"Since when has Roy done this?" he asked. "I am surprised not to have heard of it."
"This six weeks he have done it, sir, and longer nor that. It's get our things from Peckaby's or it's not get any at all. Folks won't trust the likes of us, without us goes with the money in our hands. We might have knowed there was some evil in the wind when Peckaby's took to give us trust. Mr. Verner wasn't the best of masters to us, after he let Roy get on our backs—saving your presence for saying it, sir; but you must know as it's truth—but there's things a-going on now as 'ud make him, if he knowed 'em, rise up out of his grave. Let Roy take care of hisself, that he don't get burned up some night in his bed!" significantly added the man.
"Be silent, Davies! You—"
Lionel was interrupted by a commotion. Upon turning to ascertain its cause, he found an excited crowd hastening towards the spot from the brick-fields. The news of the affray had been carried thither, and Roy, with much intemperate language and loud wrath, had set off at full speed to quell it. The labourers set off after him, probably to protect their wives. Shouting, hooting, swearing—at which pastime Roy was the loudest—on they came, in a state of fury.
But for the presence of Lionel Verner, things might have come to a crisis—if a fight could have brought a crisis on. He interposed his authority, which even Roy did not yet dispute to his face, and he succeeded in restoring peace for the time. He became responsible—I don't know whether it was quite wise of him to do so—for the cost of the broken windows, and the women were allowed to go home unmolested. The men returned to their work, and Mr. Peckaby's face regained its colour. Roy was turning away, muttering to himself, when Lionel beckoned him aside with an authoritative hand.
"Roy, this must not go on. Do you understand me? It must not go on."
"What's not to go on, sir?" retorted Roy sullenly.
"You know what I mean. This disgraceful system of affairs altogether. I believe that you would be amenable to the law in thus paying the men, or in part paying them, with an order for goods; instead of in open, honest coin. Unless I am mistaken, it borders very closely upon the truck system."
"I can take care of myself and of the law, too, sir," was the answer of Roy.
"Very good. I shall take care that this sort of oppression is lifted off the shoulders of the men. Had I known it was being pursued, I should have stopped it before."
"You have no right to interfere between me and anything now, sir."
"Roy," said Lionel calmly, "you are perfectly well aware that the right, not only to interfere between you and the estate, but to invest me with full power over it and you, was sought to be given me by Mrs. Verner at my uncle's death. For reasons of my own I chose to decline it, and have continued to decline it. Do you remember what I once told you—that one of my first acts of power would be to displace you? After what I have seen and heard to-day, I shall deliberate whether it be not my duty to reconsider my determination, and assume this, and all other power."
Roy's face turned green. He answered defiantly, not in tone, but in spirit—
"It wouldn't be for long, at any rate, sir; and Mr. Massingbird, I know, 'll put me into my place again on his return."
Lionel did not reply immediately. The sun was coming down upon his uncovered head like a burning furnace, and he was casting a glance round to see if any friendly shade might be at hand. In his absorption over the moment's business he had not observed that he had halted with Roy right underneath its beams. No, there was no shade just in that spot. A public pump stood behind him, but the sun was nearly vertical, and the pump got as much of it as he did. A thought glanced through Lionel's mind of resorting to the advice of the women, to double his handkerchief cornerwise over his head. But he did not purpose staying above another minute with Roy, to whom he again turned.
"Don't deceive yourself, Roy. Mr. Massingbird is not likely to countenance such doings as these. That Mrs. Verner will not, I know; and, I tell you plainly, I will not. You shall pay the men's wages at the proper and usual time; you shall pay them in full, to the last halfpenny that they earn. Do you hear? I order you now to do so. We will have no underhanded truck system introduced on the Verner estate."
"You'd like to ruin poor Peckaby, I suppose, sir!"
"I have nothing to do with Peckaby. If public rumour is to be credited, the business is not Peckaby's, but yours—"
"Them that says it is a pack of liars!" burst forth Roy.
"Possibly. I say I have nothing to do with that. Peckaby—"
Lionel's voice faltered. An awful pain—a pain, the like of which, for acute violence, he had never felt—had struck him in the head. He put his hand up to it, and fell against the pump.
