XLIII. LIONEL'S PRAYER FOR FORGIVENESS
Lady Verner, like many more of us, found that misfortunes do not come singly. Coeval almost with that great misfortune, Lionel's marriage--at any rate, coeval with his return to Verner's Pride with his bride--another vexation befell Lady Verner. Had Lady Verner found real misfortunes to contend with, it is hard to say how she would have borne them. Perhaps Lionel's marriage to Sibylla was a real misfortune; but this second vexation assuredly was not--at any rate to Lady Verner.
Some women--and Lady Verner was one--are fond of scheming and planning. Whether it be the laying out of a flower-bed, or the laying out of a marriage, they must plan and project. Disappointment with regard to her own daughter--for Decima most unqualifyingly disclaimed any match-making on her own score--Lady Verner had turned her hopes in this respect on Lucy Tempest. She deemed that she should be ill-fulfilling the responsibilities of her guardianship, unless when Colonel Tempest returned to England, she could present Lucy to him a wife, or, at least, engaged to be one. Many a time now did she unavailingly wish that Lionel had chosen Lucy, instead of her whom he had chosen. Although--and mark how we estimate things by comparison--when, in the old days, Lady Verner had fancied Lionel was growing to like Lucy, she had told him emphatically it "would not do." Why would it not do? Because, in the estimation of Lady Verner, Lucy Tempest was less desirable in a social point of view than the Earl of Elmsley's daughter, and upon the latter lady had been fixed her hopes for Lionel.
All that was past and gone. Lady Verner had seen the fallacy of sublunary hopes and projects. Lady Mary Elmsley was rejected--Lionel had married in direct defiance of everybody's advice--and Lucy was open to offers. Open to offers, as Lady Verner supposed; but she was destined to find herself unpleasantly disappointed.
One came forward with an offer to her. And that was no other than the Earl of Elmsley's son, Viscount Garle. A pleasant man, of eight-and-twenty years; and he was often at Lady Verner's. He had been intimate there a long while, going in and out as unceremoniously as did Lionel or Jan. Lady Verner and Decima could tell a tale that no one else suspected. How, in the years gone by--some four or five years ago now--he had grown to love Decima with his whole heart; and Decima had rejected him. In spite of his sincere love; of the advantages of the match; of the angry indignation of Lady Verner; Decima had steadfastly rejected him. For some time Lord Garle would not take the rejection; but one day, when my lady was out, Decima spoke with him privately for five minutes, and from that hour Lord Garle had known there was no hope; had been content to begin there and then, and strive to love her only as a sister. The little episode was never known; Decima and Lady Verner had kept counsel, and Lord Garle had not told tales of himself. Next to Lionel, Lady Verner liked Lord Garle better than any one--ten times better than she liked unvarnished Jan; and he was allowed the run of the house as though he had been its son. The first year of Lucy's arrival--the year of Lionel's illness, Lord Garle had been away from the neighbourhood; but somewhere about the time of Sibylla's return, he had come back to it. Seeing a great deal of Lucy, as he necessarily did, being so much at Lady Verner's, he grew to esteem and love her. Not with the same love he had borne for Decima--a love, such as that, never comes twice in a lifetime--but with a love sufficiently warm, notwithstanding. And he asked her to become his wife.
There was triumph for Lady Verner! Next to Decima--and all hope of that was dead for ever--she would like Lord Garle to marry Lucy. A real triumph, the presenting her to Colonel Tempest on his return, my Lady Viscountess Garle! In the delight of her heart she betrayed something of this to Lucy.
"But I am not going to marry him, Lady Verner," objected Lucy.
"You are not going to marry him, Lucy? He confided to me the fact of his intention this morning before he spoke to you. He has spoken to you, has he not?"
"Yes," replied Lucy; "but I cannot accept him."
"You--cannot! What are you talking of?" cried Lady Verner.
"Please not to be angry, Lady Verner! I could not marry Lord Garle."
Lady Verner's lips grew pale. "And pray why can you not?" she demanded.
"I--don't like him," stammered Lucy.
"Not like him!" repeated Lady Verner. "Why, what can there be about Lord Garle that you young ladies do not like?" she wondered; her thoughts cast back to the former rejection by Decima. "He is good-looking, he is sensible; there's not so attractive a man in all the county, Lionel Verner excepted."
Lucy's face turned to a fiery glow. "Had I known he was going to ask me, I would have requested him not to do so beforehand, as my refusal has displeased you," she simply said. "I am sorry you should be vexed with me, Lady Verner."
"It appears to me that nothing but vexation is to be the portion of my life!" uttered Lady Verner. "Thwarted--thwarted always!--on all sides. First the one, then the other--nothing but crosses and vexations! What did you say to Lord Garle?"
"I told Lord Garle that I could not marry him; that I should never like him well enough--for he said, if I did not care for him now, I might later. But I told him no; it was impossible. I like him very well as a friend, but that is all."
"Why don't you like him?" repeated Lady Verner.
"I don't know," whispered Lucy, standing before Lady Verner like a culprit, her eyes cast down, and her eyelashes resting on her hot crimsoned face.
"Do you both mean to make yourselves into old maids, you and Decima?" reiterated the angry Lady Verner. "A pretty pair of you I shall have on my hands! I never was so annoyed in all my life."
Lucy burst into tears. "I wish I could go to papa in India!" she said.
"Do you know what you have rejected?" asked Lady Verner. "You would have been a peeress of England. His father will not live for ever."
"But I should not care to be a peeress," sobbed Lucy. "And I don't like him."
"Mamma, please do not say any more," pleaded Decima. "Lucy is not to blame. If she does not like Lord Garle she could not accept him."
"Of course she is not to blame--according to you, Miss Verner! You were not to blame, were you, when you rejected--some one we knew of? Not the least doubt that you will take her part! Young Bitterworth wished to have proposed to you; you sent him away--as you send all--and refuse to tell me your motive! Very dutiful you are, Decima!"
Decima turned away her pale face. She began to think Lucy would do better without her advocacy than with it.
"I cannot allow it to end thus," resumed Lady Verner to Lucy. "You must reconsider your determination and recall Lord Garle."
The words frightened Lucy.
"I never can--I never can, Lady Verner!" she cried. "Please not to press it; it is of no use."
"I must press it," replied Lady Verner. "I cannot allow you to throw away your future prospects in this childish manner. How should I answer for it to Colonel Tempest?"
She swept out of the room as she concluded, and Lucy, in an uncontrollable fit of emotion, threw herself on the bosom of Decima, and sobbed there. Decima hushed her to her soothingly, stroking her hair from her forehead with a fond gesture.
"What is it that has grieved you lately, Lucy?" she gently asked. "I am sure you have been grieving. I have watched you. Gay as you appear to have been, it is a false gaiety, seen only by fits and starts."
Lucy moved her face from the view of Decima. "Oh, Decima! if I could but go back to papa!" was all she murmured. "If I could but go away, and be with papa!"
This little episode had taken place the day that Lionel Verner and his wife returned. On the following morning Lady Verner renewed the contest with Lucy. And they were deep in it--at least my lady was, for Lucy's chief part was only a deprecatory silence, when Lionel arrived at Deerham Court, to pay that visit to his mother which you have heard of.
"I insist upon it, Lucy, that you recall your unqualified denial," Lady Verner was saying. "If you will not accept Lord Garle immediately, at any rate take time for consideration. I will inform Lord Garle that you do it by my wish."
"I cannot," replied Lucy in a firm, almost a vehement tone. "I--you must not be angry with me, Lady Verner--indeed, I beg your pardon for saying it--but I will not."
"How dare you, Lucy--"
Her ladyship stopped at the sudden opening of the door, turning angrily to see what caused the interruption. Her servant appeared.
"Mr. Verner, my lady."
How handsome he looked as he came forward! Tall, noble, commanding. Never more so; never so much so in Lucy's sight. Poor Lucy's heart was in her mouth, as the saying runs, and her pulses quickened to a pang. She did not know of his return.
He bent to kiss his mother. He turned and shook hands with Lucy. He looked gay, animated, happy. A joyous bridegroom, beyond doubt.
"So you have reached home, Lionel?" said Lady Verner.
"At ten last night. How well you are looking, mother mine!"
"I am flushed just now," was the reply of Lady Verner, her accent a somewhat sharp one from the remembrance of the vexation which had given her the flush. "How is Paris looking? Have you enjoyed yourself?"
"Paris is looking hot and dusty, and we have enjoyed ourselves much," replied Lionel. He answered in the plural, you observe; my lady had put the question in the singular. Where is Decima?"
"Decima is sure to be at some work or other for Jan," was the answer, the asperity of Lady Verner's tone not decreasing. "He turns the house nearly upside down with his wants. Now a pan of broth must be made for some wretched old creature; now a jug of beef tea; now a bran poultice must be got; now some linen cut up for bandages. Jan's excuse is that he can't get anything done at Dr. West's. If he is doctor to the parish, he need not be purveyor; but you may just as well speak to a post as speak to Jan. What do you suppose he did the other day? Those improvident Kellys had their one roomful of things taken from them by their landlord. Jan went there--the woman's ill with a bad breast, or something--and found her lying on the bare boards; nothing to cover her, not a saucepan left to boil a drop of water. Off he comes here at the pace of a steam engine, got an old blanket and pillow from Catherine, and a tea-kettle from the kitchen. Now, Lionel, would you believe what I am going to tell you? No! No one would. He made the pillow and blanket into a bundle, and walked off with it under his arm; the kettle--never so much as a piece of paper wrapped round it--in his other hand! I felt ready to faint with shame when I saw him crossing the road opposite, that spectacle, to get to Clay Lane, the kettle held out a yard before him to keep the black off his clothes. He never could have been meant to be your brother and my son!"
Lucy laughed at the recollection. She had had the pleasure of beholding the spectacle. Lionel laughed now at the description. Their mirth did not please Lady Verner. She was serious in her complaint.
"Lionel, you would not have liked it yourself. Fancy his turning out of Verner's Pride in that guise, and encountering visitors! I don't know how it is, but there's some deficiency in Jan; something wanting. You know he generally chooses to come here by the back door: this day, because he had got the black kettle in his hand like a travelling tinker, he must go out by the front. He did! It saved him a few steps, and he went out without a blush. Out of my house, Lionel! Nobody ever lived, I am certain, who possessed so little innate notion of the decencies of life as Jan. Had he met a carriage full of visitors in the courtyard, he would have swung the kettle back on his arm, and gone up to shake hands with them. I had the nightmare that night, Lionel. I dreamt a tall giant was pursuing me, seeking to throw some great machine at me, made of tea-kettles."
"Jan is an odd fellow," assented Lionel.
"The worst is, you can't bring him to see, himself, what is proper or improper," resumed Lady Verner. "He has no sense of the fitness of things. He would go as unblushingly through the village with that black kettle held out before him, as he would if it were her Majesty's crown, borne on a velvet cushion."
"I am not sure but the crown would embarrass Jan more than the kettle," said Lionel, laughing still.
"Oh, I dare say; it would be just like him. Have you heard of the disgraceful flitting away of some of the inhabitants here to go after the Mormons?" added my lady.
"Jan has been telling me of it. What with one thing and another, Deerham will rise into notoriety. Nancy has gone from Verner's Pride."
"Poor deluded woman!" ejaculated Lady Verner.
"There's a story told in the village about that Peckaby's wife--Decima can tell it best, though. I wonder where she is?"
Lucy rose. "I will go and find her, Lady Verner."
No sooner had she quitted the room, than Lady Verner turned to Lionel, her manner changing. She began to speak rapidly, with some emotion.
"You observed that I looked well, Lionel. I told you I was flushed. The flush was caused by vexation, by anger. Not a week passes but something or other occurs to annoy me. I shall be worried into my grave."
"What has happened?" inquired Lionel.
"It is about Lucy Tempest. Here she is, upon my hands, and of course I am responsible. She has no mother, and I am responsible to Colonel Tempest and to my own conscience for her welfare. She will soon be twenty years of age--though I am sure nobody would believe it, to look at her--and it is time that her settlement in life should, at all events, be thought of. But now, look how things turn out! Lord Garle--than whom a better parti could not be wished--has fallen in love with her. He made her an offer yesterday, and she won't have him."
"Indeed!" replied Lionel, constrained to say something, but wishing Lady Verner would entertain him with any other topic.
"We had quite a scene here yesterday. Indeed, it has been renewed this morning, and your coming in interrupted it. I tell her that she must have him: at any rate, must take time to consider the advantages of the offer. She obstinately protests that she will not. I cannot think what can be her motive for rejection; almost any girl in the county would jump at Lord Garle."
"I suppose so," returned Lionel, pulling at a hole in his glove.
"I must get you to speak to her, Lionel. Ask her why she declines. Show her--"
"I speak to her!" interrupted Lionel in a startled tone. "I cannot speak to her about it, mother. It is no business of mine."
"Good heavens, Lionel! are you going to turn disobedient?--And in so trifling-a matter as this!--trifling so far as you are concerned. Were it of vital importance to you, you might run counter to me; it is only what I should expect."
This was a stab at his marriage. Lionel replied by disclaiming any influence over Miss Tempest. "Where your arguments have failed, mine would not be likely to succeed."
"Then you are mistaken, Lionel. I am certain that you hold a very great influence over Lucy. I observed it first when you were ill, when she and Decima were so much with you. She has betrayed it in a hundred little ways; her opinions are formed upon yours; your tastes unconsciously bias hers. It is only natural. She has no brother, and no doubt has learned to regard you as one."
Lionel hoped in his inmost heart that she did regard him only as a brother. Lady Verner continued--
"A word from you may have great effect upon her; and I desire, Lionel, that you will, in your duty to me, undertake that word. Point out to her the advantages of the match; tell her that you speak to her as her father; urge her to accept Lord Garle; or, as I say, not to summarily reject him without consideration, upon the childish plea that she 'does not like him.' She was terribly agitated last night; nearly went into hysterics, Decima tells me, after I left her; all her burden being that she wished she could go away to India."
"Mother--you know how pleased I should be to obey any wish of yours; but this is really not a proper business for me to interfere with," urged Lionel, a red spot upon his cheek.
"Why is it not?" pointedly asked Lady Verner, looking hard at him and waiting for an answer.
"I do not deem it to be so. Neither would Lucy consider my interference justifiable."
"But, Lionel, you take up wrong notions! I wish you to speak in my place, just as if you were her father; in short, acting for her father. As to what Lucy may consider or not consider in the matter, that is of very little consequence. Lucy is so perfectly unsophisticated, so simple in her ideas, that were I to desire my maid Therese to give her a lecture, she would receive it as something proper."
"I should be most unwilling to----"
"Hold your tongue, Lionel. You must do it. Here she is."
"I could not find Decima, Lady Verner," said Lucy, entering. "When I had been all over the house for her, Catherine told me Miss Decima had gone out. She has gone to Clay Lane on some errand for Jan."
"Oh, of course for Jan!" resentfully spoke Lady Verner. "Nothing else, I should think, would take her to Clay Lane. You see, Lionel!"
"There's nothing in Clay Lane that will hurt Decima, mother."
Lady Verner made no reply. She walked to the door, and stood with the handle in her hand, turning round to speak.
"Lucy, I have been acquainting Lionel with this affair between you and Lord Garle. I have requested him to speak to you upon the point; to ascertain your precise grounds of objection, and--so far as he can--to do away with them. Try your best, Lionel."
She quitted the room, leaving them standing opposite each other. Standing like two statues. Lionel's heart smote him. She looked so innocent, so good, in her delicate morning dress, with its gray ribbons and its white lace on the sleeves, open to the small fair arms! Simple as the dress was, it looked, in its exquisite taste, worth ten of Sibylla's elaborate French costumes. Her cheeks were glowing, her hands were trembling, as she stood there in her self-consciousness.
Terribly self-conscious was Lionel. He strove to say something, but in his embarrassment could not get out a single word. The conviction of the grievous fact, that she loved him, went right to his heart in that moment, and seated itself there. Another grievous fact came home to him; that she was more to him than the whole world. However he had pushed the suspicion away from his mind, refused to dwell on it, kept it down, it was all too plain to him now. He had made Sibylla his wife. He stood there, feeling that he loved Lucy above all created things.
He crossed over to her, and laid his hand fondly and gently on her head, as he moved to the door. "May God forgive me, Lucy!" broke from his white and trembling lips. "My own punishment is heavier than yours."
There was no need of further explanation on either side. Each knew that the love of the other was theirs, the punishment keenly bitter, as surely as if a hundred words had told it. Lucy sat down as the door closed behind him, and wondered how she should get through the long dreary life before her.
And Lionel? Lionel went out by Jan's favourite way, the back, and plunged into a dark lane where neither ear nor eye was on him. He uncovered his head, he threw back his coat, he lifted his breath to catch only a gasp of air. The sense of dishonour was stifling him.
XLIV. FARMER BLOW'S WHITE-TAILED PONY
Lionel Verner was just in that frame of mind which struggles to be carried out of itself. No matter whether by pleasure or pain, so that it be not that particular pain from which it would fain escape, the mind seeks yearningly to forget itself, to be lifted out anywhere, or by any means, from its trouble. Conscience was doing heavy work with Lionel. He had destroyed his own happiness--that was nothing; he could battle it out, and nobody be the wiser or the worse, save himself; but he had blighted Lucy's. There was the sting that tortured him. A man of sensitively refined organisation, keenly alive to the feelings of others--full of repentant consciousness when wrong was worked through him, he would have given his whole future life and all its benefits, to undo the work of the last few months. Either that he had never met Lucy, or that he had not married Sibylla. Which of those two events he would have preferred to recall, he did not trust himself to think; whatever may have been his faults, he had, until now, believed himself to be a man of honour. It was too late. Give what he would, strive as he would, repent as he would, the ill could neither be undone nor mitigated; it was one of those unhappy things for which there is no redress; they must be borne, as they best can, in patience and silence.
With these thoughts and feelings full upon him, little wonder was there that Lionel Verner, some two hours after quitting Lucy, should turn into Peckaby's shop. Mrs. Peckaby was seated back from the open door, crying, and moaning, and swaying herself about, apparently in terrible pain, physical or mental. Lionel remembered the story of the white donkey, and he stepped in to question her; anything for a minute's divertisement; anything to drown the care that was racking him. There was a subject on which he wished to speak to Roy, and that took him down Clay Lane.
