by Ellen Wood
“Master Cheese thought you would keep it up until morning.”
“Oh! did he? Is he gone to bed?”
“He is in the surgery,” replied Miss Amilly. “Mr. Jan, you have told us nothing yet about the wedding in the morning.”
“It went off,” answered Jan.
“But the details? How did the ladies look?”
“They looked as usual, for all I saw,” replied Jan.
“What did they wear?”
“Wear? Gowns, I suppose.”
“Oh, Mr. Jan! Surely you saw better than that! Can’t you tell what sort of gowns?”
Jan really could not. It may be questioned whether he could have told a petticoat from a gown. Miss Amilly was waiting with breathless interest, her lips apart.
“Some were in white, and some were in colours, I think,” hazarded Jan, trying to be correct in his good nature. “Decima was in a veil.”
“Of course she was,” acquiesced Miss Amilly with emphasis. “Did the bridemaids—”
What pertinent question relating to the bridemaids Miss Amilly was about to put, never was known. A fearful sound interrupted it. A sound nearly impossible to describe. Was it a crash of thunder? Had an engine from the distant railway taken up its station outside their house, and gone off with a bang? Or had the surgery blown up? The room they were in shook, the windows rattled, the Misses West screamed with real terror, and Jan started from his seat.
“It can’t be an explosion of gas!” he muttered.
Bursting out of the room, he nearly knocked down Martha, who was bursting into it. Instinct, or perhaps sound, took Jan to the surgery, and they all followed in his wake. Bob, the image of terrified consternation, stood in the midst of a débris of glass, his mouth open, and his hair standing-upright. The glass bottles and jars of the establishment had flown from their shelves, causing the unhappy Bob to believe that the world had come to an end.
But what was the débris there, compared to the débris in the next room, Jan’s! The window was out, the furniture was split, the various chemical apparatus had been shivered into a hundred pieces, the tamarind jar was in two, and Master Cheese was extended on the floor on his back, his hands scorched, his eyebrows singed off, his face black, and the end of his nose burning.
“Oh! that’s it, is it?” said Jan, when his eyes took in the state of things. “I knew it would come to it.”
“He have been and blowed hisself up,” remarked Bob, who had stolen in after them.
“Is it the gas?” sobbed Miss Amilly, hardly able to speak for terror.
“No, it’s not the gas,” returned Jan, examining the débris more closely. “It’s one of that gentleman’s chemical experiments.”
Deborah West was bending over the prostrate form in alarm. “He surely can’t be dead!” she shivered.
“Not he,” said Jan. “Come, get up,” he added, taking Master Cheese by the arm to assist him.
He was placed in a chair, and there he sat, coming to, and emitting dismal groans.
“I told you what you’d bring it to, if you persisted in attempting experiments that you know nothing about,” was Jan’s reprimand, delivered in a sharp tone. “A pretty state of things this is!”
Master Cheese groaned again.
“Are you much hurt?” asked Miss Deb in a sympathising accent.
“Oh-o-o-o-o-o-h!” moaned Master Cheese.
“Is there anything we can get for you?” resumed Miss Deb.
“Oh-o-o-o-o-o-h!” repeated Master Cheese. “A glass of wine might revive me.”
“Get up,” said Jan, “and let’s see if you can walk. He’s not hurt, Miss Deb.”
Master Cheese, yielding to the peremptory movement of Jan’s arm, had no resource but to show them that he could walk. He had taken a step or two as dolefully as it was possible for him to take it, keeping his eyes shut, and stretching out his hands before him, after the manner of the blind, when an interruption came from Miss Amilly.
“What can this be, lying here?”
She was bending her head near the old bureau, which had been rent in the explosion, her eyes fixed upon some large letter or paper on the floor. They crowded round at the words. Jan picked it up, and found it to be a folded parchment bearing a great seal.
“Hollo!” exclaimed Jan.
On the outside was written “Codicil to the will of Stephen Verner.”
