NO HOME.
People talk of a nine days' wonder. But no nine days' wonder has ever
been heard or known, equal to that which fell on Deerham; which went
booming to the very extremity of the county's boundaries. Lionel Verner,
the legitimate heir--it may so be said--the possessor of Verner's Pride,
was turned out of it to make room for an alien, resuscitated from the
supposed dead.
Sailors tell us that the rats desert a sinking ship. Pseudo friends
desert a falling house. You may revel in these friends in prosperity,
but when adversity sets in, how they fall away! On the very day that
John Massingbird arrived at Verner's Pride, and it became known that not
he, but Mrs. and Mr. Verner must leave it, the gay company gathered
there dispersed. Dispersed with polite phrases, which went for nothing.
They were so very sorry for the calamity, for Mr. and Mrs. Verner; if
they could do anything to serve them they had only to be commanded. And
then they left; never perhaps to meet again, even as acquaintances. It
may be asked, what could they do? They could not invite them to a
permanent home; saddle themselves with a charge of that sort; neither
would such an invitation stand a chance of acceptance. It did not appear
they could do anything; but their combined flight from the house, one
after the other, did strike with a chill of mortification upon the
nerves of Lionel Verner and his wife.
His wife! Ah, poor Lionel had enough upon his hands, looking on one side
and another. _She_ was the heaviest weight. Lionel had thanked God in
his true heart that they had been spared the return of Frederick
Massingbird; but there was little doubt that the return of Frederick
would have been regarded by her as a light calamity, in comparison with
this. She made no secret of it. Ten times a day had Lionel to curb his
outraged feelings, and compress his lips to stop the retort that would
rise bubbling up within them. She would openly lament that it was not
Frederick who had returned, in which case she might have remained at
Verner's Pride!
"You'll not turn them out, Massingbird?" cried Jan, in his
straightforward way, drawing the gentleman into the fruit-garden to a
private conference. "_I_ wouldn't."
John Massingbird laughed good-humouredly. He had been in the sunniest
humour throughout; had made his first appearance at Verner's Pride in
bursts of laughter, heartily grasping the hands of Lionel, of Sibylla,
and boasting of the "fun" he had had in playing the ghost. Captain
Cannonby, the only one of the guests who remained, grew charmed with
John, and stated his private opinion in the ear of Lionel Verner that he
was worth a hundred such as Frederick.
"How can I help turning them out?" answered he. "_I_ didn't make the
will--it was old Daddy Verner."
"You need not act upon the will," said Jan. "There was a codicil, you
know, superseding it, though it can't be found. Sibylla's your
cousin--it would be a cruel thing to turn her from her home."
"Two masters never answered in a house yet," nodded John. "I'm not going
to try it."
"Let them stop in Verner's Pride, and you go elsewhere," suggested Jan.
John Massingbird laughed for five minutes. "How uncommon _young_ you
are, Jan!" said he. "Has Lionel been putting you up to try this on?"
Jan swung himself on a tolerably strong branch of the mulberry-tree,
regardless of any damage the ripe fruit might inflict on his nether
garments, as he answered--
"Knowing Lionel, you needn't ask it, Massingbird. There'd be a
difficulty in getting him to stop in Verner's Pride now, but he might be
coaxed to do it for the sake of his wife. She'll have a fit of illness
if she has to go out of it. Lionel is one to stand by his own to the
last; while Verner's Pride was his, he'd have fought to retain its
possession, inch by inch; but let ever so paltry a quibble of the law
take it from him, and he'd not lift up his finger to keep it. But, I
say, I think he might be got to do it for Sibylla."
"I'll tell you a secret, Jan," cried John Massingbird. "I'd not have
Sibylla stop in Verner's Pride if she paid me ten thousand a year for
the favour. There! And as to resigning Verner's Pride the minute I come
into it, nobody but a child or Jan Verner could ever have started so
absurd an idea. If anything makes me feel cross, it is the thought of my
having been knocking about yonder, when I might have been living in
clover here. I'd get up an Ever-perpetual Philanthropic
Benefit-my-fellow-creature Society, if I were you, Jan, and hold
meetings at Exeter Hall!"
"Not in my line," said Jan, swaying himself about on the bough.
"Isn't it! I should say it was. Why don't you invite Sibylla to your
house, if you are so fond of her?"
"She won't come," said Jan.
"Perhaps you have not asked her!"
"I was beginning to ask her, but she flew at me and ordered me to hold
my tongue. No, I see it," Jan added, in self-soliloquy, "she'll never
come there. I thought she might: and I got Miss Deb to think so.