"What's the matter, Mrs. Peckaby?"
Mrs. Peckaby rose from her chair, curtseyed, and sat down again. But for the state of tribulation she was in, she would have remained standing.
"Oh, sir, I have had a upset," she sobbed. "I see the white tail of a pony a-going by, and I thought it might be some'at else. It did give me a turn!"
"What did you think it might be?"
"I thought it might be the tail of a different sort of animal. I be a-going a far journey, sir, and I thought it was, may be, the quadruple come to fetch me. I'm a-going to New Jerusalem on a white donkey."
"So I hear," said Lionel, suppressing a smile, in spite of his heavy heart. "Do you go all the way on the white donkey, Mrs. Peckaby?"
"Sir, that's a matter that's hid from me," answered Mrs. Peckaby. "The gentleman that was sent back to me by Brother Jarrum, hadn't had particulars revealed to him. There's difficulties in the way of a animal on four legs which can't swim, doing it all, that I don't pretend to explain away. I'm content, when the hour comes, sir, to start, and trust. Peckaby, he's awful sinful, sir. Only last evening, when I was saying the quadruple might have mirac'lous parts give to it, like Balum's had in the Bible, Peckaby he jeered, and said he'd like to see Balum's or any other quadruple, set off to swim to America--that he'd find the bottom afore he found the land. I wonder the kitchen ceiling don't drop down upon his head! For myself, sir, I'm rejoiced to trust, as I says; and as soon as the white donkey do come, I shall mount him without fear."
"What do you expect to find at New Jerusalem?" asked Lionel.
"I could sooner tell you, sir, what I don't expect; it 'ud take up less time. There's a'most everything good at New Jerusalem that the world contains--Verner's Pride's a poor place to it, sir--saving your presence for saying so. I could have sat and listened to Brother Jarrum in this here shop for ever, sir, if it hadn't been that the longing was upon me to get there. In this part o' the world we women be poor, cast down, half-famished, miserable slaves; but in New Jerusalem we are the wives of saints, well cared for, and clothed and fed, happy as the day's long, and our own parlours to ourselves, and nobody to interrupt us. Yes, Peckaby, I'm a-telling his honour, Mr. Verner, what's a-waiting for me at New Jerusalem! And the sooner I'm on my road to it, the better."
The conclusion was addressed to Peckaby himself. Peckaby had just come in from the forge, grimed and dirty. He touched his hair to Lionel, an amused expression playing on his face. In point of fact, this New Jerusalem vision was affording the utmost merriment to Peckaby and a few more husbands. Peckaby had come home to his tea, which meal it was the custom of Deerham to enjoy about three o'clock. He saw no signs of its being in readiness; and, but for the presence of Mr. Verner, might probably have expressed his opinion demonstratively upon the point. Peckaby, of late, appeared to have changed his nature and disposition. From being a timid man, living under wife-thraldom, he had come to exercise thraldom over her. How far Mrs. Peckaby's state of low spirits, into which she was generally sunk, may have explained this, nobody knew.
"I have had a turn, Peckaby. I caught sight of a white tail a-going by, and I thought it might be the quadruple a-coming for me. I was shook, I can tell you. 'Twas more nor an hour ago, and I've been able to do nothing since, but sit here and weep; I couldn't redd up after that."
"Warn't it the quadrepid?" asked Peckaby in a mocking tone.
"No, it weren't," she moaned. "It were nothing but that white pony of Farmer Blow's."
"Him, was it," said Peckaby, with affected scorn. "He is in the forge now, he is; a-having his shoes changed, and his tail trimmed."
"I'd give a shilling to anybody as 'ud cut his tail off;" angrily rejoined Mrs. Peckaby. "A-deceiving of me, and turning my inside all of a quake! Oh, I wish it 'ud come! The white donkey as is to bear me to New Jerusalem!"
"Don't you wish her joy of her journey, sir?" cried the man respectfully, a twinkle in his eye, while she rocked herself too and fro. "She have got a bran new gownd laid up in a old apron upstairs, ready for the start. She, and a lot more to help her, set on and made it in a afternoon, for fear the white donkey should arrive immediate. I asks her, sir, how much back the gownd'll have left in him, by the time she have rode from here to New Jerusalem."
"Peckaby, you are a mocker!" interposed his lady, greatly exasperated. "Remember the forty-two as was eat up by bears when they mocked at Elisher!"
"Mrs. Peckaby," said Lionel, keeping his countenance, "don't you think you would have made more sure of the benefits of the New Jerusalem, had you started with the rest, instead of depending upon the arrival of the white donkey?"
"They started without her, sir," cried the man, laughing from ear to ear. "They give her the slip, while she were a-bed and asleep."
"It were revealed to Brother Jarrum so to do, sir," she cried eagerly. "Don't listen to him. Brother Jarrum as much meant me to go, sir, and I as much thought to go, as I mean to go to my bed this night--always supposing the white donkey don't come," she broke off in a different voice.
"Why did you not go, then?" demanded Lionel.
"I'll tell you about it, sir. Me and Brother Jarrum was on the best of terms--which it's a real gentleman he was, and never said a word nor gave a look as could offend me. I didn't know the night fixed for the start; and Brother Jarrum didn't know it; in spite of Peckaby's insinuations. On that last night, which it was Tuesday, not a soul came near the place but that pale lady where Dr. West attended. She stopped a minute or two, and then Brother Jarrum goes out, and says he might be away all the evening. Well, he was; but he came in again; I can be on my oath he did; and I give him his candle and wished him a good-night. After that, sir, I never heard nothing till I got up in the morning. The first thing I see was his door wide open, and the bed not slept in. And the next thing I heard was, that the start had took place; they a-walking to Heartburg, and taking the train there. You might just have knocked me down with a puff of wind."
"Such a howling and screeching followed on, sir," put in Peckaby. "I were at the forge, and it reached all the way to our ears, over there. Chuff, he thought as the place had took fire and the missis was a-burning."
"But it didn't last; it didn't last," repeated Mrs. Peckaby. "Thanks be offered up for it, it didn't last, or I should ha' been in my coffin afore the day were out! A gentleman came to me: a Brother he were, sent express by Brother Jarrum; and had walked afoot all the way from Heartburg. It had been revealed to Brother Jarrum, he said, that they were to start that partic'lar night, and that I was to be left behind special. A higher mission was--What was the word? resigned?--no--reserved--reserved for me, and I was to be conveyed special on a quadruple, which was a white donkey. I be to keep myself in readiness, sir, always a-looking out for the quadruple's coming and stopping afore the door."
Lionel leaned against the counter, and went into a burst of laughter. The woman told it so quaintly, with such perfect good faith in the advent of the white donkey! She did not much like the mirth. As to that infidel Peckaby, he indulged in sundry mocking doubts, which were, to say the least of them, very mortifying to a believer.
"What's your opinion, sir?" she suddenly asked of Lionel.
"Well," said Lionel, "my opinion--as you wish for it--Would incline to the suspicion that your friend, Brother Jarrum, deceived you. That he invented the fable of the white donkey to keep you quiet while he and the rest got clear off."
Mrs. Peckaby Went into a storm of shrieking sobs. "It couldn't be! it couldn't be! Oh, sir, you be as cruel as the rest! Why should Brother Jarrum take the others, and not take me?"
"That is Brother Jarrum's affair," replied Lionel. "I only say it looks like it."
"I telled Brother Jarrum, the very day afore the start took place, that if he took off my wife, I'd follor him on and beat every bone to smash as he'd got in his body," interposed Peckaby, glancing at Lionel with a knowing smile. "I did, sir. Her was out"--jerking his black thumb at his wife--"and I caught Brother Jarrum in his own room and shut the door on us both, and there I telled him. He knew I meant it, too, and he didn't like the look of a iron bar I happened to have in my hand. I saw that. Other wives' husbands might do as they liked; but I warn't a-going to have mine deluded off by them Latter Day Saints. Were I wrong, sir?"
"I do not think you were," answered Lionel.
"I'd Latter Day 'em! and saint 'em too, if I had my will!" continued wrathful Peckaby. "Arch-deceiving villuns!"
"Well, good-day, Mrs. Peckaby," said Lionel, moving to the door. "I would not spend too much time were I you, looking out for the white donkey."
"It'll come! it'll come!" retorted Mrs. Peckaby, in an ecstasy of joy, removing her hands from her ears, where she had clapped them during Peckaby's heretical speech. "I am proud, sir, to know as it'll come, in spite of opinions contrairey and Peckaby's wickedness; and I'm proud to be always a-looking out for it."
"This is never it, is it, drawing up to the door now?" cried Lionel, with gravity.
Something undoubtedly was curveting and prancing before the door; something with a white flowing tail. Mrs. Peckaby caught one glimpse, and bounded from her seat, her chest panting, her nostrils working. The signs betrayed how implicit was the woman's belief; how entirely it had taken hold of her.
Alas! for Mrs. Peckaby. Alas! for her disappointment. It was nothing but that deceiving animal again, Farmer Blow's white pony. Apparently the pony had been so comfortable in the forge, that he did not care to leave it. He was dodging about and backing, wholly refusing to go forward, and setting at defiance a boy who was striving to lead him onwards. Mrs. Peckaby sat down and burst into tears.
XLV. STIFLED WITH DISHONOUR
"Now, then," began Peckaby, as Lionel departed, "what's the reason my tea ain't ready for me."
"Be you a man to ask?" demanded she. "Could I redd up and put on kettles, and, see to ord'nary work, with my inside turning?"
Peckaby paused for a minute. "I've a good mind to wallop you!"
"Try it," she aggravatingly answered. "You have not kep' your hands off me yet to be let begin now. Anybody but a brute 'ud comfort a poor woman in her distress. You'll be sorry for it when I'm gone off to New Jerusalem."
"Now, look here, Suke," said he, attempting to reason with her. "It's quite time as you left off this folly; we've had enough on't. What do you suppose you'd do at Salt Lake? What sort of a life 'ud you lead?"
"A joyful life!" she responded, turning her glance sky-ward. "Brother Jarrum thinks as the head saint, the prophet hisself, has a favour to me! Wives is as happy there as the day's long."
Peckaby grinned; the reply amused him much. "You poor ignorant creatur," cried he, "you have got your head up in a mad-house; and that's about it. You know Mary Green?"
"Well?" answered she, looking surprised at this divertissement.
"And you know Nancy from Verner's Pride as is gone off," he continued, "and you know half a dozen more nice young girls about here, which you can just set on and think of. How 'ud you like to see me marry the whole of 'em, and bring 'em home here? Would the house hold the tantrums you'd go into, d'ye think?"
"You hold your senseless tongue, Peckaby! A man 'ud better try and bring home more nor one wife here! The law 'ud be on to him."
"In course it would," returned Peckaby! "And the law knowed what it was about when it made itself into the law. A place with more nor one wife in it 'ud be compairable to nothing but that blazing place you've heerd on as is under our feet, or the Salt Lake City."
"For shame, you wicked man!"
"There ain't no shame, in saying that; it's truth," composedly answered Peckaby. "Brother Jarrum said, didn't he, as the wives had a parlour a-piece. Why do they? 'Cause they be obleeged to be kep' apart, for fear o' damaging each other, a-tearing and biting and scratching, and a-pulling of eyes out. A nice figure you'd cut among 'em! You'd be a-wishing yourself home again afore you'd tried it for a day. Don't you be a fool, Susan Peckaby."
"Don't you!" retorted she. "I wonder you ain't afraid o' some judgment falling on you. Lies is sure to come home to people."
"Just take your thoughts back to the time as we had the shop here, and plenty o' custom in it. One day you saw me just a-kissing of a girl in that there corner--leastways you fancied as you saw me," corrected Peckaby, coughing down his slip. "Well, d'ye recollect the scrimmage? Didn't you go a'most mad, never keeping' your tongue quiet for a week, and the place hardly holding of ye? How 'ud you like to have eight or ten more of 'em, my married wives, like you be, brought in here?"
"You are a fool, Peckaby. The cases is different."
"Where's the difference?" asked Peckaby. "The men be men, out there; and the women be women. I might pertend as I'd had visions and revelations sent to me, and dress myself up in a black coat and a white neck-an-kecher, and suchlike paycock's plumes--I might tar and feather myself if I pleased, if it come to that--and give out as I was a prophit and a Latter Day Saint; but where 'ud be the difference, I want to know? I should just be as good and as bad a man as I be now, only a bit more of a hypocrite. Saints and prophits, indeed! You just come to your senses, Susan Peckaby."
"I haven't lost 'em yet," answered she, looking inclined to beat him.
"You have lost 'em; to suppose as a life, out with them reptiles, could be anything but just what I telled you--a hell. It can't be otherways. It's again human female natur. If you went angry mad with jealousy, just at fancying you see a innocent kiss give upon a girl's face, how 'ud you do, I ask, when it come to wives? Tales runs as them 'saints' have got any number a-piece, from four or five, up to seventy. If you don't come to your senses, Mrs. Peckaby, you'll get a walloping, to bring you to 'em; and that's about it. You be the laughing-stock o' the place as it is."
He swung out at the door, and took his way towards the nearest public-house, intending to solace himself with a pint of ale, in lieu of tea, of which he saw no chance. Mrs. Peckaby burst into a flood of tears, and apostrophised the expected white donkey in moving terms: that he would forthwith appear and bear her off from Peckaby and trouble, to the triumphs and delights of New Jerusalem.
Lionel, meanwhile, went to Roy's dwelling. Roy, he found, was not in it. Mrs. Roy was; and, by the appearance of the laid-out tea-table, she was probably expecting Roy to enter. Mrs. Roy sat doing nothing, her arms hung listlessly down, her head also; sunk apparently in that sad state of mind--whatever may have been its cause--which was now habitual to her. By the start with which she sprang from her chair, as Lionel Verner appeared at the open door, it may be inferred that she took him for her husband. Surely nobody else could have put her in such tremor.
"Roy's not in, sir," she said, dropping a curtsey, in answer to Lionel's inquiry. "May be, he'll not be long. It's his time for coming home, but there's no dependence on him."
Lionel glanced round. He saw that the woman was alone, and he deemed it a good opportunity to ask her about what had been mentioned to him, two or three hours previously, by the Vicar of Deerham. Closing the door, and advancing towards her, he began.
"I want to say a word to you, Mrs. Roy. What were your grounds for stating to Mr. Bourne that Mr. Frederick Massingbird was with Rachel Frost at the Willow Pool the evening of her death?"
Mrs. Roy gave a low shriek of terror, and flung her apron over her face. Lionel ungallantly drew it down again. Her countenance was turning livid as death.
"You will have the goodness to answer me, Mrs. Roy."
"It were just a dream sir," she said, the words issuing in unequal jerks from her trembling lips, "I have been pretty nigh crazed lately. What with them Mormons, and the uncertainty of fixing what to do--whether to believe 'em or not--and Roy's crabbed temper, which grows upon him, and other fears and troubles, I've been a-nigh crazed. It were just a dream as I had, and nothing more; and I be vexed to my heart that I should have made such a fool of myself, as to go and say what I did to Mr. Bourne."
One word above all others, caught the attention of Lionel in the answer. It was "fears." He bent towards her, lowering his voice.
"What are these fears that seem to pursue you? You appear to me to have been perpetually under the influence of fear since that night. Terrified you were then; terrified you remain. What is the cause?"
The woman trembled excessively.
"Roy keeps me in fear, sir. He's for ever a-threatening. He'll shake me, or he'll pinch me, or he'll do for me, he says. I'm in fear of him always."
"That is an evasive answer," remarked Lionel. "Why should you fear to confide in me? You have never known me to take an advantage to anybody's injury. The past is past. That unfortunate night's work appears now to belong wholly to the past. Nevertheless, if you can throw any light upon it, it is your duty to do so. I will keep the secret."
"I didn't know a thing, sir, about the night's work. I didn't," she sobbed.
"Hush!" said Lionel. "I felt sure at the time that you did know something, had you chosen to speak. I feel more sure of it now."
"No, I don't, sir; not if you pulled me in pieces for it. I had a horrid dream, and I went straight off, like a fool, to Mr. Bourne and told it, and--and--that was all, sir."
She was flinging her apron up again to hide her countenance, when, with a faint cry, she let it fall, sprung from her seat, and stood before Lionel.
"For the love of heaven, sir, say nothing to him!" she uttered, and disappeared within an inner door. The sight of Roy, entering, explained the enigma; she must have seen him from the window. Roy took off his cap by way of salute.
"I hope I see you well, sir, after your journey."
"Quite well. Roy, some papers have been left at Verner's Pride for my inspection, regarding the dispute in Farmer Hartright's lease. I do not understand them. They bear your signature, not Mrs. Verner's. How is that?"
Roy stopped a while--to collect his thoughts, possibly. "I suppose I signed it for her, sir."
"Then you did what you had no authority to do. You never received power to sign from Mrs. Verner."
"Mrs. Verner must have give me power, sir, if I have signed. I don't recollect signing anything. Sometimes, when she was ill, or unwilling to be disturbed, she'd say, 'Roy, do this,' or, 'Roy, do the other.' She--"
"Mrs. Verner never gave you authority to sign," impressively repeated Lionel. "She is gone, and therefore cannot be referred to; but you know as well as I do, that she never did give you such authority. Come to Verner's Pride to-morrow morning at ten, and see these papers."
Roy signified his obedience, and Lionel departed. He bent his steps towards home, taking the field way; all the bitter experiences of the day rising up within his mind. Ah! try as he would, he could not deceive himself; he could not banish or drown the one ever-present thought. The singular information imparted by Mr. Bourne; the serio-comic tribulation of Mrs. Peckaby, waiting for her white donkey; the mysterious behaviour of Dinah Roy, in which there was undoubtedly more than met the ear; all these could not cover for a moment the one burning fact--Lucy's love, and his own dishonour. In vain Lionel flung off his hat, heedless of any second sun-stroke, and pushed his hair from his heated brow. It was of no use; as he had felt when he went out from the presence of Lucy, so he felt now--stifled with dishonour.
