CHAPTER LXVIII.
A THREAT TO JAN
They had dined unusually late at Verner's Pride that evening, and Lionel Verner was with his guests, making merry with the best heart he had. Now, he would rely upon the information given by Captain Cannonby; the next moment he was feeling that the combined testimony of so many eye-witnesses must be believed, and that it could be no other than Frederick Massingbird. Tynn had been with the man face to face only the previous night; Roy had distinctly asserted that he was back, in life, from Australia. Whatever his anxiety may have been, his wife seemed at rest. Full of smiles and gaiety, she sat opposite to him, glittering gems in her golden hair, shining forth from her costly robes.
"Not out from dinner!" cried Jan, in his astonishment, when he arrived, and Tynn denied him to Lionel. "Why, it's my supper-time! I must see him, whether he's at dinner or not. Go and say so, Tynn. Something important, tell him."
The message brought Lionel out. Thankful, probably, to get out. The playing the host with a mind ill at ease, how it jars upon the troubled and fainting spirit! Jan, disdaining the invitation to the drawing-room, had hoisted himself on the top of an old carved ebony cabinet that stood in the hall, containing curiosities, and sat there with his legs dangling. He jumped off when Lionel appeared, wound his arm within his, and drew him out on the terrace.
"I have come to the bottom of it, Lionel," said he, without further circumlocution. "I dropped upon the ghost just now and pinned him. It is not Fred Massingbird."
Lionel paused, and then drew a deep breath; like one who has been relieved from some great care.
"Cannonby said it was not!" he exclaimed. "Cannonby is here, Jan, and he assures me Frederick Massingbird is dead and buried. Who is it, then? Have you found it out?"
"I pinned him, I say," said Jan. "I was going down to Hook's, and he crossed my path. He—"
"It is somebody who has been doing it for a trick?" interrupted Lionel.
"Well—yes—in one sense. It is not Fred Massingbird, Lionel; he is dead, safe enough; but it is somebody from a distance; one who will cause you little less trouble. Not any less, in fact, putting Sibylla out of the question."
Lionel stopped in his walk—they were pacing the terrace—and looked at Jan with some surprise; a smile, in his new security, lightening his face.
"There is nobody in the world, Jan, dead or alive, who could bring trouble to me, save Frederick Massingbird. Anybody else may come, so long as he does not."
"Ah! You are thinking only of Sibylla."
"Of whom else should I think?"
"Yourself," replied Jan.
Lionel laughed in his gladness. How thankful he was for his wife's sake ONE alone knew. "I am nobody, Jan. Any trouble coming to me I can battle with."
"Well, Lionel, the returned man is John Massingbird."
"John—Mass—ingbird!"
Of all the birds in the air and the fishes in the sea—as the children say—he was the very last to whom Lionel Verner had cast a thought. That it was John who had returned, had not entered his imagination. He had never cast a doubt on the fact of his death. Bringing the name out slowly, he stared at Jan in very astonishment.
"Well," said he presently, "John is not Frederick."
"No," assented Jan. "He can put in no claim to your wife. But he can to Verner's Pride."
The words caused Lionel's heart to go on with a bound. A great evil for him; there was no doubt of it; but still slight, compared to the one he had dreaded for Sibylla.
"There is no mistake, I suppose, Jan?"
"There's no mistake," replied Jan. "I have been talking to him this half-hour. He is hiding at Roy's."
"Why should he be in hiding at all?" inquired Lionel.
"He had two or three motives he said;" and Jan proceeded to give Lionel a summary of what he had heard. "He was not very explicit to me," concluded Jan. "Perhaps he will be more so to you. He says he is coming to Verner's Pride to-morrow morning at the earliest genteel hour after breakfast."
"And what does he say to the fright he has caused?" resumed Lionel.
"Does nothing but laugh over it. Says it's the primest fun he ever had in his life. He has come back very poor, Lionel."
"Poor? Then, were Verner's Pride and its revenues not his, I could have understood why he should not like to show himself openly. Well! well! compared to what I feared, it is a mercy. Sibylla is free; and I—I must make the best of it. He will be a more generous master of Verner's Pride—as I believe—than Frederick would ever have been."
"Yes," nodded Jan. "In spite of his faults. And John Massingbird used to have plenty."
"I don't know who amongst us is without them, Jan. Unless—upon my word, old fellow, I mean it!—unless it is you."
Jan opened his great eyes with a wondering stare. It never occurred to humble-minded Jan that there was anything in him approaching to goodness. He supposed Lionel had spoken in joke.
