Works of Ellen Wood, page 376
“What a sight of money those things must have cost!” cried she.
“What that matter?” returned the lady’s-maid. “The purse of a milor Anglais can stand anything.”
“What did she buy them for?” went on Tynn. “For what purpose?”
“Bon!” ejaculated Mademoiselle. “She buy them to wear. What else you suppose she buy them for?”
“Why! she would never wear out the half of them in all her whole life!” uttered Tynn, speaking the true sentiments of her heart. “She could not.”
“Much you know of things, Madame Teen!” was the answer, delivered in undisguised contempt for Tynn’s primitive ignorance. “They’ll not last her six months.”
“Six months!” shrieked Tynn. “She couldn’t come to an end of them dresses in six months, if she wore three a day, and never put on a dress a second time!”
“She want to wear more than three different a day sometimes. And it not the mode now to put on a robe more than once,” returned Mademoiselle Benoite carelessly.
Tynn could only open her mouth. “If they are to be put on but once, what becomes of ’em afterwards?” questioned she, when she could find breath to speak.
“Oh, they good for jupons — petticoats, you call it. Some may be worn a second time; they can be changed by other trimmings to look like new. And the rest will be good for me: Madame la Duchesse gave me a great deal. ‘Tenez, ma fille,’ she would say, ‘regardez dans ma garde-robe, et prenez autant que vous voudrez.’ She always spoke to me in French.”
Tynn wished there had been no French invented, so far as her comprehension was concerned. While she stood, undecided what reply to make, wishing very much to express her decided opinion upon the extravagance she saw around her, yet deterred from it by remembering that Mrs. Verner was now her mistress, Ph[oe]by entered with the chocolate. The girl put it down on the mantel-piece — there was no other place — and then made a sign to Mrs. Tynn that she wished to speak with her. They both left the room.
“Am I to be at the beck and call of that French madmizel?” she resentfully asked. “I was not engaged for that, Mrs. Tynn.”
“It seems we are all to be at her beck and call, to hear her go on,” was Mrs. Tynn’s wrathful rejoinder. “Of course it can’t be tolerated. We shall see in a day or two. Ph[oe]by, girl, what could possess Mrs. Verner to buy all them cart-loads of finery? She must have spent the money like water.”
“So she did,” acquiesced Ph[oe]by. “She did nothing all day long but drive about from one place to another and choose pretty things. You should see the china that’s coming over!”
“I wonder Mr. Lionel let her,” was the thoughtlessly-spoken remark of Tynn. And she tried, when too late, to cough it down.
“He helped her, I think,” answered Ph[oe]by. “I know he bought some of that beautiful jewellery for her himself, and brought it home. I saw him kiss her, through the doorway, as he clasped that pink necklace on her neck.”
“Oh, well, I don’t want to hear about that rubbish,” tartly rejoined Tynn. “If you take to peep through doorways, girl, you won’t suit Verner’s Pride.”
Ph[oe]by did not like the rebuff. She turned one way, and Mrs. Tynn went off another.
In the breakfast-room below, in her charming French morning costume, tasty and elegant, sat Sibylla Verner. With French dresses, she seemed to be acquiring French habits. Late as the hour was, the breakfast remained on the table. Sibylla might have sent the things away an hour ago; but she kept a little chocolate in her cup, and toyed with it. She had never tasted chocolate for breakfast in all her life, previous to this visit to Paris: now she protested she could take nothing else. Possibly she may have caught the taste for it from Mademoiselle Benoite. Her husband sat opposite to her, his chair drawn from the table, and turned to face the room. A perfectly satisfied, happy expression pervaded his face; he appeared to be fully contented with his lot and with his bride. Just now he was laughing immoderately.
