SELF WILL.
Gathered before a target on the lawn, in their archery costume gleaming with green and gold, was a fair group, shooting their arrows in the air. Far more went into the air than struck the target. They were the visitors of Verner's Pride; and Sibylla, the hostess, was the gayest, the merriest, the fairest among them.
Lionel came on to the terrace, descended the steps, and crossed the lawn to join them—as courtly, as apparently gay, as if that bill of Mrs. Duff's was not making havoc of his heartstrings. They all ran to surround him. It was not often they had so attractive a host to surround; and attractive men are, and always will be, welcome to women. A few minutes, a quarter of an hour given to them, an unruffled smoothness on his brow, a smile upon his lips, and then he contrived to draw his wife aside.
"Oh, Lionel, I forgot to tell you," she exclaimed. "Poynton has been here. He knows of the most charming pair of gray ponies, he says. And they can be ours if secured at once."
"I don't want gray ponies," replied Lionel.
"But I do," cried Sibylla. "You say I am too timid to drive. It is all nonsense; I should soon get over the timidity. I will learn to drive, Lionel. Mrs. Jocelyn, come here," she called out.
Mrs. Jocelyn, a young and pretty woman, almost as pretty as Sibylla, answered to the summons.
"Tell Mr. Verner what Poynton said about the ponies."
"Oh, you must not miss the opportunity," cried Mrs. Jocelyn to Lionel. "They are perfectly beautiful, the man said. Very dear, of course; but you know nobody looks at money when buying horses for a lady. Mrs. Verner must have them. You might secure them to-day."
"I have no room in my stables for more horses," said Lionel, smiling at Mrs. Jocelyn's eagerness.
"Yes, you have, Lionel," interposed his wife. "Or, if not, room must be made. I have ordered the ponies to be brought."
"I shall send them back," said Lionel, laughing.
"Don't you wish your wife to take to driving, Mr. Verner? Don't you like to see a lady drive? Some do not."
"I think there is no necessity for a lady to drive, while she has a husband at her side to drive for her," was the reply of Lionel.
"Well—if I had such a husband as you to drive for me, I don't know but I might subscribe to that doctrine," candidly avowed Mrs. Jocelyn. "I would not miss these ponies, were I Mrs. Verner. You can drive them, you know. They are calling me. It is my turn, I suppose."
She ran back to the shooting, Sibylla was following her, but Lionel caught her hand and drew her into a covered walk. Placing her hand within his arm, he began to pace it.
"I must go back, too, Lionel."
"Presently. Sibylla, I have been terribly vexed this morning."
"Oh, now Lionel, don't you begin about 'vexing,'" interrupted Sibylla, in the foolish, light, affected manner, which had grown worse of late, more intolerable to Lionel. "I have ordered the ponies. Poynton will send them in; and if there's really not room in the stables, you must see about it, and give orders that room must be made."
"I cannot buy the ponies," he firmly said. "My dear, I have given in to your every wish, to your most trifling whim; but, as I told you a few days ago, these ever-recurring needless expenses I cannot stand. Sibylla"—and his voice grew hoarse—"do you know that I am becoming embarrassed?"
"I don't care if you are," pouted Sibylla. "I must have the ponies."
His heart ached. Was this the loving wife—the intelligent companion for whom he had once yearned?—the friend who should be as his own soul? He had married the Sibylla of his imagination; and he woke to find Sibylla—what she was. The disappointment was heavy upon him always; but there were moments when he could have cried out aloud in its sharp bitterness.
"Sibylla, you know the state in which some of my tenants live; the miserable dwellings they are forced to inhabit. I must change this state of things. I believe it to be a duty for which I am accountable to God. How am I to set about it if you ruin me?"
Sibylla put her fingers to her ears. "I can't stand to listen when you preach, Lionel. It is as bad as a sermon."
It was ever thus. He could not attempt to reason with her. Anything like sensible conversation she could not, or would not, hold. Lionel, considerate to her as he ever was, felt provoked.
"Do you know that this unfortunate affair of Alice Hook's is laid remotely to me?" he said, with a sternness, which he could not help, in his tone. "People are saying that if I gave them decent dwellings, decent conduct would ensue. It is so. God knows that I feel its truth more keenly than my reproachers."
"The dwellings are good enough for the poor."
"Sibylla! You cannot think it. The laws of God and man alike demand a change. Child," he continued in a softer tone, as he took her hand in his, "let us bring the case home to ourselves. Suppose that you and I had to sleep in a room a few feet square, no chimney, no air, and that others tenanted it with us? Girls and boys growing up—nay, grown up, some of them; men and women as we are, Sibylla. The beds huddled together, no space between them; sickness, fever—"
"I am only shutting my ears," interrupted Sibylla. "You pretend to be so careful of me—you would not even let me go to that masked ball in Paris—and yet you put these horrid pictures into my mind! I think you ought to be ashamed of it, Lionel. People sleeping in the same room with us!"
"If the picture be revolting, what must be the reality?" was his rejoinder. "They have to endure it."
"They are used to it," retorted Sibylla. "They are brought up to nothing better."
"Just so. And therefore their perceptions of right and wrong are deadened. The wonder is, not that Alice Hook has lost herself, but that—"
"I don't want to hear about Alice Hook," interrupted Sibylla. "She is not very good to talk about."
"I have been openly told, Sibylla, that the reproach should lie at my door."
"I believe it is not the first reproach of the kind that has been cast on you," answered Sibylla, with cutting sarcasm.
