by Ellen Wood
Lionel drew him into the vicarage garden, amidst the trees. It was shady there; the outer world shut out from eye and ear.
“I cannot beat about the bush; I cannot dissemble,” began Lionel, in deep agitation. “Tell me your true opinion of this business, for the love of Heaven! I have come down to ask it of you.”
The vicar paused. “My dear friend, I feel almost afraid to give it to you.”
“I have been speaking with Jan. He thinks it may be Frederick Massingbird — not dead, but alive.”
“I fear it is,” answered the clergyman. “Within the last half-hour I have fully believed that it is.”
Lionel leaned his back against a tree, his arms folded. Tolerably calm outwardly; but he could not get the healthy blood back to his face. “Why within the last half-hour more than before?” he asked. “Has anything fresh happened?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Bourne. “I went down to Hook’s; the girl’s not expected to live the day through — but that you may have heard from Jan. In coming away, your gamekeeper met me. He stopped, and began asking my advice in a mysterious manner — whether, if a secret affecting his master had come to his knowledge, he ought, or ought not, to impart it to his master. I felt sure what the man was driving at — that it could be no other thing than this ghost affair — and gave him a hint to speak out to me in confidence; which he did.”
“Well?” rejoined Lionel.
“He said,” continued Mr. Bourne, lowering his voice, “that he passed a man last night who, he was perfectly certain, was Frederick Massingbird. ‘Not Frederick Massingbird’s ghost, as foolish people were fancying,’ Broom added, ‘but Massingbird himself.’ He was in doubt whether or not it was his duty to acquaint Mr. Verner; and so he asked me. I bade him not acquaint you,” continued the vicar, “but to bury the suspicion within his own breast, breathing a word to none.”
Evidence upon evidence! Every moment brought less loop-hole of escape for Lionel. “How can it be?” he gasped. “If he is not dead, where can he have been all this while?”
“I conclude it will turn out to be one of those every-day occurrences that have little marvel at all in them. My thoughts were busy upon it, while standing over the grave yonder. I suppose he must have been to the diggings — possibly laid up there by illness; and letters may have miscarried.”
“You feel little doubt upon the fact itself — that it is Frederick Massingbird?”
“I feel none. It is certainly he. Won’t you come in and sit down?”
“No, no,” said Lionel; and, drawing his hand from the vicar’s, he went forth again, he, and his heavy weight. Frederick Massingbird alive!
CHAPTER LVII.
A WALK IN THE RAIN.
The fine September morning had turned to a rainy afternoon. A heavy mist hung upon the trees, the hedges, the ground — something akin to the mist which had fallen upon Lionel Verner’s spirit. The day had grown more like a November one; the clouds were leaden-coloured, the rain fell. Even the little birds sought the shelter of their nests.
One there was who walked in it, his head uncovered, his brow bared. He was in the height of his fever dream. It is not an inapt name for his state of mind. His veins coursed as with fever; his thoughts took all the vague uncertainty of a dream. Little heeded he that the weather had become chilly, or that the waters fell upon him!
What must be his course? What ought it to be? The more he dwelt on the revelation of that day, the deeper grew his conviction that Frederick Massingbird was alive, breathing the very air that he breathed. What ought to be his course? If this were so, his wife was — not his wife.
It was obvious that his present, immediate course ought to be to solve the doubt — to set it at rest. But how? It could only be done by unearthing Frederick Massingbird; or he who bore so strange a resemblance to him. And where was he to be looked for? To track the hiding-place of a “ghost” is not an easy matter; and Lionel had no clue where to find the track of this one. If staying in the village, he must be concealed in some house; lying perdu by day. It was very strange that it should be so; that he should not openly show himself.
There was another way by which perhaps the doubt might be solved — as it suddenly occurred to Lionel. And that was through Captain Cannonby. If this gentleman really was with Frederick Massingbird when he died, and saw him buried, it was evident that it could not be Frederick come back to life. In that case, who or what it might be, Lionel did not stay to speculate; his business lay in ascertaining by the most direct means in his power, whether it was, or was not, Frederick Massingbird. How was it possible to do this? how could it be possible to set the question at rest?