Perched upon the arm of a sofa, having there come to an anchor, his legs hanging down and swaying about in their favourite fashion, was Jan Verner. Jan had come in to pay them a visit and congratulate them on their return. That is speaking somewhat figuratively, however, for Jan possessed no notion of congratulating anybody. As Lady Verner sometimes resentfully said, Jan had no more social politeness in him than a bear. Upon entering, Sibylla asked him to take some breakfast. Breakfast! echoed Jan, did she call that breakfast? He thought it was their lunch — it was getting on for his dinner-time. Jan was giving Lionel a history of the moonlight flitting, and of Susan Peckaby’s expected expedition to New Jerusalem on a white donkey.
“It ought to have been stopped,” said Lionel, when his laughter had subsided. “They are going out to misery, and to nothing else, poor deluded creatures!”
“Who was to stop it?” asked Jan.
“Some one might have told them the truth. If this Brother Jarrum represented things in rose-coloured hues, could nobody open to their view the other side of the picture? I should have endeavoured to do it, had I been here. If they chose to risk the venture after that, it would have been their own fault.”
“You’d have done no good,” said Jan. “Once let ’em get the Mormon fever upon ‘em, and it must run its course. It’s like the gold fever; nothing will convince folks they are mistaken as to that, except the going out to Australia to the diggings. That will.”
A faint tinge of brighter colour rose to Sibylla’s cheeks at this allusion, and Lionel knit his brow. He would have avoided for ever any chain of thought that led his memory to Frederick Massingbird: he could not bear to think that his young bride had been another’s before she was his. Jan, happily ignorant, continued.
“There’s Susan Peckaby. She has got it in her head that she’s going straight off to Paradise, once she is in the Salt Lake City. Well, now, Lionel, if you, and all the world to help you, set yourselves on to convince her that she’s mistaken, you couldn’t do it. They must go out and find the level of things for themselves — there’s no help for it.”
“Jan, it is not likely that Susan Peckaby really expects a white donkey to be sent for her!” cried Sibylla.
“She as fully expects the white donkey, as I expect that I shall go from here presently, and drop in on Poynton, on my way home,” earnestly said Jan. “He has had a kick from a horse on his shin, and a nasty place it is,” added Jan in a parenthesis. “Nothing on earth would convince Susan Peckaby that the donkey’s a myth, or will be a myth; and she wastes all her time looking out for it. If you were opposite their place now, you’d see her head somewhere; poked out at the door, or peeping from the upstairs window.”
“I wish I could get them all back again — those who have gone from here!” warmly spoke Lionel.
“I wish sometimes I had got four legs, that I might get over double ground, when patients are wanting me on all sides,” returned Jan. “The one wish is just as possible as the other, Lionel. The lot sailed from Liverpool yesterday, in the ship American Star. And I’ll be bound, what with the sea-sickness, and the other discomforts, they are wishing themselves out of it already! I say, Sibylla, what did you think of Paris?”
“Oh, Jan, it’s enchanting! And I have brought the most charming things home. You can come upstairs and see them, if you like. Benoite is unpacking them.”
“Well, I don’t know,” mused Jan. “I don’t suppose they are what I should care to see. What are the things?”
“Dresses, and bonnets, and mantles, and lace, and coiffures,” returned Sibylla. “I can’t tell you half the beautiful things. One of my cache-peignes is of filigrane silver-work, with drops falling from it, real diamonds.”
“What d’ye call a cache-peigne?” asked Jan.
“Don’t you know? An ornament for the hair, that you put on to hide the comb behind. Combs are coming into fashion. Will you come up and see the things, Jan?”
“Not I! What do I care for lace and bonnets?” ungallantly answered Jan. “I didn’t know but Lionel might have brought me some anatomical studies over. They’d be in my line.”
Sibylla shrieked — a pretty little shriek of affectation. “Lionel, why do you let him say such things to me? He means amputated arms and legs.”
“I’m sure I didn’t,” said Jan. “I meant models. They’d not let the other things pass the customs. Have you brought a dress a-piece for Deb and Amilly?”
“No,” said Sibylla, looking up in some consternation. “I never thought about it.”
