Verner's Pride

"Not Mr. Verner. I'm only Jan. You must have forgotten me long ago, Sir Henry."

Sir Henry Tempest held out his hand, "I have not forgotten what you were as a boy; but I should not have known you as a man. And yet—it is the same face."

"Of course it is," said Jan, "Ugly faces, such as mine, don't alter. I will walk with you to my mother's: it is close by. Have you any luggage?"

"Only a portmanteau. My servant is looking after it. Here he is."

A very dark man came up—an Indian—nearly as old as his master. Jan recognised him.

"I remember you!" he exclaimed "It is Batsha."

The man laughed, hiding his dark eyes, but showing his white teeth. "Massa Jan!" he said, "used to call me Bat."

Without the least ceremony, Jan shook him by the hand. He had more pleasant reminiscences of him than of his master. In fact, Jan could only remember Colonel Tempest by name. He, the colonel, had despised and shunned the awkward and unprepossessing boy; but the boy and Bat used to be great friends.

"Do you recollect carrying me on your shoulder, Bat? You have paid for many a ride in a palanquin for me. Riding on shoulders or in palanquins, in those days, used to be my choice recreation. The shoulders and the funds both ran short at times."

Batsha remembered it all. Next to his master, he had never liked anybody so well as the boy Jan.

"Stop where you are a minute or two," said unceremonious Jan to Sir Henry. "I must find one of the porters, and then I'll walk with you."

Looking about in various directions, in holes and corners and sheds, inside carriages and behind trucks, Jan at length came upon a short, surly-looking man, wearing the official uniform. It was the one of whom he was in search.

"I say, Parkes, what is this I hear about your forcing your wife to get up, when I have given orders that she should lie in bed? I went in just now, and there I found her dragging herself about the damp brewhouse. I had desired that she should not get out of her bed."

"Too much bed don't do nobody much good, sir," returned the man in a semi-resentful tone. "There's the work to do—the washing. If she don't do it, who will?"

"Too much bed wouldn't do you good; or me, either; but it is necessary for your wife in her present state of illness. I have ordered her to bed again. Don't let me hear of your interfering a second time, and forcing her up. She is going to have a blister on now."

"I didn't force her, sir," answered Parkes. "I only asked her what was to become of the work, and how I should get a clean shirt to put on."

"If I had got a sick wife, I'd wash out my shirt myself, before I'd drag her out of bed to do it," retorted Jan. "I can tell you one thing, Parkes; that she is worse than you think for. I am not sure that she will be long with you; and you won't get such a wife again in a hurry, once you lose her. Give her a chance to get well. I'll see that she gets up fast enough, when she is fit for it."

Parkes touched his peaked cap as Jan turned away. It was very rare that Jan came out with a lecture; and when he did, the sufferers did not like it. A sharp word from Jan Verner seemed to tell home.

Jan returned to Sir Henry Tempest, and they walked a way in the direction of Deerham Court.

"I conclude all is well at Lady Verner's," remarked Sir Henry.

"Well enough," returned Jan. "I thought I heard you were not coming until to-morrow. They'll be surprised."

"I wrote word I should be with them to-morrow," replied Sir Henry. "But I got impatient to see my child. Since I left India and have been fairly on my way to her, the time of separation has seemed longer to me than it did in all the previous years."

"She's a nice girl," returned Jan. "The nicest girl in Deerham."

"Is she pretty?" asked Sir Henry.

The question a little puzzled Jan. "Well, I think so," answered he. "Girls are much alike for that, as far as I see. I like Miss Lucy's look, though; and that's the chief thing in faces."

"How is your brother, Janus?"

Jan burst out laughing. "Don't call me Janus, Sir Henry. I am not known by that name. They wanted me to have Janus on my door-plate; but nobody would have thought it meant me, and the practice might have gone off."

"You are Jan, as you used to be, then? I remember Lucy has called you so in her letters to me."

"I shall never be anything but Jan. What does it matter? One name's as good as another. You were asking after Lionel. He has got Verner's Pride again: all in safety now."

"What a very extraordinary course of events seems to have taken place, with regard to Verner's Pride!" remarked Sir Henry. "Now your brother's, now not his, then his again, then not his! I cannot make it out."

