DISAPPEARED.
Sweeping down from Verner's Pride towards the church at Deerham came the
long funeral train--mutes with their plumes and batons, relays of
bearers, the bier. It had been Mr. Verner's express desire that he
should be carried to the grave, that no hearse or coaches should be
used.
"Bury me quietly; bury me without show," had been his charge. And yet a
show it was, that procession, if only from its length. Close to the
coffin walked the heir, Lionel; Jan and Dr. West came next; Mr.
Bitterworth and Sir Rufus Hautley. Other gentlemen were there, followers
or pall-bearers; the tenants followed; the servants came last. A long,
long line, slow and black; and spectators gathered on the side of the
road, underneath the hedges, and in the upper windows at Deerham, to see
it pass. The under windows were closed.
A brave heir, a brave master of Verner's Pride! was the universal
thought, as eyes were turned on Lionel, on his tall, noble form, his
pale face stilled to calmness, his dark hair. He chose to walk
bare-headed, his hat, with its sweeping streamers, borne in his hand.
When handed to him in the hall he had not put it on, but went out as he
was, carrying it. The rest, those behind him, did not follow his
example; they assumed their hats; but Lionel was probably unconscious of
it, probably he never gave it a thought.
At the churchyard entrance they were met by the Vicar of Deerham, the
Reverend James Bourne. All hats came off then, as his voice rose,
commencing the service. Nearly one of the last walked old Matthew Frost.
He had not gone to Verner's Pride, the walk so far was beyond him now,
but fell in at the churchyard gate. The fine, upright, hale man whom you
saw at the commencement of this history had changed into a bowed, broken
mourner. Rachel's fate had done that. On the right as they moved up the
churchyard, was the mound which covered the remains of Rachel. Old
Matthew did not look towards it; as he passed it he only bent his head
the lower. But many others turned their heads; they remembered her that
day.
In the middle of the church, open now, dark and staring, was the vault
of the Verners. There lay already within it Stephen Verner's father, his
first wife, and the little child Rachel, Rachel Frost's foster-sister. A
grand grave this, compared to that lowly mound outside; there was a
grand descriptive tablet on the walls to the Verners; while the mound
was nameless. By the side of the large tablet was a smaller one, placed
there to the memory of the brave Sir Lionel Verner, who had fallen near
Moultan. Lionel involuntarily glanced up at it, as he stood now over the
vault, and a wish came across him that his father's remains were here,
amidst them, instead of in that far-off grave.
The service was soon over, and Stephen Verner was left in his
resting-place. Then the procession, shorn of its chief and prominent
features, went back to Verner's Pride. Lionel wore his hat this time.
In the large drawing-room of state, in her mourning robes and widow's
cap, sat Mrs. Verner. She had not been out of her chamber, until within
the last ten minutes, since before Mr. Verner's death; scarcely out of
her bed. As they passed into the room--the lawyer, Dr. West, Jan, Mr.
Bitterworth, and Sir Rufus Hautley--they thought how Mrs. Verner had
changed, and how ill she looked; not that her florid complexion was any
paler. She had, indeed, changed since the news of John Massingbird's
death; and some of them believed that she would not be very long after
Mr. Verner.
They had assembled there for the purpose of hearing the will read. The
desk of Mr. Verner was brought forward and laid upon the table. Lionel,
taking his late uncle's keys from his pocket, unlocked it, and delivered
a parchment which it contained to Mr. Matiss. The lawyer saw at a glance
that it was the old will, not the codicil, and he waited for Lionel to
hand him also the latter.
"Be so kind as read it, Mr. Matiss," said Lionel, pointing to the will.
It had to be read; and it was of no consequence whether the codicil was
taken from the desk before reading the original will, or afterwards, so
Mr. Matiss unfolded it, and began.
It was a somewhat elaborate will--which has been previously hinted.
Verner's Pride, with its rich lands, its fine income, was left to John
Massingbird; in the event of John's death, childless, it went to
Frederick; in the event of Frederick's death, childless, it passed to
Lionel Verner. There the conditions ended; so that, if it did lapse to
Lionel, it lapsed to him absolutely. But it would appear that the
contingency of both the Massingbirds dying had been only barely glanced
at by Mr. Verner. Five hundred pounds were left to Lionel: five hundred
to Jan; five hundred to Decima; nothing to Lady Verner. Mrs. Verner was
suitably provided for, and there were bequests to servants. Twenty-five
pounds for "a mourning ring" were bequeathed to each of the two
executors, Sir Rufus Hautley, and Mr. Bitterworth; and old Matthew Frost
had forty pounds a year for his life. Such were the chief features of
the will; and the utter astonishment it produced on the minds and
countenances of some of the listeners was a sight to witness. Lionel,
Mrs. Verner, Jan, and Sir Rufus Hautley were petrified.
