by Ellen Wood
“I don’t think you need tell me of that, Jan,” interrupted Lady Mary, keeping her countenance.
“I wonder you talk to him, Mary,” observed Lady Verner, feeling thoroughly ashamed of Jan, and believing that everybody else did. “You hear how he repays you. He means it for good breeding, perhaps.”
“I don’t mean it for rudeness, at any rate,” returned Jan. “Lady Mary knows that. Don’t you?” he added, turning to her.
A strangely thrilling expression in her eyes as she looked at him was her only answer. “I would rather have that sort of rudeness from you, Jan,” said she, “than the world’s hollow politeness. There is so much of false—”
Mary Elmsley’s sentence was never concluded. What was it that had broken in upon them? What object was that, gliding into the room like a ghost, on whom all eyes were strained with a terrible fascination? Was it a ghost? It appeared ghastly enough for one. Was it one of Jan’s “subjects” come after him to the ball? Was it a corpse? It looked more like that than anything else. A corpse bedizened with jewels.
“She’s mad!” exclaimed Jan, who was the first to recover his speech.
“What is it?” ejaculated Sir Edmund, gazing with something very like fear, as the spectre bore down towards him.
“It is my brother’s wife,” explained Jan. “You may see how fit she is to come.”
There was no time for more. Sibylla had her hand held out to Sir Edmund, a wan smile on her ghastly face. His hesitation, his evident discomposure, as he took it, were not lost upon her.
“You have forgotten me, Sir Edmund; but I should have known you anywhere. Your face is bronzed, and it is the only change. Am I so much changed?”
“Yes, you are; greatly changed,” was his involuntary acknowledgment in his surprise. “I should not have recognised you for the Sibylla West of those old days.”
“I was at an age to change,” she said. “I—”
The words were stopped by a fit of coughing. Not the ordinary cough, more or less violent, that we hear in every-day intercourse; but the dreadful cough that tells its tale of the hopeless state within. She had discarded her opera-cloak, and stood there, her shoulders, back, neck, all bare and naked; très décolletée, as the French would say; shivering palpably; imparting the idea of a skeleton with rattling bones. Sir Edmund Hautley, quitting Decima, took her hand compassionately and led her to a seat.
Mrs. Verner did not like the attention. Pity, compassion was in every line of his face — in every gesture of his gentle hand; and she resented it.
“I am not ill,” she declared to Sir Edmund between the paroxysms of her distressing cough. “The wind seemed to take my throat as I got out of the fly, and it is making me cough a little, but I am not ill. Has Jan been telling you that I am?”
She turned round fiercely on Jan as she spoke. Jan had followed her to her chair, and stood near her; he may have deemed that so evident an invalid should possess a doctor at hand. A good thing that Jan was of equable disposition, of easy temperament; otherwise there might have been perpetual open war between him and Sibylla. She did not spare to him her sarcasms and her insults; but never, in all Jan’s intercourse with her, had he resented them.
“No one has told me anything about you in particular, Mrs. Verner,” was the reply of Sir Edmund. “I see that you look delicate.”
“I am not delicate,” she sharply said. “It is nothing. I should be very well, if it were not for Jan.”
“That’s good,” returned Jan. “What do I do?”
“You worry me,” she answered curtly. “You say I must not go out; I must not do this, or do the other. You know you do. Presently you will be saying I must not dance. But I will.”
“Does Lionel know you have come?” inquired Jan, leaving other questions in abeyance.
“I don’t know. It’s nothing to him. He was not going to stop me. You should pay attention to your own appearance, Jan, instead of to mine; look at your gloves!”
“They split as I was drawing them on,” said Jan.
Sibylla turned from him with a gesture of contempt. “I am enchanted that you have come home, Sir Edmund,” she said to the baronet.
“I am pleased myself, Mrs. Verner. Home has more charms for me than the world knows of.”
“You will give us some nice entertainments, I hope,” she continued, her cough beginning to subside. “Sir Rufus lived like a hermit.”