"It was extraordinary," assented Jan. "But the uncertain tenure is at an end, and Lionel is installed there for life. There ought never to have been any question of his right to it."

"He has had the misfortune to lose his wife," observed Sir Henry.

"It was not much of a misfortune," returned Jan, always plain. "She was too sickly ever to enjoy life; and I know she must have worried Lionel nearly out of his patience."

Jan had said at the station that Deerham Court was "close by." His active legs may have found it so; but Sir Henry began to think it rather far than close. As they reached the gates Sir Henry spoke.

"I suppose there is an inn near, where I can send my servant to lodge. There may not be accommodation for him at Lady Verner's?"

"There's accommodation enough for that," said Jan. "They have plenty of room, and old Catherine can make him up a bed."

Lady Verner and Lucy were out. They had not returned from the call on Mrs. Bitterworth—for it was the afternoon spoken of in the last chapter. Jan showed Sir Henry in; told him to ring for any refreshment he wanted; and then left.

"I can't stay," he remarked. "My day's rounds are not over yet."

But scarcely had Jan reached the outside of the gate when he met the carriage. He put up his hand, and the coachman stopped. Jan advanced to the window, a broad smile upon his face.

"What will you give me for some news, Miss Lucy?"

Lucy's thoughts were running upon certain other news; news known but to herself and to one more. A strangely happy light shone in her soft, brown eyes, as she turned them on Jan; a rich damask flush on the cheeks where his lips had so lately been.

"Does it concern me, Jan?"

"It doesn't much concern anybody else.—Guess."

"I never can guess anything; you know I can't, Jan," she answered, smiling. "You must please tell me."

"Well," said Jan, "there's an arrival. Come by the train."

"Oh, Jan! Not papa?"

Jan nodded.

"You will find him indoors. Old Bat's come with him."

Lucy never could quite remember the details of the meeting. She knew that her father held her to him fondly, and then put her from him to look at her; the tears blinding her eyes and his.

"You are pretty, Lucy," he said, "very pretty. I asked Jan whether you were not, but he could not tell me."

"Jan!" slightingly spoke Lady Verner, while Lucy laughed in spite of her tears. "It is of no use asking Jan anything of that sort, Sir Henry, I don't believe Jan knows one young lady's face from another."

It seemed to be all confusion for some time; all bustle; nothing but questions and answers. But when they had assembled in the drawing-room again, after making ready for dinner, things wore a calmer aspect.

"You must have thought I never was coming home!" remarked Sir Henry to Lady Verner. "I have contemplated it so long."

"I suppose your delays were unavoidable," she answered.

"Yes—in a measure. I should not have come now, but for the relieving you of Lucy. Your letters, for some time past, have appeared to imply that you were vexed with her, or tired of her; and, in truth, I have taxed your patience and good nature unwarrantably. I do not know how I shall repay your kindness, Lady Verner."

"I have been repaid throughout, Sir Henry," was the quiet reply of Lady Verner. "The society of Lucy has been a requital in full. I rarely form an attachment, and when I do form one it is never demonstrative; but I have learned to love Lucy as I love my own daughter, and it will be a real grief to part with her. Not but that she has given me great vexation."

"Ah! In what way?"

"The years have gone on and on since she came to me; and I was in hopes of returning her to you with some prospect in view of the great end of a young lady's life—marriage. I was placed here as her mother; and I felt more responsibility in regard to her establishment in life than I did to Decima's. We have been at issue upon the point, Sir Henry; Lucy and I."

Sir Henry turned his eyes on his daughter: if that is not speaking figuratively, considering that he had scarcely taken his eyes off her. A fair picture she was, sitting there in her white evening dress and her pearl ornaments. Young, lovely, girlish, she looked, as she did the first day she came to Lady Verner's and took up her modest seat on the hearth-rug. Sir Henry Tempest had not seen many such faces as that; he had not met with many natures so innocent and charming. Lucy was made to be admired as well as loved.

"If there is one parti more desirable than another in the whole county, it is Lord Garle," resumed Lady Verner. "The eldest son of the Earl of Elmsley, his position naturally renders him so; but had he neither rank nor wealth, he would not be much less desirable. His looks are prepossessing; his qualities of head and heart are admirable; he enjoys the respect of all. Not a young lady for miles round but—I will use a vulgar phrase, Sir Henry, but it is expressive of the facts—would jump at him. Lucy refused him."

