by Ellen Wood
“It was him, sir; Mr. Frederick Massingbird. It was nobody else.”
Down deep in Lionel Verner’s heart there had lain a conviction, almost ever since that fatal night, that the man had been no other than the one now spoken of, the younger Massingbird. Why the impression should have come to him he could not have told at the time; something, perhaps, in Frederick’s manner had given rise to it. On the night before John Massingbird’s departure for Australia, after the long interview he had held with Mr. Verner in the study, which was broken in upon by Lionel on the part of Robin Frost, the three young men — the Massingbirds and Lionel — had subsequently remained together, discussing the tragedy. In that interview it was that a sudden doubt of Frederick Massingbird entered the mind of Lionel. It was impossible for him to tell why. He only knew that the impression — nay, it were more correct to say the conviction, seized hold upon him, never to be eradicated. Perhaps something strange in Frederick’s manner awoke it. Lionel surmised not how far his guilt might have extended; but that he was the guilty one, he fully believed. It was not his business to proclaim this; had it been a certainty, instead of a fancy, Lionel would not have made it his business. But when Frederick Massingbird was on the point of marrying Sibylla, then Lionel partially broke through his reserve, and asked him whether he had nothing on his conscience that ought to prevent his making her his wife. Frederick answered freely and frankly, to all appearance, and for the moment Lionel’s doubts were dissipated: only, however, to return afterwards with increased force. Consequently he was not surprised to hear this said, though surprised at Matthew Frost’s knowing it.
“How did you hear it, Matthew?” he asked.
“Robin got at it, sir. Poor Robin, he was altogether on the wrong scent for a long while, thinking it was Mr. John; but it’s set right now, and Robin, he’s at ease. May Heaven have mercy upon Frederick Massingbird!”
Successful rival though he had proved to him, guilty man that he had been, Lionel heartily echoed the prayer. He asked no more questions of the old man upon the subject, but afterwards, when he was going out, he met Robin and stopped him.
“Robin, what is this that your father has been telling me about Frederick Massingbird?”
“Only to think of it!” was Robin’s response, growing somewhat excited. “To think how our ways get balked! I had swore to be revenged — as you know, sir — and now the power of revenge is took from me! He’s gone where my revenge can’t reach him. It’s of no good — I see it — for us to plan. Our plans’ll never be carried out, if they don’t please God.”
“And it was Frederick Massingbird?”
“It was Frederick Massingbird,” assented Robin, his breath coming thick and fast with agitation. “We had got but one little ewe lamb, and he must leave the world that was open to him, and pick her up, and destroy her! I ain’t calm yet to talk of it, sir.”
“But how did you ascertain this? Your suspicions, you know, were directed to Mr. John Massingbird: wrongly, as I believed; as I told you.”
“Yes, they were wrong,” said Robin. “I was put upon the wrong scent: but not wilfully. You might remember a dairy wench that lived at Verner’s Pride in them days, sir — Dolly, her name was; she that went and got married after to Joe Stubbs, Mr. Bitterworth’s wagoner. It was she told me, sir. I used to be up there a good bit with Stubbs, and one day when I was sick and ill there, the wife told me she had seen one of the gentlemen come from the Willow Pool that past night. I pressed her to tell me which of them, and at first she said she couldn’t, and then she said it was Mr. John. I never thought but she told me right, but it seems — as she confesses now — that she only fixed on him to satisfy me, and because she thought he was dead, over in Australia, and it wouldn’t matter if she did say it. I worried her life out over it, she says; and it’s like I did. She says now, if she was put upon her Bible oath, she couldn’t say which of the gentlemen it was, more nor the other; but she did see one of ‘em.”
“But this is not telling me how you know it to have been Mr. Frederick, Robin.”
“I learned it from Mr. John,” was the reply. “When he come back I saw him; I knew it was him; and I got a gun and watched for him. I meant to take my revenge, sir. Roy, he found me out; and in a night or two, he brought me face to face with Mr. John, and Mr. John he told me the truth. But he’d only tell it me upon my giving him my promise not to expose his brother. So I’m balked even of that revenge. I had always counted on the exposing of the man,” added Robin in a dreamy tone, as if he were looking back into the past; “when I thought it was Mr. John, I only waited for Luke Roy to come home, that I might expose him. I judged that Luke, being so much with him in Australia, might have heard a slip word drop as would confirm it. Somehow, though I thought Dolly Stubbs spoke truth, I didn’t feel so sure of her as to noise it abroad.”
“You say it was Mr. John Massingbird who told you it was his brother?”