By a very simple process, it may be answered — the waiting for time and chance. Ay, but do you know what that waiting involves, in a case like this? Think of the state of mind that Lionel Verner must live under during the suspense!
He made no doubt that the man who had been under the tree on the lawn a few nights before, watching his window, whom they had set down as being Roy, was Frederick Massingbird. And yet, it was scarcely believable. Where now was Lionel to look for him? He could not, for Sibylla’s sake, make inquiries in the village in secret or openly; he could not go to the inhabitants and ask — have you seen Frederick Massingbird? or say to each individual, I must send a police officer to search your house, for I suspect Frederick Massingbird is somewhere concealed, and I want to find him. For her sake he could not so much as breathe the name, in connection with his being alive.
Given that it was Frederick Massingbird, what could possibly prevent his making himself known? As he dwelt upon this problem, trying to solve it, the idea taken up by Lucy Tempest — that the man under the tree was watching for an opportunity to harm him — came into his mind. That, surely, could not be the solution! If he had taken Frederick Massingbird’s wife to be his wife, he had done it in all innocence. Lionel spurned the notion as a preposterous one; nevertheless, a remembrance crossed him of the old days when the popular belief at Verner’s Pride had been, that the younger of the Massingbirds was of a remarkably secretive and also of a revengeful nature. But all that he barely glanced at; the terrible fear touching Sibylla absorbed him.
He was leaning against a tree in the covered walk near Verner’s Pride, the walk which led to the Willow Pond, his head bared, his brow bent with the most unmistakable signs of care, when something not unlike a small white balloon came flying down the path. A lady, with her silk dress turned over her shoulders, leaving only the white lining exposed to view. She was face to face with Lionel before she saw him.
“Lucy!” he exclaimed, in extreme surprise.
Lucy Tempest laughed, and let her dress drop into a more dignified position. “I and Decima went to call on Mrs. Bitterworth,” she explained, “and Decima is staying there. It began to rain as I came out, so I turned into the back walk and put my dress up to save it. Am I not economical, Mr. Verner?”
She spoke quickly. Lionel thought it was done with a view to hide her agitation. “You cannot go home through this rain, Lucy. Let me take you indoors; we are close to Verner’s Pride.”
“No, thank you,” said Lucy hastily, “I must go back to Lady Verner. She will not be pleased at Decima’s staying out, therefore I must return. Poor Mrs. Bitterworth has had an attack of — what did they call it? — spasmodical croup, I think. She is better now, and begged Decima to stay with her the rest of the day; Mr. Bitterworth and the rest of them are out. Jan says it is highly dangerous for the time it lasts.”
“She has had something of the same sort before, I remember,” observed Lionel. “I wish you would come in, Lucy. If you must go home, I will send you in the carriage; but I think you might stay and dine with us.”
A soft colour mantled in Lucy’s cheeks. She had never made herself a familiar acquaintance at Lionel Verner’s. He had observed it, if no one else had. Sibylla had once said to her that she hoped they should be great friends, that Verner’s Pride would see a great deal of her. Lucy had never respond
ed to the wish. A formal visit with Decima or Lady Verner when she could not help herself; but alone, in a social manner, she had never put her foot over the threshold of Verner’s Pride.
“You are very kind. I must go home at once. The rain will not hurt me.”
Lionel, self-conscious, did not urge it further. “Will you remain here, then, under the trees, while I go home and get an umbrella?”
“Oh, dear, no, I don’t want an umbrella; thank you all the same. I have my parasol, you see.”
She took her dress up again as she spoke; not high, as it was previously, but turning it a little. “Lady Verner scolds me so if I spoil my things,” she said, in a tone of laughing apology. “She buys me very good ones, and orders me to take care of them. Good-bye, Mr. Verner.”
Lionel took the hand in his which she held out. But he turned with her, and then loosed it again.
