Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/335

 . 13, 1862.] neckcloth, with a pale face and red whiskers, whom Lionel remembered to have seen once before, a day or two previously. As soon as he caught sight of Lionel he turned short off, crossed the street, and darted out of sight down the Belvidere Road.

“That looks as though he wanted to avoid me,” thought Lionel. “I wonder who he may be? Do you know who that man is, Mrs. Duff?” asked he aloud. “For that lady was taking the air at her shop-door, and had watched the movement.

“I don’t know much about him, sir. He have been a stopping in the place this day or two. What did I hear his name was, again?” added Mrs. Duff, putting her fingers to her temples in a considering fit. “Jarrum, I think. Yes, that was it. Brother Jarrum, sir.”

“Brother Jarrum?” repeated Lionel, uncertain whether the “Brother” might be spoken in a social point of view, or was a name bestowed upon the gentleman in baptism.

“He’s a missionary from abroad, or something of that sort, sir. He is come to see what he can do towards converting us.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Lionel, his lip curling with a smile. The man’s face had not taken his fancy. “Honest missionaries do not need run away to avoid meeting people, Mrs. Duff.”

“He have got cross eyes,” responded Mrs. Duff. “Perhaps that’s a reason he mayn’t like to look gentlefolks in the face, sir.”

“Where does he come from?”

“Well, now, sir, I did hear,” replied Mrs. Duff, putting on her considering cap again. “It were some religious place, sir, that’s talked of a good deal in the Bible. Jericho, were it? No. It began with a J, though. Oh, I have got it, sir! It were Jerusalem. He comes all the way from Jerusalem.”

“Where is he lodging?” continued Lionel.

“He have been lodging at the George and Dragon, sir. But today he have gone and took that spare room as the Peckabys have wanted to let, since their custom fell off.”

“He means to make a stay, then?”

“It looks like it, sir. Susan Peckaby, she were in here half-an-hour ago, a-buying new ribbons for a cap, all agog with it. He’s a-going to hold forth in their shop, she says, and see how many of the parish he can turn into saints. I says it won’t be a bad ‘turn,’ sir, if it keeps the men from the beer-houses.”

Lionel laughed as he went on. He supposed it was a new movement that would have its brief day and then be over, leaving results neither good nor bad behind it; and he dismissed the man from his memory.

He walked on, in the elasticity of his youth and health. All nature seemed to be smiling around him. Outward things take their hue very much from the inward feelings, and Lionel felt happier than he had done for months and months. Had the image of Lucy Tempest any thing to do with this? No—nothing. He had not yet grown to love Lucy in that idolising manner, as to bring her ever present to him. He was thinking of the change in his own fortunes; he cast his eyes around to the right and the left, and they rested on his own domains—domains which had for a time been wrested from him; and as his quick steps rung on the frosty road, his heart went up in thankfulness to the Giver of all good.

Just before he reached Verner’s Pride, he overtook Mr. Bitterworth, who was leaning against a road-side gate. He had been attacked by sudden giddiness, he said, and asked Lionel to give him an arm home. Lionel proposed that he should come in and remain for a while at Verner’s Pride; but Mr. Bitterworth preferred to go home.

“It is one of my bilious attacks coming on,” he remarked, as they went along. “I have not had a bad one for this four months.”

Lionel took him safe home, and remained with him for some time, talking; the chief theme being his own contemplated improvements: of that topic, Lionel never tired. Altogether, it was late when he reached Verner’s Pride. Night had set in, and his dinner was waiting.

He ate it hurriedly—he mostly did eat hurriedly when he was alone, as if he were glad to get it over—Tynn waiting on him. Tynn liked to wait upon his young master. Tynn had been in a state of glowing delight since the accession of Lionel. Attached to the old family, Tynn had felt it almost as keenly as Lionel himself, when the estate had lapsed to the Massingbirds. Mrs. Tynn was in a glow of delight also. There was no mistress, and she ruled the household, including Tynn.

The dinner gone away and the wine on the table, Lionel drew his chair in front of the fire, and fell into a train of thought, leaving the wine untouched. Full half an hour had he thus sat, when the entrance of Tynn aroused him. He poured out a glass, and raised it to his lips. Tynn bore a note on his silver waiter.

“Matiss’s boy has just brought it, sir. He is waiting to know whether there’s any answer.”

Lionel opened the note, and was reading it, when a sound of carriage wheels came rattling on to the terrace, passed the windows, and stopped at the hall door. “Who can be paying me a visit to-night, I wonder?” cried he. “Go and see, Tynn.”

“It sounded like one of them rattling one-horse flies from the railway station,” was Tynn’s comment, as he left the room.

Whoever it might be, they appeared pretty long in entering, and Lionel, very greatly to his surprise, heard a sound as of much luggage being deposited in the hall. He was on the point of going out to see, when the door opened, and a lovely vision glided forward. A young, fair face and form, clothed in deep mourning, with a shower of golden curls shading her damask cheeks. For one single moment, Lionel was lost in the beauty of the vista. Then he recognised her, before Tynn’s announcement was heard; and his heart leaped as if it would burst its bounds.

“Mrs. Massingbird, sir.”

Leaped within him fast and furiously. His pulses throbbed, his blood coursed on, and his face went hot and cold with its emotion. Had he been fondly persuading himself, during the past