"What's that?" cried he.
Jan alluded to a sudden burst of laughter, to a sound of many voices, to fair forms that were flitting before the windows. The ladies had gone into the drawing-room. "What a relief it will be for Sibylla!" involuntarily uttered Lionel.
"She'll make a face at losing Verner's Pride," was the less poetical remark of Jan.
"Will he turn us out at once, Jan?"
"He said nothing to me on that score, nor I to him," was the answer of Jan. "Look here, Lionel. Old West's a screw, between ourselves; but what I do earn is my own; so don't get breaking your rest, thinking you'll not have a pound or two to turn to. If John Massingbird does send you out, I can manage things for you, if you don't mind living quietly."
Honest Jan! His notions of "living quietly" would have comprised a couple of modest rooms, cotton umbrellas like his own, and a mutton chop a day. And Jan would have gone without the chop himself, to give it to Lionel. To Sibylla, also. Not that he had any great love for that lady, in the abstract; but, for Jan to eat chops, while anybody, no matter how remotely connected with him, wanted them, would have been completely out of Jan's nature.
A lump was rising in Lionel's throat. He loved Jan, and knew his worth, if nobody else did. While he was swallowing it down, Jan went on, quite eagerly.
"Something else might be thought of, Lionel. I don't see why you and Sibylla should not come to old West's. The house is large enough; and Deb and Amilly couldn't object to it for their sister. In point of right, half the house is mine: West said so when I became his partner; and I paid my share for the furniture. He asked if I'd not like to marry, and said there was the half of the house; but I told him I'd rather be excused. I might get a wife, you know, Lionel, who'd be for grumbling at me all day, as my mother does. Now, if you and Sibylla would come there, the matter as to your future would be at rest. I'd divide what I get between you and Miss Deb. Half to her for the extra cost you'd be to the housekeeping; the other half for pocket-money for you and Sibylla. I think you might make it do, Lionel: my share is quite two hundred a year. My own share I mean; besides what I hand over to Miss Deb, and transmit to the doctor, and other expenses. Could you manage with it?"
"Jan!" said Lionel, from between his quivering lips. "Dear Jan, there's—"
They were interrupted. Bounding out at the drawing-room window, the very window at which Lucy Tempest had sat that night and watched the yew-tree, came Sibylla, fretfulness in the lines of her countenance, complaint in the tones of her voice.
"Mr. Jan Verner, I'd like to know what right you have to send for Lionel from the room when he is at dinner? If he is your brother, you have no business to forget yourself in that way. He can't help your being his brother, I suppose; but you ought to know better than to presume upon it."
"Sibylla!—"
"Be quiet, Lionel. I shall tell him of it. Never was such a thing heard of, as for a gentleman to be called out for nothing, from his table's head! You do it again, Jan, and I shall order Tynn to shut the doors to you of Verner's Pride."
Jan received the lecture with the utmost equanimity, with imperturbable good nature. Lionel wound his arms about his wife, gravely and gently; whatever may have been the pain caused by her words, he suppressed it.
"Jan came here to tell me news that quite justified his sending for me, wherever I might be, or however occupied, Sibylla. He has succeeded in solving to-night the mystery which has hung over us; he has discovered who it is that we have been taking for Frederick Massingbird."
"It is not Frederick Massingbird," cried Sibylla, speaking sharply. "Captain Cannonby says that it cannot be."
"No, it is not Frederick Massingbird—God be thanked!" said Lionel. "With that knowledge, we can afford to hear who it is bravely; can we not, Sibylla?"
"But why don't you tell me who it is?" she retorted, in an impatient, fretful tone, not having the discernment to see that he wished to prepare her for what was coming. "Can't you speak, Jan, if he won't? People have no right to come, dressed up in other people's clothes and faces, to frighten us to death. He ought to be transported! Who is it?"
"You will be startled, Sibylla," said Lionel. "It is one whom we have believed to be dead; though it is not Frederick Massingbird."
"I wish you'd tell—beating about the bush like that! You need not stare so, Jan. I don't believe you know."
"It is your cousin, Sibylla; John Massingbird."
A moment's pause. And then, clutching at the hand of Lionel—
"Who?" she shrieked.
"Hush, my dear. It is John Massingbird."
"Not dead! Did he not die?"
"No. He recovered, when left, as was supposed, for dead. He is coming here to-morrow morning, Jan says."
Sibylla let fall her hands. She staggered back to a pillar and leaned against it, her upturned face white in the starlight.