“He told me, sir. He told me at Roy’s, when he was a-hiding there. When the folks here was going mad about the ghost, I knowed who the ghost was, and had my laugh at ‘em. It seemed that I could laugh then,” added Robin, looking at Mr. Verner, as if he deemed an apology for the words necessary. “My mind was set at rest.”
Did a thought cross Lionel Verner that John Massingbird, finding his own life in peril from Robin’s violence, had thrown the blame upon his brother falsely? It might have done so, but for his own deeply-rooted suspicions. That John would not be scrupulously regardful of truth, he believed, where his own turn was to be served. Lionel, at any rate, felt that he should like, for his own satisfaction, to have the matter set at rest, and he took his way to Verner’s Pride.
John Massingbird, his costume not improved in elegance, or his clay pipe in length, was lounging at his ease on one of the amber damask satin couches of the drawing-room, his feet on the back of a proximate chair, and his slippers fallen off on the carpet. A copious tumbler of rum-and-water — his favourite beverage since his return — was on a table, handy; and there he lay enjoying his ease.
“Hollo, old fellow! How are you?” was his greeting to Lionel, given without changing his position in the least.
“Massingbird, I want to speak to you,” rejoined Lionel. “I have been to see old Matthew Frost, and he has said something which surprises me—”
“The old man’s about to make a start of it, I hear,” was the interruption of Mr. Massingbird.
“He cannot last long. He has been speaking — naturally — of that unhappy business of his daughter’s. He lays it to the door of Frederick; and Robin tells me he had the information from you.”
“I was obliged to give it him, in self-defence,” said John Massingbird. “The fellow had got it into his head, in some unaccountable manner, that I was the black sheep, and was prowling about with a gun, ready capped and loaded, to put a bullet into me. I don’t set so much store by my life as some fidgets do, but it’s not pleasant to be shot off in that summary fashion. So I sent for Mr. Robin and satisfied him that he was making the same blunder that Deerham just then was making — mistaking one brother for the other.”
“Was it Frederick?”
“It was.”
“Did you know it at the time?”
“No. Never suspected him at all.”
“Then how did you learn it afterwards?”
John Massingbird took his legs from the chair. He rose, and brought himself to an anchor on a seat facing Lionel, puffing still at his incessant pipe.
“I don’t mind trusting you, old chap, being one of us, and I couldn’t help trusting Robin Frost. Roy, he knew it before — at least, his wife did; which amounts to something of the same; and she spoke of it to me. I have ordered them to keep a close tongue, under pain of unheard-of penalties — which I should never inflict; but it’s as well to let poor Fred’s memory rest in quiet and good odour. I believe honestly it’s the only scrape of the sort he ever got into. He was cold and cautious.”
“But how did you learn it?�
�� reiterated Lionel.
“I’ll tell you. I learned it from Luke Roy.”
“From Luke Roy!” repeated Lionel, more at sea than before.
“Do you remember that I had sent Luke on to London a few days before this happened? He was to get things forward for our voyage. He was fou — as the French say — after Rachel; and what did he do but come back again in secret, to get a last look at her, perhaps a word. It happened to be this very night, and Luke was a partial witness to the scene at the Willow Pond. He saw and heard her meeting with Frederick; heard quite enough to know that there was no chance for him; and he was stealing away, leaving Fred and Rachel at the termination of their quarrel, when he met his mother. She knew him, it seems, and to that encounter we are indebted for her display when before Mr. Verner, and her lame account of the ‘ghost.’ You must recollect it. She got up the ghost tale to excuse her own terror; to throw the scent off Luke. The woman says her life, since, has been that of a martyr, ever fearing that suspicion might fall upon her son. She recognised him beyond doubt; and nearly died with the consternation. He glided off, never speaking to her, but the fear and consternation remained. She recognised, too, she says, the voice of Frederick as the one that was quarrelling; but she did not dare confess it. For one thing, she knew not how far Luke might be implicated.”
Lionel leaned his brow on his hand, deep in thought. “How far was Frederick implicated?” he asked in a low tone. “Did he — did he put her into the pond?”
“No!” burst forth John Massingbird, with a vehemence that sent the ashes of his pipe flying. “Fred would not be guilty of such a crime as that, any more than you or I would. He had — he had made vows to the girl, and broken them; and that was the extent of it. No such great sin, after all, or it wouldn’t be so fashionable a one,” carelessly added John Massingbird.
Lionel waited in silence.
“By what Luke could gather,” went on John, “it appeared that Rachel had seen Fred that night with his cousin Sibylla — your wife now. What she had seen or heard, goodness knows; but enough to prove to her that Fred’s real love was given to Sibylla, that she was his contemplated wife. It drove Rachel mad: Fred had probably filled her up with the idea that the honour was destined for herself. Men are deceivers ever, and women soft, you know, Lionel.”