Sibylla was at a table, writing notes, when he reached home. Several were on it, already written, and in their envelopes. She looked up at him.
"Oh, Lionel, what a while you have been out! I thought you were never coming home."
He leaned down and kissed her. Although his conscience had revealed to him, that day, that he loved another better, she should never feel the difference. Nay, the very knowledge that it was so would render him all the more careful to give her marks of love.
"I have been to my mother's, and to one or two more places. What are you so busy over, dear?"
"I am writing invitations," said Sibylla.
"Invitations! Before people have called upon you?"
"They can call all the same. I have been asking Mary Tynn how many beds she can, by dint of screwing, afford. I am going to fill them all. I shall ask them for a month. How grave you look, Lionel!"
"In this first early sojourn together in our own house, Sibylla, I think we shall be happier alone."
"Oh, no, we should not. I love visitors. We shall be together all the same, Lionel."
"My little wife," he said, "if you cared for me as I care for you, you would not feel the want of visitors just now."
And there was no sophistry in this speech. He had come to the conviction that Lucy ought to have been his wife, but he did care for Sibylla very much. The prospect of a house full of guests at the present moment, appeared most displeasing to him, if only as a matter of taste.
"Put it off for a few weeks, Sibylla."
Sibylla pouted. "It is of no use preaching, Lionel. If you are to be a preaching husband, I shall be sorry I married you. Fred was never that."
Lionel's face turned blood-red. Sibylla put up her hand, and drew it carelessly down.
"You must let me have my own way for this once," she coaxingly said. "What's the use of my bringing all those loves of things from Paris, if we are to live in a dungeon, and nobody's to see them? I must invite them, Lionel."
"Very well," he answered, yielding the point. Yielding it the more readily from the consciousness above spoken of.
"There's my dear Lionel! I knew you would never turn tyrant. And now I want something else."
"What's that?" asked Lionel.
"A cheque."
"A cheque? I gave you one this morning, Sibylla."
"Oh! but the one you gave me is for housekeeping--for Mary Tynn, and all that. I want one for myself. I am not going to have my expenses come out of the housekeeping."
Lionel sat down to write one, a good-natured smile on his face. "I'm sure I don't know what you will find to spend it in, after all the finery you bought in Paris," he said, in a joking tone. "How much shall I fill it in for?"
"As much as you will," replied Sibylla, too eagerly. "Couldn't you give it me in blank, and let me fill it in?"
He made no answer. He drew it for L100, and gave it her.
"Will that do, my dear?"
She drew his face down again caressingly. But, in spite of the kisses left upon his lips, Lionel had awoke to the conviction, firm and undoubted, that his wife did not love him.
XLVI. 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 in 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 country, 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!" slightingly returned 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 will 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, and 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 her, 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 handwriting 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, 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 of 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 bedrooms, 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 death. Folks said, whether he had died, or whether he had 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 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, and put him on the wrong scent. He comes here, pumping, 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 pumps at 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. Lionel 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 does not care 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.
XLVII. 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 this room."
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 the room. 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 though 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 any one 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, except 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 dare say 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 bow-string 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 am 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. He 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 appear in 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 nervous temperament. With Indian bow-strings in the mind, and fancied moonlight spies before the sight, a scream was inevitable.
Whom 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 why he should be 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 undertone. 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 themselves neglected, their charms wasted on the desert air, they naturally do covet attention, although it be but a brother's."
Perhaps the first truly severe glance that Lionel Verner ever gave his wife he gave her then. Disdaining any defence off 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 if Miss Verner is neglected, it is her own fault alone. 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 to Lionel, as they reached the terrace.
"A word of warning to me, Lucy!" he 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. In bitter contrast to Lucy did she stand out to his mind that night. 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.
XLVIII. MR. DAN DUFF IN CONVULSIONS
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. As you will find also, if you will 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 overhead.
"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 one herself; or let her keep 'em till the morning and choose it then. She should have sent by daylight. You can bring back the skein 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 home 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 arms 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 play them, 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."
Chapter XLIX
"I SEE'D A DEAD MAN!"
Jan Verner was turning in at his own door--the surgery--at a swinging pace. Jan's natural pace was a deliberate one; but Jan found so much to do, now he was alone in the business, that he had no resource but to move at the rate of a steam engine. Otherwise he would never have got through his day's work. Jan had tried one assistant, who had proved to be more plague than profit, and Jan was better without him. Master Cheese, promoted now to tail-coats and turn-up collars, was coming on, and could attend to trifling cases. Master Cheese wished to be promoted also to "Mister" Cheese; but he remained obstinately excessively short, and people would still call him "Master." He appeared to grow in breadth instead of height, and underwent, in consequence, a perpetual inward mortification. Jan would tell him he should eat less and walk more; but the advice was not taken.
Jan Verner was turning into the surgery at a swinging pace, and came in violent contact with Master Cheese, who was coming out at another sharp pace. Jan rubbed his chest, and Cheese his head.
"I say, Jan," said he, "can't you look where your going?"
"Can't you look?" returned Jan. "Where are you off to?"
"There's something the matter at Duff's. About a dozen came here in a body, wanting you. Bob says Dan Duff was dying."
Jan turned his eyes on Bob, the surgery-boy. Bob answered the look--
"It's what they said, sir. They said as Dan Duff was a-dying and a-frothing at the mouth. It's about five minutes ago, sir."
"Did you go over?" asked Jan of Cheese. "I saw a crowd round Mrs. Duff's door."
"No, I didn't. I am going now. I was indoors, having my supper."
"Then you need not trouble yourself," returned Jan. "Stop where you are, and digest your supper."
He, Jan, was speeding off, when a fresh deputation arrived. Twenty anxious faces at the least, all in a commotion, their tongues going together. "Dan was frothing dreadful, and his legs was twitchin' like one in the epilepsies."
"What has caused it?" asked Jan. "I saw him well enough an hour or two ago."
"He see a dead man, sir; as it's said. We can't come to the bottom of it, 'cause of his not answering no questions. He be too bad, he be."
"He did see a dead man," put in Polly Dawson, who made one of the deputation, and was proud of being able to add her testimony to the asserted fact. "Leastways, he said he did. I was a-buying some silk, sir, in at Mother Duff's shop, and Susan Peckaby was in there too, she was, a-talking rubbish about her white donkey, when Dan flounders in upon us in a state not to be told, a-frightening of us dreadful, and a-smashing in the winder with his arm. And he said he'd seen a dead man."
Jan could not make sense of the tale. There was nobody lying dead in Deerham, that he knew of. He pushed the crowd round the door right and left to get space to enter. The shop was pretty full already, but numbers pushed in after Jan. Dan had been carried into the kitchen at the back of the shop, and was laid upon the floor, a pillow under his head. The kitchen was more crowded than the shop; there was not breathing space; and room could hardly be found for Jan.
The shop was Mrs. Duff's department. If she chose to pack it full of people to the ceiling, it was her affair: but Jan made the kitchen, where the boy lay, his.
"What's the matter with him, sir?" was the eager question to Jan, the moment he had cast his eyes on the invalid.
"I may be able to ascertain as soon as I have elbow room," replied Jan. "Suppose you give it me. Mrs. Duff may stop, but nobody else."
Jan's easy words carried authority in their tone, and the company turned tail and began to file out.
"Couldn't you do with me in, as well as his mother, sir?" asked Susan Peckaby. "I was here when he came in, I was; and I knowed what it was a'most afore he spoke. He have been frightened by that thing in the pound. Only a few minutes afore, it had turned my inside almost out."
"No, I can't," answered Jan. "I must have the room clear. Perhaps I shall send away his mother."
"I should ha' liked to know for sure," meekly observed Susan Peckaby, preparing to resign herself to her fate. "I hope you'll ask him, sir, when he comes to, whether it were not that thing in the pound as frightened him. I took it for some'at else, more's the grief! but it looks, for all the world, like a ghost in the moonlight."
"What is in the pound?" demanded Jan.
"It's a white cow," responded Susan Peckaby. "And it strikes me as it's Farmer Blow's. He have got a white cow, you know, sir, like he have got a white pony, and they be always a-giving me a turn, one or t'other of 'em. I'd like old Blow to be indicted for a pest, I would! a-keeping white animals to upset folks. It's not a week ago that I met that cow in the road at dusk--strayed through a gap in the hedge. Tiresome beast, a-causing my heart to leap into my mouth!"
"If Dan have put himself into this state, and done all this damage, through nothing but seeing of a white cow, won't I baste him!" emphatically rejoined Mrs. Duff.
Jan at length succeeded in getting the kitchen clear. But for some time, in spite of all his skill and attention--and he spared neither--he could make no impression upon the unhappy Dan. His mother's bed was made ready for him--Dan himself sharing the accommodation of a dark closet in an ordinary way, in common with his brothers--and Jan carried him up to it. There he somewhat revived, sufficiently to answer a question or two rationally. It must be confessed that Jan felt some curiosity upon the subject; to suppose the boy had been thrown into that state, simply by seeing a white cow in the pound, was ridiculous.
"What frightened you?" asked Jan.
"I see'd a dead man," answered the boy. "Oh, lor!"
"Well?" said Jan, with composure, "he didn't eat you. What is there in a dead man to be alarmed at? I have seen scores--handled 'em too. What dead man was it?"
The boy pulled the bed-clothes over him, and moaned. Jan pulled them down again.
"Of course you can't tell! There's no dead man in Deerham. Was it in the churchyard?"
"No."
"Was it in the pound?" asked Jan triumphantly, thinking he had got it right this time.
"No."
The answer was an unexpected one.
"Where was it, then?"
"Oh-o-o-o-oh!" moaned the boy, beginning to shake and twitch again.
"Now, Dan Duff, this won't do," said Jan. "Tell me quietly what you saw, and where you saw it."
"I see'd a dead man," reiterated Dan Duff. And it appeared to be all he was capable of saying.
"You saw a white cow on its hind legs," returned Jan. "That's what you saw. I am surprised at you, Dan Duff. I should have thought you more of a man."
Whether the reproof overcame Master Duff's nerves again, or the remembrance of the "dead man," certain it was, that he relapsed into a state which rendered it imprudent, in Jan's opinion, to continue for the present the questioning. One more only he put--for a sudden thought crossed him, which induced it.
"Was it in the copse at Verner's Pride?"
"'Twas at the Willow Pool; he was a-walking round it. Oh-o-o-o-o-oh!"
Jan's momentary fear was dispelled. A night or two back there had been a slight affray between Lionel's gamekeeper and some poachers: and the natural doubts arose whether anything fresh of the same nature had taken place. If so, Dan Duff might have come upon one of them lying, dead or wounded. The words--"walking round the pool"--did away with this. For the present, Jan departed.
But, if Dan's organs of disclosure are for the present in abeyance, there's no reason why we should not find out what we can for ourselves. You may be very sure that Deerham would not fail to do it.
The French madmizel--as Mrs. Duff styled her, meaning, of course, Mademoiselle Benoite--had called in at Mrs. Duff's shop and made a purchase. It consisted--if you are curious to know--of pins and needles, and a staylace. Not a parcel that would have weighed her down, certainly, had she borne it herself; but it pleased her to demand that Dan should carry it for her. This she did, partly to display her own consequence, chiefly that she might have a companion home, for Mademoiselle Benoite did not relish the walk alone by moonlight to Verner's Pride. Of course young Dan was at the beck and call of Mrs. Duff's customers, that being, as mademoiselle herself might have said, his specialite. Whether a customer bought a parcel that would have filled a van, or one that might have gone inside a penny thimble, Master Dan was equally expected to be in readiness to carry the purchase to its destination at night, if called upon. Master Dan's days being connected now with the brick-fields, where his specialite appeared to be, to put layers of clay upon his clothes.
Accordingly, Dan started with Mademoiselle Benoite. She had been making' purchases at other places, which she had brought away with her--shoes, stationery, and various things, all of which were handed over to the porter, Dan. They arrived at Verner's Pride in safety, and Dan was ordered to follow her in, and deposit his packages on the table of the apartment that was called the steward's room.
"One, two, three, four," counted Mademoiselle Benoite, with French caution, lest he should have dropped any by the way. "You go outside now, Dan, and I bring you something from my pocket for your trouble."
Dan returned outside accordingly, and stood gazing at the laundry windows, which were lighted up. Mademoiselle dived in her pocket, took something from thence, which she screwed carefully up in a bit of newspaper, and handed it to Dan. Dan had watched the process in a glow of satisfaction, believing it could be nothing less than a silver sixpence. How much more it might prove, Dan's aspirations were afraid to anticipate.
"There!" said Mademoiselle, when she put it into his hand. "Now you can go back to your mother."
She shut the door in his face somewhat inhospitably, and Dan eagerly opened his cadeau. It contained--two lumps of fine white sugar.
"Mean old cat!" burst forth Dan. "If it wasn't that mother 'ud baste me, I'd never bring a parcel for her again, not if she bought up the shop. Wouldn't I like to give all the French a licking?"
Munching his sugar wrathfully, he passed across the yard, and out at the gate. There he hesitated which way home he should take, as he had hesitated that far gone evening, when he had come up upon the errand to poor Rachel Frost. More than four years had elapsed since then, and Dan was now fourteen; but he was a young and childish boy of his age, which might be owing to the fact of his being so kept under by his mother.
"I have a good mind to trick her!" soliloquised he; alluding, it must be owned, to that revered mother. "She wouldn't let me go out to Bill Hook's to-night; though I telled her as it wasn't for no nonsense I wanted to see him, but about that there gray ferret. I will, too! I'll go back the field way, and cut down there. She'll be none the wiser."
Now, this was really a brave resolve for Dan Duff. The proposed road would take him past the Willow Pool; and he, in common with other timorous spirits, had been given to eschew that place at night, since the end of Rachel. It must be supposed that the business touching the gray ferret was one of importance, for Dan to lose sight of his usual fears, and turn towards that pool.
Not once, from that time to this, had Dan Duff taken this road alone at night. From that cause probably, no sooner had he now turned into the lane, than he began to think of Rachel. He would have preferred to think of anything else in the world; but he found, as many others are obliged to find, that unpleasant thoughts cannot be driven away at will. It was not so much that the past night of misfortune was present to him, as that he feared to meet the ghost of Rachel.
He went on, glancing furtively on all sides, his face and his hair growing hotter and hotter. There, on his right, was the gate through which he had entered the field to give chase to the supposed cat; there, on the left, was the high hedge; before him lay the length of lane traversed that evening by the tall man, who had remained undiscovered from that hour to this. Dan could see nothing now; no tall man, no cat; even the latter might have proved a welcome intruder. He glanced up at the calm sky, at the bright moon riding overhead. The night was perfectly still; a lovely night, could Dan only have kept the ghosts out of his mind.
Suddenly a horse, in the field on the other side the hedge, set up a loud neigh, right in Dan's ear. Coming thus unexpectedly, it startled Dan above everything. He half resolved to go back, and turned round and looked the way he had come. But he thought of the gray ferret, and plucked up some courage and went on again, intending, the moment he came in sight of the Willow Pool, to make a dash past at his utmost speed.
The intention was not carried out. Clambering over the gate which led to the enclosure, a more ready way to Dan than opening it, he was brought within view of the pool. There it was, down in the dreary lower part, near the trees. The pool itself was distinct enough, lying to the right, and Dan involuntarily looked towards it. Not to have saved his life, could Dan have helped looking.
Susan Peckaby had said to Jan, that her heart leaped into her mouth at the sight of the white cow in the pound. Poor Dan Duff might have said that his heart leaped right out of him, at sight now of the Willow Pool. For there was some shadowy figure moving round it.
Dan stood powerless. But for the gate behind him he would have turned and ran; to scramble back over that, his limbs utterly refused. The delay caused him, in spite of his fear, to discern the very obvious fact, that the shadowy figure was not that of a woman habited in white--as the orthodox ghost of Rachel ought to have been--but a man's, wearing dark clothes. There flashed into Dan's remembrance the frequent nightly visits of Robin Frost to the pond, bringing with it a ray of relief.
Robin had been looked upon as little better than a lunatic since the misfortune; but, to Dan Duff, he appeared in that moment worth his weight in gold. Robin's companionship was as good as anybody's to ward off the ghostly fears, and Dan set off, full speed, towards him. To go right up to the pond would take him a few yards out of his way to Bill Hook's. What of that? To exchange words with a human tongue, Dan, in that moment of superstitious fright, would have gone as many miles.
He had run more than half the intervening distance, when he brought himself to a halt. It had become evident to Dan's sight that it was not Robin Frost. Whoever it might be, he was a head and shoulders taller than Robin; and Dan moved up more quietly, his eyes strained forward in the moonlight. A suspicion came over him that it might be Mr. Verner; Dan could not, at the moment, remember anybody else so tall, unless it was Mr. Jan. The figure stood now with its back to him; apparently gazing into the pool. Dan advanced with slow steps; if it was Mr. Verner, he would not presume to intrude upon him; but when he came nearly close, he saw that it bore no resemblance to the figure of Mr. Verner. Slowly, glidingly, the figure turned round; turned its face right upon Dan, full in the rays of the bright moon; and the most awful yell you ever heard went forth upon the still night air.
It came from Dan Duff. What could have been its meaning? Did he think he saw the ghost, which he had been looking out for the last half-hour--poor Rachel's?--saw it beyond this figure which had turned upon him? Dan alone knew. That he had fallen into the most appalling terror, was certain. His eyes were starting, the drops of perspiration poured off him, and his hair rose up on end. The figure--just as if it had possessed neither sight nor hearing, neither sense nor sympathy for human sound--glided noiselessly away; and Dan went yelling on.
Towards home now. All thought of Bill Hook and the gray ferret was gone. Away he tore, the nearest way, which took him past the pound. He never saw the white cow: had the cow been a veritable ghost, Dan had not seen it then. The yells subsiding into moans, and the perspiration into fever heat, he gained his mother's, and broke the window, as you have heard, in passing in.
Such were the particulars; but as yet they were not known. The first person to elicit them was Roy the bailiff.