That she would not live to partake of any entertainments he might give, Sir Edmund Hautley felt as sure as though he had then seen her in her grave-clothes. No, not even could he be deceived, or entertain the faintest false hope, though the cough became stilled, and the brilliant hectic of reaction shone on her cheeks. Very beautiful would she then have looked, save for her attenuate frame, with that bright crimson flush and her gleaming golden hair.
Quite sufficiently beautiful to attract partners, and one came up and requested her to dance. She rose in acquiescence, turning her back right upon Jan, who would have interposed.
“Go away,” said she. “I don’t want any lecturing from you.”
But Jan did not go away. He laid his hand impressively upon her shoulder. “You must not do it, Sibylla. There’s a pond outside; it’s just as good you went and threw yourself into that. It would do you no more harm.”
She jerked her shoulder away from him; laughing a little, scornful laugh, and saying a few contemptuous words to her partner, directed to Jan. Jan propped his back against the wall, and watched her, giving her a few words in his turn.
“As good try to turn a mule, as turn her.”
He watched her through the quadrille. He watched the gradually increasing excitement of her temperament. Nothing could be more pernicious for her; nothing more dangerous; as Jan knew. Presently he watched her plunge into a waltz; and just at that moment his eyes fell on Lionel.
He had just entered; he was shaking hands with Sir Edmund Hautley. Jan made his way to them.
“Have you seen Sibylla, Jan?” was the first question of Lionel to his brother. “I hear she has come.”
For answer, Jan pointed towards a couple amidst the waltzers, and Lionel’s dismayed gaze fell on his wife, whirling round at a mad speed, her eyes glistening, her cheeks burning, her bosom heaving. With the violence of the exertion, her poor breath seemed to rise in loud gasps, shaking her to pieces, and the sweat-drops poured off her brow.
One dismayed exclamation, and Lionel took a step forward. Jan caught him back.
“It is of no use, Lionel. I have tried. It would only make a scene, and be productive of no end. I am not sure either, whether opposition at the present moment would not do as much harm as is being done.”
“Jan!” cried Sir Edmund in an undertone, “is — she — dying?”
“She is not far off it,” was Jan’s answer.
Lionel had yielded to Jan’s remonstrance, and stood back against the wall, as Jan had previously been doing. The waltz came to an end. In the dispersion Lionel lost sight of his wife. A few moments, and strange sounds of noise and confusion were echoing from an adjoining room. Jan went away at his own rate of speed, Lionel in his wake. They had caught the reiterated words, spoken in every phase of terrified tones, “Mrs. Verner! Mrs. Verner!”
Ah, poor Mrs. Verner! That had been her last dance on earth. The terrible exertion had induced a fit of coughing of unnatural violence, and in the straining a blood-vessel had once more broken.
CHAPTER LXXXVII.
THE LAMP BURNS OUT AT LAST.
From the roof of the house to the floor of the cellar, ominous silence reigned in Deerham Court. Mrs. Verner lay in it — dying. She had been conveyed home from the Hall on the morning following the catastrophe. Miss Hautley and Sir Edmund urged her remaining longer, offering every possible hospitality; but poor Sibylla seemed to have taken a caprice against it. Caprices she would have, up to her last breath. All her words were “Home! home!” Jan said she might be moved with safety; and she was taken there.
She
seemed none the worse for the removal — she was none the worse for it. She was dying, but the transit had not increased her danger or her pain. Dr. Hayes had been over in the course of the night, and was now expected again.
“It’s all waste of time, his coming; he can’t do anything; but it is satisfaction for Lionel,” observed Jan to his mother.
Lady Verner felt inclined to blame those of her household who had been left at home, for Sibylla’s escapade: all of them — Lionel, Lucy Tempest, and the servants. They ought to have prevented it, she said; have kept her in by force, had need been. But she blamed them wrongly. Lionel might have done so had he been present; there was no knowing whether he would so far have exerted his authority, but the scene that would inevitably have ensued might not have been less fatal in its consequences to Sibylla. Lucy answered, and with truth, that any remonstrance of hers to Sibylla would never have been listened to; and the servants excused themselves — it was not their place to presume to oppose Mr. Verner’s wife.