“And they quarrelled over it?”
“They quarrelled over it. Rachel, awakened out of her credulity, met him with bitter reproaches. Luke could not hear what was said towards its close. The meeting — no doubt a concerted one — had been in that grove in view of the Willow Pond, the very spot that Master Luke had chosen for his own hiding-place. They left it and walked towards Verner’s Pride, disputing vehemently; Roy made off the other way, and the last he saw of them, when they were nearly out of sight, was a final explosion, in which they parted. Fred set off to run towards Verner’s Pride, and Rachel came flying back towards the pond. There’s not a shadow of doubt that in her passion, her unhappy state of feeling, she flung herself in; and if Luke had only waited two minutes longer, he might have been in at the death — as we say by the foxes. That’s the solution of what has puzzled Deerham for years, Lionel.”
“Could Luke not have saved her?”
“He never knew she was in the pond. Whether the unexpected sight of his mother scared his senses away, he has often wondered; but he heard neither the splash in the water nor the shriek. He made off, pretty quick, he says, for fear his mother should attempt to stop him, or proclaim his presence aloud — an inconvenient procedure, since he was supposed to be in London. Luke never knew of her death until we were on the voyage. I got to London only in time to go on board the ship in the docks, and we had been out for days at sea before he learned that Rachel was dead, or I that Luke had been down, on the sly, to Deerham. I had to get over that precious sea-sickness before entering upon that, or any other talk, I can tell you. It’s a shame it should attack men!”
“I suspected Fred at the time,” said Lionel.
“You did! Well, I did not. My suspicions had turned to a very different quarter.”
“Upon whom?”
“Oh, bother! where’s the good of ripping it up, now it’s over and done with?” retorted John Massingbird. “There’s the paper of baccy by your elbow, chum. Chuck it here.”
CHAPTER LXXXI.
A CRISIS IN SIBYLLA’S LIFE.
Sibylla Verner improved neither in health nor in temper. Body and mind were alike diseased. As the spring had advanced, her weakness appeared to increase; the symptoms of consumption became more palpable. She would not allow that she was ill; she, no doubt, thought that there was nothing serious the matter with her; nothing, as she told everybody, but the vexing after Verner’s Pride.
Dr. West had expressed an opinion that her irritability, which she could neither conceal nor check, was the result of her state of health. He was very likely right. One thing was certain; that since she grew weaker and worse, this unhappy frame of mind had greatly increased. The whole business of her life appeared to be to grumble, to be cross, snappish, fretful. If her body was diseased, most decidedly her temper was also. The great grievance of quitting Verner’s Pride she made a plea for the indulgence of every complaint under the sun. She could no longer gather a gay crowd of visitors around her; she had lost the opportunity with Verner’s Pride; she could no longer indulge in unlimited orders for new dresses and bonnets, and other charming adjuncts to the toilette, without reference to how they were to be paid for; she had not a dozen servants at her beck and call; and if she wanted to pay a visit, there was no elegant equipage, the admiration of all beholders, to convey her. She had lost all with Verner’s Pride. Not a day — scarcely an hour — passed, but one or other, or all of these vexations, were made the subject of fretful, open repining. Not to Lady Verner — Sibylla would not have dared to annoy her; not to Decima or to Lucy; but to her husband. How weary his ear was, how weary his spirit, no tongue could tell. She tried him in every way — she did nothing but find fault with him. When he stayed out, she grumbled at him for staying, meeting him with reproaches on his entrance; when he remained in, she grumbled at him. In her sad frame of mind it was essential — there are frames of mind in which it is essential, as the medical men will tell you, where the sufferer cannot help it — that she should have some object on whom to vent her irritability. Not being in her own house, there was but her husband. He was the only one sufficiently nearly connected with her to whom the courtesies of life could be dispensed with; and therefore he came in for it all. At Verner’s Pride there would have been her servants to share it with him; at Dr. West’s there would have been her sisters; at Lady Verner’s there was her husband alone. Times upon times Lionel felt inclined to run away; as the disobedient boys run to sea.
The little hint, dropped by Dr. West, touching the past, had not been without its fruits in Sibylla’s mind. It lay and smouldered there. Had Lionel been attached to Lucy? — had there been love-scenes, love-making between them? Sibylla asked herself the questions ten times in a day. Now and then she let drop a sharp, acrid bit of venom to him — his “old love, Lucy.” Lionel would receive it with impassibility, never answering.
On the day spoken of in the last chapter, when 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 the mind 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, upstairs 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 courtyard, 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.