After Jan Verner had departed, saying he should be back by and by, and giving Mrs. Duff strict orders to keep the boy quiet, to allow nobody near him but herself, and, above all, no questioning, Mrs. Duff quitted him, "that he might get a bit o' sleep," she said. In point of fact, Mrs. Duff was burning to exercise her gossiping powers with those other gossipers below. To them she descended; and found Susan Peckaby holding forth upon the subject of the white cow.
"You be wrong, Susan Peckaby," said Mrs. Duff, "It warn't the white cow at all; Dan warn't a-nigh the pound. He told Mr. Jan so."
"Then what was it?" returned Susan Peckaby.
One of the present auditors was Roy the bailiff. He had only recently pushed in, and had stood listening in silence, taking note of the various comments and opinions. As silently, he moved behind the group, and was stealing up the stairs. Mrs. Duff placed herself before him.
"Where be you a-going, Mr. Roy? Mr. Jan said as not a soul was to go a-nigh him to disturb him with talk. A nice thing, it 'ud be, for it to settle on his brain!"
"I ain't a-going to disturb him," returned Roy. "I have seen something myself to-night that is not over-kind. I'd like to get a inkling if it's the same that has frightened him."
"Was it in the pound?" eagerly asked Mrs. Peckaby.
"The pound be smoked!" was the polite answer vouchsafed by Roy. "Thee'll go mad with th' white donkey one of these days."
"There can't be any outlet to it, but one," observed Mrs. Chuff, the blacksmith's wife, giving her opinion in a loud key. "He must ha' seen Rachel Frost's ghost."
"Have you been and seen that to-night, Mr. Roy?" cried Susan Peckaby.
"Maybe I have, and maybe I haven't," was Roy's satisfactory reply, "All I say is, I've seen something that I'd rather not have seen; something that 'ud have sent all you women into fits. 'Twarn't unlike Rachel, and 'twere clothed in white. I'll just go and take a look at Dan, Mother Duff. No fear o' my disturbing him."
Mother Duff, absorbed with her visitors, allowed him to go on without further impediment. The first thing Roy did upon getting upstairs, was to shut the chamber door; the next, to arouse and question the suffering Dan. Roy succeeded in getting from him the particulars already related, and a little more; insomuch that Dan mentioned the name which the dead man had borne in life.
Roy sat and stared at him after the revelation, keeping silence. It may have been that he was digesting the wonder; it may have been that he was deliberating upon his answer.
"Look you here, Dan Duff," said he, by and by, holding the shaking boy by the shoulder. "You just breathe that name again to living mortal, and see if you don't get hung up by the neck for it. 'Twas nothing but Rachel's ghost. Them ghosts takes the form of anything that it pleases, 'em to take; whether it's a dead man's, or whether it's a woman's, what do they care? There's no ghost but Rachel's 'ud be a-hovering over that pond. Where be your senses gone, not to know that?"
Poor Dan's senses appeared to be wandering somewhere yet; they certainly were not in him. He shook and moaned, and finally fell into the same sort of stupor as before. Roy could make nothing further of him, and he went down.
"Well," said he to the assemblage, "I've got it out of him. The minute he saw me, he stretched his arm out--'Mr. Roy,' says he, 'I'm sick to unburden myself to somebody'; and he up and told. He's fell off again now, like one senseless, and I question if he'd remember telling me."
"And what was it? And what was it?" questioned the chorus. "Rachel's ghost?"
"It was nothing less, you may be sure," replied Roy, his tone expressive of contempt that they should have thought it could be anything less. "The young idiot must take and go by the pond on this bright night, and in course he saw it. Right again' his face, he says, it appeared; there wasn't no mistaking of it. It was a-walking round and round the pool."
Considerable shivering in the assembly. Polly Dawson, who was on its outskirts, shrieked, and pushed into its midst, as if it were a safer place. The women drew into a closer circle, and glanced round at an imaginary ghost behind their shoulders.
"Was it that as you saw yourself to-night, Mr. Roy?"
"Never mind me," was Roy's answer. "I ain't one to be startled to death at sight of a sperit, like boys and women is. I had my pill in what I saw, I can tell ye. And my advice to ye all is, keep within your own doors after nightfall."
Without further salutation, Roy departed. The women, with one accord, began to make for the staircase. To contemplate one who had just been in actual contact with the ghost--which some infidels had persistently asserted throughout was nothing but a myth--was a sight not to be missed. But they were driven back again. With a succession of yells, the like of which had never been heard, save at the Willow Pond that night, Dan appeared leaping down upon them, his legs naked and his short shirt flying behind him. To be left alone, a prey to ghosts or their remembrances, was more than the boy, with his consciousness upon him, could bear. The women yelled also, and fell back one upon another; not a few being under the impression that it was the ghost itself.
What was to be done with him? Before the question was finally decided, Mrs. Bascroft, the landlady of the Plough and Harrow, who had made one of the company, went off to her bar, whence she hastened back again with an immense hot tumbler, three parts brandy, one part water, the whole of which was poured down the throat of Dan.
"There's nothing like it for restoring folks after a fright," remarked Mrs. Bascroft.
The result of the dose was, that Dan Duff subsided into a state of real stupor, so profound and prolonged that even Jan began to doubt whether he would awake from it.
L. MR. AND MRS. VERNER
Lionel Verner sat over his morning letters, bending upon one of them a perplexed brow. A claim which he had settled the previous spring--at least, which he believed had been settled--was now forwarded to him again. That there was very little limit to his wife's extravagance, he had begun to know.
In spite of Sibylla's extensive purchases made in Paris at the time of their marriage, she had contrived by the end of the following winter to run up a tolerable bill at her London milliner's. When they had gone to town in the early spring, this bill was presented to Lionel. Four hundred and odd pounds. He gave Sibylla a cheque for its amount, and some gentle, loving words of admonition at the same time--not to spend him out of house and home.
A second account from the same milliner had arrived this morning--been delivered to him with other London letters. Why it should have been sent to him, and not to his wife, he was unable to tell--unless it was meant as a genteel hint that payment would be acceptable. The whole amount was for eleven hundred pounds, but part of this purported to be "To bill delivered"--four hundred and odd pounds--the precise sum which Lionel believed to have been paid. Eleven hundred pounds! and all the other claims upon him! No wonder he sat with a bent brow. If things went on at this rate, Verner's Pride would come to the hammer.
He rose, the account in his hand, and proceeded to his wife's dressing-room. Among other habits, Sibylla was falling into that of indolence, scarcely ever rising to breakfast now. Or, if she rose, she did not come down. Mademoiselle Benoite came whisking out of a side room as he was about to enter.
"Madame's toilette is not made, sir," cried she, in a tart tone, as if she thought he had no right to enter.
"What of that?" returned Lionel. And he went in.
Just as she had got out of bed, save that she had a blue quilted silk dressing-gown thrown on, and her feet were thrust into blue quilted slippers, sat Sibylla, before a good fire. She leaned in an easy-chair, reading; a miniature breakfast service of Sevres china, containing chocolate, on a low table at her side. Some people like to read a word or two of the Bible, as soon as conveniently may be, after getting up in the morning. Was that good book the study of Sibylla? Not at all. Her study was a French novel. By dint of patience, and the assistance of Mademoiselle Benoite in the hard words and complicated sentences, Mrs. Verner contrived to arrive tolerably well at its sense.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, when Lionel appeared, "are you not gone shooting with the rest?"
"I did not go this morning," he answered, closing the door and approaching her.
"Have you taken breakfast?" she asked.
"Breakfast has been over a long while. Were I you, Sibylla, when I had guests staying in the house, I should try and rise to breakfast with them."
"Oh, you crafty Lionel! To save you the trouble of presiding. Thank you," she continued good-humouredly, "I am more comfortable here. What is this story about a ghost? The kitchen's in a regular commotion, Benoite says."
"To what do you allude?" asked Lionel.
"Dan Duff is dying, or dead," returned Sibylla. "Benoite was in Deerham last night, and brought him home to carry her parcels. In going back again, he saw, as he says, Rachel Frost's ghost, and it terrified him out of his senses. Old Roy saw it too, and the news has travelled up here."
Sibylla laughed as she spoke. Lionel looked vexed.
"They are very stupid," he said. "A pity but they kept such stories to themselves. If they were only as quiet as poor Rachel's ghost is, it might be better for some of them."
"Of course you would wish it kept quiet," said Sibylla, in a tone full of significance. "I like to hear of these frights--it is good fun."
He did not fathom in the remotest degree the meaning of her tone. But he had not gone thither to dispute about ghosts.
"Sibylla," he gravely said, putting the open account into her hand, "I have received this bill this morning."
Sibylla ran her eyes over it with indifference; first at the bill's head, to see whence it came, next at its sum total.
"What an old cheat! Eleven hundred pounds! I am sure I have not had the half."
Lionel pointed to the part "bill delivered." "Was that not paid in the spring?"
"How can I recollect?" returned Sibylla, speaking as carelessly as before.
"I think you may recollect if you try. I gave you a cheque for the amount."
"Oh, yes, I do recollect now. It has not been paid."
"But, my dear, I say I gave the cheque for it."
"I cashed the cheque myself. I wanted some money just then. You can't think how fast money goes in London, Lionel."
The avowal proved only what he suspected. Nevertheless it hurt him greatly--grieved him to his heart's core. Not so much the spending of the money, as the keeping the fact from him. What a lack of good feeling, of confidence, it proved.
He bent towards her, speaking gently, kindly. Whatever might be her faults to him, her provocations, he could never behave otherwise to her than as a thorough gentleman, a kind husband.
"It was not right to use that cheque, Sibylla. It was made out in Madame Lebeau's name, and should have been paid to her. But why did you not tell me?"
Sibylla shrugged her shoulders in place of answer. She had picked up many such little national habits of Mademoiselle Benoite's. Very conspicuous just then was the upright line on Lionel's brow.
"The amount altogether is, you perceive, eleven hundred pounds," he continued.
"Yes," said Sibylla. "She's a cheat, that Madame Lebeau. I shall make Benoite write her a French letter, and tell her so."
"It must be paid. But it is a great deal of money. I cannot continue to pay these large sums, Sibylla. I have not the money to do it with."
"Not the money! When you know you are paying heaps for Lady Verner! Before you tell me not to spend, you should cease supplying her."
Lionel's very brow flushed. "My mother has a claim upon me only in a degree less than you have," he gravely said. "Part of the revenues of Verner's Pride ought to have been hers years ago; and they were not."
"If my husband had lived--if he had left me a little child--Verner's Pride would have been his and mine, and never yours at all."
"Hush, Sibylla! You don't know how these allusions hurt me," he interrupted, in a tone of intense pain.
"They are true," said Sibylla.
"But not--forgive me, my dear, for saying it--not the less unseemly."
"Why do you grumble at me, then?"
"I do not grumble," he answered in a kind tone. "Your interests are mine, Sibylla, and mine are yours. I only tell you the fact--and a fact it is--that our income will not stand these heavy calls upon it. Were I to show you how much you have spent in dress since we were married--what with Paris, London, and Heartburg--the sum total would frighten you."
"You should not keep the sum total," resentfully spoke Sibylla. "Why do you add it up?"
"I must keep my accounts correctly. My uncle taught me that."
"I am sure he did not teach you to grumble at me," she rejoined. "I look upon Verner's Pride as mine, more than yours; if it had not been for the death of my husband, you would never have had it."
Inexpressibly vexed--vexed beyond the power to answer, for he would not trust himself to answer--Lionel prepared to quit the room. He began to wish he had not had Verner's Pride, if this was to be its domestic peace. Sibylla petulantly threw the French book from her lap upon the table, and it fell down with its page open.
Lionel's eyes caught its title, and a flush, not less deep than the preceding flush, darkened his brow. He laid his open palm upon the page with an involuntary movement, as if he would guard it from the eyes of his wife. That she should be reading that notorious work!
"Where did you get this?" he cried. "It is not a fit book for you."
"There's nothing-the matter with the book as far as I have gone."
"Indeed you must not read it! Pray don't, Sibylla! You will be sorry for it afterwards."
"How do you know it is not a fit book?"
"Because I have read it."
"There! You have read it! And you would like to deny the pleasure to me! Don't say you are never selfish."
"Sibylla! What is fit for me to read may be most unfit for you. I read the book when I was a young man; I would not read it now. Is it Benoite's?" he inquired, seeing the name in the first page.
"Yes, it is."
Lionel closed the book. "Promise me, Sibylla, that you will not attempt to read more of it. Give it her back at once, and tell her to send it out of the house, or to keep it under lock and key while it remains within it."
Sibylla hesitated.
"Is it so very hard a promise?" he tenderly asked. "I would do a great deal more for you."
"Yes, Lionel, I will promise," she replied, a better feeling coming over her. "I will give it her back now. Benoite!"
She called loudly. Benoite heard, and came in.
"Mr. Verner says this is not a nice book. You may take it away."
Mademoiselle Benoite advanced with a red face, and took the book.
"Have you any more such books?" inquired Lionel, looking at her.
"No, sir, I not got one other," hardily replied she.
"Have the goodness to put this one away. Had your mistress been aware of the nature of the book, she had not suffered you to produce it."
Mademoiselle went away, her skirts jerking. Lionel bent down to his wife.
"You know that it pains me to find fault, Sibylla," he fondly whispered. "I have ever your welfare and happiness at heart. More anxiously, I think, than you have mine."
LI. COMMOTION IN DEERHAM
Lionel Verner was strolling out later in the day, and met the shooting-party coming home. After congratulating them on their good sport, he was turning home with them, when the gamekeeper intimated that he should be glad to speak a word to him in private. Upon which, Lionel let the gentlemen go on.
"What is it, Broom?" asked he.
"I'm much afeared, sir, if thing's are not altered, that there'll be murder committed some night," answered Broom, without circumlocution.
"I hope not," replied Lionel. "Are you and the poachers again at issue?"
"It's not about the poachers, hang 'em! It's about Robin Frost, sir. What on earth have come to him I can't conceive. This last few nights he have took to prowling out with a gun. He lays himself down in the copse, or a ditch, or the open field--no matter where--and there he stops, on the watch, with his gun always pointed."
"On the watch for what?" asked Lionel.
"He best knows himself, sir. He's going quite cracked, it's my belief; he have been half-way to it this long while. Sometimes he's trailing through the brushwood on all fours, the gun ever pointed; but mostly he's posted on the watch. He'll get shot for a poacher, or some of the poachers will shoot him, as sure as it's a gun that he carries."
"What can be his motive?" mused Lionel.
"I'm inclined to think, sir, though he is Robin Frost, that he's after the birds," boldly returned Broom.
"Then rely upon it that you think wrong, Broom," rebuked Lionel, "Robin Frost would no more go out poaching, than I should go out thieving."
"I saw him trailing along last night in the moonlight, sir. I saw his old father come up and talk to him, urging him to go home, as it seemed to me. But he couldn't get him; and the old man had to hobble back without Robin. Robin stopped in his cold berth on the ground."
"I did not think old Matthew was capable of going out at night."
"He did last night, sir; that's for certain. It was not far; only down away by the brick-kilns. There's a tale going abroad that Dan Duff was sent into mortal fright by seeing something that he took to be Rachel's ghost; my opinion is, that he must have met old Frost in his white smock-frock, and took him for a ghost. The moon did cast an uncommon white shade last night. Though old Frost wasn't a-nigh the Willow Pool, nor Robin neither, and that's where they say Dan Duff got his fright. Formerly, Robin was always round that pool, but lately he has changed his beat. Anyhow, sir, perhaps you'd be so good as drop a warning to Robin of the risk he runs. He may mind you."
"I will," said Lionel.
The gamekeeper touched his hat, and walked away. Lionel considered that he might as well give Robin the warning then; and he turned towards the village. Before fairly entering it, he had met twenty talkative persons, who gave him twenty different versions of the previous night's doings, touching Dan Duff.
Mrs. Duff was at her door when Lionel went by. She generally was at her door, unless she was serving customers. He stopped to accost her.
"What's the truth of this affair, Mrs. Duff?" asked he. "I have heard many reports of it?"
Mrs. Duff gave as succinct an account as it was in her nature to give. Some would have told it in a third of the time: but Lionel had patience; he was in no particular hurry.
"I have been one of them to laugh at the ghost, sir a-saying that it never was Rachel's, and that it never walked," she added. "But I'll never do so again. Roy, he see it, as well as Dan."
"Oh! he saw it, too, did he," responded Lionel, with a good-natured smile of mockery. "Mrs. Duff, you ought to be too old to believe in ghosts," he more seriously resumed. "I am sure Roy is, whatever he may choose to say."
"If it was no ghost, sir, what could have put our Dan into that awful fright? Mr. Jan doesn't know as he'll overget it at all. He's a-lying without a bit of conscientiousness on my bed, his eyes shut, and his breath a-coming hard."
"Something frightened him, no doubt. The belief in poor Rachel's ghost has been so popular, that every night fright is attributed to that. Who was it went into a fainting fit in the road, fancying Rachel's ghost was walking down upon them; and it proved afterwards to have been only the miller's man with a sack of flour on his back?"
"Oh, that!" slightingly returned Mrs. Duff. "It was that stupid Mother Grind, before they went off with the Mormons. She'd drop at her shadder, sir, she would."
"So would some of the rest of you," said Lionel. "I am sorry to hear that Dan is so ill."
"Mr. Jan's in a fine way over him, sir. Mrs. Bascroft gave him just a taste of weak brandy and water, and Mr. Jan, when he come to know it, said we might just as well have give him pison; and he'd not answer for his life or his reason. A pretty thing it'll be for Deerham, if there's more lives to be put in danger, now the ghost have took to walk again! Mr. Bourne called in just now, sir, to learn the rights of it. He went up and see Dan; but nothing could he make of him. Would you be pleased to go up and take a look at him, sir?"
Lionel declined, and wished Mrs. Duff good-day.
He could do the boy no good, and had no especial wish to look at him, although he had been promoted to the notoriety of seeing a ghost. A few steps farther he encountered Jan.
"What is it that's the matter with the boy?" asked Lionel.