"Are you ill, sir?" asked Roy.
"What can it be?" murmured Lionel. "A sudden pain has attacked me here, Roy," touching his head; "an awful pain. I'll get into Frost's, and sit down."
Frost's cottage was but a minute's walk, but Lionel staggered as he went to it. Roy attended him. The man humbly asked if Mr. Lionel would be pleased to lean upon him, but Lionel waved him off. Matthew Frost was sitting indoors alone; his grandchildren were at school, his son's wife was busy elsewhere. Matthew no longer went out to labour. He had been almost incapable of it before Mr. Verner's annuity fell to him. Robin was away at work: but Robin was a sadly altered man since the death of Rachel. His very nature appeared to have changed.
"My head! my head!" broke from Lionel, as he entered, in the intensity of his pain. "Matthew, I think I must have got a sun-stroke."
Old Matthew pulled off his straw hat, and lifted himself slowly out of his chair. All his movements were slow now. Lionel had sat himself down on the settle, his head clasped by both hands, and his pale face turned to fiery red—as deep a crimson as Mrs. Verner's was habitually.
"A sun-stroke?" echoed old Matthew, leaning on his stick, as he stood before him, attentively regarding Lionel. "Ay, sir, for sure it looks like it. Have you been standing still in the sun, this blazing day?"
"I have been standing in it without my hat," replied Lionel. "Not for long, however."
"It don't take a minute, sir, to do the mischief. I had one myself, years before you were born, Mr. Lionel. On a day as hot as this, I was out in my garden, here, at the back of this cottage. I had gone out without my hat, and was standing over my pig, watching him eat his wash, when I felt something take my head—such a pain, sir, that I had never felt before, and never wish to feel again. I went indoors, and Robin, who might be a boy of five, or so, looked frightened at me, my face was so red. I couldn't hold my head up, sir; and when the doctor came, he said it was a sun-stroke. I think there must be particular moments and days when the sun has this power to harm us, though we don't know which they are nor how to avoid them," added old Matthew, as much in self-soliloquy as to Lionel. "I had often been out before, without my hat, in as great heat; for longer, too; and it had never harmed me. Since then, sir, I have put a white handkerchief inside the crown of my hat in hot weather. The doctor told me to do so."
"How long did the pain last?" asked Lionel, feeling his pain growing worse with every moment. "Many hours?"
"Hours?" repeated old Matthew, with a strong emphasis on the word. "Mr. Lionel, it lasted for days and weeks. Before the next morning came, sir, I was in a raging fever; for three weeks, good, I was in my bed, above here, and never out of it; hardly the clothes smoothed a-top of me. Sun-strokes are not frequent in this climate, sir, but when they do come, they can't be trifled with."
Perhaps Lionel felt the same conviction. Perhaps he felt that with this pain, increasing as it was in intensity, he must make the best of his way home, if he would get home at all. "Good-day, Matthew," he said, rising from the bench. "I'll go home at once!"
"And send for Dr. West, sir, or for Mr. Jan, if you are no better when you get there," was the parting salutation of the old man.
He stood at the door, leaning on his stick, and watched Lionel down Clay Lane. "A sun-stroke, for sure," repeated he, slowly turning in, as the angle of the lane hid Lionel from his view.
CHAPTER XXIII.
DAYS AND NIGHTS OF PAIN
In his darkened chamber at Deerham Court lay Lionel Verner. Whether it was a sun-stroke, or whether it was but the commencement of a fever, which had suddenly struck him down that day, certain it was, that a violent sickness attacked him, and he lay for many, many days—days and weeks as old Frost had called it—between life and death. Fever and delirium struggled with life, which should get the mastery.