"Is—is—is Verner's Pride yours or his?" she gasped in a low tone.
"It is his."
"His! Neither yours nor mine?"
"It is only his, Sibylla."
She raised her hands again; she began fighting with the air, as if she would beat off an imaginary John Massingbird. Another minute, and her laughter and her cries came forth together, shriek upon shriek. She was in strong hysterics. Lionel supported her, while Jan ran for water; and the gay company came flocking out of the lighted rooms to see.
CHAPTER LXIX.
NO HOME
People talk of a nine days' wonder. But no nine days' wonder has ever been heard or known, equal to that which fell on Deerham; which went booming to the very extremity of the county's boundaries. Lionel Verner, the legitimate heir—it may so be said—the possessor of Verner's Pride, was turned out of it to make room for an alien, resuscitated from the supposed dead.
Sailors tell us that the rats desert a sinking ship. Pseudo friends desert a falling house. You may revel in these friends in prosperity, but when adversity sets in, how they fall away! On the very day that John Massingbird arrived at Verner's Pride, and it became known that not he, but Mrs. and Mr. Verner must leave it, the gay company gathered there dispersed. Dispersed with polite phrases, which went for nothing. They were so very sorry for the calamity, for Mr. and Mrs. Verner; if they could do anything to serve them they had only to be commanded. And then they left; never perhaps to meet again, even as acquaintances. It may be asked, what could they do? They could not invite them to a permanent home; saddle themselves with a charge of that sort; neither would such an invitation stand a chance of acceptance. It did not appear they could do anything; but their combined flight from the house, one after the other, did strike with a chill of mortification upon the nerves of Lionel Verner and his wife.
His wife! Ah, poor Lionel had enough upon his hands, looking on one side and another. She was the heaviest weight. Lionel had thanked God in his true heart that they had been spared the return of Frederick Massingbird; but there was little doubt that the return of Frederick would have been regarded by her as a light calamity, in comparison with this. She made no secret of it. Ten times a day had Lionel to curb his outraged feelings, and compress his lips to stop the retort that would rise bubbling up within them. She would openly lament that it was not Frederick who had returned, in which case she might have remained at Verner's Pride!
"You'll not turn them out, Massingbird?" cried Jan, in his straightforward way, drawing the gentleman into the fruit-garden to a private conference. "I wouldn't."
John Massingbird laughed good-humouredly. He had been in the sunniest humour throughout; had made his first appearance at Verner's Pride in bursts of laughter, heartily grasping the hands of Lionel, of Sibylla, and boasting of the "fun" he had had in playing the ghost. Captain Cannonby, the only one of the guests who remained, grew charmed with John, and stated his private opinion in the ear of Lionel Verner that he was worth a hundred such as Frederick.
"How can I help turning them out?" answered he. "I didn't make the will—it was old Daddy Verner."
"You need not act upon the will," said Jan. "There was a codicil, you know, superseding it, though it can't be found. Sibylla's your cousin—it would be a cruel thing to turn her from her home."
"Two masters never answered in a house yet," nodded John. "I'm not going to try it."
"Let them stop in Verner's Pride, and you go elsewhere," suggested Jan.
John Massingbird laughed for five minutes. "How uncommon young you are, Jan!" said he. "Has Lionel been putting you up to try this on?"
Jan swung himself on a tolerably strong branch of the mulberry-tree, regardless of any damage the ripe fruit might inflict on his nether garments, as he answered—
"Knowing Lionel, you needn't ask it, Massingbird. There'd be a difficulty in getting him to stop in Verner's Pride now, but he might be coaxed to do it for the sake of his wife. She'll have a fit of illness if she has to go out of it. Lionel is one to stand by his own to the last; while Verner's Pride was his, he'd have fought to retain its possession, inch by inch; but let ever so paltry a quibble of the law take it from him, and he'd not lift up his finger to keep it. But, I say, I think he might be got to do it for Sibylla."
"I'll tell you a secret, Jan," cried John Massingbird. "I'd not have Sibylla stop in Verner's Pride if she paid me ten thousand a year for the favour. There! And as to resigning Verner's Pride the minute I come into it, nobody but a child or Jan Verner could ever have started so absurd an idea. If anything makes me feel cross, it is the thought of my having been knocking about yonder, when I might have been living in clover here. I'd get up an Ever-perpetual Philanthropic Benefit-my-fellow-creature Society, if I were you, Jan, and hold meetings at Exeter Hall!"
"Not in my line," said Jan, swaying himself about on the bough.
