by Ellen Wood
Did she wish him to look for the gold combs? Lionel did not take the hint. Leaving her in the hands of Catherine, he quitted the room.
CHAPTER LXXI.
UNPREMEDITATED WORDS.
Lucy was in the drawing-room alone when Lionel entered it. “Lady Verner,” she said to him, “has stepped out to speak to Jan.”
“Lucy, I find that our coming here has turned you out of your room,” he gravely said. “I should earnestly have protested against it, had I known what was going to be done.”
“Should you?” said she, shaking her head quite saucily. “We should not have listened to you.”
“We! Whom does the ‘we’ include?”
“Myself and Decima. We planned everything. I like the room I have now, quite as much as that. It is the room at the end, opposite the one Mrs. Verner is to have for her sitting-room.”
“The sitting-room again! What shall you and Decima do without it?” exclaimed Lionel, looking as he felt — vexed.
“If we never have anything worse to put up with than the loss of a sitting-room that was nearly superfluous, we shall not grieve,” answered Lucy, with a smile. “How did we do without it before — when you were getting better from that long illness? We had to do without it then.”
“I think not, Lucy. So far as my memory serves me, you were sitting in it a great portion of your time — cheering me. I have not forgotten it, if you have.”
Neither had she — by her heightened colour.
“I mean that we had to do without it for our own purposes, our drawings and our work. It is but a little matter, after all. I wish we could do more for you and Mrs. Verner. I wish,” she added, her voice betraying her emotion, “that we could have prevented your being turned from Verner’s Pride.”
“Ay,” he said, speaking with affected carelessness, and turning about an ornament in his fingers, which he had taken from the mantel-piece, “it is not an every-day calamity.”
“What shall you do?” asked Lucy, going a little nearer to him, and dropping her voice to a tone of confidence.
“Do? In what way, Lucy?”
“Shall you be content to live on here with Lady Verner? Not seeking to retrieve your — your position in any way?”
“My living on here, Lucy, will be out of the question. That would never do, for more reasons than one.”
Did Lucy Tempest divine what one of these reasons might be? She did not intend to look at him, but she caught his eyes in the pier-glass. Lionel smiled.
“I am thinking what a trouble you must find me — you and Decima.”
She did not speak at first. Then she went quite close to him, her earnest, sympathising eyes cast up to his.
“If you please, you need not pretend to make light of it to me,” she whispered. “I don’t like you to think that I do not know all you must feel, and what a blow it is. I think I feel it quite as much as you can do — for your sake and for Mrs. Verner’s. I lie awake at night, thinking of it; but I do not say so to Decima and Lady Verner. I make light of it to them, as you are making light of it to me.”
“I know, I know!” he uttered in a tone that would have been a passionate one, but for its wailing despair. “My whole life, for a long while, has been one long scene of acting — to you. I dare not make it otherwise. There’s no remedy for it.”
She had not anticipated the outburst; she had simply wished to express her true feeling of sympathy for their great misfortunes, as she might have expressed it to any other gentleman who had been turned from his home with his wife. She could not bear for Lionel not to know that he had her deepest, her kindliest, her truest sympathy, and this had nothing to do with any secret feeling she might, or might not, entertain for him. Indeed, but for the unpleasant, latent consciousness of that very feeling, Lucy would have made her sympathy more demonstrative. The outbreak seemed to check her; to throw her friendship back upon herself; and she stood irresolute; but she was too single-minded, too full of nature’s truth, to be angry with what had been a genuine outpouring of his inmost heart, drawn from him in a moment of irrepressible sorrow. Lionel let the ornament fall back on the mantel-piece, and turned to her, his manner changing. He took her hands, clasping them in one of his; he laid his other hand lightly on her fair young head, reverently as any old grandfather might have done.