Sir Rufus rose. He was a thin, stately man, always dressed in hessian
boots and the old-fashioned shirt-frill. A proud, impassive countenance
was his, but it darkened now. "I will not act," he began. "I beg to
state my opinion that the will is an unfair one--"
"I beg your pardon, Sir Rufus," interrupted the lawyer. "Allow me a
word. This is not the final will of Mr. Verner; much of it has been
revoked by a recent codicil. Verner's Pride comes to Mr. Lionel. You
will find the codicil in the desk, sir," he added to Lionel.
Lionel, his pale face haughty, and quite as impassive as that of Sir
Rufus, for anything like injustice angered him, opened the desk again.
"I was not aware," he observed. "My uncle told me on the day of his
death that the will would be found in his desk; I supposed that to be
it."
"It is the will," said Mr. Matiss. "But he caused me to draw up a later
codicil, which revoked the bequest of Verner's Pride. It is left to you
absolutely."
Lionel was searching in the desk. The few papers in it appeared to be
arranged with the most methodical neatness: but they were small, chiefly
old letters. "I don't see anything like a codicil," he observed. "You
had better look yourself, Mr. Matiss; you will probably recognise it."
Mr. Matiss advanced to the desk and looked in it. "It is not here!" he
exclaimed.
Not there! They gazed at him, at the desk, at Lionel, half puzzled. The
lawyer, with rapid fingers, began taking out the papers one by one.
"No, it is not here, in either compartment. I saw it was not, the moment
I looked in; but it was well to be sure. Where has it been put?"
"I really do not know anything about it," answered Lionel, to whom he
looked as he spoke. "My uncle told me the will would be found in his
desk. And the desk has not been opened since his death."
"Could Mr. Verner himself have changed its place to somewhere else?"
asked the lawyer, speaking with more than usual quickness, and turning
over the papers with great rapidity.
"Not after he told me where the will was. He did not touch the desk
after that. It was but just before his death. So far as I know, he had
not had his desk brought out of the closet for days."
"Yes, he had," said the lawyer. "After he had executed the codicil on
the evening previous to his death, he called for his desk, and put the
parchment into it. It lay on the top of the will--this one. I saw that
much."
"I can testify that the codicil was locked in the desk, and the desk was
then returned to the closet, for I happened to be present," spoke up Dr.
West. "I was one of the witnesses to the codicil, as I had been to the
will. Mr. Verner must have moved it himself to some safer place."
"What place could be safer than the desk in his own bedroom?" cried the
lawyer. "And why move the codicil and not the will?"
"True," assented Dr. West. "But--I don't see--it could not go out of the
desk without being moved out. And who would presume to meddle with it
but himself? Who took possession of his keys when he died?" added the
doctor, looking round at Mrs. Verner.
"I did," said Lionel. "And they have not been out of my possession
since. Nothing whatever has been touched; desk, drawers, every place
belonging to him are as they were left when he died."
Of course the only thing to do was to look for the codicil. Great
interest was excited; and it appeared to be altogether so mysterious an
affair that one and all flocked upstairs to the room; the room where he
had died! whence the coffin had but just been borne. Mrs. Tynn was
summoned; and when she found what was amiss, she grew excited; fearing,
possibly, that the blame might in some way fall upon her. Saving Lionel
himself, she was the only one who had been alone with Mr. Verner; of
course, the only one who could have had an opportunity of tampering with
the desk. And that, only when the patient slept.
"I protest that the desk was never touched, after I returned it to the
closet by my master's desire, when the parchment was put into it!" she
cried. "My master never asked for his desk again, and I never so much as
opened the closet. It was only the afternoon before he died, gentlemen,
that the deed was signed."
"Where did he keep his keys?" asked Mr. Bitterworth.
"In the little table-drawer at his elbow, sir. The first day he took to
his bed, he wanted his keys, and I got them out of his dressing-gown
pocket for him. 'You needn't put them back,' he says to me; 'let them
stop inside this little drawer.' And there they stayed till he died,
when I gave them up to Mr. Lionel."
"You must have allowed somebody to get into the room, Mrs. Tynn," said
Dr. West.
"I never was away from the room above two minutes at a time, sir," was
the woman's reply, "and then either Mr. Lionel or Tynn would be with
him. But, if any of 'em did come in, it's not possible they'd get
picking at the master's desk to take out a paper. What good would the
paper do any of the servants?"
