Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/56

48 Matthew Frost was dying, she was more ill at ease, more intensely irritable than usual. Lady Verner had gone with some friends to Heartburg, and was not expected home until night; Decima and Lucy walked out in the afternoon, and Sibylla was alone. Lionel had not been home since he went out in the morning to see Matthew Frost. The fact was, Lionel had had a busy day of it: what with old Matthew and what with his conversation with John Massingbird afterwards, certain work which ought to have been done in the morning he had left till the afternoon. It was nothing unusual for him to be out all day: but Sibylla was choosing to make his being out on this day an unusual grievance. As the hours of the afternoon passed on and on, and it grew late, and nobody appeared, she could scarcely suppress her temper, her restlessness. She was a bad one to be alone; had never liked to be alone for five minutes in her life: and thence perhaps the secret of her having made so much of a companion of her maid, Benoite. In point of fact, Sibylla Verner had no resources within herself; and she made up for the want by indulging in her naturally bad temper?

“Where were they? Where was Decima? Where was Lucy? Above all, where was Lionel?” Sibylla, not being able to answer the questions, suddenly began to get up a pretty little plot of imagination—that Lucy and Lionel were somewhere together. Had Sibylla possessed one of Sam Weller’s patent self-acting microscopes, able to afford a view through space and stairs, and deal doors, she might have seen Lionel seated alone in the study at Verner’s Pride, amidst his leases and papers; and Lucy in Clay Lane, paying visits with Decima from cottage to cottage. Not possessing one of those admirable instruments—if somebody at the West-end would but set up a stock of them for sale, what a lot of customers he’d have!—Sibylla was content to cherish the mental view she had conjured up, and to improve upon it. All the afternoon she kept improving upon it, until she worked herself up to that agreeable pitch of distorted excitement when a person does not know what is real, and what fancy. It was a regular April day; one of sunshine and storm: now, the sun shining out bright and clear; now, the rain pattering against the panes; and Sibylla wandered from room to room, up stairs and down, as stormy as the weather.

Had her dreams been types of fact? Upon glancing from the window, during a sharper shower than any they had yet had, she saw her husband coming in at the large gates, Lucy Tempest on his arm, over whom he was holding an umbrella. They were walking slowly, conversing—as it seemed—confidentially. It was quite enough for Mrs. Verner.

But it was a very innocent, accidental meeting, and the confidential conversation was only about the state of poor old Matthew Frost. Lionel had taken Clay Lane on his road home for the purpose of inquiring after old Matthew. There, standing in the kitchen, he found Lucy. Decima was with the old man, and it was uncertain how long she would stay with him: and Lucy, who had no umbrella, was waiting for the shower to be over to get back to Deerham Court. Lionel offered her the shelter of his. As they advanced through the court-yard, Lucy saw Sibylla at the small drawing-room window—the ante-room, as it was called—and nodded a smiling greeting to her. She did not return it, and Lionel saw that his wife looked black as night.

They came in, Lucy untying her bonnet-strings, and addressing Sibylla in a pleasant tone.

“What a sharp storm!” she said. “And I think it means to last, for there seems no sign of its clearing up. I don’t know how I should have come home but for Mr. Verner’s umbrella.”

No reply from Mrs. Verner.

“Decima is with old Matthew Frost,” continued Lucy, passing into the drawing-room; “she desired that we would not wait dinner for her.”

Then began Sibylla. She turned upon Lionel in a state of perfect fury, her temper, like a torrent, bearing down all before it—all decency, all consideration.

“Where have you been? You and she?”

“Do you allude to Lucy?” he asked, pausing before he replied, and looking at her with surprise. “We have been nowhere. I saw her at old Frost’s as I came by, and brought her home.”

“It is a falsehood!” raved Sibylla. “You are carrying on a disgraceful intimacy with each other in secret. I have been blind long enough, but—”

Lionel caught her arm, pointing in peremptory silence to the drawing-room door, which was not closed, his white face betraying his inward agitation.

“She is there!” he whispered. “She can hear you.”

But Sibylla’s passion was terrible—not to be controlled. All the courtesies of life were lost sight of—its social usages were as nothing. She flung Lionel’s hand away from her.

“I hope she can hear me!” broke like a torrent from her trembling lips. “It is time she heard, and others also! I have been blind, I say, long enough. But for papa, I might have gone on in my blindness to the end.”

How was he to stop it? That Lucy must hear every word as plainly as he did, he knew; words that fell upon his ear, and blistered them. There was no egress for her—no other door—she was there in a cage, as may be said. He did what was the best to be done under the circumstances: he walked into the presence of Lucy, leaving Sibylla to herself.

At least it might have been the best in some cases. It was not in this. Sibylla, lost in that moment to all sense of the decency due to herself, to her husband, to Lucy, allowed her wild fancies, her passion, to over-master everything; and she followed him in. Her eyes blazing, her cheeks aflame, she planted herself in front of Lucy.

“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Lucy Tempest, to wile my husband from me?”

Lucy looked perfectly aghast. That she thought Mrs. Verner had suddenly gone mad may be excused to her. A movement of fear escaped her, and she drew involuntarily nearer to Lionel, as if for protection.

“No! you shan’t go to him! There has been