"He had a good fright; there's no doubt about that," replied Jan. "Saw a white cow on its hind legs, it's my belief. That wouldn't have been much. The boy would have been all right by now, but the women drenched him with brandy, and made him stupidly drunk. He'll be better this evening. I can't stop, Lionel; I am run off my legs to-day."
The commotion in the village increased as the evening approached. Jan knew that young Dan would be well--save for any little remembrance of the fright which might remain--when the fumes of the brandy had gone off; But he wisely kept his own counsel, and let the public think he was in danger. Otherwise, a second instalment of the brandy might have been administered behind Jan's back. To have a boy dying of fright from seeing a ghost was a treat in the marvellous line, which Deerham had never yet enjoyed. There had been no agitation like unto it, since the day of poor Rachel Frost.
Brave spirits, some of them! They volunteered to go out and meet the apparition. As twilight approached you could not have got into Mrs. Duff's shop, for there was the chief gathering. Arguments were being used to prove that, according to all logic, if a ghost appeared one night, it was safe to appear a second.
"Who'll speak up to go and watch for it?" asked Mrs. Duff. "I can't. I can't leave Dan. Sally Green's a-sitting up by him now; for Mr. Jan says if he's left again, he shall hold me responsible. It don't stand to reason as I can leave Sally Green in charge of the shop, though I can leave her a bit with Dan. Not but what I'd go alone to the pond, and stop there; I haven't got no fear."
It singularly happened that those who were kept at home by domestic or other duties, had no fear; they, to hear them talk, would rather have enjoyed an encounter solus with the ghost, than not. Those who could plead no home engagement professed themselves willing to undertake the expedition in company; but freely avowed they would not go alone for the world.
"Come! who'll volunteer?" asked Mrs. Duff. "It 'ud be a great satisfaction to see the form it appears in, and have that set at rest. Dan, he'll never be able to tell, by the looks of him now."
"I'll go for one," said bold Mrs. Bascroft. "And them as joins me shall each have a good stiff tumbler of some'at hot afore starting, to prime 'em again' the cold."
Whether it was the brave example set, or whether it was the promise accompanying it, certain it was, that there was no lack of volunteers now. A good round dozen started, filling up the Plough and Harrow bar, as Mrs. Bascroft dealt out her treat with no niggard hand.
"What's a-doing now?" asked Bascroft, a stupid-looking man with red hair combed straight down his forehead, and coloured shirt-sleeves, surveying the inroad on his premises with surprise.
"Never you mind," sharply reproved his better half. "These ladies is my visitors, and if I choose to stand treat round, what's that to you? You takes your share o' liquor, Bascroft."
Bascroft was not held in very great estimation by the ladies generally, and they turned their backs upon him.
"We are a-going out to see the ghost, if you must know, Bascroft," said Susan Peckaby, who made one of the volunteers.
Bascroft stared. "What a set of idiots you must be!" grunted he. "Mr. Jan says as Dan Duff see nothing but a white cow; he telled me so hisself. Be you a-thinking to meet that there other white animal on your road, Mrs. Peckaby?"
"Perhaps I am," tartly returned Mrs. Peckaby.
"One 'ud think so. You can't want to go out to meet ghostesses; you be a-going out to your saints at New Jerusalem. I'd whack that there donkey for being so slow, when he did come, if I was you."
Hastening away from Bascroft and his aggravating tongue, the expedition, having drained their tumblers, filed out. Down by the pound--relieved now of its caged inmate--went they, on towards the Willow Pond. The tumblers had made them brave. The night was light, as the preceding one had been; the ground looked white, as if with frost, and the air was cold. The pond in view, they halted, and took a furtive glance, beginning to feel somewhat chill. So far as these half glances allowed them to judge, there appeared to be nothing near to it, nothing upon its brink.
"It's of no good marching right up to it," said Mrs. Jones, the baker's wife. "The ghost mightn't come at all, if it saw all us there. Let's get inside the trees."
Mrs. Jones meant inside the grove of trees. The proposition was most acceptable, and they took up their position, the pond in view, peeping out, and conversing in a whisper. By and by they heard the church clock strike eight.
"I wish it'ud make haste," exclaimed Susan Peckaby, with some impatience. "I don't never like to be away from home long together, for fear of that there blessed white animal arriving."
"He'd wait, wouldn't he?" sarcastically rejoined Polly Dawson. "He'd----"
A prolonged hush--sh--sh! from the rest restored silence. Something was rustling the trees at a distance. They huddled closer together, and caught hold one of another.
Nothing appeared. The alarm went off. And they waited, without result, until the clock struck nine. The artificial strength within them had cooled by that time, their ardour had cooled, and they were feeling chill and tired. Susan Peckaby was upon thorns, she said, and urged their departure.
"You can go if you like," was the answer. "Nobody wants to keep you."
Susan Peckaby measured the distance between the pond and the way she had to go, and came to the determination to risk it.
"I'll make a rush for it, I think," said she. "I sha'n't see nothing. For all I know, that quadruple may be right afore our door now. If he----"
Susan Peckaby stopped, her voice subsiding into a shriek. She, and those with her, became simultaneously aware that some white figure was bearing down upon them. The shrieks grew awful.
It proved to be Roy in his white fustian jacket. Roy had never had the privilege of hearing a dozen women shriek in concert before; at least, like this. His loud derisive laugh was excessively aggravating. What with that, what with the fright his appearance had really put them in, they all tore off, leaving some hard words for him; and never stopped to take breath until they burst into the shop of Mrs. Duff.
It was rather an ignominious way of returning, and Mrs. Duff did not spare her comments. If she had went out to meet the ghost, sh'd ha' stopped till the ghost came, she would! Mrs. Jones rejoined that them watched-for ghosts, as she had heered, never did come--which she had said so afore she went out!
Master Dan, considerably recovered, was downstairs then. Rather pale and shaky, and accommodated with a chair and pillow, in front of the kitchen fire. The expedition pressed into the kitchen, and five hundred questions were lavished upon the boy.
"What was it dressed in, Dan? Did you get a good sight of her face, Dan? Did it look just as Rachel used to look? Speak up, Dan."
"It warn't Rachel at all," replied Dan.
This unexpected assertion brought a pause of discomfiture. "He's head ain't right yet," observed Mrs. Duff apologetically; "and that's why I've not asked him nothing."
"Yes, it is right, mother," said Dan. "I never see Rachel last night. I never said as I did."
Another pause--spent in contemplating Dan. "I knowed a case like this, once afore," observed old Miss Till, who carried round the milk to Deerham. "A boy got a fright, and they couldn't bring him to at all. Epsum salts did it at last. Three pints of 'em they give, I think it was, and that brought his mind round."
"It's a good remedy," acquiesced Mrs. Jones. "There's nothing like plenty of Epsum salts for boys. I'd try 'em on him, Mother Duff."
"Dan, dear," said Susan Peckaby insinuatingly--for she had come in along with the rest, ignoring for the moment what might be waiting at her door--"was it in the pound as you saw Rachel's ghost?"
"'Twarn't Rachel's ghost as I did see," persisted Dan.
"Tell us who it was, then?" asked she, humouring him.
The boy answered. But he answered below his breath; as if he scarcely dared to speak the name aloud. His mother partially caught it.
"Whose?" she exclaimed, in a sharp voice, her tone changing. And Dan spoke a little louder.
"It was Mr. Frederick Massingbird's!"
LII. MATTHEW FROST'S NIGHT ENCOUNTER
Old Matthew Frost sat in his room at the back of the kitchen. It was his bedroom and sitting-room combined. Since he had grown feeble, the bustle of the kitchen and of Robin's family disturbed him, and he sat much in his chamber, they frequently taking his dinner in to him.
A thoroughly comfortable arm-chair had Matthew. It had been the gift of Lionel Verner. At his elbow was a small round table, of very dark wood, rubbed to brightness. On that table Matthew's large Bible might generally be found open, and Matthew's spectacled eyes bending over it. But the Bible was closed to-day. He sat in deep thought. His hands clasped upon his stick, something after the manner of old Mr. Verner; and his eyes fixed through the open window at the September sun, as it played on the gooseberry and currant bushes in the cottage garden.
The door opened, and Robin's wife--her hands and arms white, for she was kneading dough--appeared, showing in Lionel; who had come on after his conversation with Mrs. Duff, as you read of in the last chapter; for it is necessary to go back a few hours. One cannot tell two portions of a history at one and the same time. The old man rose, and stood leaning on his stick.
"Sit down, Matthew," said Lionel, in a kindly tone. "Don't let me disturb you." He made him go into his seat again, and took a chair opposite to him.
"The time's gone, sir, for me to stand afore you. That time must go for us all."
"Ay, that it must, Matthew, if we live. I came in to speak to Robin. His wife says she does not know where he is."
"He's here and there and everywhere," was old Matthew's answer. "One never knows how to take him, sir, or when to see him. My late master's bounty to me, sir, is keeping us in comfort, but I often ask Robin what he'll do when I am gone. It gives me many an hour's care, sir. Robin, he don't earn the half of a living now."
"Be easy, Matthew," was Lionel's answer. "I am not sure that the annuity, or part of it, will not be continued to Robin. My uncle left it in my charge to do as I should see fit. I have never mentioned it, even to you; and I think it might be as well for you not to speak of it to Robin. It is to be hoped that he will get steady and hard-working again; were he to hear that there was a chance of his being kept without work, he might never become so."
"The Lord bless my old master!" aspirated Matthew, lifting his hands. "The Lord bless you, sir! There's not many gentlemen would do for us what him and you have."
Lionel bent his head forward, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Matthew, what is this that I hear, of Robin's going about the grounds at night with a loaded gun?"
Matthew flung up his hands. Not with the reverence of the past minute, but with a gesture of despair. "Heaven knows what he does it for, sir! I'd keep him in; but it's beyond me."
"I know you would. You went yourself after him last night, Broom tells me."
Matthew's eyes fell. He hesitated much in his answer. "I--yes, sir--I--I couldn't get him home. It's a pity."
"You got as far as the brick-kilns, I hear. I was surprised. I don't think you should be out at night, Matthew."
"No, sir, I am not a-going again."
The words this time were spoken readily enough. But, from some cause or other, the old man was evidently embarrassed. His eyes were not lifted, and his clear face had gone red. Lionel searched his imagination for a reason, and could only connect it with his son.
"Matthew," said he, "I am about to ask you a painful question. I hope you will answer it. Is Robin perfectly sane?"
"Ay, sir, as sane as I am. Unsettled he is, ever dwelling on poor Rachel, ever thinking of revenge; but his senses be as much his as they ever were. I wish his mind could be set at rest."
"At rest in what way?"
"As to who it was that did the harm to Rachel. He has had it in his head for a long while, sir, that it was Mr. John Massingbird; but he can't be certain, and it's the uncertainty that keeps his mind on the worrit."
"Do you know where he picked up the notion that it was Mr. John Massingbird?" inquired Lionel, remembering the conversation on the same point that Robin had once held with him, on that very garden bench, in the face of which he and Matthew were now sitting.
Old Matthew shook his head. "I never could learn, sir. Robin's a dutiful son to me, but he'd never tell me that. I know that Mr. John Massingbird has been like a pill in his throat this many a day. Oftentimes have I felt thankful that he was dead, or Robin would surely have gone out to where he was, and murdered him. Murder wouldn't mend the ill, sir--as I have told him many a time."
"Indeed it would not," replied Lionel. "The very fact of Mr. John Massingbird's being dead, should have the effect of setting Robin's mind at rest--if it was to him that his suspicions were directed. For my part, I think Robin is wrong in suspecting him."
"I think so too, sir. I don't know how it is, but I can't bring my mind to suspect him more than anybody else. I have thought over things in this light, and I have thought 'em over in that light; and I'd rather incline to believe that she got acquainted with some stranger, poor dear! than that it was anybody known to us. Robin is in doubt; he has had some cause given him to suspect Mr. John Massingbird, but he is not sure, and it's that doubt, I say, that worrits him."
"At any rate, doubt or no doubt, there is no cause for him to go about at night with a gun. What does he do it for?"
"I have asked him, sir, and he does not answer. He seems to me to be on the watch."
"On the watch for what?" rejoined Lionel.
"I'm sure I don't know," said old Matthew. "If you'd say a word to him, sir, it might stop it. He got a foolish notion into his mind that poor Rachel's spirit might come again, and he'd used to be about the pond pretty near every moonlight night. That fancy passed off, and he has gone to his bed at night as the rest of us have, up to the last week or so, when he has taken to go out again, and to carry a gun."
"It was a foolish notion," remarked Lionel. "The dead do not come again, Matthew."
Matthew made no reply.
"I must try and come across Robin," said Lionel, rising. "I wish you would tell him to come up to me, Matthew."
"Sir, if you desire that he shall wait upon you at Verner's Pride, he will be sure to do so," said the old man, leaning on his stick as he stood. "He has not got to the length of disobeying an order of yours. I'll tell him."
It happened that Lionel did "come across" Robin Frost. Not to any effect, however, for he could not get to speak to him. Lionel was striking across some fields towards Deerham Court, when he came in view of Roy and Robin Frost leaning over a gate, their heads together in close confab. It looked very much as though they were talking secrets. They looked up and saw him; but when he reached the place, both were gone. Roy was in sight, but the other had entirely disappeared. Lionel lifted his voice.
"Roy, I want you."
Roy could not fain deafness, although there was every appearance that he would like to do it. He turned and approached, putting his hand to his hat in a half surly manner.
"Where's Robin Frost?"
"Robin Frost, sir? He was here a minute or two agone. I met him accidental, and I stopped him to ask what he was about, that he hadn't been at work this three days. He went on his way then, down the gap. Did you want him, sir?"
Lionel Verner's perceptive faculties were tolerably developed. That Roy was endeavouring to blind him, he had no doubt. They had not met "accidental," and the topic of conversation had not been Robin's work--of that he felt sure. Roy and Robin Frost might meet and talk together all day long. It was nothing to him. Why they should strive to deceive him was the only curious part about it. Both had striven to avoid meeting him; and Roy was talking to him now unwillingly. In a general way, Robin Frost was fond of meeting and receiving a word from Mr. Verner.
"I shall see him another time," carelessly remarked Lionel. "Not so fast, Roy"--for the man was turning away--"I have not done with you. Will you be good enough to inform me what you were doing in front of my house last night?"
"I wasn't doing anything, sir. I wasn't there."
"Oh, yes, you were," said Lionel. "Recollect yourself. You were posted under the large yew tree on the lawn, watching my drawing-room windows."
Roy looked up at this, the most intense surprise in his countenance. "I never was on your lawn last night, sir; I wasn't near it. Leastways not nearer than the side field. I happened to be in that, and I got through a gap in the hedge, on to the high road."
"Roy, I believe that you were on the lawn last night, and watching the house," persisted Lionel, looking fixedly at his countenance. For the life of him he could not tell whether the man's surprise was genuine, his denial real. "What business had you there?"
"I declare to goodness, if it was the last word I had to speak, that I was not on your lawn, sir--that I did not watch the house. I did not go near the house. I crossed the side field, cornerwise, and got out into the road; and that's the nearest I was to the house last night."
Roy spoke unusually impressive for him, and Lionel began to believe that, so far, he was telling truth. He did not make any immediate reply, and Roy resumed.
"What cause have you got to accuse me, sir? I shouldn't be likely to watch your house--why should I?"
"Some man was watching it," replied Lionel. "As you were seen in the road shortly afterwards, close to the side field, I came to the conclusion that it was you."
"I can be upon my oath that it wasn't, sir," answered Roy.
"Very well," replied Lionel, "I accept your denial. But allow me to give you a recommendation, Roy--not to trouble yourself with my affairs in any way. They do not concern you; they never will concern you; therefore, don't meddle with them."
He walked away as he spoke. Roy stood and gazed after him, a strange expression on his countenance. Had Lucy Tempest seen it, she might have renewed her warning to Lionel. And yet she would have been puzzled to tell the meaning of the expression, for it did not look like a threatening one.
Had Lionel Verner turned up Clay Lane, upon leaving Matthew Frost's cottage, instead of down it, to take a path across the fields at the back, he would have encountered the Vicar of Deerham. That gentleman was paying parochial visits that day in Deerham, and in due course he came to Matthew Frost's. He and Matthew had long been upon confidential terms; the clergyman respected Matthew, and Matthew revered his pastor.
Mr. Bourne took the seat which Lionel had but recently vacated. He was so accustomed to the old man's habitual countenance that he could detect every change in it; and he saw that something was troubling him.
"I am troubled in more ways than one, sir," was the old man's answer. "Poor Robin, he's giving me trouble again; and last night, sir, I had a sort of fright. A shock, it may be said. I can't overget it."
"What was its nature?" asked Mr. Bourne.
"I don't much like to speak of it, sir; and, beside yourself, there's not a living man that I'd open my lips to. It's an unpleasant thing to have upon the mind. Mr. Verner, he was here but a few minutes a-gone, and I felt before him like a guilty man that has something to conceal. When I have told it to you, sir, you'll be hard of belief."
"Is it connected with Robin?"
"No, sir. But it was my going after Robin that led to it, as may be said. Robin, sir, has took these last few nights to go out with a gun. It has worrited me so, sir, fearing some mischief might ensue, that I couldn't sleep; and last evening, I thought I'd hobble out and see if I couldn't get him home. Chuff, he said as he had seen him go toward the brick-field, and I managed to get down; and, sure enough, I came upon Robin. He was lying down at the edge of the field, watching, as it seemed to me. I couldn't get him home, sir. I tried hard, but 'twas of no use. He spoke respectful to me, as he always does: 'Father, I have got my work to do, and I must do it. You go back home, and go to sleep in quiet.' It was all I could get from him, sir, and at last I turned to go back----"
"What was Robin doing?" interrupted Mr. Bourne.
"Sir, I suppose it's just some fancy or other that he has got into his head, as he used to get after the poor child died. Mr. Verner has just asked me whether he is sane, but there's nothing of that sort wrong about him. You mind the clump of trees that stands out, sir, between here and the brick-field, by the path that would lead to Verner's Pride?" added old Matthew in an altered tone.
"Yes," said Mr. Bourne.
