by Ellen Wood
“Can you tell me my way to Lady Verner’s?”
The words were spoken close to Jan’s ear. He turned and looked at the speaker. An oldish man with a bronzed countenance and upright carriage, bearing about him that indescribable military air which bespeaks the soldier of long service, in plain clothes though he may be.
“Sir Henry Tempest?” involuntarily spoke Jan, before the official addressed had time to answer the question. “I heard that my mother was expecting you.”
Sir Henry Tempest ran his eyes over Jan’s face and figure: an honest face, but an ungainly figure; loose clothes that would have been all the better for a brush, and the edges of his high shirt-collar jagged out.
“Mr. Verner?” responded Sir Henry doubtingly.
“Not Mr. Verner. I’m only Jan. You must have forgotten me long ago, Sir Henry.”
Sir Henry Tempest held out his hand, “I have not forgotten what you were as a boy; but I should not have known you as a man. And yet — it is the same face.”
“Of course it is,” said Jan, “Ugly faces, such as mine, don’t alter. I will walk with you to my mother’s: it is close by. Have you any luggage?”
“Only a portmanteau. My servant is looking after it. Here he is.”
A very dark man came up — an Indian — nearly as old as his master. Jan recognised him.
“I remember you!” he exclaimed “It is Batsha.”
The man laughed, hiding his dark eyes, but showing his white teeth. “Massa Jan!” he said, “used to call me Bat.”
Without the least ceremony, Jan shook him by the hand. He had more pleasant reminiscences of him than of his master. In fact, Jan could only remember Colonel Tempest by name. He, the colonel, had despised and shunned the awkward and unprepossessing boy; but the boy and Bat used to be great friends.
“Do you recollect carrying me on your shoulder, Bat? You have paid for many a ride in a palanquin for me. Riding on shoulders or in palanquins, in those days, used to be my choice recreation. The shoulders and the funds both ran short at times.”
Batsha remembered it all. Next to his master, he had never liked anybody so well as the boy Jan.
“Stop where you are a minute or two,” said unceremonious Jan to Sir Henry. “I must find one of the porters, and then I’ll walk with you.”
Looking about in various directions, in holes and corners and sheds, inside carriages and behind trucks, Jan at length came upon a short, surly-looking man, wearing the official uniform. It was the one of whom he was in search.
“I say, Parkes, what is this I hear about your forcing your wife to get up, when I have given orders that she should lie in bed? I went in just now, and there I found her dragging herself about the damp brewhouse. I had desired that she should not get out of her bed.”
“Too much bed don’t do nobody much good, sir,” returned the man in a semi-resentful tone. “There’s the work to do — the washing. If she don’t do it, who will?”
“Too much bed wouldn’t do you good; or me, either; but it is necessary for your wife in her present state of illness. I have ordered her to bed again. Don’t let me hear of your interfering a second time, and forcing her up. She is going to have a blister on now.”
“I didn’t force her, sir,” answered Parkes. “I only asked her what was to become of the work, and how I should get a clean shirt to put on.”
“If I had got a sick wife, I’d wash out my shirt myself, before I’d drag her out of bed to do it,” retorted Jan. “I can tell you one thing, Parkes; that she is worse than you think for. I am not sure that she will be long with you; and you won’t get such a wife again in a hurry, once you lose her. Give her a chance to get well. I’ll see that she gets up fast enough, when she is fit for it.”
Parkes touched his peaked cap as Jan turned away. It was very rare that Jan came out with a lecture; and when he did, the sufferers did not like it. A sharp word from Jan Verner seemed to tell home.
Jan returned to Sir Henry Tempest, and they walked a way in the direction of Deerham Court.
“I conclude all is well at Lady Verner’s,” remarked Sir Henry.
“Well enough,” returned Jan. “I thought I heard you were not coming until to-morrow. They’ll be surprised.”
“I wrote word I should be with them to-morrow,” replied Sir Henry. “But I got impatient to see my child. Since I left India and have been fairly on my way to her, the time of separation has seemed longer to me than it did in all the previous years.”