"Isn't it! I should say it was. Why don't you invite Sibylla to your house, if you are so fond of her?"
"She won't come," said Jan.
"Perhaps you have not asked her!"
"I was beginning to ask her, but she flew at me and ordered me to hold my tongue. No, I see it," Jan added, in self-soliloquy, "she'll never come there. I thought she might: and I got Miss Deb to think so. She'll—she'll—"
"She'll what?" asked John Massingbird.
"She'll be a thorn in Lionel's side, I'm afraid."
"Nothing more likely," acquiesced easy John. "Roses and thorns go together. If gentlemen will marry the one, they must expect to get their share of the other."
Jan jumped off his bough. His projects all appeared to be failing. The more he had dwelt upon his suddenly-thought-of scheme, that Dr. West's house might afford an asylum for Lionel and his wife, the more he had become impressed with its desirability. Jan Verner, though the most unselfish, perhaps it may be said the most improvident of mortals, with regard to himself, had a considerable amount of forethought for the rest of the world. It had struck him, even before it struck Lionel, that, if turned out of Verner's Pride, Lionel would want a home; want it in the broadest acceptation of the word. It would have been Jan's delight to give him one. He, Jan, went home, told Miss Deb the news that it was John Massingbird who had returned, not Frederick, and imparted his views of future arrangements.
Miss Deb was dubious. For Mr. Verner of Verner's Pride to become an inmate of their home, dependent on her housekeeping, looked a formidable affair. But Jan pointed out that, Verner's Pride gone, it appeared to be but a choice of cheap lodgings; their house would be an improvement upon that. And Miss Deb acquiesced; and grew to contemplate the addition to her family, in conjunction with the addition Jan proposed to add to her income, with great satisfaction.
That failed. Failed upon Jan's first hint of it to Mrs. Verner. She—to use his own expression—flew out at him, at the bare hint; and Sibylla Verner could fly out in an unseemly manner when she chose.
Jan's next venture had been with John Massingbird. That was failure the second. "Where are they to go?" thought Jan.
It was a question that Lionel Verner may also have been asking in his inmost heart. As yet he could not look his situation fully in the face. Not from any want of moral courage, but because of the inextricable confusion that his affairs seemed to be in. And, let his moral courage be what it would, the aspect they bore might have caused a more hardy heart than Lionel's to shrink. How much he owed he could not tell; nothing but debt stared him in the face. He had looked to the autumn rents of Verner's Pride to extricate him from a portion of his difficulties; and now those rents would be received by John Massingbird. The furniture in the house, the plate, the linen, none of it was his; it had been left by the will with Verner's Pride. The five hundred pounds, all that he had inherited by that will, had been received at the time—and was gone. One general sinking fund seemed to have swallowed up everything; that, and all else; leaving a string of debts a yard long in its place.
Reproaches now would be useless; whether self-reproach, or reproach to his wife. The latter Lionel would never have given. And yet, when he looked back, and thought how free from debt he might have been, nothing but reproach, however vaguely directed, reproach of the past generally, seemed to fill his heart. To turn out in the world, a free man, though penniless, would have been widely different from turning out, plunged over head and ears in difficulties.
In what quarter did he not owe money? He could not say. He had not been very provident, and Sibylla had not been provident at all. But this much might be said for Lionel: that he had not wasted money on useless things, or self-indulgence. The improvements he had begun on the estate had been the chief drain, so far as he went; and the money they took had caused him to get backward with the general expenses. He had also been over liberal to his mother. Money was owing on all sides; for large things and for small; how much, Lionel did not yet know. He did not know—he was afraid to guess—what private debts might have been contracted by his wife. There had been times lately, when, in contemplating the embarrassment growing so hopelessly upon him, Lionel had felt inclined to wish that some climax would come and end it; but he had never dreamt of such a climax as this. A hot flush dyed his cheeks as he remembered there was nearly a twelvemonth's wages owing to most of his servants; and he had not the means now of paying them.
"Stop on a bit if you like," said John Massingbird, in a hearty tone; "stop a month, if you will. You are welcome. It will be only changing your place from master to guest."
From master to guest! That same day John Massingbird assumed his own place, unasked, at the head of the dinner-table. Lionel went to the side with a flushed face. John Massingbird had never been remarkable for delicacy, but Lionel could not help thinking that he might have waited until he was gone, before assuming the full mastership. Captain Cannonby made the third at the dinner, and he, by John Massingbird's request, took the foot of the table. It was not the being put out of his place that hurt Lionel so much, as the feeling of annoyance that John Massingbird could behave so unlike a gentleman. He felt ashamed for him. Dinner over, Lionel went up to his wife, who was keeping her room, partly from temper, partly from illness.