“You are not coming with me, Mr. Verner?”
“I shall see you home.”
“But — I had rather you did not. I prefer — not to trouble you.”
“Pardon me, Lucy. I cannot suffer you to go alone.”
It was a calm reply, quietly spoken. There were no fine phrases of its being “no trouble,” that the “trouble was a pleasure,” as others might indulge in. Fine phrases from them! from the one to the other! Neither could have spoken them.
Lucy said no more, and they walked on side by side in silence, both unpleasantly self-conscious. Lionel’s face had resumed its strange expression of care. Lucy had observed it when she came up to him; she observed it still.
“You look as though you had some great trouble upon you, Mr. Verner,” she said, after a while.
“Then I look what is the truth. I have one, Lucy.”
“A heavy one?” asked Lucy, struck with his tone.
“A grievously heavy one. One that does not often fall to the lot of man.”
“May I know it?” she timidly said.
“No, Lucy. If I could speak it, it would only give you pain; but it is of a private nature. Possibly it may be averted; it is at present a suspected dread, not a confirmed one. Should it become confirmed, you will learn it in common with all the world.”
She looked up at him, puzzled; sympathy in her mantling blush, in her soft, dark, earnest eyes. He could not avoid contrasting that truthful face with another’s frivolous one; and I can’t help it if you blame him. He did his best to shake off the feeling, and looked down at her with a careless smile.
“Don’t let it give you concern, Lucy. My troubles must rest upon my own head.”.
“Have you seen any more of that man who was watching? Roy.”
“No. But I don’t believe now that it was Roy. He strongly denies it, and I have had my suspicions diverted to another quarter.”
“To one who may be equally wishing to do you harm?”
“I cannot say. If it be the party I — I suspect, he may deem that I have done him harm.”
“You!” echoed Lucy. “And have you?”
“Yes. Unwittingly. It seems to be my fate, I think, to work harm upon — upon those whom I would especially shield from it.”
Did he allude to her? Lucy thought so, and the flush on her cheeks deepened. At that moment the rain began to pour down heavily. They were then passing the thicket of trees where those adventurous ghost-hunters had taken up their watch a few nights previously, in view of the Willow Pond. Lucy stepped underneath their branches.
“Now,” said Lionel, “should you have done well to accept my offer of Verner’s Pride as a shelter, or not?”
“It may only be a passing storm,” observed Lucy. “The rain then was nothing.”
Lionel took her parasol and shook the wet off it. He began to wonder how Lucy would get home. No carriage could be got to that spot, and the rain, coming down now, was not, in his opinion, a passing storm.
“Will you promise to remain here, Lucy, while I get an umbrella?” he presently asked.
“Why! where could you get an umbrella from?”
“From Hook’s, if they possess such a thing. If not, I can get one from Broom’s.”
“But you would get so wet, going for it!”
Lionel laughed as he went off.
“I don’t wear a silk dress; to be scolded for it, if it gets spoiled.”
Not ten steps had he taken, however, when who should come striding through an opening in the trees, but Jan. Jan was on his way from Hook’s cottage, a huge brown cotton umbrella over his head, more useful than elegant.
“What, is that you, Miss Lucy! Well, I should as soon have thought of seeing Mrs. Peckaby’s white donkey!”
“I am weather-bound, Jan,” said Lucy. “Mr. Verner was about to get me an umbrella.”
“To see if I could get one,” corrected Lionel. “I question if the Hooks possess such a commodity.”
“Not they,” cried Jan. “The girl’s rather better,” added he unceremoniously. “She may get through it now; at least there’s a shade of a chance. You can have my umbrella, Miss Lucy.”
“Won’t you let me go with you, Jan?” she asked.
“Oh, I can’t stop to take you to Deerham Court,” was Jan’s answer, given with his accustomed plainness. “Here, Lionel!”
He handed over the umbrella, and was walking off.
“Jan, Jan, you will get wet,” said Lucy.
It amused Jan. “A wetting more or less is nothing to me,” he called out, striding on.
