked a single question, or hear whether the outside world had stopped, or was going on still.
“You will just pen a few words for me to Sibylla, Lionel,” she called out. “I am past much writing now.”
“If it be necessary that I should,” he coldly replied.
“And send them with the remittance,” concluded Mrs. Verner. “You will know how much to send. Tell Sibylla that Verner’s Pride is no longer mine, and I cannot invite her to it. It would hardly be the—the thing for a young girl, and she’s little better, to be living here with you all day long, and I always shut up in my room. Would it, Lionel?”
Lionel somewhat haughtily shrugged his shoulders. “Scarcely,” he answered.
“She must go to her sisters, of course. Poor girl! what a thing it seems, to have to return to her old house again!”
Jan put in his head. “I thought you said you were coming, Lionel?”
“So I am; this instant.” And they departed together: encountering Mr. Bitterworth in the road.
He grasped hold of Lionel in much excitement.
“Is it true—what people are saying? That you have come into Verner’s Pride?”
“Quite true,” replied Lionel. And he gave Mr. Bitterworth a summary of the facts.
“Now look there!” cried Mr. Bitterworth, who was evidently deeply impressed, “it’s of no use to try to go against honest right: sooner or later it will triumph. In your case, it has come wonderfully soon. I told my old friend that the Massingbirds had no claim to Verner’s Pride; that if they were exalted to it, over your head, it would not prosper them. Not, poor fellows, that I thought of their death. May you remain in undisturbed possession of it, Lionel! May your children succeed to it after you!”
Lionel and Jan continued their road. But they soon parted company, for Jan turned off to his patients. Lionel made the best of his way to Deerham Court. In the room he entered, steadily practising, was Lucy Tempest, alone. She turned her head to see who it was, and at the sight of Lionel started up in alarm.
“What is it? Why are you back?” she exclaimed. “Has the train broken down?”
Lionel smiled at her vehemence; at her crimsoned countenance; at her unbounded astonishment altogether.
“The train has not broken down, I trust, Lucy. I did not go with it. Do you know where my mother is?”
“She is gone out with Decima.”
He felt a temporary disappointment: the news, he was aware, would be so deeply welcome to Lady Verner. Lucy stood regarding him, waiting the solution of the mystery.
“What should you say, Lucy, if I tell you Deerham is not going to get rid of me at all?”
“I do not understand you,” replied Lucy, colouring with surprise and emotion. “Do you mean that you are going to remain here?”
“Not here—in this house. That would be a calamity for you.”
Lucy looked as if it would be anything but a calamity.
“You are as bad as our French mistress at the rectory,” she said. “She would never tell us anything: she used to make us guess.”
Her words were interrupted by the breaking out of the church bells; a loud peal, telling of joy. A misgiving crossed Lionel that the news had got wind, and that some officious person had been setting on the bells to ring for him, because of his succession. The exceeding bad taste of the proceeding—should it prove so—called a flush of anger to his brow. His inheritance had cost Mrs. Verner her son.
The suspicion was confirmed. One of the servants, who had been to the village came running in at this juncture with open mouth, calling out that Mr. Lionel had come into his own, and that the bells were ringing for it. Lucy Tempest heard the words, and turned to Lionel.
“It is so, Lucy,” he said, answering the look. “Verner’s Pride is at last mine. But”
She grew strangely excited. Lionel could see her heart beat,—could see the tears of emotion gather in her eyes.
“I am so glad!” she said, in a low, heartfelt tone. “I thought it would be so, sometime. Have you found the codicil?”
“Hush, Lucy! Before you express your gladness, you must learn that sad circumstances are mixed with it. The codicil has not been found: but Frederick Massingbird has died.”
Lucy shook her head. “He had no right to Verner’s Pride, and I did not like him. I am sorry, though, for himself, that he is dead. And—Lionel—you will never go away now?”
“I suppose not: to live.”
“I am so glad! I may tell you that I am glad, may I not?”
She half timidly held out her hand as she spoke. Lionel took it between both of his, toying with it as tenderly as he had ever toyed with Sibylla’s. And his low voice took a tone which was certainly not that of hatred, as he bent towards her.
“I am glad also, Lucy. The least pleasant part of my recent projected departure was the constantly remembered fact that I was about to put a distance of many miles between myself and you. It grew all too palpable towards the last.”
