Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/700

692 “I don’t see how,” replied Jan. “Pins were the readiest to hand.”

Sibylla had been keeping them waiting dinner. She came in now, radiant in smiles and in her gold combs. None, to look at her, would suppose she had that day lost a home. A servant appeared and announced dinner.

Lionel went up to Lady Verner. Whenever he dined there, unless there were other guests besides himself, he had been in the habit of taking her into dinner. Lady Verner drew back.

“No, Lionel. I consider that you and I are both at home now. Take Miss Tempest.”

He could only obey. He held out his arm to Lucy, and they went forward.

“Am I to take anybody?” inquired Jan.

That was just like Jan! Lady Verner pointed to Sibylla, and Jan marched off with her. Lady Verner and Decima followed.

“Not there, not there, Lucy,” said Lady Verner, for Lucy was taking the place she was accustomed to, by Lady Verner. “Lionel, you will take the foot of the table now, and Lucy will sit by you.”

Lady Verner was rather a stickler for etiquette, and at last they fell into their appointed places. Herself and Lionel opposite each other, Lucy and Decima on one side the table, Jan and Sibylla on the other.

“If I am to have you under my wing as a rule, Miss Lucy, take care that you behave yourself,” nodded Lionel.

Lucy laughed, and the dinner proceeded. But there was very probably an under-current of consciousneesconsciousness [sic] in the heart of both—at any rate, there was in his—that it might have been more expedient, all things considered, that Lucy Tempest’s place at dinner had not been fixed by the side of Lionel Verner’s.

Dinner was half over when Sibylla suddenly laid down her knife and fork, and burst into tears. They looked at her in consternation. Lionel rose.

“That horrid John Massingbird!” escaped her lips. “I always disliked him.”

“Goodness!” uttered Jan, “I thought you were taken ill, Sibylla. What’s the good of thinking about it?”

“According to you, there’s no good in thinking of anything,” tartly responded Sibylla. “You told me yesterday not to think about Fred, when I said I wished he had come back instead of John—if one must have come back.”

“At any rate, don’t think about unpleasant things now,” was Jan’s answer. “Eat your dinner.”

looked his situation full in the face. It was not a desirable one. When he had been turned out of Verner’s Pride before, it is probable he had thought that about the extremity of all human calamity; but that, looking back upon it, appeared a position to be coveted, as compared with this. In point of fact it was. He was free then from pecuniary liabilities; he did not owe a shilling in the world; he had five hundred pounds in his pocket; nobody but himself to look to; and—he was a younger man.

In the matter of years he was not so very much older now; but Lionel Verner, since his marriage, had bought some experience in human disappointment, and nothing ages a man’s inward feelings like it.

He was now, with his wife, a burden upon his mother; a burden she could ill afford. Lady Verner was somewhat embarrassed in her own means, and she was preparing to reduce her establishment to the old size that it used to be in her grumbling days. If Lionel had but been free! free from debt and difficulty! he would have gone out into the world and put his shoulder to the wheel.

Claims had poured in upon him without end. Besides the obligations he already knew of, not a day passed but the post brought him outstanding accounts from London, with demands for their speedy settlement; accounts contracted by his wife. Mr. Verner of Verner’s Pride might not have been troubled with these accounts for years, had his wife so managed; but Mr. Verner, turned from Verner’s Pride, a—it is an ugly word, but expressive of the truth—a pauper, found the demands come pouring thick and threefold upon his head. It was of no use to reproach Sibylla; of no use even to speak, save to ask “Is such-and-such a bill a just claim?” Any approach to such topics was the signal for an unseemly burst of passion on her part, or else a fit of hysterics, in which fashionable affectation Sibylla had lately become an adept. She tried Lionel terribly: worse than tongue can tell or pen can write. There was no social confidential intercourse. Lionel could not go to her for sympathy, for counsel, or for comfort; if he attempted to talk over any plans for the future, for the immediate future; what they could do, what they could not; what might be best, what worst; she met him with the frivolousness of a child, or else with a sullen reproach that he “did nothing but worry her.” For any purposes of companionship, his wife was a nonentity; far better that he had been without one. She made his whole life a penance; she betrayed the frivolous folly of her nature ten times a day; she betrayed her pettish temper, her want of self-control, dyeing Lionel’s face of a blood red. He felt ashamed for her; he felt doubly ashamed for himself; that his mother, that Lucy Tempest should at last become aware what sort of a wife he had taken to his bosom, what description of wedded life was his.

What was he to do for a living? The only thing that appeared to be open to him was to endeavour to get some sort of a situation, where, by means of the hands or the head, he might earn a competence. And yet, to do this, it was necessary to be free from the danger of arrest. He went about in dread of it. Were he to go to London he felt sure that not an hour would pass, should his presence there be known, but he would be sued and taken. If his country creditors showed him forbearance, his town ones would not. Any fond hope that he had formerly entertained of studying for the Bar, was not available now. He had neither the means nor the time to give to it: the time for study ere remuneration should come. Occasionally a thought would cross him