Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/696

688 “It cannot be, Sibylla. Lady Verner has no accommodation for Benoite.”

“She must make accommodation. When people used to come here to visit us, they brought their servants with them.”

“Oh, Sibylla! can you not see the difference? But—what do you owe Benoite?” he added in a different tone.

“I don’t owe her anything,” replied Sibylla eagerly, quite mistaking the motive of the question. “I have always paid her every month. She’d never let it go on.”

“Then there will be the less trouble,” thought Lionel.

He called Benoite to him, then packing up Sibylla’s things for Deerham Court, inquired into the state of her accounts, and found Sibylla had told him correctly. He gave Benoite a month’s wages and a month’s board wages, and informed her that as soon as her mistress had left the house, she would be at liberty to leave it. A scene ensued with Sibylla, but for once Lionel was firm.

“You will have every attendance provided for you, Sibylla, my mother said. But I cannot take Benoite; neither would Lady Verner admit her.”

John Massingbird had agreed to keep on most of the old servants. The superfluous ones, those who had been engaged when Verner’s Pride grew gay, Lionel found the means of discharging: paying them as he had paid Benoite.

Heavy work for him, that day! the breaking up of his home, the turning forth to the world. And, as if his heart were not sufficiently heavy, he had the trouble of Sibylla. The arrangements had been three or four days in process. It had taken that time to pack and settle things, since he first spoke to Lady Verner. There were various personal trifles of his and Sibylla’s to be singled out and separated from what was now John Massingbird’s. But all was done at last, and they were ready to depart. Lionel went to John Massingbird.

“You will allow me to order the carriage for Sibylla? She will like it better than a hired one.”

“Certainly,” replied John, with much graciousness. “But what’s the good of leaving before dinner?”

“My mother is expecting us,” simply answered Lionel.

Just the same innate refinement of feeling which had characterised him in the old days. It so happened that Lionel had never bought a carriage since he came into Verner’s Pride. Stephen Verner had been prodigal in his number of carriages, although the carriages had a sinecure of it, and Lionel had found no occasion to purchase. Of course they belonged to John Massingbird, like everything else belonged to him. He—for the last time—ordered the close carriage for his wife. His carriage, it might surely be said, more than John Massingbird’s. Lionel did not deem it so, and asked permission ere he gave the order.

Sibylla had never seen her husband quietly resolute in opposing her whims, as he had been with regard to Benoite. She scarcely knew what to make of it; but she had deemed it well to dry her tears, and withdraw her opposition. She came down dressed at the time of departure, and looked about for John Massingbird. That gentleman was in the study. Its large desk, a whole mass of papers crowded above it and underneath it, pushed into the remotest corner. Lionel had left things connected with the estate as straight as he could. He wished to explain affairs to John Massingbird and hand over documents and all else in due form, but he was not allowed. Business and John had never agreed. John was sitting now before the window, his elbows on the sill, a rough cap on his head, and a short clay pipe in his mouth. Lionel glanced with dismay at the confusion reigning amid the papers.

“Fare you well, John Massingbird,” said Sibylla.

“Going?” said John, coolly turning round. “Good day.”

“And let me tell you, John Massingbird,” continued Sibylla, “that if ever you had got turned out of your home, as you have turned us, you would know what it was.”

“BlesssBless [sic] you! I’ve never had anything of my own to be turned out of, except a tent,” said John, with a laugh.

“It is to be hoped that you may, then, some time, and that you will be turned out of it! That’s my best wish for you, John Massingbird.”

“I’d recommend you to be polite, young lady,” returned John, good-humouredly. “If I sue your husband for back rents, you’d not be quite so independent, I calculate.”

“Back rents!” repeated she.

“Back rents,” assented John. “But we’ll leave that discussion to another time. Don’t you be saucy, Sibylla.”

“John,” said Lionel, pointing to the papers, “are you aware that some valuable leases and other agreements are amongst those papers? You might get into inextricable confusion with your tenants, were you to mislay, or lose them.”

“They are safe enough,” said careless John, taking his pipe from his mouth to speak.

“I wish you had allowed me to put things in order for you. You will be wanting me to do it later.”

“Not a bit of it,” said John Massingbird. “I am not going to upset my equanimity with leases, and bothers of that sort. Good bye, old fellow. Lionel!”

Lionel turned round. He had been going out.

“We part friends, don’t we?”

“I can answer for myself,” said Lionel, a frank smile rising to his lips. “It would be unjust to blame you for taking what you have a right to take.”

“All right. Then, Lionel, you’ll come and see me here?”

“Sometimes. Yes.”

They went out to the carriage, Lionel conducting his wife, and John in attendance, smoking his short pipe. The handsome carriage, with its coat of ultramarine, its rich white lining, its silver mountings, and its arms on the panels. The Verner arms. Would John paint them out? Likely not. One badge on the panels of his carriages