thought. “How far was Frederick implicated?” he asked in a low tone. “Did he—did he put her into the pond?”
“No!” burst forth John Massingbird, with a vehemence that sent the ashes of his pipe flying. “Fred would not be guilty of such a crime as that, any more than you or I would. He had—he had made vows to the girl, and broken them; and that was the extent of it. No such great sin, after all, or it wouldn’t be so fashionable a one,” carelessly added John Massingbird.
Lionel waited in silence.
“By what Luke could gather,” went on John, “it appeared that Rachel had seen Fred that night with his cousin Sibylla—your wife now. What she had seen or heard, goodness knows: but enough to prove to her that Fred’s real love was given to Sibylla; that she was his contemplated wife. It drove Rachel mad: Fred had probably filled her up with the idea that the honour was destined for herself. Men are deceivers ever, and women soft, you know, Lionel.”
“And they quarrelled over it?”
“They quarrelled over it. Rachel, awakened out of her credulity, met him with bitter reproaches. Luke could not hear what was said towards its close. The meeting—no doubt a concerted one—had been in that grove in view of the willow-pool, the very spot that Master Luke had chosen for his own hiding-place. They left it and walked towards Verner’s Pride, disputing vehemently; Roy made off the other way, and the last he saw of them, when they were nearly out of sight, was a final explosion, in which they parted. Fred set off to run towards Verner’s Pride, and Rachel came flying back towards the pond. There’s not a shadow of doubt that in her passion, her unhappy state of feeling, she flung herself in: and if Luke had only waited two minutes longer, he might have been in at the death—as we say by the foxes. That’s the solution of what has puzzled Deerham for years, Lionel.”
“Could Luke not have saved her?”
“He never knew she was in the pond. Whether the unexpected sight of his mother scared his senses away, he has often wondered; but he heard neither the splash in the water nor the shriek. He made off pretty quick, he says, for fear his mother should attempt to stop him, or proclaim his presence aloud—an inconvenient procedure, since he was supposed to be in London. Luke never knew of her death until we were on the voyage. I got to London only in time to go on board the ship in the docks, and we had been out for days at sea before he learnt that Rachel was dead, or I that Luke had been down, on the sly, to Deerham. I had to get over that precious sea-sickness, before entering upon that, or any other talk, I can tell you. It’s a shame it should attack men!”
“I suspected Fred at the time,” said Lionel.
“You did! Well, I did not. My suspicions had turned to a very different quarter.”
“Upon whom?”
“O bother! where’s the good of ripping it up, now it’s over and done with?” retorted John Massingbird. “There’s the paper of baccy by your elbow, chum. Chuck it here.”
CHAPTER LVI. A CRISIS IN SIBYLLA’S LIFE.
Sibylla Verner improved neither in health nor in temper. Body and mind were alike diseased. As the spring had advanced, her weakness appeared to increase; the symptoms of consumption became more palpable. She would not allow that she was ill; she no doubt thought that there was nothing serious the matter with her; nothing, as she told everybody, but the vexing after Verner’s Pride.
Dr. West had expressed an opinion that her irritability, which she could neither conceal nor check, was the result of her state of health. He was very likely right. One thing was certain: that since she grew weaker and worse, this unhappy frame of mind had greatly increased. The whole business of her life appeared to be to grumble; to be cross, snappish, fretful. If her body was diseased, most decidedly her temper was also. The great grievance of quitting Verner’s Pride she made a plea for the indulgence of every complaint under the sun. She could no longer gather a gay crowd of visitors around her; she had lost the opportunity with Verner’s Pride: she could no longer indulge in unlimited orders for new dresses and bonnets, and other charming adjuncts to the toilette, without reference to how they were to be paid for: she had not a dozen servants at her beck and call; if she wanted to pay a visit, there was no elegant equipage, the admiration of all beholders, to convey her. She had lost all with Verner’s Pride. Not a day—scarcely an hour—passed, but one or other, or all of these vexations, were made the subject of fretful, open repining. Not to Lady Verner: Sibylla would not have dared to annoy her; not to Decima or to Lucy; but to her husband. How weary his ear was, how weary his spirit, no tongue could tell. She tried him in every way—she did nothing but find fault with him. When he stayed out, she grumbled at him for staying, meeting him with reproaches on his entrance; when he remained in, she grumbled at him. In her sad frame of mind, it was essential—there are frames of mind in which it is essential, as the medical men will tell you; where the sufferer cannot help it—that she should have some object on which to vent her irritability. Not being in her own house, there was but her husband. He was the only one sufficiently nearly connected with her to whom the courtesies of life could be dispensed with; and therefore he came in for it all. At Verner’s Pride there would have been her servants to share it with him; at Dr. West’s there would have been her sisters; at Lady Verner’s there was her husband alone. Times upon times Lionel felt inclined to run away; just as disobedient boys run to sea.
The little hint, dropped by Dr. West, touching the past, had not been without its fruits in Sibylla’s mind. It lay and smouldered there. Had Lionel been attached to Lucy?—had there been love-scenes, love-making between them?—Sibylla asked herself the question ten times in a day. Now and then she let drop a sharp acrid bit of venom to him—his “old love, Lucy.” Lionel would receive it with impassibility, never answering.
On the day spoken of in the last chapter, when