“Lucy! — my dear friend! — you must not mistake me. There are times when some of the bitterness within me is drawn forth, and I say more than I ought: what I never should say, in a calmer moment. I wish I could talk to you; I wish I could give you the full confidence of all my sorrows, as I gave it you on another subject once before. I wish I could draw you to my side, as though you were my sister, or one of my dearest friends, and tell you of the great trouble at my heart. But it cannot be, I thank you, I thank you for your sympathy. I know that you would give me your friendship in all single-heartedness, as Decima might give it me; and it would be to me a green spot of brightness in life’s arid desert. But the green spot might for me grow too bright, Lucy; and my only plan is to be wise in time, and to forego it.”
“I did but mean to express my sorrow for you and Mrs. Verner,” she timidly answered; “my sense of the calamity which has fallen upon you.”
“Child, I know it; and I dare not say how I feel it; I dare not thank you as I ought. In truth it is a terrible calamity. All its consequences I cannot yet anticipate; but they may be worse than anybody suspects, or than I like to glance at. It is a deep and apparently an irremediable misfortune. I cannot but feel it keenly; and I feel it for my wife more than for myself. Now and then, something like a glimpse of consolation shows itself — that it has not been brought on by any fault of mine; and that, humanly speaking, I have done nothing to deserve it.”
“Mr. Cust used to tell us that however dark a misfortune might be, however hopeless even, there was sure to be a way of looking at it, by which we might see that it might have been darker,” observed Lucy. “This would have been darker for you, had it proved to be Frederick Massingbird, instead of John; very sadly darker for Mrs. Verner.”
“Ay; so far I cannot be too thankful,” replied Lionel. The remembrance flashed over him of his wife’s words that day — in her temper — she wished it had been Frederick. It appeared to be a wish that she had already thrown out frequently; not so much that she did wish it, as to annoy him.
“Mr. Cust used to tell us another thing,” resumed Lucy, breaking the silence: “that these apparently hopeless misfortunes sometimes turn out to be great benefits in the end. Who knows but in a short time, through some magic or other, you and Mrs. Verner may be back at Verner’s Pride? Would not that be happiness?”
“I don’t know about happiness, Lucy; sometimes I feel tired of everything,” he wearily answered. “As if I should like to run away for ever, and be at rest. My life at Verner’s Pride was not a bed of rose-leaves.”
He heard his mother’s voice in the ante-room, and went forward to open the door for her. Lady Verner came in, followed by Jan. Jan was going to dine there; and Jan was actually in orthodox dinner costume. Decima had invited him, and Decima had told him to be sure to dress himself; that she wanted to make a little festival of the evening to welcome Lionel and his wife. So Jan remembered, and appeared in black. But the gloss of the whole was taken off by Jan having his shirt fastened down the front with pins, where the buttons ought to be. Brassy-looking, ugly, bent pins, as big as skewers, stuck in horizontally.
“Is that a new fashion coming in, Jan?” asked Lady Verner, pointing with some asperity to the pins.
“It’s to be hoped not,” replied Jan. “It took me five minutes to stick them in, and there’s one of the pins running into my wrist now. It’s a new shirt of mine come home, and they have forgotten the buttons. Miss Deb caught sight of it, when I went in to tell her I was coming here, and ran after me to the gate with a needle and thread, wanting to sew them on.”
“Could you not have fastened it better than that, Jan?” asked Decima, smiling as she looked at the s
hirt.
“I don’t see how,” replied Jan. “Pins were the readiest to hand.”
Sibylla had been keeping them waiting dinner. She came in now, radiant in smiles and in her gold combs. None, to look at her, would suppose she had that day lost a home. A servant appeared and announced dinner.
Lionel went up to Lady Verner. Whenever he dined there, unless there were other guests besides himself, he had been in the habit of taking her in to dinner. Lady Verner drew back.
“No, Lionel. I consider that you and I are both at home now. Take Miss Tempest.”
He could only obey. He held out his arm to Lucy, and they went forward.
“Am I to take anybody?” inquired Jan.
That was just like Jan! Lady Verner pointed to Sibylla, and Jan marched off with her. Lady Verner and Decima followed.
“Not there, not there, Lucy,” said Lady Verner, for Lucy was taking the place she was accustomed to, by Lady Verner. “Lionel, you will take the foot of the table now, and Lucy will sit by you.”