"Sibylla, I'll not stop here another day," he said. "I see that John Massingbird wants us to go. Now, what shall I do? Take lodgings?"
Sibylla looked up from the sofa, her eyes red with crying, her cheeks inflamed.
"Anybody but you, Lionel, would never allow him to turn you out. Why don't you dispute the right with him? Turn him out, and defy him!"
He did not tell Sibylla that she was talking like a child. He only said that John Massingbird's claim to Verner's Pride was indisputable—that it had been his all along; that, in point of fact, he himself had been the usurper.
"Then you mean," she said, "to give him up quiet possession?"
"I have no other resource, Sibylla. To attempt any sort of resistance would be foolish as well as wrong."
"I shan't give it up. I shall stay here in spite of him. You may do as you like, but he is not going to get me out of my own home."
"Sibylla, will you try and be rational for once? If ever a time called for it, it is the present. I ask you whether I shall seek after lodgings."
"And I wonder that you are not ashamed to ask me," retorted Sibylla, bursting into tears. "Lodgings, after Verner's Pride! No. I'd rather die than go into lodgings. I dare say I shall die soon, with all this affliction."
"I do not see what else there is for us but lodgings," resumed Lionel, after a pause. "You will not hear of Jan's proposition."
"Go back to my old home!" she shrieked. "Like—as poor Fred used to say—bad money returned. No! that I never will. You are wrapt up in Jan; if he proposed to give me poison, you'd say yes. I wish Fred had not died!"
"Will you be so good as tell me what you think ought to be done?" inquired Lionel.
"How can I think? Where's the good of asking me? I think the least you can do in this wretchedness, is to take as much worry off me as you can, Lionel."
"It is what I wish to do," he gently said. "But I can see only one plan for us, Sibylla—lodgings. Here we cannot stay; it is out of the question. To take a house is equally so. We have no furniture—no money, in short, to set up a house, or to keep it on. Jan's plan, until I can turn myself round and see what's to be done, would be the best. You would be going to your own sisters, who would take care of you, should I find it necessary to be away."
"Away! Where?" she quickly asked.
"I must go somewhere and do something. I cannot lead an idle life, living upon other people's charity, or let you live upon it. I must find some way of earning a livelihood: in London, perhaps. While I am looking out, you would be with your sisters."
"Then, Lionel, hear me!" she cried, her throat working, her blue eyes flashing with a strange light. "I will never go home to my sisters! I will never, so long as I live, enter that house again, to reside! You are no better than a bear to wish me to do it."
What was he to do? She was his wife, and he must provide for her; but she would go neither into lodgings, nor to the proposed home. Lionel set his wits to work.
"I wonder—whether—my mother—would invite us there, for a short while?" The words were spoken slowly, reluctantly, as if there were an undercurrent of strong doubt in his mind. "Would you go to Deerham Court for a time, Sibylla, if Lady Verner were agreeable?"
"Yes," said Sibylla, after a minute's consideration. "I'd go there."
Deeming it well that something should be decided, Lionel went downstairs, caught up his hat, and proceeded to Deerham Court. He did not say a word about his wife's caprice; or that two plans, proposed to her, had been rejected. He simply asked his mother whether she would temporarily receive him and his wife, until he could look round and decide on the future.
To his great surprise, Lady Verner answered that she would; and answered readily. Lionel, knowing the light in which she regarded his wife, had anticipated he knew not what of objection, if not of positive refusal.
"I wish you to come here, Lionel; I intended to send for you and tell you so," was the reply of Lady Verner. "You have no home to turn to, and I could not have it said that my son in his strait was at fault for one. I never thought to receive your wife inside my doors, but for your sake I will do so. No servants, you understand, Lionel."
"Certainly not," he answered. "I cannot afford servants now as a matter of luxury."
"I can neither afford them for you, nor is there room in my house to accommodate them. This applies to that French maid of yours," Lady Verner pointedly added. "I do not like the woman; nothing would induce me to admit her here, even were circumstances convenient. Any attendance that your wife may require, she shall have."
Lionel smiled a sad smile. "Be easy, mother. The time for my wife to keep a French maid has gone by. I thank you very sincerely."
And so Lionel Verner was once more to be turned from Verner's Pride, to take up his abode with his wife in his mother's home. When were his wanderings to be at rest?