Works of Ellen Wood, page 369
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.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
A MOMENT OF DELIRIUM.
The dining-room looked a picture of comfort, and Lionel thought so as he entered. A blaze of light and warmth burst upon him. A well-spread tea-table was there, with cold meat, game and else, at one end of it. Standing before the fire, her young, slender form habited in its black robes, was Sibylla. No one, looking at her, would have believed her to be a widow; partly from her youth, partly that she did not wear the widow’s dress. Her head was uncovered, and her fair curls fell, shading her brilliant cheeks. It has been mentioned that her chief beauty lay in her complexion: seen by candle-light, flushed as she was now, she was inexpressibly beautiful. A dangerous hour, a perilous situation for the yet unhealed heart of Lionel Verner.
The bright flush was the result of excitement, of some degree of inward fever. Let us allow that it was a trying time for her. She had arrived to find Mrs. Verner dead, her father absent; she had arrived to find that no provision had been made for her by Mr. Verner’s will, as the widow of Frederick Massingbird. Frederick’s having succeeded to the inheritance debarred her even of the five hundred pounds. It is true there would be the rents, received for the short time it had been his. There was no doubt that Sibylla, throughout the long voyage, had cherished the prospect of finding a home at Verner’s Pride. If her husband had lived, it would have been wholly hers; she appeared still to possess a right in it; and she never gave a thought to the possibility that her aunt would not welcome her to it. Whether she cast a reflection to Lionel Verner in the matter, she best knew: had she reflected properly, she might have surmised that Lionel would be living at it, its master. But, the voyage ended, the home gained, what did she find? That Mrs. Verner was no longer at Verner’s Pride, to press the kiss of welcome upon her lips; a few feet of earth was all her home now.
It was a terrible disappointment. There could be no doubt of that. And another disappointment was, to find Dr. West away. Sibylla’s sisters had been at times over-strict with her, much as they loved her, and the vision of returning to her old home, to them, was one of bitterness. So bitter, in fact, that she would not glance at its possibility.
Fatigued, low-spirited, feverishly perplexed, Sibylla did not know what she could do. She was not in a state that night to give much care to the future. All she hoped was, to stay in that haven until something else could be arranged for her. Let us give her her due. Somewhat careless, naturally, of the punctilios of life, it never occurred to her that it might not be the precise thing for her to remain, young as she was, the sole guest of Lionel Verner. Her voyage out, her residence in that very unconventional place, Melbourne, the waves and storms which had gone over her there in more ways than one, the voyage back again alone, all had tended to give Sibylla Massingbird an independence of thought; a contempt for the rules and regulations, the little points of etiquette obtaining in civilised society. She really thought no more harm of staying at Verner’s Pride with Lionel, than she would have thought it had old Mr. Verner been its master. The eyelashes, resting on her hot cheeks, were wet, as she turned round when Lionel entered.
“Have you taken anything, Mrs. Massingbird?”
“No.”
“But you should have done so,” he remonstrated, his tone one of the most considerate kindness.
“I did not observe that tea waited,” she replied, the covered table catching her eye for the first time. “I have been thinking.”
He placed a chair for her before the tea-tray, and she sat down. “Am I to preside?” she asked.
“If you will. If you are not too tired.”
