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.
[Illustration: "Sibylla!" he said.]
Up she started at the sound of his voice, and flew to him. There lay her
protection; and in spite of her ill-temper and her love of aggravation,
she felt and recognised it. Lionel held her in his sheltering arms,
bending her head down upon his breast, and drawing his coat over it, so
that she might see no ray of light--as he had been wont to do in former
storms. As a timid child was she at these times, humble, loving, gentle;
she felt as if she were on the threshold of the next world, that the
next moment might be her last. Others have been known to experience the
same dread in a thunder-storm; and, to be thus brought, as it were, face
to face with death, takes the spirit out of people.
He stood, patiently holding her. Every time the thunder burst above
their heads, he could feel her heart beat against his. One of her arms
was round him; the other he held; all wet it was with fear. He did not
speak; he only clasped her closer every now and then, that she might be
reminded of her shelter.
Twenty minutes or so, and the violence of the storm abated. The
lightning grew less frequent, the thunder distant and more distant. At
length the sound wholly ceased, and the lightning subsided into that
harmless sheet lightning which is so beautiful to look at in the far-off
horizon.
"It is over," he whispered.
She lifted her head from its resting place. Her blue eye was bright with
excitement, her delicate cheek was crimson, her golden hair fell in a
dishevelled mass around. Her gala robes had been removed, with the
diamond coronet, and the storm had surprised her writing a note in her
dressing-gown. In spite of the sudden terror which overtook her, she did
not forget to put the letter--so far as had been written of it--safely
away. It was not expedient that her husband's eyes should fall upon it.
Sibylla had many answers to write now to importunate creditors.
"Are you sure, Lionel?"
"Quite sure. Come and see how clear it is. You are not alarmed at the
sheet lightning."
He put his arm round her, and led her to the window. As he said, the sky
was clear again. Nearly all traces of the storm had passed away; there
had been no rain with it; and, but for the remembrance of its sound in
their ears, they might have believed that it had not taken place. The
broad lands of Verner's Pride lay spreading out before them, the lawns
and the terrace underneath; the sheet-lightning illumined the heavens
incessantly, rendering objects nearly as clear as in the day.
Lionel held her to his side, his arm round her. She trembled
still--trembled excessively; her bosom heaved and fell beneath his hand.
"When I die, it will be in a thunder-storm," she whispered.
"You foolish girl!" he said, his tone half a joking one, wholly tender.
"What can have given you this excessive fear of thunder, Sibylla?"
"I was always frightened at a thunder-storm. Deborah says mamma was. But
I was not so _very_ frightened until a storm I witnessed in Australia.
It killed a man!" she added, shivering and nestling nearer to Lionel.
"Ah!"
"It was only a few days before Frederick left me, when he and Captain
Cannonby went away together," she continued. "We had hired a carriage,
and had gone out of the town ever so far. There was something to be seen
there; I forget what now; races perhaps. I know a good many people went;
and an awful thunder-storm came on. Some ran under the trees for
shelter; some would not; and the lightning killed a man. Oh, Lionel, I
shall never forget it! I saw him carried past; I saw his face! Since
then I have felt ready to die myself with the fear."
She turned her face, and hid it upon his bosom. Lionel did not attempt
to soothe the _fear_; he knew that for such fear time alone is the only
cure. He whispered words of soothing to _her_; he stroked fondly her
golden hair. In these moments, when she was gentle, yielding, clinging
to him for protection, three parts of his old love for her would come
back again. The lamp, which had been turned on to its full blaze of
light, was behind them, so that they might have been visible enough to
anybody standing in the nearer portion of the grounds.
"Captain Cannonby went away with Frederick Massingbird," observed
Lionel, approaching by degrees to the questions he wished to ask. "Did
they start together?"
"Yes. Don't talk about it, Lionel."
"My dear wife, I must talk about it," he gravely answered. "You have
always put me off in this manner, so that I know little or nothing of
the circumstances. I have a reason for wishing to become cognisant of
those past particulars. Surely," he added, a shade of deeper feeling in
his tone, "at this distance of time it cannot be so very painful to your
feelings to speak of Frederick Massingbird. _I_ am by your side."
"What is the reason that you wish to know?"
"A little matter that regarded him and Cannonby. Was Cannonby with him
when he died?"
Sibylla, subdued still, yielded to the wish as she would probably have
yielded at no other time.
"Of course he was with him. They were but a day's journey from
Melbourne. I forget the name of the place; a sort of small village or
settlement, I believe, where the people halted that were going to, or
returning from, the diggings. Frederick was taken worse as they got
there, and in a few hours he died."
"Cannonby remaining with him?"
"Yes. I am sure I have told you this before, Lionel. I told it to you on
the night of my return."
He was aware she had. He could not say: "But I wish to press you upon
the points; to ascertain beyond doubt that Frederick Massingbird did
really die; that he is not living." "Did Cannonby stay until he was
buried?" he asked aloud.
"Yes."
"You are sure of this?"
Sibylla looked at him curiously. She could not think why he was
recalling this; why want to know it?
"I am sure of it only so far as that Captain Cannonby told me so,"
replied Sibylla.
The reservation struck upon him with a chill; it seemed to be a
confirmation of his worst fears. Sibylla continued, for he did not
speak--
"Of course he stayed with him until he was buried. When Captain Cannonby
came back to me at Melbourne, he said he had waited to lay him in the
ground. Why should he have said it, if he did not?"
"True," murmured Lionel.
"He said the burial-service had been read over him. I remember that,
well. I reproached Captain Cannonby with not having come back to me
immediately, or sent for me that I might at least have seen him dead, if
not alive. He excused himself by saying that he did not think I should
like to see him; and he had waited to bury him before returning."
Lionel fell into a reverie. If this, that Captain Cannonby had stated,
was correct, there was no doubt that Frederick Massingbird was safely
dead and buried. But he could not be sure that it was correct; Captain
Cannonby may not have relished waiting to see a dead man buried;
although he had affirmed so much to Sibylla. A thousand pounds would
Lionel have given out of his pocket at that moment, for one minute's
interview with Captain Cannonby.
"Lionel!"
The call came from Sibylla with sudden intensity, half startling him.
She had got one of her fingers pointed to the lawn.
"Who's that--peeping forth from underneath the yew-tree?"
The same place, the same tree which had been pointed to by Lucy Tempest!
An impulse, for which Lionel could not have accounted, caused him to
turn round and put out the lamp.
"Who can it be?" wondered Sibylla. "He appears to be watching us. How
foolish of any of them to go out! _I_ should not feel safe under a tree,
although that lightning is only sheet-lightning."
Every perceptive faculty that Lionel Verner possessed was strained upon
the spot. He could make out a tall man; a man whose figure bore--unless
his eyes and his imagination combined to deceive him--a strong
resemblance to Frederick Massingbird's. Had it come to it? Were he and
his rival face to face; was she, by his own side now, about to be
bandied between them?--belonging, save by the priority of the first
marriage ceremony, no more to one than to the other? A stifled cry,
suppressed instantly, escaped his lips; his pulses stood still, and then
throbbed on with painful violence.
"Can you discern him, Lionel?" she asked. "He is going away--going back
amidst the trees. Perhaps because he can't see us any longer, now you
have put the light out. Who is it? Why should he have stood there,
watching us?"
Lionel snatched her to him with an impulsive gesture. He would have
sacrificed his life willingly, to save Sibylla from the terrible
misfortune that appeared to be falling upon her.