“What is it?” exclaimed Miss Deborah, and even Master Cheese contrived to get his eyes open to look.
“It is the lost codicil,” replied Jan. “It must have been in that bureau. How did it get there?”
How indeed? There ensued a pause.
“It must have been placed there” — Jan was beginning, and then he stopped himself. He would not, before those ladies, say— “by Dr. West.”
But to Jan it was now perfectly clear. That old hunting for the “prescription,” which had puzzled him at the time, was explained now. There was the “prescription” — the codicil! Dr. West had had it in his hand when disturbed in that room by a stranger: he had flung it back in the bureau in his hurry; pushed it back: and by some unexplainable means, he must have pushed it too far out of sight. And there it had lain until now, intact and undiscovered.
The hearts of the Misses West were turning to sickness, their countenances to pallor. That it could be no other than their father who had stolen the codicil from Stephen Verner’s dying chamber, was present to their conviction. His motive could only have been to prevent Verner’s Pride passing to Lionel, over his daughter and her husband. What did he think of his work when the news came of Frederick’s death? What did he think of it when John Massingbird returned in person? What did he think of it when he read Sibylla’s dying message, written to him by Amilly— “Tell papa it is the leaving Verner’s Pride that has killed me?”
“I shall take possession of this,” said Jan Verner. Master Cheese was conveyed to the house and consigned to bed, where his burnings were dressed by Jan, and restoratives administered to him, including the glass of wine.
The first thing on the following morning the codicil was handed over to Mr. Matiss. He immediately recognised it by its appearance. But it would be opened officially later, in the presence of John Massingbird. Jan betook himself to Verner’s Pride to carry the news, and found Mr. Massingbird astride on a pillar of the terrace steps, smoking away with gusto. The day was warm and sunshiny as the previous one had been.
“What, is it you?” cried he, when Jan came in sight. “You are up here betimes. Anybody dying, this way?”
“Not this morning,” replied Jan. “I say, Massingbird, there’s ill news in the wind for you.”
“What’s that?” composedly asked John, tilting some ashes out of his pipe.
“That codicil has come to light.”
John puffed on vigorously, staring at Jan, but never speaking.
“The thief must have been old West,” went on Jan. “Only think! it has been hidden all this while in that bureau of his, in my bedroom.”
“What has unhidden it?” demanded Mr. Massingbird in a half-satirical tone, as if he doubted the truth of the information.
“An explosion did that. Cheese got meddling with dangerous substances, and there was a blow-up. The bureau was thrown down and broken, and the codicil was dislodged. To talk of it, it sounds like an old stage trick.”
“Did Cheese blow himself up?” asked John Massingbird.
“Yes. But he came down again. He is in bed with burned hands and a scorched face. If I had told him once to let that dangerous play alone — dangerous in his hands — I had told him ten times.”
“Where’s the codicil?” inquired Mr. Massingbird, smoking away.
“In Matiss’s charge. You’d like to be present, I suppose, at the time of its being opened?”
“I can take your word,” returned John Massingbird. “This does not surprise me. I have always had an impression that the codicil would turn up.”
“It is more than I have had,”
dissented Jan.
As if by common consent, they spoke no further on the subject of the abstraction and its guilty instrument. It was a pleasant theme to neither. John Massingbird, little refinement of feeling that he possessed, could not forget that Dr. West was his mother’s brother; or Jan, that he was his late master, his present partner — that he was connected with him in the eyes of Deerham. Before they had spoken much longer, they were joined by Lionel.
“I shall give you no trouble, old fellow,” was John Massingbird’s salutation. “You gave me none.”
“Thank you,” answered Lionel. Though what precise trouble it lay in John Massingbird’s power to give him, he did not see, considering that things were now so plain.
“You’ll accord me house-room for a bit longer, though, won’t you?”
“I will accord it you as long as you like,” replied Lionel, in the warmth of his heart.
