WAS IT A SPECTRE?
When they returned to the rooms, Sir Edmund with Decima, Lady Verner by her daughter's side, the first object that met their view was Jan. Jan at a ball! Lady Verner lifted her eyebrows; she had never believed that Jan would really show himself where he must be so entirely out of place. But there Jan was; in decent dress, too—black clothes, and a white neckcloth and gloves. It's true the bow of his neckcloth was tied upside down, and the gloves had their thumbs nearly out. Jan's great hands laid hold of both Sir Edmund's.
"I'm uncommon glad you are back!" cried he—which was his polite phrase for expressing satisfaction.
"So am I, Jan," heartily answered Sir Edmund. "I have never had a real friend, Jan, since I left you."
"We can be friends still," said plain Jan.
"Ay," said Sir Edmund meaningly, "and brothers." But the last word was spoken in Jan's ear alone, for they were in a crowd now.
"To see you here very much surprises me, Jan," remarked Lady Verner, asperity in her tone. "I hope you will contrive to behave properly."
Lady Mary Elmsley, then standing with them, laughed. "What are you afraid he should do, Lady Verner?"
"He was not made for society," said Lady Verner, with asperity.
"Nor society for me," returned Jan good-humouredly. "I'd rather be watching a case of fever."
"Oh, Jan!" cried Lady Mary, laughing still.
"So I would," repeated Jan. "At somebody's bedside, in my easy coat, I feel at home. And I feel that I am doing good; that's more. This is nothing but waste of time."
"You hear?" appealed Lady Verner to them, as if Jan's avowal were a passing proof of her assertion—that he and society were antagonistic to each other, "I wonder you took the thought to attire yourself passably," she added, her face retaining its strong vexation. "Had anybody asked me, I should have given it as my opinion, that you had not things fit to appear in."
"I had got these," returned Jan, looking down at his clothes. "Won't they do? It's my funeral suit."
The unconscious, matter-of-fact style of Jan's avowal was beyond everything. Lady Verner was struck dumb, Sir Edmund smiled, and Mary Elmsley laughed outright.
"Oh, Jan!" said she, "you'll be a child all your days. What do you mean by your 'funeral suit'?"
"Anybody might know that," was Jan's answer to Lady Mary. "It's the suit I keep for funerals. A doctor is always being asked to attend them; and if he does not go he offends the people."
"You might have kept the information to yourself," rebuked Lady Verner.
"It doesn't matter, does it?" asked Jan. "Aren't they good enough to come in?"
He turned his head round, to get a glance at the said suit behind. Sir Edmund laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder. Young as Jan had been before Edmund Hautley went out, they had lived close friends.
"The clothes are all right, Jan. And if you had come without a coat at all, you would have been equally welcome to me."
"I should not have gone to this sort of thing anywhere else, you know; it is not in my line, as my mother says. I came to see you."
"And I would rather see you, Jan, than anybody else in the room—with one exception," was the reply of Sir Edmund. "I am sorry not to see Lionel."
"He couldn't come," answered Jan. "His wife turned crusty, and said she'd come if he did—something of that—and so he stayed at home. She is very ill, and she wants to ignore it, and go out all the same. It is not fit she should."
"Pray do you mean to dance, Jan?" inquired Lady Verner, the question being put ironically.
"I?" returned Jan. "Who'd dance with me?"
"I'll dance with you, Jan," said Lady Mary.
Jan shook his head. "I might get my feet entangled in the petticoats."
"Not you, Jan," said Sir Edmund, laughing. "I should risk that, if a lady asked me."
"She'd not care to dance with me," returned Jan, looking at Mary Elmsley. "She only says it out of good-nature."
"No, Jan, I don't think I do," frankly avowed Lady Mary. "I should like to dance with you."
"I'd stand up with you, if I stood up with anybody," replied Jan. "But where's the good of it? I don't know the figures, and should only put you out, as well as everybody else."
So, what with his ignorance of the figures, and his dreaded awkwardness amidst the trains, Jan was allowed to rest in peace. Mary Elmsley told him that if he would come over sometimes to their house in an evening, she and her young sisters would practise the figures with him, so that he might learn them. It was Jan's turn to laugh now. The notion of his practising dancing, or having evenings to waste on it, amused him considerably.
"Go to your house to learn dancing!" echoed he. "Folks would be for putting me into a lunatic asylum. If I do find an hour to myself any odd evening, I have to get to my dissection. I went shares the other day in a beautiful subject—"
"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.