AN EVENING AT LADY VERNER'S.
In the well-lighted drawing-room at Deerham Court was its mistress, Lady Verner. Seated with her on the same sofa was her son, Lionel. Decima, at a little distance, was standing talking to Lord Garle. Lucy Tempest sat at the table cutting the leaves of a new book; and Sibylla was bending over the fire in a shivering attitude, as if she could not get enough of its heat. Lord Garle had been dining with them.
The door opened and Jan entered. "I have brought you a visitor, Sibylla," said he, in his unceremonious fashion, without any sort of greeting to anybody. "Come in, doctor."
It caused quite a confusion, the entrance of Dr. West. All were surprised. Lionel rose, Lucy rose; Lord Garle and Decima came forward, and Sibylla sprang towards him with a cry. Lady Verner was the only one who retained entire calmness.
"Papa! it cannot be you! When did you come?"
Dr. West kissed her, and turned to Lady Verner with some courtly words. Dr. West was an adept at such. Not the courtly words that spring genuinely from a kindly and refined nature; but those that are put on to hide a false one. All people, true-hearted ones, too, cannot distinguish between them; the false and the real. Next, the doctor grasped the hand of Lionel.
"My son-in-law!" he exclaimed in a very demonstrative manner. "The last time you and I had the pleasure of meeting, Mr. Verner, we little anticipated that such a relationship would ensue. I rejoice to welcome you in it, my dear sir."
"True," said Lionel, with a quiet smile. "Coming events do not always cast their shadows before."
With Decima, with Lord Garle, with Lucy Tempest, the doctor severally shook hands; he had a phrase of suavity for them all.
"I should not have known you," he said to the latter.
"No!" returned Lucy. "Why?"
"You have grown, Miss Tempest. Grown much."
"Then I must have been very short before," said Lucy. "I am not tall now."
"You have grown into remarkable beauty," added the doctor.
Whether Lucy had grown into beauty, or not, she did not like being told of it. And she did not like Dr. West. She had not been in love with him ever, as you may recollect; but she seemed to like him now, as he stood before her, less and less. Drawing away from him when she could do so civilly, she went up and talked to Jan.
A little while, and they had become more settled, dispersing into groups. The doctor, his daughter, and Lionel were sitting on a couch apart, conversing in an undertone; the rest disposed themselves as they would. Dr. West had accepted a cup of coffee. He kept it in his hand, sipping it now and then, and slowly ate a biscuit.
"Mr. Jan tells me Sibylla is not very strong," he observed, addressing both of them, but more particularly Lionel.
"Not very," replied Lionel. "The cold weather of this winter has tried her; has given her a cough. She will be better, I hope, when it comes in warm."
"How do you feel, my dear?" inquired the doctor, apparently looking at his coffee-cup instead of Sibylla. "Weak here?"—touching his chest.
"Not more weak than I had used to be," she answered in a cross tone, as if the confession that she did feel weak was not pleasant to her. "There's nothing the matter with me, papa; only Lionel makes a fuss."
"Nay, Sibylla," interposed Lionel good-humouredly, "I leave that to you and Jan."
"You would like to make papa believe you don't make a fuss!" she cried, in a most resentful tone; "when you know, not two days ago, you wanted to prevent my going to the party at Mrs. Bitterworth's!"
"I plead guilty to that," said Lionel. "It was a most inclement night, a cold, raw fog that penetrated everywhere, carriages and all else, and I wished you not to venture out in it. The doing so increased your cough."
"Mr. Verner was right," said Dr. West. "Night fogs are pernicious to a degree, where the chest and lungs are delicate. You should not stir out of the house, Sibylla, after sunset. Now don't interrupt, my dear. Let the carriage be ever so closely shut, it makes no difference. There is the change of atmosphere from the warm room to the cold carriage; there are the draughts of air in passing to it. You must not do it, Sibylla."
"Do you mean to say, papa, that I am to live like a hermit?—never to go out?" she returned, her bosom heaving with vexation. "It is not much visiting that I have had, goodness knows, since quitting Verner's Pride: if I am to give it all up, you may as well put me out of the world. As good be dead!"
"Sibylla," said the doctor, more impressively than he often spoke, "I know your constitution, and I know pretty well what you can and what you can not bear. Don't attempt to stir out after sunset again. Should you get stronger it will be a different matter. At present it must not be. Will you remember this, Mr. Verner?"
"If my wife will allow me to remember it," he said, bending to Sibylla with a kindly tone. "My will was good to keep her in, all this winter; but she would not be kept."
"What has Jan been telling you about me, papa? It is a shame of him! I am not ill."
"Mr. Jan has told me very little indeed of your ailments," replied Dr. West. "He says you are not strong; he says you are fretful, irritable. My dear, this arises from your state of health."
"I have thought so, too," said Lionel, speaking impulsively. Many and many a time, latterly, when she had nearly tired out his heart and his patience, had he been willing to find an excuse for her still—that her illness of body caused in her the irritation of mind. Or, at any rate, greatly increased it.
An eye, far less experienced than that of Dr. West—who, whatever may have been his other shortcomings, was clever in his profession—could have seen at a glance how weak Sibylla was. She wore an evening dress of white muslin, its body very low and its sleeves very short; her chest was painfully thin, and every breath she took lifted it ominously: she seemed to be breathing outside as well as in. The doctor touched the muslin.
"This is not a fit dress for you, Sibylla—"
"Lionel has been putting you up to say it, papa!" she burst forth.
Dr. West looked at her. He surmised, what was indeed the case, that her husband had remonstrated against the unsuitableness of the attire, to one in her condition.