Very little doubt was there, that his state of mind increased the danger of his state of body. How bravely Lionel had struggled to do battle with his great anguish, he might scarcely have known himself, in all its full intensity, save for this illness. He had loved Sibylla with the pure fervour of feelings young and fresh. He could have loved her to the end of life; he could have died for her. No leaven was mixed with his love, no base dross; it was refined as the purest silver. It is only these exalted, ideal passions, which partake more of heaven's nature than of earth's, that tell upon the heart when their end comes. Terribly had it told upon Lionel Verner's. In one hour he had learned that Sibylla was false to him, was about to become the wife of another. In his sensitive reticence, in his shrinking pride, he had put a smiling face upon it before the world. He had watched her marry Frederick Massingbird, and had "made no sign." Deep, deep in his heart, fifty fathom deep, had he pressed down his misery, passing his days in what may be called a false atmosphere—showing a false side to his friends. It seemed false to Lionel, the appearing what he was not. He was his true self at night only, when he could turn, and toss, and groan out his trouble at will. But, when illness attacked him, and he had no strength of body to throw off his pain of mind, then he found how completely the blow had shattered him. It seemed to Lionel, in his sane moments, in the intervals of his delirium, that it would be far happier to die, than to wake up again to renewed life, to bear about within him that ever-present sorrow. Whether the fever—it was not brain fever, though bordering closely upon it—was the result of this state of mind, more than of the sun-stroke, might be a question. Nobody knew anything of that inward state, and the sun-stroke got all the blame—save, perhaps, from Lionel himself. He may have doubted.
One day Jan called in to see him. It was in August. Several weeks had elapsed since the commencement of his illness, and he was so far recovered as to be removed by day to a sitting-room on a level with his chamber—a wondrously pretty sitting-room over Lady Verner's drawing-room, but not so large as that, and called "Miss Decima's room." The walls were panelled in medallions, white and delicate blue, the curtains were of blue satin and lace, the furniture blue. In each medallion hung an exquisite painting in water colours, framed—Decima's doing. Lady Verner was one who liked at times to be alone, and then Decima would sit in this room, and feel more at home than in any room in the house. When Lionel began to recover, the room was given over to him. Here he lay on the sofa; or lounged on an easy-chair; or stood at the window, his hands clasping hold of some support, and his legs as tottering as were poor old Matthew Frost's. Sometimes Lady Verner would be his companion, sometimes he would be consigned to Decima and Lucy Tempest. Lucy was pleased to take her share of helping the time to pass; would read to him, or talk to him; or sit down on her low stool on the hearth-rug and only look at him, waiting until he should want something done. Dangerous moments, Miss Lucy! Unless your heart is cased in adamant, you can scarcely be with that attractive man—ten times more attractive now, in his sickness—and not get your wings singed.
Jan came in one day when Lionel was sitting on the sofa, having propped the cushion up at the back of his head. Decima was winding some silk, and Lucy was holding the skein for her. Lucy wore a summer dress of white muslin, a blue sprig raised upon it in tambour-stitch, with blue and white ribbons at its waist and neck. Very pretty, very simple it looked, but wonderfully according with Lucy Tempest. Jan looked round, saw a tolerably strong table, and took up his seat upon it.
"How d'ye get on, Lionel?" asked he.
It was Dr. West who attended Lionel, and Jan was chary of interfering with the doctor's proper patients—or, rather, the doctor was chary of his doing so—therefore Jan's visits were entirely unprofessional.
"I don't get on at all—as it seems to me," replied Lionel. "I'm sure I am weaker than I was a week ago."
"I dare say," said Jan.
"You dare say!" echoed Lionel. "When a man has turned the point of an illness, he expects to get stronger, instead of weaker."
"That depends," said Jan. "I beg your pardon, Miss Lucy; that's my foot caught in your dress, isn't it?"
Lucy turned to disentangle her dress from Jan's great feet. "You should not sway your feet about so, Jan," said she pleasantly.
"It hasn't hurt it, has it?" asked Jan.
"Oh, no. Is there another skein to hold, Decima?"
Decima replied in the negative. She rose, put the paper of silk upon the table, and then turned to Jan.
"Mamma and I had quite a contention yesterday," she said to him. "I say that Lionel is not being treated properly."
"That's just my opinion," laconically replied Jan. "Only West flares up so, if his treatment is called in question. I'd get him well in half the time."
Lionel wearily changed his position on the sofa. The getting well, or the keeping ill, did not appear to interest him greatly.
"Let's look at his medicine, Decima," continued Jan. "I have not seen what has come round lately."
Decima left the room and brought back a bottle with some medicine in it.
"There's only one dose left," she remarked to Jan.