"Indeed," replied Sir Henry, gazing at Lucy's glowing face, at the smile that hovered round her lips.

Lady Verner resumed—

"She refused him in the most decidedly positive manner that you can imagine. She has refused also one or two others. They were not so desirable in position as Lord Garle; but they were very well. And her motive I never have been able to get at. It has vexed me much. I have pointed out to her that when ever you returned home, you might think I had been neglectful of her interests."

"No, no," replied Sir Henry, "I could not fancy coming home to find Lucy married. I should not have liked it. She would have seemed to be gone from me."

"But she must marry some time, and the years are going on," returned Lady Verner.

"Yes, I suppose she must."

"At least, I should say she would, were it anybody but Lucy," rejoined Lady Verner, qualifying her words. "After the refusal of Lord Garle, one does not know what to think. You will see him and judge for yourself."

"What was the motive of the refusal, Lucy?" inquired Sir Henry.

He spoke with a smile, in a gay, careless tone; but Lucy appeared to take the question in a serious light. Her eyelids drooped, her whole face became scarlet, her demeanour almost agitated.

"I did not care to marry, papa," she answered in a low tone. "I did not care for Lord Garle."

"One grievous fear has been upon me ever since, haunting my rest at night, disturbing my peace by day," resumed Lady Verner. "I must speak of it to you, Sir Henry. Absurd as the notion really is, and as at times it appears to me that it must be, still it does intrude, and I should scarcely be acting an honourable part by you to conceal it, sad as the calamity would be."

Lucy looked up in surprise. Sir Henry in a sort of puzzled wonder.

"When she refused Lord Garle, whom she acknowledged she liked, and forbade him to entertain any future hope whatever, I naturally began to look about me for the cause. I could only come to one conclusion, I am sorry to say—that she cared too much for another."

Lucy sat in an agony; the scarlet of her face changing to whiteness.

"I arrived at the conclusion, I say," continued Lady Verner, "and I began to consider whom the object could be. I called over in my mind all the gentlemen she was in the habit of seeing; and unfortunately there was only one—only one upon whom my suspicions could fix. I recalled phrases of affection openly lavished upon him by Lucy; I remembered that there was no society she seemed to enjoy and be so much at ease with as his. I have done what I could since to keep him at arm's length; and I shall never forgive myself for having been so blind. But, you see, I no more thought she, or any other girl, could fall in love with him, than that she could with one of my serving men."

"Lady Verner, you should not say it!" burst forth Lucy, with vehemence, as she turned her white face, her trembling lips, to Lady Verner. "Surely I might refuse to marry Lord Garle without caring unduly for another!"

Lady Verner looked quite aghast at the outburst. "My dear, does not this prove that I am right?"

"But who is it?" interrupted Sir Henry Tempest.

"Alas!—Who! I could almost faint in telling it to you," groaned Lady Verner. "My unfortunate son, Jan."

The relief was so great to Lucy; the revulsion of feeling so sudden; the idea called up altogether so comical, that she clasped her hands one within the other, and laughed out in glee.

"Oh, Lady Verner! Poor Jan! I never thought you meant him. Papa," she said, turning eagerly to Sir Henry, "Jan is downright worthy and good, but I should not like to marry him."

"Jan may be worthy; but he is not handsome," gravely remarked Sir Henry.

"He is better than handsome," returned Lucy. "I shall love Jan all my life, papa; but not in that way."

Her perfect openness, her ease of manner, gave an earnest of the truth with which she spoke; and Lady Verner was summarily relieved of the fear which had haunted her rest.

"Why could you not have told me this before, Lucy?"

"Dear Lady Verner, how could I tell it you? How was I to know anything about it?"

"True," said Lady Verner. "I was simple; to suppose any young lady could ever give a thought to that unfortunate Jan! You saw him, Sir Henry. Only fancy his being my son and his father's!"

"He is certainly not like either of you," was Sir Henry's reply. "Your other son was like both. Very like his father."

"Ah! he is a son!" spoke Lady Verner, in her enthusiasm. "A son worth having; a son that his father would be proud of, were he alive. Handsome, good, noble;—there are few like Lionel Verner. I spoke in praise of Lord Garle, but he is not as Lionel. A good husband, a good son, a good man. His conduct under his misfortunes was admirable."