He did not know what she meant, or in what sense to take the remark; but his mind was too preoccupied to linger on it. "With these things staring me in the face, how can I find money for superfluous vanities? The time has come when I am compelled to make a stand against it. I will, I must, have decent dwellings on my estate, and I shall set about the work without a day's loss of time. For that reason, if for no other, I cannot buy the ponies."
"I have bought them," coolly interrupted Sibylla.
"Then, my dear, you must forgive me if I countermand the purchase. I am resolute, Sibylla," he continued, in a firm tone. "For the first time since our marriage, I must deny your wish. I cannot let you bring me to beggary, because it would also involve you. Another year or two of this extravagance, and I should be on the verge of it."
Sibylla flung his arms from her. "Do you want to keep me as a beggar? I will have the ponies!"
He shook his head. "The subject is settled, Sibylla. If you cannot think for yourself, I must think for you. But it was not to speak of the ponies that I brought you here. What is it that you owe to Mrs. Duff?"
Sibylla's colour heightened. "It is no business of yours, Lionel, what I owe her. There may be some trifle or other down in her book. It will be time enough for you to concern yourself with my little petty debts when you are asked to pay them."
"Then that time is the present one, with regard to Mrs. Duff. She applied to me for the money this morning. At least, she asked if I would speak to you—which is the same thing. She says you owe her thirty-two pounds. Sibylla, I had far rather been stabbed than have heard it."
"A fearful sum, truly, to be doled out of your coffers!" cried Sibylla, sarcastically. "You'll never recover it, I should think!"
"Not that—not that," was the reply of Lionel, his tone one of pain. "Sibylla! have you no sense of the fitness of things? Is it seemly for the mistress of Verner's Pride to keep a poor woman, as Mrs. Duff is, out of her money; a humble shopkeeper who has to pay her way as she goes on?"
"I wish Fred had lived! He would never have taken me to task as you do."
"I wish he had!" was the retort in Lionel's heart; but he bit his lips to silence, exchanging the words, after a few minutes' pause, for others.
"You would have found Frederick Massingbird a less indulgent husband to you than I have been," he firmly said. "But these remarks are profitless, and will add to the comfort of neither you nor me. Sibylla, I shall send, in your name, to pay this bill of Mrs. Duff's. Will you give it me?"
"I dare say Benoite can find it, if you choose to ask her."
"And, my dear, let me beg of you not to contract these paltry debts. There have been others, as you know. I do not like that Mrs. Verner's name should be thus bandied in the village. What you buy in the village, pay for at once."
"How can I pay while you stint me?"
"Stint you!" repeated Lionel, in amazement. "Stint you!"
"It's nothing but stinting—going on at me as you do!" she sullenly answered. "You would like to deprive me of the horses I have set my mind upon! You know you would!"
"The horses you cannot have, Sibylla," he answered, his tone a decisive one. "I have already said it."
It aroused her anger. "If you don't let me have the horses, and all other things I want, I'll go where I can have them."
What did she mean? Lionel's cheek turned white with the taunt the words might be supposed to imply. He held her two hands in his, pressing them nervously.
"You shall not force me to quarrel with you, Sibylla," he continued, with emotion. "I have almost registered a vow that no offensive word or conduct on your part shall make me forget myself for a moment; or render me other than an ever considerate, tender husband. It may be that our marriage was a mistake for both of us; but we shall do well to make the best of it. It is the only course remaining."
He spoke in a strangely earnest tone; one of deep agitation. Sibylla was aroused. She had believed that Lionel blindly loved her. Otherwise she might have been more careful to retain his love—there's no knowing.
"How do you mean that our marriage was a mistake for both of us?" she hastily cried.
"You do your best to remind me continually that it must be so," was his reply.
"Psha!" returned Sibylla. And Lionel, without another word, quitted her and walked away. In these moments, above all others, would the image of Lucy Tempest rise up before his sight. Beat it down as he would, it was ever present to him. A mistake in his marriage! Ay; none save Lionel knew how fatal a one.
He passed on direct to the terrace, avoiding the lawn, traversed it, and went out at the large gates. Thence he made his way to Poynton's, the veterinary surgeon, who also dealt in horses. At least, dealt in them so far as that he would buy and sell when employed to do so.
The man was in his yard, watching a horse go through his paces. He came forward to meet Lionel.
"Mrs. Verner has been talking to you about some ponies, she tells me," began Lionel. "What are they?"
"A very handsome pair, sir. Just the thing for a lady to drive. They are to be sold for a hundred and fifty pounds. It's under their value."
"Spirited?"
"Yes. They have their mettle about them. Good horses always have, you know, sir. Mrs. Verner has given me the commission."
"Which I am come to rescind," replied Lionel, calling up a light smile to his face. "I cannot have my wife's neck risked by her attempting to drive spirited ponies, Poynton. She knows nothing of driving, is constitutionally timid, and—in short, I do not wish the order executed."
"Very well, sir," was the man's reply. "There's no harm done. I was at Verner's Pride with that horse that's ill, and Mrs. Verner spoke to me about some ponies. It was only to-day I heard these were in the market, and I mentioned them to her. But, for all I know, they may be already sold."
Lionel turned to walk out of the yard. "After Mrs. Verner shall have learned to drive, then we shall see; perhaps we may buy a pair," he remarked. "My opinion is that she will not learn. After a trial or two she will give it up."
"All right, sir."