“Won’t they be disappointed, then! They have counted upon it, I can tell you. They can’t afford to buy themselves much, you know; the doctor keeps them so short,” added Jan.
“I would have brought them something, if I had thought of it; I would, indeed!” exclaimed Sibylla, in an accent of contrition. “Is it not a pity, Lionel?”
“I wish you had,” replied Lionel. “Can you give them nothing of what you have brought?”
“Well — I — must — consider,” hesitated Sibylla, who was essentially selfish. “The things are so beautiful, so expensive; they are scarcely suited to Deborah and Amilly.”
“Why not?” questioned Jan.
“You have not a bit of sense, Jan,” grumbled Sibylla. “Things chosen to suit me, won’t suit them.”
“Why not?” repeated Jan obstinately.
“There never was any one like you, Jan, for stupidity,” was Sibylla’s retort. “I am young and pretty, and a bride; and they are two faded old maids.”
“Dress ’em up young, and they’ll look young,” answered Jan, with composure. “Give ’em a bit of pleasure for once, Sibylla.”
“I’ll see,” impatiently answered Sibylla. “Jan, how came Nancy to go off with the Mormons? Tynn says she packed up her things in secret, and started.”
“How came the rest to go?” was Jan’s answer. “She caught the fever too, I suppose.”
“What Nancy are you talking of?” demanded Lionel. “Not Nancy from here!”
“Oh, Lionel, yes! I forgot to tell you,” said Sibylla. “She is gone indeed. Mrs. Tynn is so indignant. She says the girl must be a fool!”
“Little short of it,” returned Lionel. “To give up a good home here for the Salt Lake! She will repent it.”
“Let ’em all alone for that,” nodded Jan, “I’d like to pay an hour’s visit to ‘em, when they have been a month in the place — if they ever get to it.”
“Tynn says she remembers, when that Brother Jarrum was here in the spring, that Nancy made frequent excuses for going to Deerham in the evening,” resumed Sibylla.
“She thinks it must have been to frequent those meetings in Peckaby’s shop.”
“I thought the man, Jarrum, had gone off, leaving the mischief to die away,” observed Lionel.
“So did everybody else,” said Jan. “He came back the day that you were married. Nancy’s betters got lured into Peckaby’s, as well as Nancy,” he added. “That sickly daughter at Chalk Cottage, she’s gone.”
Lionel looked very much astonished.
“No!” he uttered.
“Fact!” said Jan. “The mother came to me the morning after the flitting, and said she had been seduced away. She wanted to telegraph to Dr. West—”
Jan stopped dead, remembering that Sibylla was present, as well as Lionel. He leaped off the sofa.
“Ah, we shall see them all back some day, if they can only contrive to elude the vigilance of the Mormons. I’m off, Lionel; old Poynton will think I am not coming to-day. Good-bye, Sibylla.”
Jan hastened from the room. Lionel stood at the window, and watched him away. Sibylla glided up to her husband, nestling against him.
“Lionel, tell me. Jan never would, though I nearly teased his life out; and Deborah and Amilly persisted that they knew nothing. You tell me.”
“Tell you what, my dearest?”
“After I came home in the winter, there were strange whispers about papa and that Chalk Cottage. People were mysterious over it, and I never could get a word of explanation. Jan was the worst; he was coolly tantalising, and it used to put me in a passion. What was the tale told?”
An involuntary darkening of Lionel’s brow. He cleared it instantly, and looked down on his wife with a smile.
“I know of no tale worth telling you, Sibylla.”
“But there was a tale told?”
“Jan — who, being in closer proximity to Dr. West than any one, may be supposed to know best of his private affairs — tells a tale of Dr. West’s having set a chimney on fire at Chalk Cottage, thereby arousing the ire of its inmates.”
“Don’t you repeat such nonsense to me, Lionel; you are not Jan,” she returned, in a half peevish tone. “I fear papa may have borrowed money from the ladies, and did not repay them,” she added, her voice sinking to a whisper. “But I would not say it to any one but you. What do you think?”