“She’s a nice girl,” returned Jan. “The nicest girl in Deerham.”
“Is she pretty?” asked Sir Henry.
The question a little puzzled Jan. “Well, I think so,” answered he. “Girls are much alike for that, as far as I see. I like Miss Lucy’s look, though; and that’s the chief thing in faces.”
“How is your brother, Janus?”
Jan burst out laughing. “Don’t call me Janus, Sir Henry. I am not known by that name. They wanted me to have Janus on my door-plate; but nobody would have thought it meant me, and the practice might have gone off.”
“You are Jan, as you used to be, then? I remember Lucy has called you so in her letters to me.”
“I shall never be anything but Jan. What does it matter? One name’s as good as another. You were asking after Lionel. He has got Verner’s Pride again: all in safety now.”
“What a very extraordinary course of events seems to have taken place, with regard to Verner’s Pride!” remarked Sir Henry. “Now your brother’s, now not his, then his again, then not his! I cannot make it out.”
“It was extraordinary,” assented Jan. “But the uncertain tenure is at an end, and Lionel is installed there for life. There ought never to have been any question of his right to it.”
“He has had the misfortune to lose his wife,” observed Sir Henry.
“It was not much of a misfortune,” returned Jan, always plain. “She was too sickly ever to enjoy life; and I know she must have worried Lionel nearly out of his patience.”
Jan had said at the station that Deerham Court was “close by.” His active legs may have found it so; but Sir Henry began to think it rather far than close. As they reached the gates Sir Henry spoke.
“I suppose there is an inn near, where I can send my servant to lodge. There may not be accommodation for him at Lady Verner’s?”
“There’s accommodation enough for that,” said Jan. “They have plenty of room, and old Catherine can make him up a bed.”
Lady Verner and Lucy were out. They had not returned from the call on Mrs. Bitterworth — for it was the afternoon spoken of in the last chapter. Jan showed Sir Henry in; told him to ring for any refreshment he wanted; and then left.
“I can’t stay,” he remarked. “My day’s rounds are not over yet.”
But scarcely had Jan reached the outside of the gate when he met the carriage. He put up his hand, and the coachman stopped. Jan advanced to the window, a broad smile upon his face.
“What will you give me for some news, Miss Lucy?”
Lucy’s thoughts were running upon certain other news; news known but to herself and to one more. A strangely happy light shone in her soft, brown eyes, as she turned them on Jan; a rich damask flush on the cheeks where his lips had so lately been.
“Does it concern me, Jan?”
“It doesn’t much concern anybody else. — Guess.”
“I never can guess anything; you know I can’t, Jan,” she answered, smiling. “You must please tell me.”
“Well,” said Jan, “there’s an arrival. Come by the train.”
“Oh, Jan! Not papa?”
Jan nodded.
“You will find him indoors. Old Bat’s come with him.”
Lucy never could quite remember the details of the meeting. She knew that her father held her to him fondly, and then put her from him to look at her; the tears blinding her eyes and his.
“You are pretty, Lucy,” he said, “very pretty. I asked Jan whether you were not, but
he could not tell me.”
“Jan!” slightingly spoke Lady Verner, while Lucy laughed in spite of her tears. “It is of no use asking Jan anything of that sort, Sir Henry, I don’t believe Jan knows one young lady’s face from another.”
It seemed to be all confusion for some time; all bustle; nothing but questions and answers. But when they had assembled in the drawing-room again, after making ready for dinner, things wore a calmer aspect.
“You must have thought I never was coming home!” remarked Sir Henry to Lady Verner. “I have contemplated it so long.”
“I suppose your delays were unavoidable,” she answered.
“Yes — in a measure. I should not have come now, but for the relieving you of Lucy. Your letters, for some time past, have appeared to imply that you were vexed with her, or tired of her; and, in truth, I have taxed your patience and good nature unwarrantably. I do not know how I shall repay your kindness, Lady Verner.”