"You have heard every word Mr. Verner has spoken to me, Sibylla. You should be wrapped up warmly always. To be exposed as you are now, is enough to—to"—give you your death, he was about to say, but changed the words—"make you very ill."
"Decima and Lucy Tempest dress so," she returned in a tone that threatened tears.
Dr. West lifted his eyes to where Decima and Lucy were standing with Lord Garle. Decima wore a silk dress, Lucy a white one; each made evening fashion.
"They are both healthy," he said, "and may wear what they please. Look at their necks, compared to yours, Sibylla. I shall ask Mr. Verner to put all these thin dresses, these low bodies, behind the fire."
"He would only have the pleasure of paying for others to replace them," was the undutiful rejoinder. "Papa, I have enough trouble, without your turning against me."
Turning against her! Dr. West did not point out how purposeless were her words. His intention was to come in in the morning, and talk to her seriously of her state of health, and the precautions it was necessary to observe. He took a sip of his coffee, and turned to Lionel.
"I was about to ask you a superfluous question, Mr. Verner—whether that lost codicil has been heard of. But your leaving Verner's Pride is an answer."
"It has never been heard of," replied Lionel. "When John Massingbird returned and put in his claim—when he took possession, I may say, for the one was coeval with the other—the wanting of the codicil was indeed a grievance; far more than it had appeared at the time of its loss."
"You must regret it very much."
"I regret it always," he answered. "I regret it bitterly for Sibylla's sake."
"Papa," she cried, in deep emotion, her cheeks becoming crimson, her blue eyes flashing with an unnatural light, "if that codicil could be found it would save my life. Jan, in his rough, stupid way, tells me I am fretting myself into my grave. Perhaps I am. I want to go back to Verner's Pride."
It was not a pleasant subject to converse on; it was a subject utterly hopeless—and Dr. West sought one more genial. Ranging his eyes over the room, they fell upon Lord Garle, who was still talking with Decima and Lucy.
"Which of the two young ladies makes the viscount's attraction, Mr. Verner?"
Lionel smiled. "They do not take me into their confidence, sir; any one of the three."
"I am sure it is not Decima, papa," spoke up Sibylla. "She's as cold as a stone. I won't answer for its not being Lucy Tempest. Lord Garle comes here a good deal, and he and Lucy seem great friends. I often think he comes for Lucy."
"Then there's little doubt upon the point," observed the doctor, coming to a more rapid conclusion than the words really warranted. "Time was, Mr. Verner, when I thought that young lady would have been your wife."
"Who?" asked Lionel. But that he only asked the question in his confusion, without need, was evident; the tell-tale flush betrayed it. His pale face had turned red; red to the very roots of his hair.
"In those old days when you were ill, lying here, and Miss Tempest was so much with you, I fancied I saw the signs of a mutual attachment," continued the doctor. "I conclude I must have been mistaken."
"Little doubt of that, doctor," lightly answered Lionel, recovering his equanimity, though he could not yet recover his disturbed complexion, and laughing as he spoke.
Sibylla's greedy ears had drunk up the words, her sharp eyes had caught the conscious flush, and her jealous heart was making the most of it. At that unfortunate moment, as ill-luck had it, Lucy brought up the basket of cakes and held it out to Dr. West. Lionel rose to take it from her.
"I was taking your name in vain, Miss Tempest," said the complacent doctor. "Did you hear me?"
"No," replied Lucy, smiling. "What about?"
"I was telling Mr. Verner that in the old days I had deemed his choice was falling upon another, rather than my daughter. Do you remember, young lady?—in that long illness of his?"
Lucy did remember. And the remembrance, thus called suddenly before her, the words themselves, the presence of Lionel, all brought to her far more emotion than had arisen to him. Her throat heaved as with a spasm, and the startled colour dyed her face. Lionel saw it. Sibylla saw it.
"It proves to us how we may be mistaken, Miss Tempest," observed the doctor, who, from that habit of his, already hinted at, of never looking people in the face when he spoke to them, had failed to observe anything. "I hear there is a probability of this fair hand being appropriated by another. One who can enhance his value by coupling it with a coronet."
"Don't take the trouble, Lucy. I am holding it."
It was Lionel who spoke. In her confusion she had not loosed hold of the cake-basket, although he had taken it. Quietly, impassively, in the most unruffled manner spoke he, smiling carelessly. Only for a moment had his self-control been shaken. "Will you take a biscuit, Dr. West?" he asked; and the doctor chose one.
"Lucy, my dear, will you step here to me?"
The request came from the other end of the room, from Lady Verner. Lionel, who was about to place the cake-basket on the table, stopped and held out his arm to Lucy, to conduct her to his mother. They went forward, utterly unconscious that Sibylla was casting angry and jealous glances at them; conscious only that those sacred feelings in either heart, so well hid from the world, had been stirred to their very depths.
The door opened, and one of the servants entered. "Mr. Jan is wanted."
"Who's been taken ill now, I wonder?" cried Jan, descending from the arm of his mother's sofa, where he had been perched.
In the ante-room was Master Cheese, looking rueful.
"There's a message come from Squire Pidcock's," cried he in a most resentful tone. "Somebody's to attend immediately. Am I to go?"
"I suppose you'd faint at having to go, after being up to Miss Hautley's," returned Jan. "You'd never survive the two, should you?"
"Well, you know, Jan, it's a good mile and a half to Pidcock's, and I had to go to the other place without my tea," remonstrated Master Cheese.
"I dare say Miss Deb has given you your tea since you came home."
"But it's not like having it at the usual hour. And I couldn't finish it in comfort, when this message came."
"Be off back and finish it now, then," said Jan. And the young gentleman departed with alacrity, while Jan made the best of his way to Squire Pidcock's.