"I had just got past it, sir, when I saw a figure crossing that bare corner from the other trees. A man's shape, it looked like. Tall and shadowy it was, wearing what looked like a long garment, or a woman's riding-habit, trailing nearly on the ground. The very moment my eyes fell upon it, I felt that it was something strange, and when the figure passed me, turning its face right upon me--I saw the face, sir."
Old Matthew's manner was so peculiar, his pause so impressive, that Mr. Bourne could only gaze at him, and wait in wonder for what was coming.
"Sir, it was the face of one who has been dead these two years past--Mr. Frederick Massingbird."
If the rector had gazed at old Matthew before, he could only stare now. That the calm, sensible old man should fall into so extraordinary a delusion, was incomprehensible. He might have believed it of Deerham in general, but not of Matthew Frost.
"Matthew, you must have been deceived," was his quiet answer.
"No, sir. There never was another face like Mr. Frederick Massingbird's. Other features may have been made like his--it's not for me to say they have not--but whose else would have the black mark upon it? The moonlight was full upon it, and I could see even the little lines shooting out from the cheek, so bright was the night. The face was turned right upon me as it passed, and I am as clear about its being his as I am that it was me looking at it."
"But you know it is a thing absolutely impossible," urged Mr. Bourne. "I think you must have dreamt this, Matthew."
Old Matthew shook his head. "I wouldn't have told you a dream, sir. It turned me all in a maze. I never felt the fatigue of a step all the way home after it. When I got in, I couldn't eat my supper; I couldn't go to bed. I sat up thinking, and the wife, she came in and asked what ailed me that I didn't go to rest. I had got no sleep in my eyes, I told her, which was true; for, when I did get to bed, it was hours afore I could close 'em."
"But, Matthew, I tell you that it is impossible. You must have been mistaken."
"Sir, until last night, had anybody told me such a thing, I should have said it was impossible. You know, sir, I have never been given to such fancies. There's no doubt, sir; there's no doubt that it was the spirit of Mr. Frederick Massingbird."
Matthew's clear, intelligent eye was fixed firmly on Mr. Bourne's--his face, as usual, bending a little forward. Mr. Bourne had never believed in "spirits"; clergymen, as a rule, do not. A half smile crossed his lips.
"Were you frightened?" he asked.
"I was not frightened, sir, in the sense that you, perhaps, put the question. I was surprised, startled. As I might have been surprised and startled at seeing anybody I least expected to see--somebody that I had thought was miles away. Since poor Rachel's death, sir, I have lived, so to say, in communion with spirits. What with Robin's talking of his hope to see hers, and my constantly thinking of her; knowing also that it can't be long, in the course of nature, before I am one myself, I have grown to be, as it were, familiar with the dead in my mind. Thus, sir, in that sense, no fear came upon me last night. I don't think, sir, I should feel fear at meeting or being alone with a spirit, any more than I should at meeting a man. But I was startled and disturbed."
"Matthew," cried Mr. Bourne, in some perplexity, "I had always believed you superior to these foolish things. Ghosts might do well enough for the old days, but the world has grown older and wiser. At any rate, the greater portion of it has."
"If you mean, sir, that I was superior to the belief in ghosts, you are right. I never had a grain of faith in such superstition in my life; and I have tried all means to convince my son what folly it was of him to hover round about the Willow Pond, with any thought that Rachel might 'come again.' No, sir, I have never been given to it."
"And yet you deliberately assure me, Matthew, that you saw a ghost last night!"
"Sir, that it was Mr. Frederick Massingbird, dead or alive, that I saw, I must hold to. We know that he is dead, sir, his wife buried him in that far land; so what am I to believe? The face looked ghastly white, not like a person's living."
Mr. Bourne mused. That Frederick Massingbird was dead and buried, there could not be the slightest doubt. He hardly knew what to make of old Matthew. The latter resumed.
"Had I been flurried or terrified by it, sir, so as to lose my presence of mind, or if I was one of those timid folks that see signs in dreams, or take every white post to be a ghost, that they come to on a dark night, you might laugh at and disbelieve me. But I tell it to you, sir, as you say, deliberately; just as it happened. I can't have much longer time to live, sir; but I'd stake it all on the truth that it was the spirit of Mr. Frederick Massingbird. When you have once known a man, there are a hundred points by which you may recognise him, beyond possibility of being mistaken. They have got a story in the place, sir, to-day--as you may have heard--that my poor child's ghost appeared to Dan Duff last night, and that the boy has been senseless ever since. It has struck me, sir, that perhaps he also saw what I did."
Mr. Bourne paused. "Did you say anything of this to Mr. Verner?"
"Not I, sir. As I tell you, I felt like a guilty man in his presence, one with something to hide. He married Mr. Fred's widow, pretty creature, and it don't seem a nice thing to tell him. If it had been the other gentleman's spirit, Mr. John's, I should have told him at once."
Mr. Bourne rose. To argue with old Matthew in his present frame of mind, appeared to be about as useless a waste of time as to argue with Susan Peckaby on the subject of the white donkey. He told him he would see him again in a day or two, and took his departure.
But he did not dismiss the subject from his thoughts. No, he could not do that. He was puzzled. Such a tale from one like old Matthew--calm, pious, sensible, and verging on the grave, made more impression on Mr. Bourne than all Deerham could have made. Had Deerham come to him with the story, he would have flung it to the winds.
He began to think that some person, from evil design or love of mischief, must be personating Frederick Massingbird. It was a natural conclusion. And Matthew's surmise, that the same thing might have alarmed Dan Duff, was perfectly probable. Mr. Bourne determined to ascertain the latter fact, as soon as Dan should be in a state of sufficient convalescence, bodily and mentally, to give an account. He had already paid one visit to Mrs. Duff's--as that lady informed Lionel.
Two or three more visits he paid there during the day, but not until night did he find Dan revived. In point of fact, the clergyman penetrated to the kitchen just after that startling communication had been made by Dan. The women were standing in consternation when the vicar entered, one of them strongly recommending that the copper furnace should be heated, and Dan plunged into it to "bring him round."
"How is he now?" began Mr. Bourne. "Oh! I see; he is sensible."
"Well, sir, I don't know," said Mrs Duff. "I'm afraid as his head's a-going right off. He persists in saying now that it wasn't the ghost of Rachel at all--but somebody else's."
"If he was put into a good hot furnace, sir, and kep' at a even heat up to biling pint for half an hour--that is, as near biling as his skin could bear it--I know it 'ud do wonders," spoke up Mrs. Chuff. "It's a excellent remedy, where there's a furnace convenient, and water not short."
"Suppose you allow me to be alone with him for a few minutes," suggested Mr. Bourne. "We will try and find out what will cure him; won't we, Dan?"
The women filed out one by one. Mr. Bourne sat down by the boy, and took his hand. In a soothing manner he talked to him, and drew from him by gentle degrees the whole tale, so far as Dan's memory and belief went. The boy shook in every limb as he told it. He could not boast immunity from ghostly fears as did old Matthew Frost.
"But, my boy, you should know that there are no such things as ghosts," urged Mr. Bourne. "When once the dead have left this world, they do not come back to it again."
"I see'd it, sir," was Dan's only argument--an all sufficient one with him. "It was stood over the pool, it was, and it turned round right upon me as I went up. I see the porkypine on his cheek, sir, as plain as anything."
The same account as old Matthew's!
"How was the person dressed?" asked Mr. Bourne. "Did you notice?"
"It had got on some'at long--a coat or a skirt, or some'at. It was as thin as thin, sir."
"Dan, shall I tell you what it was--as I believe? It was somebody dressed up to frighten you and other timid persons."
Dan shook his head. "No, sir, 'twasn't. 'Twas the ghost of Mr. Frederick Massingbird."
LIII. MASTER CHEESE'S FRIGHT--OTHER FRIGHTS
Strange rumours began to be rife in Deerham. The extraordinary news told by Dan Duff would have been ascribed to some peculiar hallucination of that gentleman's brain, and there's no knowing but that the furnace might have been tried as a cure, had not other testimony arisen to corroborate it. Four or five different people, in the course of as many days--or rather nights--saw, or professed to have seen, the apparition of Frederick Massingbird.
One of them was Master Cheese. He was one night coming home from paying a professional visit--in slight, straightforward cases Jan could trust him--when he saw by the roadside what appeared to be a man standing up under the hedge, as if he had taken his station there to look at the passers-by.
"He's up to no good," quoth Master Cheese to himself. "I'll go and dislodge the fellow."
Accordingly Master Cheese turned off the path where he was walking, and crossed the waste bit--only a yard or two in breadth--that ran by the side of the road. Master Cheese, it must be confessed, did not want for bravery; he had a great deal rather face danger of any kind than hard work; and the rumour about Fred Massingbird's ghost had been rare nuts for him to crack. Up he went, having no thought in his head at that moment of ghosts, but rather of poachers.
"I say, you fellow----" he was beginning, and there he stopped dead.
He stopped dead, both in step and tongue. The figure, never moving, never giving the faintest indication that it was alive, stood there like a statue. Master Cheese looked in its face, and saw the face of the late Frederick Massingbird.
It is not pleasant to come across a dead man at moonlight--a man whose body has been safely reposing in the ground ever so long ago. Master Cheese did not howl as Dan Duff had done. He set off down the road--he was too fat to propel himself over or through the hedge, though that was the nearest way--he took to his heels down the road, and arrived in an incredibly short space of time at home, bursting into the surgery and astonishing Jan and the surgery boy.
"I say, Jan, though, haven't I had a fright?"
Jan, at the moment, was searching in the prescription-book. He raised his eyes, and looked over the counter. Master Cheese's face had turned white, and drops of wet were pouring off it--in spite of his bravery.
"What have you been at?" asked Jan.
"I saw the thing they are talking about, Jan. It is Fred Massingbird's."
Jan grinned. That Master Cheese's fright was genuine, there could be no mistaking, and it amused Jan excessively.
"What had you been taking?" asked he, in his incredulity.
"I had taken nothing," retorted Master Cheese, who did not like the ridicule. "I had not had the opportunity of taking anything--unless it was your medicine. Catch me tapping that! Look here, Jan. I was coming by Crow Corner, when I saw a something standing back in the hedge. I thought it was some poaching fellow hiding there, and went up to dislodge him. Didn't I wish myself up in the skies? It was the face of Fred Massingbird."
"The face of your fancy," slightingly returned Jan.
"I swear it was, then! There! There's no mistaking him. The hedgehog on his cheek looked larger and blacker than ever."
Master Cheese did not fail to talk of this abroad; the surgery boy, Bob, who had listened with open ears, did not fail to talk of it, and it spread throughout Deerham; additional testimony to that already accumulated. In a few days' time, the commotion was at its height; nearly the only persons who remained in ignorance of the reported facts being the master and mistress of Verner's Pride, and those connected with them, relatives on either side.
That some great internal storm of superstition was shaking Deerham, Lionel knew. In his happy ignorance, he attributed it to the rumour which had first been circulated, touching Rachel's ghost. He was an ear-witness to an angry colloquy at home. Some indispensable trifle for his wife's toilette was required suddenly from Deerham one evening, and Mademoiselle Benoite ordered that it should be sent for. But not one of the maids would go. The Frenchwoman insisted, and there ensued a stormy war. The girls, one and all, declared they'd rather give up their service, than go abroad after nightfall.
When the fears and the superstitions came palpably in Lionel's way, he made fun of them--as Jan might have done. Once or twice he felt half provoked; and asked the people, in a tone between earnest and jest, whether they were not ashamed of themselves. Little reply made they; not one of them but seemed to shrink from mentioning to Lionel Verner the name that the ghost had borne in life.
On nearly the last evening that it would be light during this moon, Mr. Bourne started from home to pay a visit to Mrs. Hook, the labourer's wife. The woman had been ailing for some time; partly from natural illness, partly from chagrin--for her daughter Alice was the talk of the village--and she had now become seriously ill. On this day Mr. Bourne had accidentally met Jan; and, in conversing upon parish matters, he had inquired after Mrs. Hook.
"Very much worse," was Jan's answer. "Unless a change takes place, she'll not last many days."
The clergyman was shocked; he had not deemed her to be in danger. "I will go and see her to-day," said he. "You can tell her that I am coming."
He was a conscientious man; liking to do his duty, and especially kind to those that were in sickness or trouble. Neither did he willingly break a specific promise. He made no doubt that Jan delivered the message, and therefore he went; though it was late at night when he started, other duties having detained him throughout the day.
His most direct way from the vicarage to Hook's cottage, took him past the Willow Pond. He had no fear of ghosts, and therefore he chose it, in preference to going down Clay Lane, which was farther round. The Willow Pool looked lonely enough as he passed it, its waters gleaming in the moonlight, its willows bending. A little farther on, the clergyman's ears became alive to the sound of sobs, as from a person in distress. There was Alice Hook, seated on a bench underneath some elm-trees, sobbing enough to break her heart.
However the girl might have got herself under the censure of the neighbourhood, it is a clergyman's office to console, rather than to condemn. And he could not help liking pretty Alice; she had been one of the most tractable pupils in his Sunday-school. He addressed her as soothingly, as considerately, as though she were one of the first ladies in his parish; harshness would not mend the matter now. Her heart opened to the kindness.
"I've broke mother's heart, and killed her!" cried she, with a wild burst of sobs. "But for me, she might have got well."
"She may get well still, Alice," replied the vicar. "I am going on to see her now. What are you doing here?"
"I am on my way, sir, to get the fresh physic for her. Mr. Jan, he said this morning as somebody was to go for it; but the rest have been out all day. As I came along, I got thinking of the time, sir, when I could go about by daylight with my head up, like the best of 'em; and it overcame me."
She rose up, dried her eyes with her shawl, and Mr. Bourne proceeded onwards. He had not gone far, when something came rushing past him from the opposite direction. It seemed more like a thing than a man, with its swift pace--and he recognised the face of Frederick Massingbird.
Mr. Bourne's pulses stood still, and then gave a bound onwards. Clergyman though he was, he could not, for his life, have helped the queer feeling which came over him. He had sharply rebuked the superstition in his parishioners; had been inclined to ridicule Matthew Frost; had cherished a firm and unalterable belief that some foolish wight was playing pranks with the public; but all these suppositions and convictions faded in this moment; and the clergyman felt that that which had rustled past was the veritable dead and-gone Frederick Massingbird, in the spirit or in the flesh.
He shook the feeling off--or strove to shake it. That it was Frederick Massingbird in the flesh he did not give a second supposition to; and that it could be Frederick Massingbird in the spirit, was opposed to every past belief of the clergyman's life. But he had never seen such a likeness; and though the similarity in the features might be accidental, what of the black star?
He strove to shake the feeling off; to say to himself that some one, bearing a similar face, must be in the village; and he went on to his destination. Mrs. Hook was better; but she was lying in the place unattended, all of them out somewhere or other. The clergyman talked to her and read to her; and then waited impatiently for the return of Alice. He did not care to leave the woman alone.
"Where are they all?" he asked, not having inquired before.
They were gone to the wake at Broxley, a small place some two miles distant. Of course! Had Mr. Bourne remembered the wake, he need not have put the question.
An arrival at last. It was Jan. Jan, attentive to poor patients as he was to rich ones, had come striding over, the last thing. They asked him if he had seen anything of Alice in his walk. But Jan had come across from Deerham Court, and that would not be the girl's road. Another minute, and the husband came in. The two gentlemen left together.
"She is considerably better, to-night," remarked Jan. "She'll get about now, if she does not fret too much over Alice."
"It is strange where Alice can have got to," remarked Mr. Bourne. Her prolonged absence, coupled with the low spirits the girl appeared to be in, rather weighed upon his mind. "I met her as I was coming here an hour ago," he continued. "She ought to have been home long before this."
"Perhaps she has encountered the ghost," said Jan, in a joke.
"I saw it to-night, Jan."
"Saw what?" asked Jan, looking at Mr. Bourne.
"The--the party that appears to be personating Frederick Massingbird."
"Nonsense!" uttered Jan.
"I did. And I never saw such a likeness in my life."
"Even to the porcupine," ridiculed Jan.
"Even to the porcupine," gravely replied Mr. Bourne. "Jan, I am not joking. Moreover, I do not consider it a subject for a joke. If any one is playing the trick, it is an infamous thing, most disrespectful to your brother and his wife. And if not----"
"If not--what?" asked Jan.
"In truth, I stopped because I can't continue. Frederick Massingbird's spirit it cannot be--unless all our previous belief in the non-appearance of spirits is to be upset--and it cannot be Frederick Massingbird in life. He died in Australia, and was buried there. I am puzzled, Jan."
Jan was not. Jan only laughed. He believed there must be something in the moonlight that deceived the people, and that Mr. Bourne had caught the infection from the rest.
"Should it prove to be a trick that any one is playing," resumed the clergyman, "I shall----"
"Hollo!" cried Jan. "What's this? Another ghost?"
They had nearly stumbled over something lying on the ground. A woman, dressed in some light material. Jan stooped.
"It's Alice Hook!" he cried.
The spot was that at which Mr. Bourne had seen her sitting. The empty bottle for medicine in her hand told him that she had not gone upon her errand. She was insensible and cold.
"She has fainted," remarked Jan. "Lend a hand, will you, sir?"
Between them they got her on the bench, and the stirring revived her. She sighed once or twice, and opened her eyes.
"Alice, girl, what is it? How were you taken ill?" asked the vicar.
She looked up at him; she looked at Jan. Then she turned her eyes in an opposite direction, glanced fearfully round, as if searching for some sight that she dreaded; shuddered, and relapsed into insensibility.
"We must get her home," observed Jan.
"There are no means of getting her home in her present state, unless she is carried," said Mr. Bourne.
"That's easy enough," returned Jan. And he caught her up in his long arms, apparently having to exert little strength in the action. "Put her petticoats right, will you?" cried he, in his unceremonious fashion.
The clergyman put her things as straight as he could, as they hung over Jan's arm. "You'll never be able to carry her, Jan," said he.
"Not carry her!" returned Jan. "I could carry you, if put to it."
And away he went, bearing his burden as tenderly and easily as though it had been a little child. Mr. Bourne could hardly keep pace with him.