Jan took the cork out and smelt it; then he tasted it, apparently with great gusto, as anybody else might taste port wine; while Lucy watched him, drawing her lips away from her pretty teeth in distaste at the proceeding.
"Psha!" cried Jan.
"Is it not proper medicine for him?" asked Decima.
"It's as innocent as water," said Jan. "It'll do him neither good nor harm."
And finally Jan poured the lot down his own throat.
Lucy shuddered.
"Oh, Jan, how could you take it?"
"It won't hurt me," said literal Jan.
"But it must be so nasty! I never could have believed any one would willingly drink medicine. It is bad enough to do it when compelled by sickness."
"Law!" returned Jan. "If you call this nasty, Miss Lucy, you should taste some of our physic. The smell would about knock you down."
"I think nothing is worse than the smell of drugs," resumed Lucy. "The other day, when Lady Verner called in at your surgery to speak to you, and took me with her, I was glad to get into the open air again."
"Don't you ever marry a doctor, then, Miss Lucy."
"I am not going to marry one," returned Lucy.
"Well, you need not look so fierce," cried Jan. "I didn't ask you."
Lucy laughed. "Did I look fierce, Jan? I suppose I was thinking of the drugs. I'd never, never be a surgeon, of all things in the world."
"If everybody was of your mind, Miss Lucy, how would people get doctored?"
"Very true," answered Lucy. "But I don't envy them."
"The doctors or the people?" asked Jan.
"I meant the doctors. But I envy the patients less," glancing involuntarily towards Lionel as she spoke.
Jan glanced at him too. "Lionel, I'll bring you round some better stuff than this," said he. "What are you eating?"
"Nothing," put in Decima. "Dr. West keeps him upon arrowroot and beef-tea, and such things."
"Slops," said Jan contemptuously. "Have a fowl cooked every day, Lionel, and eat it all, if you like, bones and all; or a mutton—chop or two; or some good eels. And have the window open and sit at it; don't lounge on that sofa, fancying you can't leave it; and to-morrow or the next day, borrow Mrs. Verner's carriage—"
"No, thank you," interposed Lionel.
"Have a fly, then," composedly went on Jan. "Rouse yourself, and eat and drink, and go into the air, and you'll soon be as well as I am. It's the stewing and fretting indoors, fancying themselves ill, that keeps folks back."
Something like a sickly smile crossed Lionel's wan lips. "Do you remember how you offended your mother, Jan, by telling her she only wanted to rouse herself?"
"Well," said Jan, "it was the truth. West keeps his patients dilly-dallying on, when he might have them well in no time. If he says anything about them to me, I always tell him so; otherwise I don't interfere; it's no business of mine. But you are my brother, you know."
"Don't quarrel with West on my account, Jan. Only settle it amicably between you, what I am to do, and what I am to take. I don't care."
"Quarrel!" said Jan. "You never knew me to quarrel in your life. West can come and see you as usual, and charge you, if you please; and you can just pour his physic down the sink. I'll send you some bark: but it's not of much consequence whether you take it or not; it's good kitchen physic you want now. Is there anything on your mind that's keeping you back?" added plain Jan.
A streak of scarlet rose to Lionel's white cheek.
"Anything on my mind, Jan! I do not understand you."
"Look here," said Jan, "if there is nothing, you ought to be better than this by now, in spite of old West. What you have got to do is to rouse yourself, and believe you are well, instead of lying by, here. My mother was angry with me for telling her that, but didn't she get well all one way after it? And look at the poor! They have their illnesses that bring 'em down to skeletons; but when did you ever find them lie by, after they got better? They can't; they are obliged to go out and turn to at work again; and the consequence is they are well in no time. You have your fowl to-day," continued Jan, taking himself off the table to depart; "or a duck, if you fancy it's more savoury; and if West comes in while you are eating it, tell him I ordered it. He can't grumble at me for doctoring you."
Decima left the room with Jan. Lucy Tempest went to the window, threw it open, drew an easy-chair, with its cushions, near to it, and then returned to the sofa.
"Will you come to the window?" said she to Lionel. "Jan said you were to sit there, and I have put your chair ready."