Lucy laughed and drew away her hand, her radiant countenance falling before the gaze of Lionel.
“So you will be troubled with me yet, you see, Miss Lucy,” he added in a lighter tone, as he left her and strode off with a step that might have matched Jan’s, on his way to ask the bells whether they were not ashamed of themselves.
CHAPTER XXII. “IT’S APPLEPLEXY.”
And so the laws of right and justice had eventually triumphed, and Lionel Verner took possession of his own. Mrs. Verner took possession of her own—her chamber; all she was ever again likely to take possession of at Verner’s Pride. She had no particular ailment, unless heaviness could be called an ailment, and steadily refused any suggestion of Jan’s.
“You’ll go off in a fit,” said plain Jan to her.
“Then I must go,” replied Mrs. Verner. “I can’t submit to be made wretched with your medical and surgical remedies, Mr. Jan. Old people should be let alone, to doze away their days in peace.”
“As good give some old people poison outright, as let them always doze,” remonstrated Jan.
“You’d like me to live sparingly—to starve myself, in short—and you’d like me to take exercise!” returned Mrs. Verner. “Wouldn’t you, now?”
“It would add ten years to your life,” said Jan.
“I daresay! It’s of no use your coming preaching to me, Mr. Jan. Go and try your eloquence upon others. I always have had enough to eat, and I hope I always shall. And as to my getting about, or walking, I can’t. When folks come to be my size, it’s cruel to want them to do it.”
Mrs. Verner was nodding before she had well spoken the last words, and Jan said no more. You may have met with some such case in your own experience.
When the news of Lionel Verner’s succession fell upon Roy, the bailiff, he could have gnashed his teeth in very vexation. Had he foreseen what was to happen he would have played his cards so differently. It had not entered into the head-piece of Roy, to reflect that Frederick Massingbird might die. Scarcely, had it, that he could die. A man, young and strong, what was likely to take off him? John had died, it was true; but John’s death had been a violent one. Had Roy argued the point at all—which he did not, for it had never occurred to his mind—he might have assumed that because John had died, Fred was the more likely to live. It is a somewhat rare case for two brothers to be cut down in their youth and prime, one closely following upon the other.
Roy lived in a cottage standing by itself, a little beyond Clay Lane, but not so far off as the gamekeeper’s. On the morning when the bells had rung out—to the surprise and vexation of Lionel—Roy happened to be at home. Roy never grudged himself holiday when it could be devoted to the benefit of his wife. A negative benefit she may have thought it, since it invariably consisted in what Roy called “a blowing of her up.”
Mrs. Roy had heard that the Australian mail was in. But the postman had not been to their door, therefore no letter could have arrived for them from Luke. A great many mails, as it appeared to Mrs. Roy, had come in with the like result. That Luke had been murdered, as his master John Massingbird had been before him, was the least she feared. Her fears and troubles touching Luke, were great; they were never at rest; and her tears fell frequently. All of which excited the ire of Roy.
She sat in a rocking-chair in the kitchen—a chair which had been new when the absent Luke was a baby, and which was sure to be the seat chosen by Mrs. Roy since, when she was in a mood to indulge any passing tribulation. The kitchen opened to the road, as the kitchens of many of the dwellings did open to it; a parlour was on the right, which was used only on the grand occasion of receiving visitors; and the stairs, leading to two rooms above, ascended from the kitchen. Here she sat, silently wiping away her dropping tears with a red cotton pocket-handkerchief. Roy was not in the sweetest possible temper himself that morning, so of course he turned it upon her.
“There you be, a-snivelling as usual! I’d have a bucket always at my feet, if I was you. It might save the trouble of catching rain-water.”
“If the letter-man had got anything for us, he’d have been round here a hour ago,” responded Mrs. Roy, bursting into unrestrained sobs.
Now, this happened to be the very grievance that was affecting the gentleman’s temper—the postman’s not having gone there. They had heard that the Australian mail was in. Not that he was actuated by any strong paternal feelings—such sentiments did not prey upon Mr. Roy. The hearing or the not hearing from his son would not thus have disturbed his equanimity. He took it for granted that Luke was alive somewhere—probably getting on—and was content to wait until himself or a letter should turn up. The one whom he had been expecting to hear from, was his new master, Mr. Massingbird. He had fondly indulged the hope that credential letters would arrive for him, confirming him in his place of manager; he believed that this mail would inevitably bring them, as the last mails had not. Hence he had stayed at home to receive the postman. But the postman had not come, and it gave Roy a pain in his temper.