“Will you stay under shelter a few minutes yet, and see whether it abates?” asked Lionel.
Lucy looked up at the skies, stretching her head beyond the trees to do so.
“Do you think it will abate?” she rejoined.
“Honestly to confess it, I think it will get worse,” said Lionel. “Lucy, you have thin shoes on! I did not see that until now.”
“Don’t you tell Lady Verner,” replied Lucy, with the pretty dependent manner which she had brought from school with her, and which she probably would never lose. “She would scold me for walking out in them.”
Lionel smiled, and held the great umbrella — large enough for a carriage — close to the trees, that it might shelter her as she came forth.
“Take my arm, Lucy.”
She hesitated for a single moment — a hesitation so temporary that any other than Lionel could not have observed it, and then took his arm. And again they walked on in silence. In passing down Clay Lane — the way Lionel took — Mrs. Peckaby was standing at her door.
“On the look-out for the white donkey, Mrs. Peckaby?” asked Lionel.
The husband inside heard the words, and flew into a tantrum.
“She’s never on the look-out for nothing else, sir, asking pardon for saying it to you.”
Mrs. Peckaby clasped her hands together.
“It’ll come!” she murmured. “Sometimes, sir, when my patience is well nigh exhausted, I has a vision of the New Jerusalem in the night, and is revived. It’ll come, sir, the quadruple’ll come!”
“I wonder,” laughed Lucy, as they walked on, “whether she will go on to the end of her life expecting it?”
“If her husband will allow her,” answered Lionel. “But by what I have heard since I came home, his patience is — as she says by her own with reference to the white ‘quadruple’ — well nigh exhausted.”
“He told Decima, the other day, that he was sick of the theme and of her folly, and he wished the New Jerusalem had her and the white donkey together. Here we are!” added Lucy, as they came in front of Deerham Court. “Lionel, please, let me go in the back way — Jan’s way. And then Lady Verner will not see me. She will say I ought not to have come through the rain.”
“She’ll see the shoes and the silk dress, and she’ll say you should have stopped at Verner’s Pride, as a well-trained young lady ought,” returned Lionel.
He took her safely to the back door, opened it, and sent her in.
“Thank you very much,” said she, holding out her hand to him. “I have g
iven you a disagreeable walk, and now I must give you one back again.”
“Change your shoes at once, and don’t talk foolish things,” was Lionel’s answer.
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE THUNDER-STORM.
A wet walk back Lionel certainly had; but, wet or dry, it was all the same in his present distressed frame of mind. Arrived at Verner’s Pride, he found his wife dressed for dinner, and the centre of a host of guests gay as she was. No opportunity, then, to question her about Frederick Massingbird’s death, and how far Captain Cannonby was cognisant of the particulars.
He had to change his own things. It was barely done by dinner-time; and he sat down to table, the host of many guests. His brow was smooth, his speech was courtly; how could any of them suspect that a terrible dread was gnawing at his heart? Sibylla, in a rustling silk dress and a coronet of diamonds, sat opposite to him, in all her dazzling beauty. Had she suspected what might be in store for her, those smiles would not have chased each other so incessantly on her lips.
Sibylla went up to bed early. She was full of caprices as a wayward child. Of a remarkably chilly nature — as is the case, sometimes, where the constitution is delicate — she would have a fire in her dressing-room night and morning all the year round, even in the heat of summer. It pleased her this evening to desert her guests suddenly; she had the headache, she said.
The weather on this day appeared to be as capricious as Sibylla, as strangely curious as the great fear which had fallen upon Lionel. The fine morning had changed to the rainy, misty, chilly afternoon; the afternoon to a clear, bright evening; and that evening had now become overcast with portentous clouds.
Without much warning the storm burst forth; peals of thunder reverberated through the air, flashes of forked lightning played in the sky. Lionel hastened upstairs; he remembered how these storms terrified his wife.
She had knelt down to bury her head amidst the soft cushions of a chair when Lionel entered her dressing-room. “Sibylla!” he said.