She'll--she'll--"
"She'll what?" asked John Massingbird.
"She'll be a thorn in Lionel's side, I'm afraid."
"Nothing more likely," acquiesced easy John. "Roses and thorns go
together. If gentlemen will marry the one, they must expect to get their
share of the other."
Jan jumped off his bough. His projects all appeared to be failing. The
more he had dwelt upon his suddenly-thought-of scheme, that Dr. West's
house might afford an asylum for Lionel and his wife, the more he had
become impressed with its desirability. Jan Verner, though the most
unselfish, perhaps it may be said the most improvident of mortals, with
regard to himself, had a considerable amount of forethought for the rest
of the world. It had struck him, even before it struck Lionel, that, if
turned out of Verner's Pride, Lionel would _want_ a home; want it in the
broadest acceptation of the word. It would have been Jan's delight to
give him one. He, Jan, went home, told Miss Deb the news that it was
John Massingbird who had returned, not Frederick, and imparted his views
of future arrangements.
Miss Deb was dubious. For Mr. Verner of Verner's Pride to become an
inmate of their home, dependent on her housekeeping, looked a formidable
affair. But Jan pointed out that, Verner's Pride _gone_, it appeared to
be but a choice of cheap lodgings; their house would be an improvement
upon that. And Miss Deb acquiesced; and grew to contemplate the addition
to her family, in conjunction with the addition Jan proposed to add to
her income, with great satisfaction.
_That_ failed. Failed upon Jan's first hint of it to Mrs. Verner.
She--to use his own expression--flew out at him, at the bare hint; and
Sibylla Verner could fly out in an unseemly manner when she chose.
Jan's next venture had been with John Massingbird. That was failure the
second. "Where are they to go?" thought Jan.
It was a question that Lionel Verner may also have been asking in his
inmost heart. As yet he could not look his situation fully in the face.
Not from any want of moral courage, but because of the inextricable
confusion that his affairs seemed to be in. And, let his moral courage
be what it would, the aspect they bore might have caused a more hardy
heart than Lionel's to shrink. _How much he owed he could not tell_;
nothing but debt stared him in the face. He had looked to the autumn
rents of Verner's Pride to extricate him from a portion of his
difficulties; and now those rents would be received by John Massingbird.
The furniture in the house, the plate, the linen, none of it was his; it
had been left by the will with Verner's Pride. The five hundred pounds,
all that he had inherited by that will, had been received at the
time--and was gone. One general sinking fund seemed to have swallowed up
everything; that, and all else; leaving a string of debts a yard long in
its place.
Reproaches now would be useless; whether self-reproach, or reproach to
his wife. The latter Lionel would never have given. And yet, when he
looked back, and thought how free from debt he might have been, nothing
but reproach, however vaguely directed, reproach of the past generally,
seemed to fill his heart. To turn out in the world, a free man, though
penniless, would have been widely different from turning out, plunged
over head and ears in difficulties.
In what quarter did he not owe money? He could not say. He had not been
very provident, and Sibylla had not been provident at all. But this much
might be said for Lionel: that he had not wasted money on useless
things, or self-indulgence. The improvements he had begun on the estate
had been the chief drain, so far as he went; and the money they took had
caused him to get backward with the general expenses. He had also been
over liberal to his mother. Money was owing on all sides; for large
things and for small; how much, Lionel did not yet know. He did not
know--he was afraid to guess--what private debts might have been
contracted by his wife. There had been times lately, when, in
contemplating the embarrassment growing so hopelessly upon him, Lionel
had felt inclined to wish that some climax would come and end it; but he
had never dreamt of such a climax as this. A hot flush dyed his cheeks
as he remembered there was nearly a twelvemonth's wages owing to most of
his servants; and he had not the means now of paying them.
"Stop on a bit if you like," said John Massingbird, in a hearty tone;
"stop a month, if you will. You are welcome. It will be only changing
your place from master to guest."
From master to guest! That same day John Massingbird assumed his own
place, unasked, at the head of the dinner-table. Lionel went to the side
with a flushed face. John Massingbird had never been remarkable for
delicacy, but Lionel could not help thinking that he might have waited
until he was gone, before assuming the full mastership. Captain Cannonby
made the third at the dinner, and he, by John Massingbird's request,
took the foot of the table. It was not the being put out of his place
that hurt Lionel so much, as the feeling of annoyance that John
Massingbird could behave so unlike a gentleman. He felt ashamed for him.