“You know I would have had you stop on here all along,” remarked Mr. Massingbird; “but the bar to it was Sibylla. I am not sorry the thing’s found. I am growing tired of my life here. It has come into my mind at times lately to think whether I should not give up to you, Lionel, and be off over the seas again. It’s tame work, this, to one who has roughed it at the diggings.”
“You’d not have done it,” observed Jan, alluding to the giving up.
“Perhaps not,” said John Massingbird; “but I have owed a debt to Lionel for a long while. I say, old chap, didn’t you think I clapped on a good sum for your trouble when I offered you the management of Verner’s Pride?”
“I did,” answered Lionel.
“Ay! I was in your debt; am in it still. Careless as I am, I thought of it now and then.”
“I do not understand you,” said Lionel. “In what way are you in my debt?”
“Let it go for now,” returned John. “I may tell you some time, perhaps. When shall you take up your abode here?”
Lionel smiled. “I will not invade you without warning. You and I will take counsel together, John, and discuss plans and expediencies.”
“I suppose you’ll be for setting about your improvements now?”
“Yes,” answered Lionel, his tone changing to one of deep seriousness, not to say reverence. “Without loss of time.”
“I told you they could wait until you came into the estate. It has not been long first, you see.”
“No; but I never looked for it,” said Lionel.
“Ah! Things turn up that we don’t look for,” concluded John Massingbird, smoking on as serenely as though he had come into an estate, instead of having lost one. “There’ll be bonfires all over the place to-night, Lionel — left-handed compliment to me. Here comes Luke Roy. I told him to be here this morning. What nuts this will be for old Roy to crack! He has been fit to stick me, ever since I refused him the management of Verner’s Pride.”
CHAPTER XC.
LIGHT THROWN ON OBSCURITY.
And so, the trouble and the uncertainty, the ups and the downs, the turnings out and changes were at an end, and Lionel Verner was at rest — at rest so far as rest can be, in this lower world. He was reinstalled at Verner’s Pride, its undisputed master; never again to be sent forth from it during life.
He had not done as John Massingbird did — gone right in, the first day, and taken up his place, sans cérémonie, without word and without apology, at the table’s head, leaving John to take his at the side or the foot, or where he could. Quite the contrary. Lionel’s refinement of mind, his almost sensitive consideration for the feelings of others, clung to him now, as it always had done, as it always would do, and he was chary of disturbing John Massingbird too early in his sway of the internal economy of Verner’s Pride. It had to be done, however; and John Massingbird remained on with him, his guest.
All that had passed; and the spring of the year was growing late. The codicil had been proved; the neighbourhood had tendered their congratulations to the new master, come into his own at last; the improvements, in which Lionel’s conscience held so deep a score, were begun and in good progress; and John Massingbird’s return to Australia was decided upon, and the day of his departure fixed. People surmised that Lionel would be glad to get rid of him, if only for the sake of his drawing-rooms. John Massingbird still lounged at full length on the amber satin couches, in dropping-off slippers or in dirty boots, as the case might be, still filled them with clouds of tobacco-smoke, so that you could not see across them. Mrs. Tynn declared, to as many people as she dared, that she prayed every night on her bended knees for Mr. Massingbird’s departure, before the furniture should be quite ruined, or they burned in their beds.
Mr. Massingbird was not going alone. Luke Roy was returning with him. Luke’s intention always had been to return to Australia; he had but come home for a short visit to the old place and to see his mother. Luke had been doing well at the gold-fields. He did not dig; but he sold liquor to those who did dig; at which he was making money rapidly. He had a “chum,” he said, who managed the store while he was away. So glowing was his account of his prospects, that old Roy had decided upon going also, and trying his fortune there. Mrs. Roy looked aghast at the projected plans; she was too old for it, she urged. But she could not turn her husband. He had never studied her wishes too much, and he was not likely to begin to do so now. So Mrs. Roy, with incessantly-dropping tears, and continued prognostications that the sea-sickness would kill her, was forced to make her preparations for the voyage. Perhaps one motive, more than all else, influenced Roy’s decision — the getting out of Deerham. Since his hopes of having something to do with the Verner’s Pride estate — as he had in Stephen Verner’s time — had been at an end, Roy had gone about in a perpetual state of inward mortification. This emigration would put an end to it; and what with the anticipation of making a fortune at the diggings, and what with his satisfaction at saying adieu to Deerham, and what with the thwarting of his wife, Roy was in a state of complacency.