“If my wife will allow me to tell her what I think, I should say that it is her duty — and mine now — not to seek to penetrate into any affairs belonging to Dr. West which he may wish to keep to himself. Is it not so, Sibylla mine?”
Sibylla smiled, and held up her face to be kissed. “Yes, you are right, Lionel.”
Swayed by impulse, more than by anything else, she thought of her treasures upstairs, in the process of dis-interment from their cases by Benoite, and ran from him to inspect them. Lionel put on his hat, and strolled out of doors.
A thought came over him that he would go and pay a visit to his mother. He knew how exacting of attention from him she was, how jealous, so to speak, of Sibylla’s having taken him from her. Lionel hoped by degrees to reduce the breach. Nothing should be wanting on his part to effect it; he trusted that nothing would be wanting on Sibylla’s. He really wished to see his mother after his month’s absence; and he knew she would be pleased at his going there on this, the first morning of his return. As he turned into the high road, he met the vicar of Deerham, the Reverend James Bourne.
They shook hands, and the conversation turned, not unnaturally, on the Mormon flight. As they were talking of it, Roy, the ex-bailiff, was observed crossing the opposite field.
“My brother tells me the report runs that Mrs. Roy contemplated being of the company, but was overtaken by her husband and brought back,” remarked Lionel.
“How it may have been, about his bringing her back, or whether she actually started, I don’t know,” replied Mr. Bourne, who was a man with a large pale face and iron-gray hair. “That she intended to go, I have reason to believe.”
He spoke the last words significantly, lowering his voice. Lionel looked at him.
“She paid me a mysterious visit at the vicarage the night before the start,” continued the clergyman. “A very mysterious visit, indeed, taken in conjunction with her words. I was in my study, reading by candle-light, when somebody came tapping at the glass door, and stole in. It was Mrs. Roy. She was in a state of tremor, as I have heard it said she appeared the night the inquiry was held at Verner’s Pride, touching the death of Rachel Frost. She spoke to me in ambiguous terms of a journey she was about to take — that she should probably be away for her whole life — and then she proceeded to speak of that night.”
“The night of the inquiry?” echoed Lionel.
“The night of the inquiry — that is, the night of the accident,” returned Mr. Bourne. “She said she wished to confide a secret to me, which she had not liked to touch upon before, but which she could not leave the place without confiding to some one responsible, who might use it in case of need. The secret she proceeded to tell me was — that it was Frederick Massingbird who had been quarrelling with Rachel that night by the Willow Pool. She could swear it to me, she said, if necessary.”
“But — if that were true — why did she not proclaim it at the time?” asked Lionel, after a pause.
“It was all she said. And she would not be questioned. ‘In case o’ need, sir, in case anybody else should ever be brought up for it, tell ’em that Dinah Roy asserted to you with her last breath in Deerham, that Mr. Fred Massingbird was the one that was with Rachel.’ Those were the words she used to me; I dotted them down after she left. As I tell you, she would not be questioned, and glided out again almost immediately.”
“Was she wandering in her mind?”
“I think not. She spoke with an air of truth. When I heard of the flight of the converts the next morning, I could only conclude that Mrs. Roy had intended to be amongst them. But now, understand me, Mr. Verner, although I have told you this, I have not mentioned it to another living soul. Neither do I intend to do so. It can do no good to reap up the sad tale; whether Frederick Massingbird was or was not with Rachel that night; whether he was in any way guilty, or was purely innocent, it boots not to inquire now.”
“It does not,” warmly replied Lionel. “You have done well. Let us bury Mrs. Roy’s story between us, and forget it, so far as we can.”
They parted. Lionel took his way to Deerham Court, absorbed in thought. His own strong impression had been, that Mr. Fred Massingbird was the black sheep with regard to Rachel.
CHAPTER 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.