“They be a-coming back, that’s what it is,” was the conclusion he arrived at, when his disappointment had a little subsided. “Perhaps they might have come by this very ship! I wonder if it brings folks as well as letters?”
“I know he must be dead!” sobbed Mrs. Roy.
“He’s dead as much as you be,” retorted Roy. “He’s a-making his fortune, and he’ll come home after it—that’s what Luke’s a-doing. For all you know he may be come, too.”
The words appeared to startle Mrs. Roy; she looked up, and he saw that her face had gone white with terror.
“Why! what does ail you?” cried he, in wonder. “Be you took crazy?”
“I don’t want him to come home,” she replied in an awe-struck whisper. “Roy, I don’t want him to.”
“You don’t want to be anything but a idiot,” returned Roy with supreme contempt.
“But I’d like to hear from him,” she wailed, swaying herself to and fro. “I’m always a-dreaming of it.”
“You’ll just dream a bit about getting the dinner ready,” commanded Roy, morosely; “that’s what you’ll dream about now. I said I’d have biled pork and turnips, and nicely you be a-getting on with it. Hark ye! I’m a-going now, but I shall be in at twelve, and if it ain’t ready, mind your skin!”
He swung open the kitchen door just in time to hear the church bells burst out with a loud and joyous peal. It surprised Roy. In quiet Deerham, such sounds were not very frequent.
“What’s up now?” cried Roy, savagely. Not that the abstract fact of the bells ringing was of any moment to him, but he was in a mood to be angry with everything. “Here, you!” continued he, seizing hold of a boy who was running by, “what be them bells a clattering out for?”
Thus brought to summarily, the boy had no resource but to stop. It was a young gentleman whom you have had the pleasure of meeting before—Master Dan Duff. So fast had he been flying, that a moment or Mb elapsed ere he could get breath to speak.
The delay did not tend to soothe his capturer; and he administered a slight shake. “Can’t you speak, Dan Duff? Don’t you see who it is that’s a asking of you? What be them bells a working for?”
“Please, sir, it’s for Mr. Lionel Verner.”
The answer took Roy somewhat aback. He knew—as everybody else knew—that Mr. Lionel Verner’s departure from Deerham was fixed for that day; but to believe that the bells would ring out a peal of joy on that account was a staggerer even to Roy’s ears. Dan Duff found himself treated to another shake, together with a sharp reprimand.
“So they be a ringing for him!” panted he. “There ain’t no call to shake my inside out of me for saying so. Mr. Lionel have got Verner’s Pride at last, and he ain’t a going away at all, and the bells be a ringing for it. Mother have sent me to tell the gamekeeper. She said he’d sure to give me a penny, if I was the first to tell him.”
Roy let go the boy. His arms and his mouth alike dropped. “Is that—that there codicil found?” gasped he.
Dan Duff shook his head. “I dun know nothink about codinals,” said he. “Mr. Fred Massingbird’s dead. He can’t keep Mr. Lionel out of his own any longer, and the bells is a ringing for it.”
Unrestrained now, he sped away. Roy was not altogether in a state to stop him. He had turned of a glowing heat, and was asking himself whether the news could be true. Mrs. Roy stepped forward, her tears arrested.
“Law, Roy, whatever shall you do?” spoke she, deprecatingly. “I said as you should have kept in with Mr. Lionel. You’ll have to eat humble pie, for certain.”
The humble pie would taste none the more palatable for his being reminded of it by his wife, and Roy drove her back with a shower of harsh words. He shut the door with a bang, and went out, a forlorn hope lighting him that the news might be false.
But the news, he found, was too true. Frederick Massingbird was really dead, and the true heir had come into his own.
Roy stood in much inward perturbation. The eating of humble pie—as Mrs. Roy had been kind enough to suggest—would not cost much to a man of his cringing nature; but he entertained a shrewd suspicion that no amount of humble pie would avail for him with Mr. Verner; that, in short, he should be discarded entirely. While thus standing, the centre of a knot of gossipers, for the news had caused Deerham to collect in groups, the bells ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and Lionel Verner himself was observed coming from the direction of the church. Roy stood out from the rest, and, as a preliminary slice of the humble pie, took off his hat, and stood bareheaded while Lionel passed by.