“I have been repaid throughout, Sir Henry,” was the quiet reply of Lady Verner. “The society of Lucy has been a requital in full. I rarely form an attachment, and when I do form one it is never demonstrative; but I have learned to love Lucy as I love my own daughter, and it will be a real grief to part with her. Not but that she has given me great vexation.”
“Ah! In what way?”
“The years have gone on and on since she came to me; and I was in hopes of returning her to you with some prospect in view of the great end of a young lady’s life — marriage. I was placed here as her mother; and I felt more responsibility in regard to her establishment in life than I did to Decima’s. We have been at issue upon the point, Sir Henry; Lucy and I.”
Sir Henry turned his eyes on his daughter: if that is not speaking figuratively, considering that he had scarcely taken his eyes off her. A fair picture she was, sitting there in her white evening dress and her pearl ornaments. Young, lovely, girlish, she looked, as she did the first day she came to Lady Verner’s and took up her modest seat on the hearth-rug. Sir Henry Tempest had not seen many such faces as that; he had not met with many natures so innocent and charming. Lucy was made to be admired as well as loved.
“If there is one parti more desirable than another in the whole county, it is Lord Garle,” resumed Lady Verner. “The eldest son of the Earl of Elmsley, his position naturally renders him so; but had he neither rank nor wealth, he would not be much less desirable. His looks are prepossessing; his qualities of head and heart are admirable; he enjoys the respect of all. Not a young lady for miles round but — I will use a vulgar phrase, Sir Henry, but it is expressive of the facts — would jump at him. Lucy refused him.”
“Indeed,” replied Sir Henry, gazing at Lucy’s glowing face, at the smile that hovered round her lips.
Lady Verner resumed —
“She refused him in the most decidedly positive manner that you can imagine. She has refused also one or two others. They were not so desirable in position as Lord Garle; but they were very well. And her motive I never have been able to get at. It has vexed me much. I have pointed out to her that when ever you returned home, you might think I had been neglectful of her interests.”
“No, no,” replied Sir Henry, “I could not fancy coming home to find Lucy married. I should not have liked it. She would have seemed to be gone from me.”
“But she must marry some time, and the years are going on,” returned Lady Verner.
“Yes, I suppose she must.”
“At least, I should say she would, were it anybody but Lucy,” rejoined Lady Verner, qualifying her words. “After the refusal of Lord Garle, one does not know what to think. You will see him and judge for yourself.”
“What was the motive of the refusal, Lucy?” inquired Sir Henry.
He spoke with a smile, in a gay, careless tone; but Lucy appeared to take the question in a serious light. Her eyelids drooped, her whole face became scarlet, her demeanour almost agitated.
“I did not care to marry, papa,” she answered in a low tone. “I did not care for Lord Garle.”
“One grievous fear has been upon me ever since, haunting my rest at night, disturbing my peace by day,” resumed Lady Verner. “I must speak of it to you, Sir Henry. Absurd as the notion really is, and as at times it appears to me that it must be, still it does intrude, and I should scarcely be acting an honourable part by you to conceal it, sad as the calamity would be.”
Lucy looked up in surprise. Sir Henry in a sort of puzzled wonder.
“When she refused Lord Garle, whom she acknowledged she liked, and forbade him to entertain any future hope whatever, I naturally began to look about me for the cause. I could only come to one conclusion, I am sorry to say — that she cared too much for another.”
Lucy sat in an agony; the scarlet of her face changing to whiteness.
“I arrived at the conclusion, I say,” continued Lady Verner, “and I began to consider whom the object could be. I called over in my mind all the gentlemen she was in the habit of seeing; and unfortunately there was only one — only one upon whom my suspicions could fix. I recalled phrases of affection openly lavished upon him by Lucy; I remembered that there was no society she seemed to enjoy and be so much at ease with as his. I have done what I could since to keep him at arm’s length; and I shall never forgive myself for having been so blind. But, you see, I no more thought she, or any other girl, could fall in love with him, than that she could with one of my serving men.”
“Lady Verner, you should not say it!” burst forth Lucy, with vehemence, as she turned her white face, her trembling lips, to Lady Verner. “Surely I might refuse to marry Lord Garle without caring unduly for another!”