Lady Verner was rather a stickler for etiquette, and at last they fell into their appointed places. Herself and Lionel opposite each other, Lucy and Decima on one side the table, Jan and Sibylla on the other.
“If I am to have you under my wing as a rule, Miss Lucy, take care that you behave yourself,” nodded Lionel.
Lucy laughed, and the dinner proceeded. But there was very probably an undercurrent of consciousness in the heart of both — at any rate, there was in his — that it might have been more expedient, all things considered, that Lucy Tempest’s place at dinner had not been fixed by the side of Lionel Verner.
Dinner was half over when Sibylla suddenly laid down her knife and fork, and burst into tears. They looked at her in consternation. Lionel rose.
“That horrid John Massingbird!” escaped her lips. “I always disliked him.”
“Goodness!” uttered Jan, “I thought you were taken ill, Sibylla. What’s the good of thinking about it?”
“According to you, there’s no good in thinking of anything,” tartly responded Sibylla. “You told me yesterday not to think about Fred, when I said I wished he had come back instead of John — if one must have come back.”
“At any rate, don’t think about unpleasant things now,” was Jan’s answer. “Eat your dinner.”
CHAPTER LXXII.
JAN’S SAVINGS.
Lionel Verner looked his situation full in the face. It was not a desirable one. When he had been turned out of Verner’s Pride before, it is probable he had thought that about the extremity of all human calamity; but that, looking back upon it, appeared a position to be coveted, as compared with this. In point of fact it was. He was free then from pecuniary liabilities; he did not owe a shilling in the world; he had five hundred pounds in his pocket; nobody but himself to look to; and — he was a younger man. In the matter of years he was not so very much older now; but Lionel Verner, since his marriage, had bought some experience in human disappointment, and nothing ages a man’s inward feelings like it.
He was now, with his wife, a burden upon his mother; a burden she could ill afford. Lady Verner was somewhat embarrassed in her own means, and she was preparing to reduce her establishment to the size that it used to be in her grumbling days. If Lionel had but been free! free from debt and difficulty! he would have gone out into the world and put his shoulder to the wheel.
Claims had poured in upon him without end. Besides the obligations he already knew of, not a day passed but the post brought him from London outstanding accounts, for debts contracted by his wife, with demands for their speedy settlement. Mr. Verner of Verner’s Pride might not have been troubled with these accounts for years, had his wife so managed: but Mr. Verner, turned from Verner’s Pride, a — it is an ugly word, but expressive of the truth — a pauper, found the demands come pouring thick and threefold upon his head. It was of no use to reproach Sibylla; of no use even to speak, save to ask “Is such-and-such a bill a just claim?” Any approach to such topics was the signal for an unseemly burst of passion on her part; or for a fit of hysterics, in which fashionable affectation Sibylla had lately become an adept. She tried Lionel terribly — worse than tongue can tell or pen can write. There was no social confidential intercourse. Lionel could not go to her for sympathy, for counsel, or for comfort. If he attempted to talk over any plans for the future, for the immediate future; what they could do, what they could not; what might be best, what worst; she met him with the frivolousness of a child, or with a sullen reproach that he “did nothing but worry her.” For any purposes of companionship, his wife was a nonentity; far better that he had been without one. She made his whole life a penance; she betrayed the frivolous folly of her nature ten times a day; she betrayed her pettish temper, her want of self-control, dyeing Lionel’s face of a blood-red. He felt ashamed for her; he felt doubly ashamed for himself — that his mother, that Lucy Tempest should at last become aware what sort of a wife he had taken to his bosom, what description of wedded life was his.