Lionel unclosed his eyelids. "I am better here, child, thank you."
"But you heard what Jan said—that you were not going the right way to get well."
"It does not much matter, Lucy, whether I get well, or whether I don't," he answered wearily.
Lucy sat down; not on her favourite stool, but on a low chair, and fixed her eyes upon him gravely.
"Do you know what Mr. Cust would say to that?" she asked. "He would tell you that you were ungrateful to God. You are already half-way towards getting well."
"I know I am, Lucy. But I am nearly tired of life."
"It is only the very old who say that, or ought to say it. I am not sure that they ought—even if they were a hundred. But you are young. Stay! I will find it for you."
He was searching about for his handkerchief. Lucy found it, fallen on the floor at the back of the sofa. She brought it round to him, and he gently laid hold of her hand as he took it.
"My little friend, you have yet to learn that things, not years, tire us of life."
Lucy shook her head.
"No; I have not to learn it. I know it must be so. Will you please to come to the window?"
Lionel, partly because his tormentor (may the word be used? he was sick, bodily and mentally, and would have lain still for ever) was a young lady, partly to avoid the trouble of persisting in "No," rose, and took his seat in the arm-chair.
"What an obstinate nurse you would make, Lucy! Is there anything else, pray, that you wish me to do?"
She did not smile in response to his smile; she looked very grave and serious.
"I would do all that Jan says, were I you," was her answer. "I believe in Jan. He will get you well sooner than Dr. West."
"Believe in Jan?" repeated Lionel, willing to be gay if he could. "Do you mean that Jan is Jan?"
"I mean that I have faith in Jan. I have none in Dr. West."
"In his medical skill? Let me tell you, Lucy, he is a very clever man, in spite of what Jan may say."
"I can't tell anything about his skill. Until Jan spoke now I did not know but he was treating you rightly. But I have no faith in himself. I think a good, true, faithful-natured man should be depended on for cure, more certainly than one who is false-natured."
"False-natured!" echoed Lionel. "Lucy, you should not so speak of Dr. West. You know nothing wrong of Dr. West. He is much esteemed among us at Deerham."
"Of course I know nothing wrong of him," returned Lucy, with some slight surprise. "But when I look at people I always seem to know what they are. I am sorry to have said so much. I—I think I forgot it was to you I spoke."
"Forgot!" exclaimed Lionel. "Forgot what?"
She hesitated at the last sentence, and she now blushed vividly.
"I forgot for the moment that he was Sibylla's father," she simply said.
Again the scarlet rose in the face of Lionel. Lucy leaned against the window-frame but a few paces from him, her large soft eyes, in their earnest sympathy, lifted to his. He positively shrank from them.
"What's Sibylla to me?" he asked. "She is Mrs. Frederick Massingbird."
Lucy stood in penitence. "Do not be angry with me," she timidly cried. "I ought not to have said it to you, perhaps. I see it always."
"See what, Lucy?" he continued, speaking gently, not in anger.
"I see now much you think of her, and how ill it makes you. When Jan asked just now if you had anything on your mind to keep you back, I knew what it was."
Lionel grew hot and cold with a sudden fear. "Did I say anything in my delirium?"
"Nothing at all—that I heard of. I was not with you. I do not think anybody suspects that you are ill because—because of her."
"Ill because of her!" he sharply repeated, the words breaking from him in his agony, in his shrinking dread at finding so much suspected. "I am ill from fever. What else should I be ill from?"
Lucy went close to his chair and stood before him meekly.
"I am so sorry," she whispered. "I cannot help seeing things, but I did not mean to make you angry."
He rose, steadying himself by the table, and laid his hand upon her head, with the same fond motion that a father might have used.
"Lucy, I am not angry—only vexed at being watched so closely," he concluded, his lips parting with a faint smile.
In her earnest, truthful, serious face of concern, as it was turned up to him, he read how futile it would be to persist in his denial.
"I did not watch you for the purpose of watching. I saw how it was, without being able to help myself."
Lionel bent his head.
"Let the secret remain between us, Lucy. Never suffer a hint of it to escape your lips."
Nothing answered him save the glad expression that beamed out from her countenance, telling him how implicitly he might trust to her.