It did not avail him. On the following day Roy found himself summoned to Verner’s Pride. He went up, and was shown to the old business room—the study.
Ah! things were changed now; changed from what they had been; and Roy was feeling it to his heart’s core. It was no longer the feeble invalid, Stephen Verner, who sat there; to whom all business was unwelcome, and who shunned as much of it as he could shun, leaving it to Roy: it was no longer the ignorant and easy Mrs. Verner, to whom (as she herself had once expressed it) Roy could represent white as black, and black as white: but he who reigned now was essentially master—master of himself, and of all who were dependent on him.
Roy felt it the moment he entered: felt it keenly. Lionel stood before a table covered with papers. He appeared to have risen from his chair and to be searching for something. He lifted his head when Roy appeared, quitted the table and stood looking at the man, his figure drawn to its full height. The exceeding nobility of the face and form struck even Roy. But Lionel greeted him in a quiet, courteous tone: to meet anyone, the poorest person on his estate otherwise than courteously, was next to an impossibility for Lionel Verner. “Sit down, Roy,” he said. “You are at no loss, I imagine, to guess what my business is with you.”
Roy did not accept the offered seat. He stood in discomfiture, saying something to the effect that he’d change his mode of dealing with the men, would do all he could to give satisfaction to his master, Mr. Verner, if the latter would consent to continue him on.
“You must know yourself that I am not likely to do it,” returned Lionel, briefly. “But I do not wish to be harsh, Roy—I trust I never shall be harsh with any one—and if you choose to accept of work on the estate, you can do so.”
“You’ll not continue me in my post over the brickyard, sir—over the men generally?”
“No,” replied Lionel. “Perhaps the less we go into those past matters the better. I have no objection to speak of them, Roy; but, if I do, you will hear some home truths that may not be palatable. You can have work if you wish for it; and good pay.”
“As one of the men, sir?” asked Roy, a shade of grumbling in his tone.
“As one of the superior men.”
Roy hesitated. The blow had fallen; but it was only what he feared. “Might I ask as you’d give me a day to consider it over, sir?” he presently said.
“A dozen days if you choose. The work is always to be had: it will not run away. If you prefer to spend time deliberating upon the point, it is your affair, not mine.”
“Thank ye, sir. Then I’ll think it over. It’ll be hard lines, coming down to be a workman, where I’ve been, as may be said, a sort of master.”
“Roy.”
Roy turned back. He had been moving away. “Yes, sir.”
“I shall expect you to pay rent for your cottage now, if you remain in it. Mr. Verner, I believe, threw it into your post; made it part of your perquisites. Mrs. Verner has, no doubt, done the same. But that is at an end. I can show no more favour to you than I do to others.”
“I’ll think it over, sir,” concluded Roy, his tone as sullen a one as he dared let appear. And he departed.
Before a week had elapsed, he came again to Verner’s Pride, and said he would accept the work, and pay rent for the cottage: but he hoped Mr. Verner would name a fair rent.
“I should not name an unfair one, Roy,” was the reply of Lionel. “You will pay the same that others pay, whose dwellings are the same size as yours. Mr. Verner’s scale of rents was not high, but low; as you know: I shall not alter it.”
A short period elapsed. One night Jan Verner, upon getting into bed, found he need not have taken the trouble, for the night-bell rang, and Jan had to get up again. He opened his side window and called out to know who was there. A boy came round from the surgery door into view, and Jan recognised him for the youngest son of his brother’s gamekeeper, a youth of twelve. He said his mother was ill.
“What’s the matter with her?” asked Jan.
“Please, sir, she’s took bad in the stomach. She’s a groaning awful. Father thinks she’ll die.”
Jan dressed himself and started off, carrying with him a dose of tincture of opium. When he arrived, however, he found the woman so violently sick and ill, that he suspected it did not arise simply from natural causes. “What had she been eating?” inquired Jan.
“Some late mushrooms out of the fields.”
“Ah, that’s just it,” said Jan. And he knew the woman had been poisoned. He took a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote a rapid word on it, and ordered the boy to carry it to the house, and give it to Mr. Cheese.
