BACK AGAIN.
It was late when Lionel reached Verner's Pride. Night had set in, and
his dinner was waiting.
He ate it hurriedly--he mostly did eat hurriedly when he was alone, as
if he were glad to get it over--Tynn waiting on him. Tynn liked to wait
upon his young master. Tynn had been in a state of glowing delight since
the accession of Lionel. Attached to the old family, Tynn had felt it
almost as keenly as Lionel himself, when the estate had lapsed to the
Massingbirds. Mrs. Tynn was in a glow of delight also. There was no
mistress, and she ruled the household, including Tynn.
The dinner gone away and the wine on the table, Lionel drew his chair in
front of the fire, and fell into a train of thought, leaving the wine
untouched. Full half an hour had he thus sat, when the entrance of Tynn
aroused him. He poured out a glass, and raised it to his lips. Tynn bore
a note on his silver waiter.
"Matiss's boy has just brought it. He is waiting to know whether there's
any answer."
Lionel opened the note, and was reading it, when a sound of carriage
wheels came rattling on to the terrace, passed the windows, and stopped
at the hall door. "Who can be paying me a visit to-night, I wonder?"
cried he. "Go and see, Tynn."
"It sounded like one of them rattling one-horse flies from the railway
station," was Tynn's comment to his master, as he left the room.
Whoever it might be, they appeared pretty long in entering, and Lionel,
very greatly to his surprise, heard a sound as of much luggage being
deposited in the hall. He was on the point of going out to see, when the
door opened, and a lovely vision glided forward--a young, fair face and
form, clothed in deep mourning, with a shower of golden curls shading
her damask cheeks. For one single moment, Lionel was lost in the beauty
of the vision. Then he recognised her, before Tynn's announcement was
heard; and his heart leaped as if it would burst its bounds--
"Mrs. Massingbird, sir."
--leaped within him fast and furiously. His pulses throbbed, his blood
coursed on, and his face went hot and cold with emotion. Had he been
fondly persuading himself, during the past months, that she was
forgotten? Truly the present moment rudely undeceived him.
Tynn shut the door, leaving them alone. Lionel was not so agitated as to
forget the courtesies of life. He shook hands with her, and, in the
impulse of the moment, called her Sibylla; and then bit his tongue for
doing it.
She burst into tears. There, as he held her hand. She lifted her lovely
face to him with a yearning, pleading look. "Oh, Lionel!--you will give
me a home, won't you?"
What was he to say? He could not, in that first instant, abruptly say to
her--No, you cannot have a home here. Lionel could not hurt the feelings
of any one. "Sit down, Mrs. Massingbird," he gently said, drawing an
easy-chair to the fire. "You have taken me quite by surprise. When did
you land?"
She threw off her bonnet, shook back those golden curls, and sat down in
the chair, a large heavy shawl on her shoulders. "I will not take it off
yet," she said in a plaintive voice. "I am very cold."
She shivered slightly. Lionel drew her chair yet nearer the fire, and
brought a footstool for her feet, repeating his question as he did so.
"We reached Liverpool late yesterday, and I started for home this
morning," she answered, her eyelashes wet still, as she gazed into the
fire. "What a miserable journey it has been!" she added, turning to
Lionel. "A miserable voyage out; a miserable ending!"
"Are you aware of the changes that have taken place since you left?" he
asked. "Your aunt is dead."
"Yes, I know it," she answered. "They told me at the station just now.
That lame porter came up and knew me; and his first news to me was that
Mrs. Verner was dead. What a greeting! I was coming home here to live
with her."
"You could not have received my letter. One which I wrote at the request
of Mrs. Verner in answer to yours."
"What news was in it?" she asked. "I received no letter from you."
"It contained remittances. It was sent, I say, in answer to yours, in
which you requested money should be forwarded for your home passage.
You did not wait for it?"
"I was tired of waiting. I was sick for home. And one day, when I had
been crying more than usual, Mrs. Eyre said to me that if I were so
anxious to go, there need be no difficulty about the passage-money, that
they would advance me any amount I might require. Oh, I was so glad! I
came away by the next ship."
"Why did you not write saying that you were coming?"
"I did not think it mattered--and I knew I had this home to come to. If
I had had to go to my old home again at papa's, then I should have
written. I should have seemed like an intruder arriving at their house,
and have deemed it necessary to warn them of it."