What was he to do for a living? The only thing that appeared to be open to him was to endeavour to get some sort of a situation, where, by means of the hands or the head, he might earn a competence. And yet, to do this, it was necessary to be free from the danger of arrest. He went about in dread of it. Were he to show himself in London he felt sure that not an hour would pass, but he would be sued and taken. If his country creditors accorded him forbearance, his town ones would not. Any fond hope that he had formerly entertained of studying for the Bar, was not available now. He had neither the means nor the time to give to it — the time for study ere remuneration should come. Occasionally a thought would cross him that some friend or other of his prosperity might procure for him a government situation. A consulship, or vice-consulship abroad, for instance. Any thing abroad. Not to avoid the payment of his creditors, for whether abroad or at home, Lionel would be sure to pay them, if by dint of pinching himself he could find the means; but that he might run away from home and mortification, take his wife and make the best of her. But consulships and other government appointments are more easily talked of than obtained; as any body who has tried for them under difficulties knows. Moreover, although Lionel had never taken a prominent part in politics, the Verner interest had always been given against the government party, then in power. He did not see his way at all clear before him; and he found that it was to be still further obstructed on another score.
After thinking and planning and plotting till his brain was nearly bewildered, he at length made up his mind to go to London, and see whether anything could be done. With regard to his creditors there, he must lay the state of the case frankly before them, and say: “Will you leave me my liberty, and wait? You will get nothing by putting me in prison, for I have no money of my own, and no friend to come forward and advance it to clear me. Give me time, accord me my liberty, and I will endeavour to pay you off by degrees.” It was, at any rate, a straightforward mode of going to work, and Lionel determined to adopt it. Before mentioning it to his wife, he spoke to Lady Verner.
And then occurred the obstruction. Lady Verner, though she did not oppose the plan, declined to take charge of Sibylla, or to retain her in her house during Lionel’s absence.
“I could not take her with me,” said Lionel. “There would be more objections to it than one. In the first place, I have not the means; in the second—”
He came to an abrupt pause, and turned the words off. He had been about incautiously to say, “She would most likely, once in London, run me into deeper debt.” But Lionel had kept the fact of her having run him into debt at all, a secret in his own breast. Whatever may have been his wife’s faults and failings, he did not make it his business to proclaim them to the world. She proclaimed enough herself, to his grievous chagrin, without his helping to do it.
“Listen, Lionel,” said Lady Verner. “You know what my feeling always was with regard to your wife. A closer intercourse has not tended to change that feeling, or t
o lessen my dislike of her. Now you must forgive my saying this; it is but a passing allusion. Stay on with me as long as you like; stay on for ever, if you will, and she shall stay; but if you leave, she must leave. I should be sorry to have her here, even for a week, without you. In fact, I would not.”
“It would be quite impossible for me to take her to London,” deliberated Lionel. “I can be there alone at a very trifling cost; but a lady involves so much expense. There must be lodgings, which are dear; and living, which is dear; and attendance; and — and — many other sources of outlay.”
“And pray, what should you do, allowing that you went alone, without lodgings and living and attendance, and all the rest of it?” asked Lady Verner. “Take a room at one of their model lodging-houses, at half a crown a week, and live upon the London air?”
“Not very healthy air for fastidious lungs,” observed Lionel, with a smile. “I don’t quite know how I should manage for myself, mother; except that I should take care to condense my expenses into the very narrowest compass that man ever condensed them yet.”
“Not you, Lionel. You were never taught that sort of close economy.”
“True,” he answered. “But the most efficient of all instructors has come to me now — necessity. I wish you would increase my gratitude and my obligation to you by allowing Sibylla to remain here. In a little time, if I have luck, I may make a home for her in London.”
“Lionel, it cannot be,” was the reply of Lady Verner. And he knew when she spoke in that quiet tone of emphasis, that it could not be. “Why should you go to London?” she resumed. “My opinion is that you will do no good by going; that it is a wild-goose scheme altogether which you have got in your head. I think I could tell you a better.”
“What is yours?”
“Remain contentedly here with me until the return of Colonel Tempest. He may even now be on his road. He will no doubt be able to get you some civil appointment in one of the Presidencies; he has influence here with the people that have to do with India. That will be the best plan, Lionel. You are always wishing you could go abroad. Stay here quietly until he comes; I should like you to stay, and I will put up with your wife.”