Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/724

716 and Mrs. Peckaby shrieked and sobbed. Chuff began calling out that the best remedy for white paint was turpentine.

“Come along, Peckaby, and open the door,” said Jan, rising. “She’ll catch an illness if she stops here in her wet clothes, and I shall have a month’s work, attending on her. Come!”

“Well, sir, to oblige you, I will,” returned the man. “But let me ever catch her snivelling after them saints again, that’s all! They should have her if they liked; I’d not.”

“You hear, Mrs. Peckaby,” said Jan in her ear. “I’d let the saints alone for the future, if I were you.”

“I mean to, sir,” she meekly answered, between her sobs.

Peckaby, in his shirt and nightcap, opened the door, and she bounded in. The casements closed to the echoes of subsiding laughter, and the echoes of Jan’s footsteps died away in the distance.

sat at the window of her sitting-room in the evening twilight: a cold evening in early winter. Sibylla was in an explosive temper. It was nothing unusual for her to be in an explosive temper now; but she was in a worse than customary this evening. Sibylla felt the difference between Verner’s Pride and Deerham Court. She lived but in excitement; she cared but for gaiety. In removing to Deerham Court, she had gone readily, believing that she should there find a large portion of the gaiety she had been accustomed to at Verner’s Pride; that she should, at any rate, be living with the appliances of wealth about her, and should go out a great deal with Lady Verner. She had not bargained for Lady Verner’s establishment being reduced to simplicity and quietness, for her laying down her carriage and discharging her men servants and selling her horses, and living again the life of a retired gentlewoman. Yet all these changes had come to pass, and Sibylla’s inward spirit turned restive. She had everything any reasonable mind could possibly desire, every comfort: but quiet comfort and Sibylla’s taste did not accord. Her husband was out a great deal, at Verner’s Pride and on the estate. As he had resolved to do, over John Massingbird’s dinner-table, so he was doing—putting his shoulder to the wheel. He had never looked after things as he was looking now. To be the master of Verner’s Pride was one thing; to be the hired manager of Verner’s Pride was another: and Lionel found every hour of his time occupied. His was no eye-service; his conscience was engaged in his work, and he did it efficiently.

Sibylla still sat at the window, looking out into the twilight. Decima stood near the fire in a thoughtful mood. Lucy was down-stairs in the drawing room, at the piano. They could hear the faint echo of her soft playing as they sat there in silence. Sibylla was in no humour to talk: she had repulsed Decima rudely—or it may rather be said fractiously—when the latter had ventured on conversation. Lady Verner had gone out to dinner. The Countess of Elmsley had been there that day, and she had asked Lady Verner to go over in the evening and take a friendly dinner with her. “Bring any of them that you like with you,” had been her careless words in parting. But Lady Verner had not chosen to take “any of them she had dressed and driven off in the hired fly alone: and this it was that was exciting the anger of Sibylla. She thought Lady Verner might have taken her.

Lucy came in and knelt down on the rug before the fire, half shivering. “I am so cold!” she said. “Do you know what I did, Decima? I let the fire go out. Sometime after Lady Verner went up to dress, I turned round and found the fire was out. My hands are quite numbed.”

“You have gone on playing there without a fire!” cried Decima.

“I shall be warm again directly,” said Lucy, cheerily. “As I passed through the hall, the reflection of the blaze came out of the dining-room. We shall get warm there. Is your head still aching, Mrs. Verner?”

“It is always aching,” snapped Sibylla.

Lucy, kind and gentle in spirit, unretorting, ever considerate for the misfortunes which had come upon Mrs. Verner, went to her side. “Shall I get you a little of your aromatic vinegar?” she asked.

“You need not trouble to get anything for me,” was the ungracious answer.

Lucy, thus repulsed, stood in silence at the window. The window, on the side of the house, overlooked the road which led to Sir Rufus Hautley’s. A carriage, apparently closely shut up, so far as she could see in the dark, its coachman and footman attending it, was bowling rapidly down towards the village.

“There’s Sir Rufus Hautley’s carriage,” said Lucy. “I suppose he is going out to dinner.”

Decima drew to the window and looked out. The carriage came sweeping round the point, and turned, on its road to the village, as they supposed. In the still silence of the room, they could hear its wheels on the frosty road, after they lost sight of it: could hear it bowl before their house, and—stop at the gates.

“It has stopped here!” exclaimed Lucy.

Decima moved quietly back to the fire and sat down. A fancy arose to Lucy that she, Decima, had turned unusually pale. Was it so?—or was it fancy? If it was fancy, why should the fancy have arisen? Ghastly pale her face certainly looked, as the blaze played upon it.

A few minutes, and one of the servants came in, handing a note to Decima.

“Bring lights,” said Decima, in a low tone.

The lights were brought: and then Decima’s agitation was apparent. Her hands shook as she broke the seal of the letter. Lucy gazed in surprise; Sibylla, somewhat aroused from her own grievances, in curiosity.

“Desire the carriage to wait,” said Decima.

“It is waiting, Miss Decima. The servants said they had orders.”

Decima crushed the note into her pocket as well as her shaking fingers would allow her, and left the room. What could have occurred thus to agitate calm and stately Decima? Before Lucy and Mrs. Verner had recovered their surprise she was back again, dressed to go out.