"His misfortunes have been like a romance," remarked Sir Henry.

"More like that than reality. You will see him presently. I asked him to dine with me, and expect him in momentarily. Ah, he has had trouble in all ways. His wife brought him nothing else."

"Jan dropped a hint of that," said Sir Henry. "I should think he would not be in a hurry to marry again!

"I should think not, indeed. He—Lucy, where are you going?"

Lucy turned round with her crimsoned face. "Nowhere, Lady Verner."

"I thought I heard a carriage stop, my dear. See if it is Lionel."

Lucy walked to the window in the other room. Sir Henry followed her. The blue and silver carriage of Verner's Pride was at the Court gates, Lionel stepping from it. He came in, looking curiously at the gray head next to Lucy's.

"A noble form, a noble face!" murmured Sir Henry Tempest.

He wore still the mourning for his wife. A handsome man never looks so well in other attire. There was no doubt that he divined now who the stranger was, and a glad smile of welcome parted his lips. Sir Henry met him on the threshold, and grasped both his hands.

"I should have known you, Lionel, anywhere, from your likeness to your father."

CHAPTER XCIV.

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN JAN!

Lionel could not let the evening go over without speaking of the great secret. When he and Sir Henry were left together in the dining-room, he sought the opportunity. It was afforded by a remark of Sir Henry's.

"After our sojourn in London shall be over, I must look out for a residence, and settle down. Perhaps I shall purchase one. But I must first of all ascertain what locality would be agreeable to Lucy."

"Sir Henry," said Lionel in a low tone, "Lucy's future residence is fixed upon—if you will accord your permission."

Sir Henry Tempest, who was in the act of raising his wine-glass to his lips, set it down again and looked at Lionel.

"I want her at Verner's Pride."

It appeared that Sir Henry could not understand—did not take in the meaning of the words.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I have loved her for years," answered Lionel, the, scarlet spot of emotion rising to his cheeks. "We—we have known each other's sentiments a long while. But I did not intend to speak more openly to Lucy until I had seen you. To-day, however, in the sudden excitement of hearing of her contemplated departure, I betrayed myself. Will you give her to me, Sir Henry?"

Sir Henry Tempest looked grave. "It cannot have been so very long an attachment," he observed. "The time since your wife's death can only be counted by months."

"True. But the time since I loved Lucy can be counted by years. I loved her before I married," he added in a low tone.

"Why, then, have married another?" demanded Sir Henry, after a pause.

"You may well ask it, Sir Henry," he replied, the upright line in his brow showing out just then all too deep and plain. "I engaged myself to my first wife in an unguarded moment; as soon as the word was spoken I became aware that she was less dear to me than Lucy. I might have retracted; but the retractation would have left a stain on my honour that could never be effaced. I am, not the first man who has paid by years of penitence for a word spoken in the heat of passion."

True enough! Sir Henry simply nodded his head in answer.

"Yes, I loved Lucy; I married another, loving her; I never ceased loving her all throughout my married life. And I had to force down my feelings; to suppress and hide them in the best manner that I could."

"And Lucy?" involuntarily uttered Sir Henry.

"Lucy—may I dare to say it to you?—loved me," he answered, his breath coming fast. "I believe, from my very heart, that she loved me in that early time, deeply perhaps as I loved her. I have never exchanged a word with her upon the point; but I cannot conceal from myself that it was the unhappy fact."

"Did you know it at the time?"

"No!" he answered, raising his hand to his brow, on which the drops were gathering, "I did not suspect it until it was too late; until I was married. She was so child-like."

Sir Henry Tempest sat in silence, probably revolving the information.

"If you had known it—what then?"

"Do not ask me," replied Lionel, his bewailing tone strangely full of pain. "I cannot tell what I should have done. It would have been Lucy—love—versus honour. And a Verner never sacrificed honour yet. And yet—it seems to me that I sacrificed honour in the course I took. Let the question drop, Sir Henry. It is a time I cannot bear to recur to."

Neither spoke for some minutes. Lionel's face was shaded by his hand. Presently he looked up.

"Do not part us, Sir Henry!" he implored, his voice quite hoarse with its emotion, its earnestness. "We could neither of us bear it. I have waited for her long."