"You heard in Australia of Mr. Verner's death, I presume?"
"I heard of that, and that my husband had inherited Verner's Pride. The
news came out just before I sailed for home. Of course I thought I had a
right to come to this home, though he was dead. I suppose it is yours
now?"
"Yes."
"Who lives here?"
"Only myself."
"Have I a right to live here--as Frederick's widow?" she continued,
lifting her large blue eyes anxiously at Lionel. "I mean would the law
give it me?"
"No," he replied, in a low tone. He felt that the truth must be told to
her without disguise. She was placing both him and herself in an
embarrassing situation.
"Was there any money left to me?--or to Frederick?"
"None to you. Verner's Pride was left to your husband; but at his demise
it came to me."
"Did my aunt leave me nothing?"
"She had nothing to leave, Mrs. Massingbird. The settlement which Mr.
Verner executed on her, when they married, was only for her life. It
lapsed back to the Verner's Pride revenues when she died."
"Then I am left without a shilling, to the mercy of the world!"
Lionel felt for her--felt for her rather more than was safe. He began
planning in his own mind how he could secure to her an income from the
Verner's Pride estate, without her knowing whence it came. Frederick
Massingbird had been its inheritor for a short three or four months,
and Lionel's sense of justice revolted against his widow being thrown on
the world, as she expressed it, without a shilling.
"The revenues of the estate during the short time that elapsed between
Mr. Verner's death and your husband's are undoubtedly yours, Mrs.
Massingbird," he said. "I will see Matiss about it, and they shall be
paid over."
"How long will it be first?"
"A few days, possibly. In a note which I received but now from Matiss,
he tells me he is starting for London, but will be home the beginning of
the week. It shall be arranged on his return."
"Thank you. And, until then, I may stay here?"
Lionel was at a nonplus. It is not a pleasing thing to tell a lady that
she must quit your house, in which, like a stray lamb, she has taken
refuge. Even though it be, for her own fair sake, expedient that she
should go.
"I am here alone," said Lionel, after a pause. "Your temporary home had
better be with your sisters."
"No, that it never shall," returned Sibylla, in a hasty tone of fear. "I
will never go home to them, now papa's away. Why did he leave Deerham?
They told me at the station that he was gone, and Jan was doctor."
"Dr. West is travelling on the Continent, as medical attendant and
companion to a nobleman. At least--I think I heard it was a nobleman,"
continued Lionel. "I am really not sure."
"And you would like me to go home to those two cross, fault-finding
sisters!" she resumed. "They might reproach me all day long with coming
home to be kept. As if it were my fault that I am left without anything.
Oh, Lionel! don't turn me out! Let me stay until I can see what is to be
done for myself. I shall not hurt you. It would have been all mine had
Frederick lived."
He did not know what to do. Every moment there seemed to grow less
chance that she would leave the house. A bright thought darted into his
mind. It was, that he would get his mother or Decima to come and stay
with him for a time.
"What would you like to take?" he inquired. "Mrs. Tynn will get you
anything you wish. I----"
"Nothing yet," she interrupted. "I could not eat; I am too unhappy. I
will take some tea presently, but not until I am warmer. I am very
cold."
She cowered over the fire again, shivering much. Lionel, saying he had a
note to write, sat down to a distant table. He penned a few hasty lines
to his mother, telling her that Mrs. Massingbird had arrived, under the
impression that she was coming to Mrs. Verner, and that he could not
well turn her out again that night, fatigued and poorly as she appeared
to him to be. He begged his mother to come to him for a day or two, in
the emergency, or to send Decima.
An undercurrent of conviction ran in Lionel's mind during the time of
writing it that his mother would not come; he doubted even whether she
would allow Decima to come. He drove the thought away from him; but the
impression remained. Carrying the note out of the room when written, he
despatched it to Deerham Court by a mounted groom. As he was returning
to the dining-room he encountered Mrs. Tynn.
"I hear Mrs. Massingbird has arrived, sir," cried she.
"Yes," replied Lionel. "She will like some tea presently. She appears
very much fatigued."
"Is the luggage to be taken upstairs, sir?" she continued, pointing to
the pile in the hall. "Is she going to stay here?"