"You go on, and have the door open," said Jan, as they neared the cottage. "We must get her in without the mother hearing, upstairs."
They had the kitchen to themselves. Hook, the father, a little the worse for what he had taken, had gone to bed, leaving the door open for his children. They got her in quietly, found a light, and placed her in a chair. Jan took off her bonnet and shawl--he was handy as a woman; and looked about for something to give her. He could find nothing except water. By and by she got better.
Her first movement, when she fully recovered her senses, was to clutch hold of Jan on the one side, of Mr. Bourne on the other.
"Is it gone?" she gasped, in a voice of the most intense terror.
"Is what gone, child?" asked Mr. Bourne.
"The ghost," she answered. "It came right up, sir, just after you left me. I'd rather die than see it again."
She was shaking from head to foot. There was no mistaking that her terror was intense. To attempt to meet it with confuting arguments would have been simply folly, and both gentlemen knew that it would. Mr Bourne concluded that the same sight, which had so astonished him, had been seen by the girl.
"I sat down again after you went, sir," she resumed, her teeth chattering. "I knew there was no mighty hurry for my being back, as you had gone on to mother, and I sat on ever so long, and it came right up again me, brushing my knees with its things as it passed. At the first moment I thought it might be you coming back, to say something to me, sir, and I looked up. It turned its face upon me, and I never remember nothing after that."
"Whose face?" questioned Jan.
"The ghost's, sir. Mr. Fred Massingbird's."
"Bah!" said Jan. "Faces look alike in the moonlight."
"Twas his face," answered the girl, from between her shaking lips. "I saw its every feature, sir."
"Porcupine and all?" retorted Jan, ironically.
"Porkypine and all, sir. I'm not sure that I should have knowed it at first, but for the porkypine."
What were they to do with the girl? Leave her there, and go? Jan, who was more skilled in ailments than Mr. Bourne, thought it possible that the fright had seriously injured her.
"You must go to bed at once," said he. "I'll just say a word to your father."
Jan was acquainted with the private arrangements of the Hooks' household. He knew that there was but one sleeping apartment for the whole family--the room above, where the sick mother was lying. Father, mother, sons, and daughters all slept there together. The "house" consisted of the kitchen below and the room above it. There were many such on the Verner estate.
Jan, carrying the candle to guide him, went softly up the creaky staircase. The wife was sleeping. Hook was sleeping, too, and snoring heavily. Jan had something to do to awake him; shaking seemed useless.
"Look here," said he in a whisper, when the man was aroused, "Alice has had a fright, and I think she may perhaps be ill through it; if so, mind you come for me without loss of time. Do you understand, Hook?"
Hook signified that he did.
"Very well," replied Jan. "Should----"
"What's that! what's that?"
The alarmed cry came from the mother. She had suddenly awoke.
"It's nothing," said Jan. "I only had a word to say to Hook. You go to sleep again, and sleep quietly."
Somehow Jan's presence carried reassurance with it to most people. Mrs. Hook was contented. "Is Ally not come in yet?" asked she.
"Come in, and downstairs," replied Jan. "Good-night. Now," said he to Alice, when he returned to the kitchen, "you go on to bed and get to sleep; and don't get dreaming of ghosts and goblins."
They were turning out at the door, the clergyman and Jan, when the girl flew to them in a fresh attack of terror.
"I daren't be left alone," she gasped. "Oh, stop a minute! Pray stop, till I be gone upstairs."
"Here," said Jan, making light of it. "I'll marshal you up."
He held the candle, and the girl flew up the stairs as fast as young Cheese had flown from the ghost. Her breath was panting, her bosom throbbing. Jan blew out the candle, and he and Mr. Bourne departed, merely shutting the door. Labourers' cottages have no fear of midnight robbers.
"What do you think now?" asked Mr. Bourne, as they moved along.
Jan looked at him. "You are not thinking, surely, that it is Fred Massingbird's ghost!"
"No. But I should advise Mr. Verner to place a watch, and have the thing cleared up--who it is, and what it is."
"Why, Mr. Verner?"
"Because it is on his land that the disturbance is occurring. This girl has been seriously frightened."
"You may have cause to know that, before many hours are over," answered Jan.
"Why! you don't fear that she will be seriously ill?"
"Time will show," was all the answer given by Jan. "As to the ghost, I'll either believe in him, or disbelieve him, when I come across him. If he were a respectable ghost, he'd confine himself to the churchyard, and not walk in unorthodox places, to frighten folks."
They looked somewhat curiously at the seat near which Alice had fallen; at the Willow Pond, farther on. There was no trace of a ghost about then--at least, that they could see--and they continued their way. In emerging upon the high road, whom should they meet but old Mr. Bitterworth and Lionel, arm in arm. They had been to an evening meeting of the magistrates at Deerham, and were walking home together.
To see the vicar and surgeon of a country village in company by night, imparts the idea that some one of its inhabitants may be in extremity. It did so now to Mr. Bitterworth--
"Where do you come from?" he asked.
"From Hook's," answered Jan. "The mother's better to-night; but I have had another patient there. The girl, Alice, has seen the ghost, or fancied that she saw it, and was terrified, literally, out of her senses."
"How is she going on?" asked Mr. Bitterworth.
"Physically, do you mean, sir?"
"No, I meant morally, Jan. If all accounts are true, the girl has been losing herself."
"Law!" said Jan. "Deerham has known that this many a month past. I'd try and stop it, if I were Lionel."
"Stop what?" asked Lionel.
"I'd build 'em better dwellings," composedly went on Jan. "They might be brought up to decency then."
"It's true that decency can't put its head into such dwellings as that of the Hooks'," observed the vicar. "People have accused me of showing leniency to Alice Hook, since the scandal has been known; but I cannot show harshness to her when I think of the home the girl was reared in."
The words pricked Lionel. None could think worse of the homes than he did. He spoke in a cross tone; we are all apt to do so, when vexed with ourselves. "What possesses Deerham to show itself so absurd just now? Ghosts! They only affect fear, it is my belief."
"Alice Hook did not affect it, for one," said Jan. "She may have been frightened to some purpose. We found her lying on the ground, insensible. They are stupid, though, all the lot of them."
"Stupid is not the name for it," remarked Lionel. "A little superstition, following on Rachel's peculiar death, may have been excusable, considering the ignorance of the people here, and the tendency to superstition inherent in human nature. But why it should have been revived now, I cannot imagine."
Mr. Bitterworth and Jan had walked on. The vicar touched Lionel on the arm, not immediately to follow them.
"Mr. Verner, I do not hold good with the policy which seems to prevail, of keeping this matter from you," he said, in a confidential tone. "I cannot see the expediency of it in any way. It is not Rachel's Frost's ghost that is said to be terrifying people."
"Whose then?" asked Lionel.
"Frederick Massingbird's."
Lionel paused, as if his ears deceived him.
"Whose?" he repeated.
"Frederick Massingbird's."
"How perfectly absurd!" he presently exclaimed.
"True," said Mr. Bourne. "So absurd that, were it not for a circumstance which has happened to-night, I scarcely think I should have brought myself to repeat it. My conviction is, that some person bearing an extraordinary resemblance to Frederick Massingbird is walking about to terrify the neighbourhood."
"I should think there's not another face living, that bears a resemblance to Fred Massingbird's," observed Lionel. "How have you heard this?"
"The first to tell me of it was old Matthew Frost. He saw him plainly, believing it to be Frederick Massingbird's spirit--although he had never believed in spirits before. Dan Duff holds to it that he saw it; and now Alice Hook; besides others. I turned a deaf ear to all, Mr. Verner; but to-night I met one so like Frederick Massingbird that, were Massingbird not dead, I could have sworn it was himself. It was wondrously like him, even to the mark on the cheek."
"I never heard such a tale!" uttered Lionel.
"That is precisely what I said--until to-night. I assure you the resemblance is so great, that if we have all female Deerham in fits, I shall not wonder. It strikes me--it is the only solution I can come to--that some one is personating Frederick Massingbird for the purpose of a mischievous joke--though how they get up the resemblance is another thing. Let me advise you to see into it, Mr. Verner."
Mr. Bitterworth and Jan were turning round in front, waiting; and the vicar hastened on, leaving Lionel glued to the spot where he stood.
LIV. MRS. DUFF'S BILL
Peal! peal! peal! came the sound of the night-bell at Jan's window as he lay in bed. For Jan had caused the night-bell to be hung there since he was factotum. "Where's the good of waking up the house?" remarked Jan; and he made the alteration.
Jan got up with the first sound, and put his head out at the window. Upon which, Hook--for he was the applicant--advanced. Jan's window being, as you may remember, nearly on a level with the ground, presented favourable auspices for holding a face to face colloquy with night visitors.
"She's mortal bad, sir," was Hook's salutation.
"Who is?" asked Jan. "Alice, or the missis?"
"Not the missis, sir. The other. But I shouldn't ha' liked to trouble you, if you hadn't ordered me."
"I won't be two minutes," said Jan.
It seemed to Hook that Jan was only one, so speedily did he come out. A belief was popular in Deerham that Mr. Jan slept with his clothes on; no sooner would a night summons be delivered to Jan, than Jan was out with the summoner, ready for the start. Before he had closed the surgery door, through which he had to pass, there came another peal, and a woman ran up to him. Jan recognised her for the cook of a wealthy lady in the Belvedere Road, a Mrs. Ellis.
"Law, sir! what a provident mercy that you are up and ready!" exclaimed she. "My mistress is attacked again."
"Well, you know what to do," returned Jan. "You don't want me."
"But she do want you, sir. I have got orders not to go back without you."
"I suppose she has been eating cucumber again," remarked Jan.
"Only a bit of it, sir. About the half of a small one, she took for her supper. And now the spasms is on her dreadful."
"Of course they are," replied Jan. "She knows how cucumber serves her. Well, I can't come. I'll send Mr. Cheese, if you like. But he can do no more good than you can. Give her the drops and get the hot flannels; that's all."
"You are going out, sir!" cried the woman, in a tone that sounded as if she would like to be impertinent. "You are come for him, I suppose?" turning a sharp tongue upon Hook.
"Yes, I be," humbly replied Hook. "Poor Ally--"
The woman set up a scream. "You'd attend her, that miserable castaway, afore you'd attend my mistress!" burst out she to Jan. "Who's Ally Hook, by the side of folks of standing?"
"If she wants attendance, she must have it," was the composed return of Jan. "She has got a body and a soul to be saved, as other folks have. She is in danger; your mistress is not."
"Danger! What has that got to do with it?" angrily answered the woman. "You'll never get paid there, sir."
"I don't expect it," returned Jan. "If you'd like Cheese, that's his window," pointing to one in the house. "Throw a handful of gravel up, and tell them I said he was to attend."
Jan walked off with Hook. He heard a crash of gravel behind him; so concluded the cook was flinging at Mr. Cheese's window in a temper. As she certainly was, giving Mr. Jan some hard words in the process. Just as Lady Verner had never been able to inculcate suavity on Jan, so Dr. West had found it a hopeless task to endeavour to make Jan understand that, in medical care, the rich should be considered before the poor. Take, for example, that bete noire of Deerham just now, Alice Hook, and put her by the side of a born duchess; Jan would have gone to the one who had most need of him, without reference to which of the two it might be. Evidently there was little hope for Jan.
Jan, with his long legs, outstripped the stooping and hard-worked labouring man. In at the door and up the stairs he went, into the sleeping room.
Did you ever pay a visit to a room of this social grade? If not, you will deem the introduction of this one highly coloured. Had Jan been a head and shoulders shorter, he might have been able to stand up in the lean-to attic, without touching the lath and plaster of the roof. On a low bedstead, on a flock mattress, lay the mother and two children, about eight and ten. How they made room for Hook also, was a puzzle. Opposite to it, on a straw mattress, slept three sons, grown up, or nearly so; between these beds was another straw mattress where lay Alice and her sister, a year younger; no curtains, no screens, no anything. All were asleep, with the exception of the mother and Alice; the former could not rise from her bed; Alice appeared too ill to rise from hers. Jan stooped his head and entered.
A few minutes, and he set himself to arouse the sleepers. They might make themselves comfortable in the kitchen, he told them, for the rest of the night: he wanted room in the place to turn himself round, and they must go out of it. And so he bundled them out. Jan was not given to stand upon ceremony. But it is not a pleasant room to linger in, so we will leave Jan to it.
It was pleasanter at Lady Verner's. Enough of air, and light, and accommodation there. But even in that desirable residence it was not all couleur de rose. Vexations intrude into the most luxurious home, whatever may be the superfluity of room, the admirable style of the architecture; and they were just now agitating Deerham Court.
On the morning which rose on the above night--as lovely a morning as ever September gave us--Lady Verner and Lucy Tempest received each a letter from India. Both were from Colonel Tempest. The contents of Lady Verner's annoyed her, and the contents of Lucy's annoyed her.
It appeared that some considerable time back, nearly, if not quite, twelve months, Lucy had privately written to Colonel Tempest, urgently requesting to be allowed to go out to join him. She gave no reason or motive for the request, but urged it strongly. That letter, in consequence of the moving about of Colonel Tempest, had only just reached him; and now had arrived the answer to it. He told Lucy that he should very shortly be returning to Europe; therefore it was useless for her to think of going out.
So far, so good. However Lucy might have been vexed or disappointed at the reply--and she was both; still more at the delay which had taken place--there the matter would have ended. But Colonel Tempest, having no idea that Lady Verner was a stranger to this request; inferring, on the contrary, that she was a party to it, and must, therefore, be growing tired of her charge, had also written to her an elaborate apology for leaving Lucy so long upon her hands, and for being unable to comply with her wish to be relieved of her. This enlightened Lady Verner as to what Lucy had done.
She was very angry. She was worse than angry; she was mortified. And she questioned Lucy a great deal more closely than that young lady liked, as to what her motive could have been, and why she was tired of Deerham Court.
Lucy, all self-conscious of the motive by which she had been really actuated, stood before her like a culprit. "I am not tired of Deerham Court, Lady Verner. But I wished to be with papa."
"Which is equivalent to saying that you wish to be away from me," retorted my lady. "I ask you why?"
"Indeed, Lady Verner, I am pleased to be with you; I like to be with you. It was not to be away from you that I wrote. It is a long while since I saw papa; so long, that I seem to have forgotten what he is like."
"Can you assure me, in all open truth, that the wish to be with Colonel Tempest was your sole reason for writing, unbiassed by any private feeling touching Deerham?" returned Lady Verner, searching her face keenly. "I charge you answer me, Lucy."
Lucy could not answer that it was her sole reason, unless she told an untruth. Her eyes fell under the gaze bent upon her.
"I see," said Lady Verner. "You need not equivocate more. Is it to me that you have taken a dislike? or to any part of my arrangements?"
"Believe me, dear Lady Verner, that it is neither to you nor to your home," she answered, the tears rising to her eyes. "Believe me, I am as happy here as I ever was; on that score I have no wish to change."
It was an unlucky admission of Lucy's, "on that score." Of course, Lady Verner immediately pressed to know on what other score the wish might be founded. Lucy pleaded the desire to be with her father, which Lady Verner did not believe; and she pleaded nothing else. It was not satisfactory to my lady, and she kept Lucy the whole of the morning, harping upon the sore point.
Lionel entered, and interrupted the discussion. Lady Verner put him in possession of the facts. That for some cause which Lucy refused to explain, she wanted to leave Deerham Court; had been writing, twelve months back, to Colonel Tempest, to be allowed to join him in India; and the negative answer had arrived but that morning. Lady Verner would like the motive for her request explained; but Lucy was obstinate, and would not explain it.
Lionel turned his eyes on Lucy. If she had stood self-conscious before Lady Verner, she stood doubly self-conscious now. Her eyelashes were drooping, her cheeks were crimson.
"She says she has no fault to find with me, no fault to find with the arrangements of my house," pursued Lady Verner. "Then I want to know what else it is that should drive her away from Deerham. Look at her, Lionel! That is how she stands--unable to give me an answer."
Lady Verner might equally well have said, Look at Lionel. He stood self-conscious also. Too well he knew the motive--absence from him--which had actuated Lucy. From him, the married man; the man who had played her false; away, anywhere, from witnessing the daily happiness of him and his wife. He read it all, and Lucy saw that he did.
"It were no such strange wish, surely, to be where my dear papa is!" she exclaimed, the crimson of her cheeks turning to scarlet.
"No," murmured Lionel, "no such strange wish. I wish I could go to India, and free the neighbourhood of my presence!"
A curious wish! Lady Verner did not understand it. Lionel gave her no opportunity to inquire its meaning, for he turned to quit the room and the house. She rose and laid her hand upon his arm to detain him.
"I have an engagement," pleaded Lionel.
"A moment yet. Lionel, what is this nonsense that is disturbing the equanimity of Deerham? About a ghost!"
"Ah, what indeed?" returned Lionel, in a careless tone, as if he would make light of it. "You know what Deerham is, mother. Some think Dan Duff saw his own shadow; some, a white cow in the pound. Either is sufficient marvel for Deerham."
"So vulgar a notion!" reiterated Lady Verner, resuming her seat, and taking her essence bottle in her delicately gloved hand. "I wonder you don't stop it, Lionel."
"I!" cried Lionel, opening his eyes in considerable surprise. "How am I to stop it?"
"You are the Lord of Deerham. It is vulgar, I say, to have such a report afloat on your estate."
Lionel smiled. "I don't know how you are to put away vulgarity from stargazers and villagers. Or ghosts either--if they once get ghosts in their heads."
He finally left the Court, and turned towards home. His mother's words about the ghost had brought the subject to his mind; if, indeed, it had required bringing; but the whispered communication of the vicar the previous night had scarcely been out of his thoughts since. It troubled him. In spite of himself, of his good sense and reason, there was an undercurrent of uneasiness at work within him. Why should there be? Lionel could not have explained had he been required to do it. That Frederick Massingbird was dead and buried, there could be no shade of doubt; and ghosts had no place in the creed of Lionel Verner. All true; but the consciousness of uneasiness was there, and he could not ignore it.