Lady Verner looked quite aghast at the outburst. “My dear, does not this prove that I am right?”
“But who is it?” interrupted Sir Henry Tempest.
“Alas! — Who! I could almost faint in telling it to you,” groaned Lady Verner. “My unfortunate son, Jan.”
The relief was so great to Lucy; the revulsion of feeling so sudden; the idea called up altogether so comical, that she clasped her hands one within the other, and laughed out in glee.
“Oh, Lady Verner! Poor Jan! I never thought you meant him. Papa,” she said, turning eagerly to Sir Henry, “Jan is downright worthy and good, but I should not like to marry him.”
“Jan may be worthy; but he is not handsome,” gravely remarked Sir Henry.
“He is better than handsome,” returned Lucy. “I shall love Jan all my life, papa; but not in that way.”
Her perfect openness, her ease of manner, gave an earnest of the truth with which she spoke; and Lady Verner was summarily relieved of the fear which had haunted her rest.
“Why could you not have told me this before, Lucy?”
“Dear Lady Verner, how could I tell it you? How was I to know anything about it?”
“True,” said Lady Verner. “I was simple; to suppose any young lady could ever give a thought to that unfortunate Jan! You saw him, Sir Henry. Only fancy his being my son and his father’s!”
“He is certainly not like either of you,” was Sir Henry’s reply. “Your other son was like both. Very like his father.”
“Ah! he is a son!” spoke Lady Verner, in her enthusiasm. “A son worth having; a son that his father would be proud of, were he alive. Handsome, good, noble; — there are few like Lionel Verner. I spoke in praise of Lord Garle, but he is not as Lionel. A good husband, a good son, a good man. His conduct under his misfortunes was admirable.”
“His misfortunes have been like a romance,” remarked Sir Henry.
“More like that than reality. You will see him presently. I asked him to dine with me, and expect him in momentarily. Ah, he has had trouble in all ways. His wife brought him nothing else.”
“Jan dropped a hint of that,” said Sir Henry. “I should think he would not be in a hurry to marry again!
“I should think not, indeed. He — Lucy, where are you going?”
Lucy turned round with he
r crimsoned face. “Nowhere, Lady Verner.”
“I thought I heard a carriage stop, my dear. See if it is Lionel.”
Lucy walked to the window in the other room. Sir Henry followed her. The blue and silver carriage of Verner’s Pride was at the Court gates, Lionel stepping from it. He came in, looking curiously at the gray head next to Lucy’s.
“A noble form, a noble face!” murmured Sir Henry Tempest.
He wore still the mourning for his wife. A handsome man never looks so well in other attire. There was no doubt that he divined now who the stranger was, and a glad smile of welcome parted his lips. Sir Henry met him on the threshold, and grasped both his hands.
“I should have known you, Lionel, anywhere, from your likeness to your father.”
CHAPTER XCIV.
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN JAN!
Lionel could not let the evening go over without speaking of the great secret. When he and Sir Henry were left together in the dining-room, he sought the opportunity. It was afforded by a remark of Sir Henry’s.
“After our sojourn in London shall be over, I must look out for a residence, and settle down. Perhaps I shall purchase one. But I must first of all ascertain what locality would be agreeable to Lucy.”
“Sir Henry,” said Lionel in a low tone, “Lucy’s future residence is fixed upon — if you will accord your permission.”
Sir Henry Tempest, who was in the act of raising his wine-glass to his lips, set it down again and looked at Lionel.
“I want her at Verner’s Pride.”
It appeared that Sir Henry could not understand — did not take in the meaning of the words.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I have loved her for years,” answered Lionel, the, scarlet spot of emotion rising to his cheeks. “We — we have known each other’s sentiments a long while. But I did not intend to speak more openly to Lucy until I had seen you. To-day, however, in the sudden excitement of hearing of her contemplated departure, I betrayed myself. Will you give her to me, Sir Henry?”
Sir Henry Tempest looked grave. “It cannot have been so very long an attachment,” he observed. “The time since your wife’s death can only be counted by months.”