Lionel really did not know what answer to make.
"She came expecting to stay," he said, after a pause. "She did not know
but your mistress was still here. Should she remain, I dare say Lady
Verner, or my sister, will join her. You have beds ready?"
"Plenty of them, sir, at five minutes' notice."
When Lionel entered the room, Sibylla was in the same attitude,
shivering over the fire. Unnaturally cold she appeared to be, and yet
her cheeks were brilliantly bright, as if with a touch of fever.
"I fear you have caught cold on the journey to-day," he said.
"I don't think so," she answered. "I am cold from nervousness. I went
cold at the station when they told me that my aunt was dead, and I have
been shivering ever since. Never mind me; it will go off presently."
Lionel drew a chair to the other side of the fire, compassionately
regarding her. He could have found in his heart to take her in his arms,
and warm her there.
"What was that about a codicil?" she suddenly asked him. "When my aunt
wrote to me upon Mr. Verner's death, she said that a codicil had been
lost: or that, otherwise, the estate would have been yours."
Lionel explained it to her, concealing nothing.
"Then--if that codicil had been forthcoming, Frederick's share would
have been but five hundred pounds?"
"That is all."
"It was very little to leave him," she musingly rejoined.
"And still less to leave me, considering my nearer relationship--my
nearer claims. When the codicil could not be found, the will had to be
acted upon: and five hundred pounds was all the sum it gave me."
"Has the codicil never been found?"
"Never."
"How very strange! What became of it, do you think?"
"I wish I could think what," replied Lionel. "Although Verner's Pride
has come to me without it, it would be satisfactory to solve the
mystery."
Sibylla looked round cautiously, and sunk her voice. "Could Tynn or his
wife have done anything with it? You say they were present when it was
signed."
"Most decidedly they did not. Both of them were anxious that I should
succeed."
"It is so strange! To lock a paper up in a desk, and for it to disappear
of its own accord! The moths could not have got in and eaten it?"
"Scarcely," smiled Lionel. "The day before your aunt died, she----"
"Don't talk of that," interrupted Mrs. Massingbird. "I will hear about
her death to-morrow. I shall be ill if I cry much to-night."
She sank into silence, and Lionel did not interrupt it. It continued,
until his quick ears caught the sound of the groom's return. The man
rode his horse round to the stables at once. Presently Tynn came in with
a note. It was from Lady Verner. A few lines, written hastily with a
pencil:--
"I do not understand your request, Lionel, or why you make it. Whatever
may be my opinion of Frederick Massingbird's widow, I will not insult
her sense of propriety by supposing that she would attempt to remain at
Verner's Pride now her aunt is dead. It is absurd of you to ask me to
come; neither shall I send Decima. Were I and Decima residing with you,
it would not be the place for Sibylla Massingbird. She has her own home
to go to."
There was no signature. Lionel knew his mother's handwriting too well to
require the addition. It was just the note that he might have expected
her to write.
What was he to do? In the midst of his ruminations, Sibylla rose.
"I am warm now," she said. "I should like to go upstairs and take this
heavy shawl off."
Lionel rang the bell for Mrs. Tynn. And Sibylla left the room with her.
"I'll get her sisters here!" he suddenly exclaimed, the thought of them
darting into his mind. "They will be the proper persons to explain to
her the inexpediency of her remaining here. Poor girl! she is unable to
think of it in her fatigue and grief."
He did not give it a second thought, but snatched his hat, and went down
himself to Dr. West's with strides as long as Jan's. Entering the
general sitting-room without ceremony, his eyes fell upon a supper-table
and Master Cheese; the latter regaling himself upon apple-puffs to his
heart's content.
"Where are the Misses West?" asked Lionel.
"Gone to a party," responded the young gentleman, as soon as he could
get his mouth sufficiently empty to speak.
"Where to?"
"To Heartburg, sir. It's a ball at old Thingumtight's, the doctor's.
They are gone off in gray gauze, with, branches of white flowers hanging
to their curls, and they call that mourning. The fly is to bring them
back at two in the morning. They left these apple-puffs for me and Jan.
Jan said he should not want any; he'd eat meat; so I have got his share
and mine!"
And Master Cheese appeared to be enjoying the shares excessively. Lionel
left him to it, and went thoughtfully back to Verner's Pride.