Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/334

 326 visit it, or see any remedy. She took to passing her time in groaning and tears, somewhat after the fashion of Dinah Roy, venting her complaints upon anybody that would listen to her.

Lionel had not said to the men, “You shall leave Peckaby’s shop.” He had not even hinted to them that it might be desirable to leave it. In short, he had not interfered. But, the restraint of Roy being removed from the men, they quitted it of their own accord. “No more Roy; no more Peckaby; no more grinding down—hurrah!” shouted they, and went back to the old shops in the village.

All sorts of improvements had Lionel begun. That is, he had planned them: begun yet, they were not. Building better tenements for the labourers, repairing and draining the old ones, adding whatever might be wanted to make the dwellings healthy: draining, ditching, hedging. “It shall not be said that while I live in a palace, my poor live in pigsties,” said Lionel to Mr. Bitterworth, one day. “I’ll do what I can to drive that periodical ague from the place.”

“Have you counted the cost?” was Mr. Bitterworth’s rejoinder.

“No,” said Lionel. “I don’t intend to count it. Whatever the changes may cost, I shall carry them out.”

And Lionel, like other new schemers, was red hot upon them. He drew out plans in his head and with his pencil; he consulted architects, he spent half his days with builders. Lionel was astonished at the mean, petty acts of past tyranny which came to light, exercised by Roy: far more than he had had any idea of. He blushed for himself and for his uncle, that such a state of things had been allowed to go on: he wondered that it could have gone on: that he had been blind to so much of it, or that the men had not exercised Lynch law upon Roy.

Roy had taken his place in the brickyard, as workman; but Lionel, in the anger of the moment, when these things came out, felt inclined to spurn him from the land. He would have done it but for his promise to the man himself; and for the pale sad face of Mrs. Roy. In the hour when his anger was at its height, the woman came up to Verner’s Pride, stealthily, as it seemed, and craved him to write to Australia, “now he was a grand gentleman,” and ask the “folks over there” if they could send back news of her son. “it’s going on of a twelvemonth since he writed to us, sir, and we don’t know where to write to him, and I’m a’most fretted into my grave.”

“My opinion is, that he is coming home,” said Lionel.

“Heaven sink the ship first!” she involuntarily muttered, and then she burst into a violent flood of tears.

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Lionel. “Don’t you want him to come home?”

“No, sir. No.”

“But why? Are you fearing”—he jumped to the most probable solution of her words that he could suggest—“are you fearing that he and Roy would not agree?—that there would be unpleasant scenes between them, as there used to be?”

The woman had her face buried in her hands, and she never lifted it as she answered, in a stifled voice, “It’s what I’m a fearing, sir.”

Lionel could not quite understand her. He thought her more weak and silly than usual.

“But he is not coming home,” she resumed. “No, sir, I don’t believe that England will ever see him again: and it’s best as it is, for there’s nothing but care and sorrow here, in the old country. But I’d like to know what’s become of him; whether he is alive or dead, whether he is starving or in comfort. “Oh, sir!” she added, with a burst of wailing anguish, “write for me, and ask news of him! They’d answer you. My heart is aching for it.”

He did not explain to her then, how very uncertain was the fate of emigrants to that country; how next to impossible it might be to obtain intelligence of an obscure young man like Luke: he contented himself with giving her what he thought would be better comfort.

“Mrs. Frederick Massingbird will be returning in the course of a few months, and I think she may bring news of him. Should she not, I will see what inquiries can be made.”

“Will she be coming soon, sir?”

“In two or three months, I should suppose. The Miss Wests may be able to tell you more definitely, if they have heard from her.”

“Thank ye, sir; then I’ll wait till she’s home. You’ll not tell Roy that I have been up here, sir?”

“Not I,” said Lionel. “I was debating, when you came in, whether I should not turn Roy off the estate altogether. His past conduct to the men has been disgraceful.”

“Ay, it have, sir! But it was my fate to marry him, and I have had to look on in quiet, and see things done, not daring to say as my soul’s my own. It’s not my fault, sir.”

Lionel knew that it was not. He pitied her, rather than blamed.

“Will you go into the servants’ hall and eat something after your walk?” he asked kindly.

“No, sir, many thanks. I don’t want to see the servants. They might get telling that I have been here.”

She stole out from his presence, her pale sad face, her evidently deep sorrow, whatever might be its source, making a vivid impression upon Lionel. But for that sad face, he might have dealt more harshly with her husband. And so Roy was tolerated still.

had pleaded an engagement, as an excuse for quitting his mother’s drawing-room and her guests. It must have been at home, we must suppose, for he took his way straight towards Verner’s Pride, sauntering through the village as if he had leisure to look about him, his thoughts deep in his projected improvements.

Here, a piece of stagnant water was to be filled in; there, was the site of his new tenements; yonder, was the spot for a projected library and reading-room; on, he walked, throwing his glances everywhere. As he neared the shop of Mrs. Duff, a man came suddenly in view, facing him: a little man, in a suit of rusty black, and a white