Verner’s Pride the next day, there would be no chance of my sailing in the projected ship—where our passages had been already secured by Luke Roy. By and by you came into the dining-room—do you remember it?—and told me Mr. Verner wanted me in the study. It was just what I wanted: and I went in. I shan’t forget my surprise to the last hour of my life. His greeting was an accusation of me: of me: that it was I who had played false with Rachel. He had proof he said. One of the house girls had seen one of us three young men coming from the scene that night—and he, Stephen Verner, knew it could only be me. Fred was too cautious, he said; Lionel he could depend upon; and he bitterly declared that he would not give me a penny piece of the promised money, to take me on my way. A pretty state of things, was it not, Lionel, to have one’s projects put an end to in that manner! In my dismay and anger, I blurted out the truth: that one of us might have been seen coming from the scene, but it was not myself; it was Lionel: and I took the glove out of my pocket, and showed it to him.”
John Massingbird paused to take a draught of the rum-and-water, and then resumed.
“I never saw any man so agitated as Mr. Verner. Upon my word, had I foreseen the effect the news would have had upon him, I hardly think I should have told it. His face turned ghastly; he lay back in his chair, uttering groans of despair; in short, it had completely prostrated him. I never knew how deeply he must have been attached to you, Lionel, until that night.”
“He believed the story?” said Lionel.
“Of course he believed it,” assented John Massingbird. “I told it him as a certainty, as a thing about which there was no admission for the slightest doubt: I assumed it, myself, to be a certainty. When he was a little recovered, he took possession of the glove, and bound me to secrecy. You would never have forgotten it, Lionel, had you seen his shaking hands, his imploring eyes, heard his voice of despair; all lifted to beseech secrecy for you—for the sake of his dead brother—for the name of Verner—for his own sake. I heartily promised it: and he handed me over a more liberal sum than even I had expected, enjoined me to depart with the morrow’s dawn, and bade me God speed. I believe he was glad that I was going, lest I might drop some chance word during the present excitement of Deerham, and by those means direct suspicion to you. He need not have feared. I was already abusing myself mentally for having told him, although it had gained me my ends: ‘Live and let live’ had been my motto hitherto. The interview was nearly over when you came to interrupt it, asking if Mr. Verner would see Robin Frost. Mr. Verner answered that he might come in. He came; you and Fred with him. Do you recollect old Verner’s excitement?—his vehement words in answer to Robin’s request that a reward should be posted up? ‘He’ll never be found, Robin,—the villain will never be found, so long as you and I and the world shall last.’ I recollect them, you see, word for word, to this hour: but none, save myself, knew what caused Mr. Verner’s excitement, or that the word ‘villain’ was applied to you. Upon my word and honour, old boy, I felt as if I had the deeper right to it; and I felt angry with old Verner for looking at the affair in so strong a light. But there was no help for it. I went away the next morning—”
“Stay,” interrupted Lionel. “A single word to me would have set the misapprehension straight. Why did you not speak it?”
“I wish I had, now. But—it wasn’t done. There! The knowledge that turns up with the future we can’t call to aid in the present. If I had had a doubt that it was you I should have spoken. We were some days out at sea on our voyage to Australia when I and Luke got comparing notes; and I found, to my everlasting astonishment, that it was not you, after all, who had been with Rachel, but Fred.”
“You should have written home, to do me justice with Mr. Verner. You ought not to have delayed one instant, when the knowledge came to you.”
“And how was I to send the letter? Chuck it into the sea in the ship’s wake, and give it orders to swim back to port?”
“You might have posted it at the first place you touched at.”
“Look here, Lionel. I never regarded it in that grave light. How was I to suppose that old Verner would disinherit you for that trumpery escapade? I never knew why he had disinherited you, until I came home and heard from yourself the story of the enclosed glove, which he left you as a legacy. It’s since then that I have been wanting to make a clean breast of it. I say, only fancy Fred’s deepness! We should never have thought it of him. The quarrel between him and Rachel that night appeared to arise from the fact of her having seen him with Sibylla; having overheard that there was more between them than was pleasant to her. At least, so far as Luke could gather it. Lionel, what should have brought your glove lying by the pond?”
“I am unable to say. I had not been there, to drop it. The most feasible solution that I can come to, is, that Rachel may have had it about her for the purpose of mending, and let it drop herself, when she fell in, or jumped in.”
“Ay. That’s the most likely. There was a hole in it, I remember; and it was Rachel who attended to such things in the household. It must have been so.”
Lionel fell into a reverie. How—but for this mistake of John Massingbird’s, this revelation to his uncle—the whole course of his life’s events might have been changed! Verner’s Pride left to him, never left at all to the Massingbirds, it was scarcely likely that Sibylla, in returning home, would have driven to Verner’s Pride. Had she not driven to it that night, he might never have been so surprised by his old feelings as to have proposed to her. He might have married Lucy Tempest; have lived, sheltered with her in Verner’s Pride from the storms of life; he might—”
“Will you forgive me, old chap?’