"I will deal candidly with you," said Sir Henry. "In the old days it was a favourite project of mine and your father's that our families should become connected by the union of our children—you and Lucy. We only spoke of it to each other; saying nothing to our wives: they might have set to work, women fashion, and urged it on by plotting and planning: we were content to let events take their course, and to welcome the fruition, should it come. Nearly the last words Sir Lionel said to me, when he was dying of his wound, were, that he should not live to see the marriage; but lie hoped I might. Years afterwards, when Lucy was placed with Lady Verner—I knew, no other friend in Europe to whom I would entrust her—her letters to me were filled with Lionel Verner. 'Lionel was so kind to her!'—'Everybody liked Lionel!' In one shape or other you were sure to be the theme. I heard how you lost the estate; of your coming to stay at Lady Verner's; of a long illness you had there; of your regaining the estate through the death of the Massingbirds; and—next—of your marriage to Frederick Massingbird's widow. From that time Lucy said less: in fact, her letters were nearly silent as to you: and, for myself, I never gave another thought to the subject. Your present communication has taken me entirely by surprise."

"But you will give her to me?"

"I had rather—forgive me if I speak candidly—that she married one who had not called another woman wife."

"I heartily wish I never had called another woman wife," was the response of Lionel. "But I cannot alter the past. I shall not make Lucy the less happy; and, for moving her—I tell you that my love for her, throughout, has been so great, as to have put it almost beyond the power of suppression."

A servant entered, and said my lady was waiting tea. Lionel waved his hand towards the man with an impatient movement, and they were left at peace again.

"You tell me that her heart is engaged in this, as well as yours?" resumed Sir Henry.

A half-smile flitted for a moment over Lionel's face; he was recalling Lucy's whispered words to him that very afternoon.

"Yes," he answered, "her heart is bound up in me: I may almost say her life. If ever love served out its apprenticeship, Sir Henry, ours has. It is stronger than time and change."

"Well, I suppose you must have her," conceded Sir Henry. "But for your own marriage, I should have looked on this as a natural result. What about the revenues of Verner's Pride?"

"I am in debt," freely acknowledged Lionel. "In my wife's time we spent too much, and outran our means. Part of my income for three or four years must be set apart to pay it off."

He might have said, "In my wife's time she spent too much;" said it with truth. But, as he spared her feelings, living, so he spared her memory, dead.

"Whoever takes Lucy, takes thirty thousand pounds on her wedding-day," quietly remarked Sir Henry Tempest.

The words quite startled Lionel. "Thirty thousand pounds!" he repeated mechanically.

"Thirty thousand pounds. Did you think I should waste all my best years in India, Lionel, and save up nothing for my only child?"

"I never thought about it," was Lionel's answer. "Or if I ever did think, I suppose I judged by my father. He saved no money."

"He had not the opportunity that I have had; and he died early. The appointment I held, out there, has been a lucrative one. That will be the amount of Lucy's present fortune."

"I am glad I did not know it!" heartily affirmed Lionel.

"It might have made the winning her more difficult, I suppose you think?"

"Not the winning her," was Lionel's answer, the self-conscious smile again on his lips. "The winning your consent, Sir Henry."

"It has not been so hard a task, either," quaintly remarked Sir Henry, as he rose. "I am giving her to you, understand, for your father's sake; in the trust that you are the same honourably good man, standing well before the world and Heaven, that he was. Unless your looks belie you, you are not degenerate."

Lionel stood before him, almost too agitated to speak. Sir Henry stopped him, laying his hand upon his shoulder.

"No thanks, Lionel. Gratitude? You can pay all that to Lucy after she shall be your wife."

They went together into the drawing-room, arm-in-arm. Sir Henry advanced straight to his daughter.

"What am I to say to you, Lucy? He has been talking secrets."

She looked up, like a startled fawn. But a glimpse at Lionel's face reassured her, bringing the roses into her cheeks. Lady Verner, wondering, gazed at them in amazement, and Lucy hid her hot cheeks on her father's breast.

"Am I to scold you? Falling in love without my permission!"

The tone, the loving arm wound round her, brought to her confidence. She could almost afford to be saucy.

"Don't be angry, papa!" were her whispered words. "It might have been worse."

"Worse!" returned Sir Henry, trying to get a look at her face. "You independent child! How could it have been worse?"