She lay on the sofa in her dressing-room, propped up by pillows; her face wan, her breathing laboured. Decima with her, calm and still; Catherine hovered near, to be useful, if necessary; Lady Verner was in her room within call; Lucy Tempest sat on the stairs. Lucy, remembering certain curious explosions, feared that her presence might not be acceptable to the invalid; but Lucy partook of the general restlessness, and sat down in her simple fashion on the stairs, listening for news from the sick-chamber. Neither she nor any one else in the house could have divested themselves of the prevailing excitement that day, or settled to calmness in the remotest degree. Lucy wished from her very heart that she could do anything to alleviate the sufferings of Mrs. Verner, or to soothe the general discomfort.
By and by, Jan entered, and came straight up the stairs. “Am I to walk over you, Miss Lucy?”
“There’s plenty of room to go by, Jan,” she answered, pulling her dress aside.
“Are you doing penance?” he asked, as he strode past her.
“It is so dull remaining in the drawing-room by myself,” answered Lucy apologetically. “Everybody is upstairs.”
Jan went into the sick-room, and Lucy sat on in silence; her head bent down on her knees, as before. Presently Jan returned.
“Is she any better, Jan?”
“She’s no worse,” was Jan’s answer. “That’s something, when it comes to this stage. Where’s Lionel?”
“I do not know,” replied Lucy. “I think he went out. Jan,” she added, dropping her voice, “will she get well?”
“Get well!” echoed Jan in his plainness. “It’s not likely. She won’t be here four-and-twenty hours longer.”
“Oh, Jan!” uttered Lucy, painfully startled and distressed. “What a dreadful thing! And all because of her going out last night!”
“Not altogether,” answered Jan. “It has hastened it, no doubt; but the ending was not far off in any case.”
“If I could but save her!” murmured Lucy in her unselfish sympathy. “I shall always be thinking that perhaps if I had spoken to her last night, instead of going out to find Mr. Verner, she might not have gone.”
“Look here,” said Jan. “You are not an angel yet, are you, Miss Lucy?”
“Not at all like one, I fear, Jan,” was her sad answer.
“Well, then, I can tell you for your satisfaction that an angel, coming down from heaven and endued with angel’s powers, wouldn’t have stopped her last night. She’d have gone in spite of it; in spite of you all. Her mind was made up to it; and her telling Lionel in the morning that she’d give up going, provided he would promise to take her for a day’s pleasure to Heartburg, was only a ruse to throw the house off its guard.”
Jan passed down; Lucy sat on. As Jan was crossing the courtyard — for he actually went out at the front door for once in his life, as he had done the day he carried the blanket and the black tea-kettle — he encountered John Massingbird. Mr. John wore his usual free-and-easy costume, and had his short pipe in his mouth.
“I say,” began he, “what’s this tale about Mrs. Lionel? Folks are saying that she went off to Hautley’s last night, and danced herself to death.”
“That’s near enough,” replied Jan. “She would go; and she did; and she danced; and she finished it up by breaking a blood-vessel. And now she is dying.”
“What was Lionel about, to let her go?”
“Lionel knew nothing of it. She slipped off while he was out. Nobody was in the house but Lucy Tempest and one or two of the servants. She dressed herself on the quiet, sent for a fly, and went.”
“And danced!”
“And danced,” assented Jan. “Her back and shoulders looked like a bag of bones. You might nearly have heard them rattle.”
“I always said there were moments when Sibylla’s mind was not right,” composedly observed John Massingbird. “Is there any hope?”
“None. There has not been hope, in point of fact, for a long while,” continued Jan, “as anybody might have seen, except Sibylla. She has been obstinately blind to it. Although her father warned her, when he was here, that she could not live.”
John Massingbird smoked for some moments in silence. “She was always sickly,” he presently said; “sickly in constitution; sickly in temper.”
Jan nodded. But what he might further have said was stopped by the entrance of Lionel. He came in at the gate, looking jaded and tired. His mind was ill at ease, and he had not been to bed.