In the last few days, the old feeling touching Lucy had been revived with unpleasant force. Since that night which she had spent at his house, when they saw, or fancied they saw, a man hiding himself under the tree, he had thought of her more than was agreeable; more than was right, he would have said, but that he saw not how to avoid it. The little episode of this morning at his mother's house had served to open his eyes most completely, to show him how intense was his love for Lucy Tempest. It must be confessed that his wife did little towards striving to retain his love.
He went along, thinking of these things. He would have put them from him; but he could not. The more he tried, the more unpleasantly vivid they became. "Tush!" said Lionel. "I must be getting nervous! I'll ask Jan to give me a draught."
He was passing Dr. West's as he spoke, and he turned into the surgery. Sitting on the bung of a large stone jar was Master Cheese, his attitude a disconsolate one, his expression of countenance rebellious.
"Is Mr. Jan at home?" asked Lionel.
"No, he's not at home, sir," replied Master Cheese, as if the fact were some personal grievance of his own. "Here's all the patients, all the making up of the physic left in my charge, and I'd like to know how I am to do it? I can't go out to fifty folks at a time?"
"And so you expedite the matter by not going to one! Where is Mr. Jan?"
"He was fetched out in the night to that beautiful Ally Hook," grumbled Master Cheese. "It's a shame, sir, folks are saying, for him to give his time to her. I had to leave my warm bed and march out to that fanciful Mother Ellis, through it, who's always getting the spasms. And I had about forty poor here this morning, and couldn't get a bit of comfortable breakfast for 'em. Miss Deb, she never kept my bacon warm, or anything; and somebody had eaten the meat out of the veal pie when I got back. Jan will have those horrid poor here twice a week, and if I speak against it, he tells me to hold my tongue."
"But is Mr. Jan not back yet from Hook's?"
"No, sir, he's not," was the resentful response. "He has never come back at all since he went, and that was at four o'clock this morning. If he had gone to cut off all the arms in the house, he couldn't have been longer! And I wish him joy of it! He'll get no breakfast. They have got nothing for themselves but bread and water."
Lionel left his draught an open question, and departed. As he turned into the principal street again, he saw Master Dan Duff at the door of his mother's shop. A hasty impulse prompted Lionel to question the boy of what he saw that unlucky night; or believed he saw. He crossed over; but Master Dan retreated inside the shop. Lionel followed him.
"Well, Dan! Have you overcome the fright of the cow yet?"
"'Twarn't a cow, please, sir," replied Dan, timidly. "'Twere a ghost."
"Whose ghost?" returned Lionel.
Dan hesitated. He stood first on one leg, then on the other.
"Please, sir, 'twarn't Rachel's," said he, presently.
"Whose then?" repeated Lionel.
"Please, sir, mother said I warn't to tell you. Roy, he said, if I told it to anybody, I should be took and hanged."
"But I say that you are to tell me," said Lionel. And his pleasant tone, combined, perhaps, with the fact that he was Mr. Verner, effected more with Dan Duff than his mother's sharp tone or Roy's threatening one.
"Please, sir," glancing round to make sure that his mother was not within hearing, "'twere Mr. Fred Massingbird's. They can't talk me out on't, sir. I see'd the porkypine as plain as I see'd him. He were--"
Dan brought his information to a summary standstill. Bustling down the stairs was that revered mother. She came in, curtseying fifty times to Lionel. "What could she have the honour of serving him with?" He was leaning over the counter, and she concluded he had come to patronise the shop.
Lionel laughed. "I am a profitless customer, I believe, Mrs. Duff. I was only talking to Dan."
Dan sidled off to the street door. Once there, he took to his heels, out of harm's way. Mr. Verner might begin telling his mother more particulars, and it was as well to be at a safe distance.
Lionel, however, had no intention to betray trust. He stood chatting a few minutes with Mrs. Duff. He and Mrs. Duff had been great friends when he was an Eton boy; many a time had he ransacked her shop over for flies and gut and other fishing tackle, a supply of which Mrs. Duff professed to keep. She listened to him with a somewhat preoccupied manner; in point of fact, she was debating a question with herself.
"Sir," said she, rubbing her hands nervously one over the other, "I should like to make bold to ask a favour of you. But I don't know how it might be took. I'm fearful it might be took as a cause of offence."
"Not by me. What is it?"
"It's a delicate thing, sir, to have to ask about," resumed she. "And I shouldn't venture, sir, to speak to you, but that I'm so put to it, and that I've got it in my head it's through the fault of the servants."
She spoke with evident reluctance. Lionel, he scarcely knew why, leaped to the conclusion that she was about to say something regarding the subject then agitating Deerham--the ghost of Frederick Massingbird. Unconsciously to himself, the pleasant manner changed to one of constraint.
"Say what you have to say, Mrs. Duff."
"Well, sir--but I'm sure I beg a hundred thousand pardings for mentioning of it--it's about the bill," she answered, lowering her voice. "If I could be paid, sir, it 'ud be the greatest help to me. I don't know hardly how to keep on."
No revelation touching the ghost could have given Lionel the surprise imparted by these ambiguous words. But his constraint was gone.
"I do not understand you, Mrs. Duff. What bill?"
"The bill what's owing to me, sir, from Verner's Pride. It's a large sum for me, sir--thirty-two pound odd. I have to keep up my payments for my goods, sir, whether or not, or I should be a bankrupt to-morrow. Things is hard upon me just now, sir; though I don't want everybody to know it. There's that big son o' mine, Dick, out o' work. If I could have the bill, or only part of it, it 'ud be like a God-send."
"Who owes you the bill?" asked Lionel.
"It's your good lady, sir, Mrs. Verner."
"Who?" echoed Lionel, his accent quite a sharp one.
"Mrs. Verner, sir."
Lionel stood gazing at the woman. He could not take in the information; he believed there must be some mistake.
"It were for things supplied between the time Mrs. Verner came home after your marriage, sir, and when she went to London in the spring. The French madmizel, sir, came down and ordered some on 'em; and Mrs. Verner herself, sir, ordered others."
Lionel looked around the shop. He did not disbelieve the woman's words, but he was in a maze of astonishment. Perhaps a doubt of the Frenchwoman crossed his mind.
"There's nothing here that Mrs. Verner would wear!" he exclaimed.
"There's many odds and ends of things here, sir, as is useful to a lady's tilette--and you'd be surprised, sir, to find how such things mounts up when they be had continual. But the chief part o' the bill, sir, is for two silk gownds as was had of our traveller. Mrs. Verner, sir, she happened to be here when he called in one day last winter, and she saw his patterns, and she chose two dresses, and said she'd buy 'em of me if I ordered 'em. Which in course I did, sir, and paid for 'em, and sent 'em home. I saw her wear 'em both, sir, after they was made up, and very nice they looked."
Lionel had heard quite enough. "Where is the bill?" he inquired.
"It have been sent in, sir, long ago. When I found Mrs. Verner didn't pay it afore she went away, I made bold to write and ask her. Miss West, she gave me the address in London, and said she wished she could pay me herself. I didn't get a answer, sir, and I made bold to write again, and I never got one then. Twice I have been up to Verner's Pride, sir, since you come home this time, but I can't get to see Mrs. Verner. That French madmizel's one o' the best I ever see at putting folks off. Sir, it goes again the grain to trouble you; and if I could have got to see Mrs. Verner, I never would have said a word. Perhaps if you'd be so good as to tell her, sir, how hard I'm put to it, she'd send me a little."
"I am sure she will," said Lionel. "You shall have your money to-day, Mrs. Duff."
He turned out of the shop, a scarlet spot of emotion on his cheek. Thirty-two pounds owing to poor Mrs. Duff! Was it thoughtlessness on Sibylla's part? He strove to beat down the conviction that it was a less excusable error.
But the Verner pride had been wounded to its very core.
LV. SELF WILL
Gathered before a target on the lawn, in their archery costume gleaming with green and gold, was a fair group, shooting their arrows in the air. Far more went into the air than struck the target. They were the visitors of Verner's Pride; and Sibylla, the hostess, was the gayest, the merriest, the fairest among them.
Lionel came on to the terrace, descended the steps, and crossed the lawn to join them--as courtly, as apparently gay, as if that bill of Mrs. Duff's was not making havoc of his heartstrings. They all ran to surround him. It was not often they had so attractive a host to surround; and attractive men are, and always will be, welcome to women. A few minutes, a quarter of an hour given to them, an unruffled smoothness on his brow, a smile upon his lips, and then he contrived to draw his wife aside.
"Oh, Lionel, I forgot to tell you," she exclaimed. "Poynton has been here. He knows of the most charming pair of gray ponies, he says. And they can be ours if secured at once."
"I don't want gray ponies," replied Lionel.
"But I do," cried Sibylla. "You say I am too timid to drive. It is all nonsense; I should soon get over the timidity. I will learn to drive, Lionel. Mrs. Jocelyn, come here," she called out.
Mrs. Jocelyn, a young and pretty woman, almost as pretty as Sibylla, answered to the summons.
"Tell Mr. Verner what Poynton said about the ponies."
"Oh, you must not miss the opportunity," cried Mrs. Jocelyn to Lionel. "They are perfectly beautiful, the man said. Very dear, of course; but you know nobody looks at money when buying horses for a lady. Mrs. Verner must have them. You might secure them to-day."
"I have no room in my stables for more horses," said Lionel, smiling at Mrs. Jocelyn's eagerness.
"Yes, you have, Lionel," interposed his wife. "Or, if not, room must be made. I have ordered the ponies to be brought."
"I shall send them back," said Lionel, laughing.
"Don't you wish your wife to take to driving, Mr. Verner? Don't you like to see a lady drive? Some do not."
"I think there is no necessity for a lady to drive, while she has a husband at her side to drive for her," was the reply of Lionel.
"Well--if I had such a husband as you to drive for me, I don't know but I might subscribe to that doctrine," candidly avowed Mrs. Jocelyn. "I would not miss these ponies, were I Mrs. Verner. You can drive them, you know. They are calling me. It is my turn, I suppose."
She ran back to the shooting, Sibylla was following her, but Lionel caught her hand and drew her into a covered walk. Placing her hand within his arm, he began to pace it.
"I must go back, too, Lionel."
"Presently. Sibylla, I have been terribly vexed this morning."
"Oh, now Lionel, don't you begin about 'vexing,'" interrupted Sibylla, in the foolish, light, affected manner, which had grown worse of late, more intolerable to Lionel. "I have ordered the ponies. Poynton will send them in; and if there's really not room in the stables, you must see about it, and give orders that room must be made."
"I cannot buy the ponies," he firmly said. "My dear, I have given in to your every wish, to your most trifling whim; but, as I told you a few days ago, these ever-recurring needless expenses I cannot stand. Sibylla"--and his voice grew hoarse--"do you know that I am becoming embarrassed?"
"I don't care if you are," pouted Sibylla. "I must have the ponies."
His heart ached. Was this the loving wife--the intelligent companion for whom he had once yearned?--the friend who should be as his own soul? He had married the Sibylla of his imagination; and he woke to find Sibylla--what she was. The disappointment was heavy upon him always; but there were moments when he could have cried out aloud in its sharp bitterness.
"Sibylla, you know the state in which some of my tenants live; the miserable dwellings they are forced to inhabit. I must change this state of things. I believe it to be a duty for which I am accountable to God. How am I to set about it if you ruin me?"
Sibylla put her fingers to her ears. "I can't stand to listen when you preach, Lionel. It is as bad as a sermon."
It was ever thus. He could not attempt to reason with her. Anything like sensible conversation she could not, or would not, hold. Lionel, considerate to her as he ever was, felt provoked.
"Do you know that this unfortunate affair of Alice Hook's is laid remotely to me?" he said, with a sternness, which he could not help, in his tone. "People are saying that if I gave them decent dwellings, decent conduct would ensue. It is so. God knows that I feel its truth more keenly than my reproachers."
"The dwellings are good enough for the poor."
"Sibylla! You cannot think it. The laws of God and man alike demand a change. Child," he continued in a softer tone, as he took her hand in his, "let us bring the case home to ourselves. Suppose that you and I had to sleep in a room a few feet square, no chimney, no air, and that others tenanted it with us? Girls and boys growing up--nay, grown up, some of them; men and women as we are, Sibylla. The beds huddled together, no space between them; sickness, fever----"
"I am only shutting my ears," interrupted Sibylla. "You pretend to be so careful of me--you would not even let me go to that masked ball in Paris--and yet you put these horrid pictures into my mind! I think you ought to be ashamed of it, Lionel. People sleeping in the same room with us!"
"If the picture be revolting, what must be the reality?" was his rejoinder. "They have to endure it."
"They are used to it," retorted Sibylla. "They are brought up to nothing better."
"Just so. And therefore their perceptions of right and wrong are deadened. The wonder is, not that Alice Hook has lost herself, but that----"
"I don't want to hear about Alice Hook," interrupted Sibylla. "She is not very good to talk about."
"I have been openly told, Sibylla, that the reproach should lie at my door."
"I believe it is not the first reproach of the kind that has been cast on you," answered Sibylla, with cutting sarcasm.
He did not know what she meant, or in what sense to take the remark; but his mind was too preoccupied to linger on it. "With these things staring me in the face, how can I find money for superfluous vanities? The time has come when I am compelled to make a stand against it. I will, I must, have decent dwellings on my estate, and I shall set about the work without a day's loss of time. For that reason, if for no other, I cannot buy the ponies."
"I have bought them," coolly interrupted Sibylla.
"Then, my dear, you must forgive me if I countermand the purchase. I am resolute, Sibylla," he continued, in a firm tone. "For the first time since our marriage, I must deny your wish. I cannot let you bring me to beggary, because it would also involve you. Another year or two of this extravagance, and I should be on the verge of it."
Sibylla flung his arms from her. "Do you want to keep me as a beggar? I will have the ponies!"
He shook his head. "The subject is settled, Sibylla. If you cannot think for yourself, I must think for you. But it was not to speak of the ponies that I brought you here. What is it that you owe to Mrs. Duff?"
Sibylla's colour heightened. "It is no business of yours, Lionel, what I owe her. There may be some trifle or other down in her book. It will be time enough for you to concern yourself with my little petty debts when you are asked to pay them."
"Then that time is the present one, with regard to Mrs. Duff. She applied to me for the money this morning. At least, she asked if I would speak to you--which is the same thing. She says you owe her thirty-two pounds. Sibylla, I had far rather been stabbed than have heard it."
"A fearful sum, truly, to be doled out of your coffers!" cried Sibylla, sarcastically. "You'll never recover it, I should think!"
"Not that--not that," was the reply of Lionel, his tone one of pain. "Sibylla! have you no sense of the fitness of things? Is it seemly for the mistress of Verner's Pride to keep a poor woman, as Mrs. Duff is, out of her money; a humble shopkeeper who has to pay her way as she goes on?"
"I wish Fred had lived! He would never have taken me to task as you do."
"I wish he had!" was the retort in Lionel's heart; but he bit his lips to silence, exchanging the words, after a few minutes' pause, for others.
"You would have found Frederick Massingbird a less indulgent husband to you than I have been," he firmly said. "But these remarks are profitless, and will add to the comfort of neither you nor me. Sibylla, I shall send, in your name, to pay this bill of Mrs. Duff's. Will you give it me?"
"I dare say Benoite can find it, if you choose to ask her."
"And, my dear, let me beg of you not to contract these paltry debts. There have been others, as you know. I do not like that Mrs. Verner's name should be thus bandied in the village. What you buy in the village, pay for at once."
"How can I pay while you stint me?"
"Stint you!" repeated Lionel, in amazement. "Stint you!"
"It's nothing but stinting--going on at me as you do!" she sullenly answered. "You would like to deprive me of the horses I have set my mind upon! You know you would!"
"The horses you cannot have, Sibylla," he answered, his tone a decisive one. "I have already said it."
It aroused her anger. "If you don't let me have the horses, and all other things I want, I'll go where I can have them."
What did she mean? Lionel's cheek turned white with the taunt the words might be supposed to imply. He held her two hands in his, pressing them nervously.
"You shall not force me to quarrel with you, Sibylla," he continued, with emotion. "I have almost registered a vow that no offensive word or conduct on your part shall make me forget myself for a moment; or render me other than an ever considerate, tender husband. It may be that our marriage was a mistake for both of us; but we shall do well to make the best of it. It is the only course remaining."
He spoke in a strangely earnest tone; one of deep agitation. Sibylla was aroused. She had believed that Lionel blindly loved her. Otherwise she might have been more careful to retain his love--there's no knowing.
"How do you mean that our marriage was a mistake for both of us?" she hastily cried.
"You do your best to remind me continually that it must be so," was his reply.
"Psha!" returned Sibylla. And Lionel, without another word, quitted her and walked away. In these moments, above all others, would the image of Lucy Tempest rise up before his sight. Beat it down as he would, it was ever present to him. A mistake in his marriage! Ay; none save Lionel knew how fatal a one.
He passed on direct to the terrace, avoiding the lawn, traversed it, and went out at the large gates. Thence he made his way to Poynton's, the veterinary surgeon, who also dealt in horses. At least, dealt in them so far as that he would buy and sell when employed to do so.
The man was in his yard, watching a horse go through his paces. He came forward to meet Lionel.
"Mrs. Verner has been talking to you about some ponies, she tells me," began Lionel. "What are they?"
"A very handsome pair, sir. Just the thing for a lady to drive. They are to be sold for a hundred and fifty pounds. It's under their value."
"Spirited?"
"Yes. They have their mettle about them. Good horses always have, you know, sir. Mrs. Verner has given me the commission."
"Which I am come to rescind," replied Lionel, calling up a light smile to his face. "I cannot have my wife's neck risked by her attempting to drive spirited ponies, Poynton. She knows nothing of driving, is constitutionally timid, and--in short, I do not wish the order executed."
"Very well, sir," was the man's reply. "There's no harm done. I was at Verner's Pride with that horse that's ill, and Mrs. Verner spoke to me about some ponies. It was only to-day I heard these were in the market, and I mentioned them to her. But, for all I know, they may be already sold."
Lionel turned to walk out of the yard. "After Mrs. Verner shall have learned to drive, then we shall see; perhaps we may buy a pair," he remarked. "My opinion is that she will not learn. After a trial or two she will give it up."
"All right, sir."