Dinner over, Lionel went up to his wife, who was keeping her room,
partly from temper, partly from illness.
"Sibylla, I'll not stop here another day," he said. "I see that John
Massingbird wants us to go. Now, what shall I do? Take lodgings?"
Sibylla looked up from the sofa, her eyes red with crying, her cheeks
inflamed.
"Anybody but you, Lionel, would never allow him to turn you out. Why
don't you dispute the right with him? Turn _him_ out, and defy him!"
He did not tell Sibylla that she was talking like a child. He only said
that John Massingbird's claim to Verner's Pride was indisputable--that
it had been his all along; that, in point of fact, he himself had been
the usurper.
"Then you mean," she said, "to give him up quiet possession?"
"I have no other resource, Sibylla. To attempt any sort of resistance
would be foolish as well as wrong."
"_I_ shan't give it up. I shall stay here in spite of him. You may do as
you like, but he is not going to get me out of my own home."
"Sibylla, will you try and be rational for once? If ever a time called
for it, it is the present. I ask you whether I shall seek after
lodgings."
"And I wonder that you are not ashamed to ask me," retorted Sibylla,
bursting into tears. "Lodgings, after Verner's Pride! No. I'd rather die
than go into lodgings. I dare say I shall die soon, with all this
affliction."
"I do not see what else there is for us but lodgings," resumed Lionel,
after a pause. "You will not hear of Jan's proposition."
"Go back to my old home!" she shrieked. "Like--as poor Fred used to
say--bad money returned. No! that I never will. You are wrapt up in Jan;
if he proposed to give me poison, you'd say yes. I wish Fred had not
died!"
"Will you be so good as tell me what _you_ think ought to be done?"
inquired Lionel.
"How can I think? Where's the good of asking me? I think the least you
can do in this wretchedness, is to take as much worry off me as you can,
Lionel."
"It is what I wish to do," he gently said. "But I can see only one plan
for us, Sibylla--lodgings. Here we cannot stay; it is out of the
question. To take a house is equally so. We have no furniture--no money,
in short, to set up a house, or to keep it on. Jan's plan, until I can
turn myself round and see what's to be done, would be the best. You
would be going to your own sisters, who would take care of you, should I
find it necessary to be away."
"Away! Where?" she quickly asked.
"I must go somewhere and do something. I cannot lead an idle life,
living upon other people's charity, or let you live upon it. I must find
some way of earning a livelihood: in London, perhaps. While I am looking
out, you would be with your sisters."
"Then, Lionel, hear me!" she cried, her throat working, her blue eyes
flashing with a strange light. "I will _never_ go home to my sisters! I
will never, so long as I live, enter that house again, to reside! You
are no better than a bear to wish me to do it."
What was he to do? She was his wife, and he must provide for her; but
she would go neither into lodgings, nor to the proposed home. Lionel set
his wits to work.
"I wonder--whether--my mother--would invite us there, for a short
while?" The words were spoken slowly, reluctantly, as if there were an
undercurrent of strong doubt in his mind. "Would you go to Deerham Court
for a time, Sibylla, if Lady Verner were agreeable?"
"Yes," said Sibylla, after a minute's consideration. "I'd go there."
Deeming it well that something should be decided, Lionel went
downstairs, caught up his hat, and proceeded to Deerham Court. He did
not say a word about his wife's caprice; or that two plans, proposed to
her, had been rejected. He simply asked his mother whether she would
temporarily receive him and his wife, until he could look round and
decide on the future.
To his great surprise, Lady Verner answered that she would; and answered
readily. Lionel, knowing the light in which she regarded his wife, had
anticipated he knew not what of objection, if not of positive refusal.
"I wish you to come here, Lionel; I intended to send for you and tell
you so," was the reply of Lady Verner. "You have no home to turn to,
and I could not have it said that my son in his strait was at fault for
one. I never thought to receive your wife inside my doors, but for your
sake I will do so. No servants, you understand, Lionel."
"Certainly not," he answered. "I cannot afford servants now as a matter
of luxury."
"I can neither afford them for you, nor is there room in my house to
accommodate them. This applies to that French maid of yours," Lady
Verner pointedly added. "I do not like the woman; nothing would induce
me to admit her here, even were circumstances convenient. Any attendance
that your wife may require, she shall have."
Lionel smiled a sad smile. "Be easy, mother. The time for my wife to
keep a French maid has gone by. I thank you very sincerely."
And so Lionel Verner was once more to be turned from Verner's Pride, to
take up his abode with his wife in his mother's home. When were his
wanderings to be at rest?