“I have been searching for you, Jan. Dr. West ought to be telegraphed to. Can you tell where he is?”
“No, I can’t,” replied Jan. “He was at Biarritz when he last wrote; but they were about to leave. I expect to hear from him daily. If we did know where he is, Lionel, telegraphing would be of no use. He could not get here.”
“I should like him telegraphed to, if possible,” was Lionel’s answer.
“I’ll telegraph to Biarritz, if you like,” said Jan. “He is sure to have left it, though.”
“Do so,” returned Lionel. “Will you come in?” he added to John Massingbird.
“No, thank you,” replied John Massingbird. “They’d not like my pipe. Tell Sibylla I hope she’ll get over it. I’ll come again by and by, and hear how she is.”
Lionel went indoors and passed upstairs with a heavy footstep. Lucy started from her place, but not before he had seen her in it.
“Why do you sit there, Lucy?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, blushing that he should have caught her there, though she had not cared for Jan’s doing so. “It is lonely downstairs to-day; here I can ask everybody who comes out of the room how she is. I wish I could cure her! I wish I could do anything for her!”
He laid his hand lightly on her head as he passed. “Thank you for all, my dear child!” and there was a strange tone of pain in his low voice as he spoke it.
Only Decima was in the room then, and she quitted it as Lionel entered. Treading softly across the carpet, he took his seat in a chair opposite Sibylla’s couch. She slept — for a great wonder — or appeared to sleep. The whole morning long — nay, the whole night long, her bright, restless eyes had been wide open; sleep as far from her as it could well be. It had seemed that her fractious temper kept the sleep away. But her eyes were closed now, and two dark, purple rims inclosed them, terribly dark on the wan, white face. Suddenly the eyes unclosed with a start, as if her doze had been abruptly disturbed, though Lionel had been perfectly still. She looked at him for a minute or two in silence, and he, knowing it would be well that she should doze again, neither spoke nor moved.
“Lionel, am I dying?”
Quietly as the words were spoken, they struck on his ear with startling intensity. He rose then and pushed her hair from her damp brow with a fond hand, murmuring some general inquiry as to how she felt.
“Am I dying?” came again from the panting lips.
What was he to answer her? To say that she was dying might send her into a paroxysm of terror; to deceive
her in that awful hour by telling her she was not, went against every feeling of his heart.
“But I don’t want to die,” she urged, in some excitement, interpreting his silence to mean the worst. “Can’t Jan do anything for me? Can’t Dr. Hayes?”
“Dr. Hayes will be here soon,” observed Lionel soothingly, if somewhat evasively. “He will come by the next train.”
She took his hand, held it between hers, and looked beseechingly up to his face. “I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered. “Oh, Lionel! keep me here if you can! You know you are always kind to me. Sometimes I have reproached you that you were not, but it was not true. You have been ever kind, have you not?”
“I have ever striven to be so,” he answered, the tears glistening on his eyelashes.
“I don’t want to die. I want to get well and go about again, as I used to do when at Verner’s Pride. Now Sir Edmund Hautley is come home, that will be a good place to visit at. Lionel, I don’t want to die! Can’t you keep me in life?”
“If by sacrificing my own life, I could save yours, Heaven knows how willingly I would do it,” he tenderly answered.
“Why should I die? Why should I die more than others? I don’t think I am dying, Lionel,” she added, after a pause. “I shall get well yet.”
She stretched out her hand for some cooling drink that was near, and Lionel gave her a teaspoonful. He was giving her another, but she jerked her head away and spilled it.
“It’s not nice,” she said. So he put it down.
“I want to see Deborah,” she resumed.
“My dear, they are at Heartburg. I told you so this morning. They will be home, no doubt, by the next train. Jan has sent to them.”
“What should they do at Heartburg?” she fractiously asked.
“They went over yesterday to remain until to-day, I hear.”
Subsiding into silence, she lay quite still, save for her panting breath, holding Lionel’s hand as he bent over her. Some noise in the corridor outside attracted her attention, and she signed to him to open the door.