The time went on to the evening previous to the departure. Lionel and John Massingbird had dined alone, and now sat together at the open window, in the soft May twilight. A small table was at John’s elbow; a bottle of rum, and a jar of tobacco, water and a glass being on it, ready to his hand. He had done his best to infect Lionel with a taste for rum-and-water — as a convenient beverage to be taken at any hour from seven o’clock in the morning onwards — but Lionel had been proof against it. John had the rum-drinking to himself, as he had the smoking. Lionel had behaved to him liberally. It was not in Lionel Verner’s nature to behave otherwise, no matter to whom. From the moment the codicil was found, John Massingbird had no further right to a single sixpence of the revenues of the estate. He was in the position of one who has nothing. It was Lionel who had found means for all — for his expenses, his voyage; for a purse when he should get to Australia. John Massingbird was thinking of this as he sat now, smoking and taking draughts of the rum-and-water.
“If ever I turn to work with a will and become a hundred-thousand-pound man, old fellow,” he suddenly broke out, “I’ll pay you back. This, and also what I got rid of while the estate was in my hands.”
Lionel, who had been looking from the window in a reverie, turned round and laughed. To imagine John Massingbird becoming a hundred-thousand-pound man through his own industry, was a stretch of fancy marvellously comprehensive.
“I have to make a clean breast of it to-night,” resumed John Massingbird, after puffing away for some minutes in silence. “Do you remember my saying to you, the day we heard news of the codicil’s being found, that I was in your debt?”
“I remember your saying it,” replied Lionel. “I did not understand what you meant. You were not in my debt.”
“Yes, I was. I had a score to pay off as big as the moon. It’s as big still; for it’s one that never can be paid off; never will be.”
Lionel looked at him in surprise; his manner was so unusually serious.
“Fifty times, since I came back from Australia, have I been on
the point of clearing myself of the secret. But, you see, there was Verner’s Pride in the way. You would naturally have said upon hearing it, ‘Give the place up to me; you can have no moral right to it.’ And I was not prepared to give it up; it seemed too comfortable a nest, just at first, after the knocking about over yonder. Don’t you perceive?”
“I don’t perceive, and I don’t understand,” replied Lionel. “You are speaking in an unknown language.”
“I’ll speak in a known one, then. It was through me that old Ste Verner left Verner’s Pride away from you.”
“What!” uttered Lionel.
“True,” nodded John, with composure. “I told him a — a bit of scandal of you. And the strait-laced old simpleton took and altered his will on the strength of it. I did not know of that until afterwards.”
“And the scandal?” asked Lionel quietly. “What may it have been?”
“False scandal,” carelessly answered John Massingbird. “But I thought it was true when I spoke it. I told your uncle that it was you who had played false with Rachel Frost.”
“Massingbird!”
“Don’t fancy I went to him open-mouthed, and said, ‘Lionel Verner’s the man.’ A fellow who could do such a sneaking trick would be only fit for hanging. The avowal to him was surprised from me in an unguarded moment; it slipped out in self-defence. I’d better tell you the tale.”
“I think you had,” said Lionel.
“You remember the bother there was, the commotion, the night Rachel was drowned. I came home and found Mr. Verner sitting at the inquiry. It never struck me, then, to suspect that it could be any one of us three who had been in the quarrel with Rachel. I knew that I had had no finger in the pie; I had no cause to think that you had; and, as to Fred, I’d as soon have suspected staid old Verner himself; besides, I believed Fred to have eyes only for Sibylla West. Not but that the affair appeared to me unaccountably strange; for, beyond Verner’s Pride, I did not think Rachel possessed an acquaintance.”