“Now, look you, Jack,” said he. “If you want your mother to get well, you’ll go there and back as fast as ever your legs can carry you. I can do little till you bring me what I have sent for. Go past the willow pool, and straight across to my house.”
The boy looked aghast at the injunction. “Past the willow pool!” echoed he. “I’d not go past there, sir, at night, for all the world.”
“Why not?” questioned Jan.
“I’d see Rachel Frost’s ghost, may be,” returned Jack, his round eyes open with perplexity.
The conceit of seeing a ghost amused Jan beyond everything. He sat down on a high press that was in the kitchen, and grinned at the boy. “What would the ghost do to you?” cried he.
Jack Broom could not say. All he knew was, that neither he, nor a good many more, had gone near that pond at night, since the report had arisen (which of course it did, simultaneously with the death) that Rachel’s ghost was to be seen there.
“Wouldn’t you go, to save your mother?” cried Jan.
“I’d—I’d not go to be made winner of the leg of mutton atop of a greased pole,” responded the boy, in mortal fright, lest Jan should send him.
“You are a nice son, Mr. Jack! A brave young man, truly!”
“Jim Hook, he was a going by the pond one night, and he seed it,” cried the boy, earnestly. “It don’t take two minutes longer to cut down Clay Lane, please, sir.”
“Be off, then,” said Jan, “and see how quick you can be. What has put such a thing in his head?” he presently asked of the gamekeeper, who was hard at work, preparing hot water.
“Little fools!” ejaculated the man. “I think the report first took its rise, sir, through Robin Frost’s going to the pond of a moonlight night, and walking about on its brink.”
“Robert Frost did!” cried Jan. “What did he do that for?”
“What indeed, sir! It did no good, as I told him, more than once, when I came upon him there. He has not been lately, I think. Folks get up a talk that Robin went there to meet his sister’s spirit, and it put the youngsters into a fright.”
Back came Mr. Jack in an incredibly short time. He could not have come much quicker, had he dashed right through the pool. Jan set himself to his work, and did not leave the woman till she was better. That was the best of Jan Verner. He paid every atom as much attention to the poor as he did to the rich. Jan never considered who or what his patients were, when he was attending on them: all his object was, to get them well.
His nearest way home lay past the pool, and he took it: he did not fear poor Rachel’s ghost. It was a sharpish night, bright, somewhat of a frost. As Jan neared the pool, he turned his head towards it and half stopped, gazing on its still waters. He had been away when the catastrophe happened; but the circumstances had been detailed to him. “How it would startle Jack and a few of those timid ones,” said he, aloud, “if some night—”
“Is that you, sir?”
Some persons, with nerves less serene than Jan’s, might have started at the sudden interruption, there and then. Not so Jan. He turned round with composure, and saw Bennet, the footman from Verner’s Pride. The man had come up hastily from behind the hedge.
“I have been to your house, sir, and they told me you were at the gamekeeper’s, so I was hastening there. My mistress is taken ill, sir.”
“Is it a fit?” cried Jan, remembering his fears and prognostications, with regard to Mrs. Verner.
“It’s worse than that, sir: it’s appleplexy. Leastways, sir, my master and Mrs. Tynn’s afraid that it is. She looks like dead, sir, and there’s froth on her mouth.”
Jan waited for no more. He turned short round, and flew by the nearest path to Verner’s Pride.
The evil had come. Apoplexy it indeed was, and all Jan’s efforts to remedy it were of no avail.
“It was by the merest chance that I found it out, sir,” Mrs. Tynn said to him. “I happened to wake up, sir, and I thought how quiet my mistress was lying: mostly she might be heard ever so far off when she was asleep. I got up, sir, and took the rushlight out of the shade, and looked at her. And then I saw what had happened, and went and called Mr. Lionel.”
“Can you restore her, Jan?” whispered Lionel.
Jan made no reply. He had his own private opinion: but, whatever that may have been, he set himself to the task in right earnest.
She never rallied. She lived only till the dawn of the morning. Scarcely had the clock told eight, when the death-bell went booming over the village: the bell of that very church which had recently been so merry for the succession of Lionel. And when people came running from far and near to inquire for whom the passing bell was ringing out, they hushed their voices and their footsteps when informed that it was for Mrs. Verner.
Verily, within the last year, Death had made himself at home at Verner’s Pride!