Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/163

. 31, 1863.] Syphax is lolling in the bath, a beaker by his side, Strigils and napkins, oil and sponge, ready for his brute pride; While cringing at his glistening feet his tyrant master stands, Rubbing the rich Arabian nard between his fat white hands.

There’s Gripus smiting on the lyre with his chapp’d horny fist, While mimes, with open-eyed grimace, are bidding all men list, And in long purple-margin’d gowns, aping the strut and stalk Of those proud senators at noon who in the Forum walk.

The gladiators rude and fierce throw cestuses away, And, tossing swords and nets in heaps, with bare fists smite and play, And to the empty benches shout, and to the Prætor’s chair They wave their spears, and clash their shields, and stab and hew the air.

The ugliest of the band is throned high in the Emperor’s seat, His pummell’d head with roses bound, a cushion for his feet; He bids them bring him crocodiles to fight with Indian snakes, And as he speaks his dusty robes with his hoarse laughter shakes.

The potter’s slave disdains to mould the rich man’s funeral urn, The poor serf of the Pontifex the bull to slay and burn; The Emperor’s charioteer neglects to tend his steeds to-day; Even Poppæa’s handmaid stays to loiter and to play.

To-morrow, at the cruel dawn, the wheel will roll again, The actors change, the swift scenes shift, and end King Saturn’s reign; To-morrow come the stinging whip, the fetter, and the goad, The mill-horse chain, the miner’s toil, the heavy faggot load.

so, the trouble and the uncertainty, the ups and the downs, the turnings out and the changes were at an end, and Lionel Verner was at rest. At rest, so far as rest can be, in this world. He was reinstalled at Verner’s Pride, its undisputed master; never again to be sent forth from it during life.

He had not done as John Massingbird did—gone right in, the first day, and taken up his place, sans cérémonie, without word and without apology, at the table’s head, leaving John to take his at the side or the foot, or where he could. Quite the contrary. Lionel’s refinement of mind, his almost sensitive consideration for the feelings of others, clung to him now, as it always had done, as it always would do, and he was chary of disturbing John Massingbird too early in his sway of the internal economy of Verner’s Pride. It had to be done, however; and John Massingbird remained on with him, his guest.

All that had passed: and the spring of the year was growing late. The codicil had been proved; the neighbourhood had tendered their congratulations to the new master, come into his own at last; the improvements, in which Lionel’s conscience held so deep a score, were begun and in good progress; and John Massingbird’s return to Australia was decided upon, and the day of his departure fixed. People surmised that Lionel would be glad to get rid of him, if only for the sake of his drawing-rooms. John Massingbird still lounged at full length on the amber satin couches, in dropping-off slippers or in dirty boots, as the case might be, still filled them with clouds of tobacco-smoke, so that you could not see across them. Mrs. Tynn declared, to as many people as she dared, that she prayed every night on her bended knees for Mr. Massingbird’s departure, before the furniture should be quite ruined, or they burnt in their beds.

Mr. Massingbird was not going alone. Luke Roy was returning with him. Luke’s intention always had been to return to Australia: he had but come home for a short visit to the old place and to see his mother. Luke had been doing well at the gold-fields. He did not dig, but he sold liquor to those who did dig; at which he was making money rapidly. He had a “chum,” he said, who managed the store while he was away. So glowing was his account of his prospects, that old Roy had decided upon going also, and trying his fortune there. Mrs. Roy looked aghast at the projected plan: she was too old for it, she urged. But she could not turn her husband. He had never studied her wishes too much, and he was not likely to begin to do so now. So Mrs. Roy, with incessantly dropping tears, and continued prognostications that the sea sickness would kill her, was forced to make her preparations for the voyage. Perhaps one motive, more than all else, had influenced Roy’s decision—the getting out of Deerham. Since his hopes of having something to do with the Verner’s Pride estate—as he had in Stephen Verner’s time—had been at an end, Roy had gone about in a perpetual state of inward mortification. This emigration would put an end to it: and what with the anticipation of making a fortune at the diggings, and what with his satisfaction at saying adieu to Deerham, and what with the thwarting of his wife, Roy was in a fever of complacency.

The time went on to the evening previous to the departure. Lionel and John Massingbird had dined alone, and now sat together at the open window, in the soft May twilight. A small table was at John’s elbow, a bottle of rum, a jar of tobacco, water and a glass being on it, ready to