Mrs. Tynn's question was a pertinent one. The servants were neither the
better nor the worse for the codicil; whether it were forthcoming, or
not, it made no difference to them. Sir Rufus Hautley inquired upon this
point, and the lawyer satisfied him.
"The codicil was to this effect alone," he explained. "It changed the
positions of Mr. Lionel and Mr. John Massingbird, the one for the other,
as they had stood in the will. Mr. Lionel came into the inheritance, and
Mr. Frederick Massingbird to five hundred pounds only. Mr. John was
gone--as everybody knows."
"These two, Mr. Lionel and Frederick Massingbird, were the only parties
interested in the codicil, then?"
"The only two. John Massingbird's name was mentioned, but only to revoke
all former bequests to him."
"Then--were John Massingbird alive, he could not now succeed to the
estate!" cried Sir Rufus.
"He could not, Sir Rufus," replied the lawyer. "He would be debarred
from all benefit under Mr. Verner's will. That is, provided we can come
across the codicil. Failing that, he would succeed were he in life, to
Verner's Pride."
"The codicil _must_ be found," cried Mr. Bitterworth, getting heated.
"Don't say, 'if we can come across it,' Matiss."
"Very good, Mr. Bitterworth. I'm sure I should be glad to see it found.
Where else are we to look?"
Where else, indeed! That Mr. Verner could not get out of the room to
hide the codicil was an indisputable fact; and nobody else seemed to
know anything whatever about it. The only one personally interested in
the suppression of the codicil was Frederick Massingbird; and he,
hundreds of miles away, could neither have secured it nor sent his ghost
to secure it. In a less degree, Mrs. Verner and Dr. West were
interested; the one in her son, the other in that son's wife. But the
doctor was not an inmate of Verner's Pride; and Mrs. Tynn could have
testified that she had been present in the room and never left it during
each of the doctor's professional visits, subsequent to the drawing out
of the codicil. As for Mrs. Verner, she had not been out of her bed. Mr.
Verner, at the last, had gone off suddenly, without pain, and there had
been no time to call his wife. Mrs. Tynn excused the negligence by
saying she did not think her master had been quite so near his end; and
it was a true excuse. But no one dreamed of attaching suspicion to Mrs.
Verner, or to Dr. West. "I'd rather it had been Lionel to succeed than
Frederick," spoke the former, honestly, some faint idea that people
might think she was pleased suggesting the avowal to her. "Lionel has
more right than Fred to Verner's Pride."
"More right!" ejaculated Dr. West warmly. "Frederick Massingbird has
_no_ right, by the side of Lionel Verner. Why Mr. Verner ever willed it
away from Lionel we could not understand."
"Fred needn't take it--even if the codicil can't be found--he can give
it back to Lionel by deed of gift," said practical Jan. "_I_ should."
"That my master meant Mr. Lionel to succeed, is certain," interposed
Tynn, the butler. "Nearly the last word he said to me, before the breath
went out of his body, was an injunction to serve Mr. Lionel faithfully
at Verner's Pride, as I had served him. There can be no difficulty in
Mr. Lionel's succeeding, when my master's intentions were made so
plain."
"Be quiet, Tynn," said Lionel. "I succeed by means of legal right to
Verner's Pride, or I will not succeed at all."
"That's true," acquiesced the lawyer. "A will is a will, and must be
acted upon. How on earth has that codicil got spirited away?"
How indeed! But for the plain fact, so positive and palpable before
them, of the codicil's absence, they would have declared the loss to be
an impossibility. Upstairs and down, the house was vainly searched for
it; and the conclusion was at length unwillingly come to that Mr. Verner
had repented of his bequest, had taken the codicil out of the desk, and
burned it. The suggestion came from Mr. Bitterworth; and Mrs. Tynn
acknowledged that it was just possible Mr. Verner's strength would allow
him to accomplish so much, while her back was turned. And yet, how
reconcile this with his dying charges to Lionel, touching the management
of the estate?
The broad fact that there was the will, and that alone to act upon,
untempered by a codicil, shone out all too clearly. Lionel Verner was
displaced, and Frederick Massingbird was the heir.
Oh, if some impossible electric telegraph could but have carried the
news over the waves of the sea, to the ship ploughing along the mid-path
of the ocean; if the two fugitives in her could but have been spirited
back again, as the codicil seemed to have been spirited away, how
triumphantly would they have entered upon their sway at Verner's Pride.