Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/139

26, 1862.] the leg of the table; but the subject was interrupted by the entrance of Sibylla. Lionel wished them good evening, and went out with her. Outside the room door they encountered Dr. West.

“Where are you going, Sibylla?” he asked, almost sharply, as his glance fell upon his daughter and Lionel.

“To Verner’s Pride.”

“Go and take your things off. You cannot go to Verner’s Pride this evening.”

“But, papa, why?” inquired Sibylla, feeling that she should like to turn restive.

“I have my reasons for it. You will know them later. Now go and take your things off without another word.”

Sibylla dared not openly dispute the will of her father, neither would she essay to do it before Lionel Verner. She turned somewhat unwillingly towards the staircase, and Dr. West opened the drawing-room door, signing to Lionel to wait.

“Deborah, I am going out. Don’t keep the tea. Mr. Jan, should I be summoned anywhere, you’ll attend for me. I don’t know when I shall be home.”

“All right,” called out Jan. And Dr. West went out with Lionel Verner.

“I am going to Verner’s Pride,” he said, taking Lionel’s arm as soon as they were in the street. “There’s news come from Australia. John Massingbird’s dead.”

The announcement was made so abruptly, with so little circumlocution or preparation, that Lionel Verner failed at the first moment to take in the full meaning of the words—“John Massingbird dead?” he mechanically asked.

“He is dead. It’s a sad tale. He had the gold about him, a great quantity of it, bringing it down to Melbourne, and he was killed on the road: murdered for the sake of the gold.”

“How have you heard it?” demanded Lionel.

“I met Roy just now,” replied Dr. West. “He stopped me, saying he had heard from his son by this afternoon’s post; that there was bad news in the letter, and he supposed he must go to Verner’s Pride, and break it to them. He gave me the letter, and I undertook to carry the tidings to Mrs. Verner.”

“It is awfully sudden,” said Lionel. “By the mail, two months ago, he wrote himself to us, in the highest spirits. And now—dead!”

“Life, over there, is not worth a month’s purchase just now,” remarked Dr. West; and Lionel could but note that had he been discussing the death of a total stranger, instead of a nephew, he could only have spoken in the same indifferent, matter-of-fact tone. “By all accounts, society is in a strange state there,” he continued; “ruffians lying in wait ever for prey. The men have been taken, and the gold found upon them, Luke writes.”

“That’s good, so far,” said Lionel.

When they reached Verner’s Pride, they found that a letter was waiting for Frederick Massingbird, who had not been home since he left the house early in the afternoon. The superscription was in the same handwriting as the letter Dr. West had brought—Luke Roy’s. There could be no doubt that it was only a confirmation of the tidings.

Mrs. Verner was in the drawing-room alone, Tynn said, ready to go in to dinner, and rather cross that Mr. Lionel should keep her waiting for it.

“Who will break it to her—you or I?” asked Dr. West, of Lionel.

“I think it should be you. You are her brother.”

Broken to her it was, in the best mode they were able. It proved a severe shock. Mrs. Verner had loved John, her eldest born, above every earthly thing. He was wild, random, improvident, had given her incessant trouble as a child and as a man; and so, mother fashion, she loved him best.

sat perched on the gate of a ploughed field, softly whistling. His brain was busy, and he was holding counsel with himself, under the grey February skies. Three weeks had gone by since the tidings arrived of the death of his brother, and Frederick was deliberating whether he should, or should not, go out. His own letter from Luke Roy had been in substance the same as that which Luke had written to his father. It was neither more explanatory, nor less so. Luke Roy was not a first-hand at epistolary correspondence. John had been attacked and killed for the sake of his gold, and the attackers and the gold had been taken hold of by the law; so far it said, and no further. That the notion should occur to Frederick to go out to Melbourne, and lay claim to the gold and any other property that had been left by John, was only natural. He had been making up his mind to do so for the last three weeks; and perhaps the vision of essaying a little business in the gold-fields on his own account urged him on. But he had not fully made up his mind yet. The journey was a long and hazardous one; and—he did not care to leave Sibylla.

“To be, or not to be?” soliloquised he, from his seat on the gate, -as he plucked thin branches off from the bare winter hedge, and scattered them. “Old step-father’s wiry yet, he may last an age, and this is getting a horrid humdrum life. I wonder what he’ll leave me, when he does go off? Mother said one day she thought it wouldn’t be more than five hundred pounds. She doesn’t know: he does not tell her about his private affairs—never has told her. Five hundred pounds! If he left me a paltry sum like that, I’d fling it in the heir’s face—Master Lionel’s.”

He put a piece of the thorn into his mouth, bit it up, spit it out again, and went on with his soliloquy.

“I had better go. Why—if nothing, to speak of, does come to me from old Verner, this money of John’s would be a perfect windfall. I must not lose the chance of it—and lose it I should, unless I go out and see after it. No, it would never do. I’ll go. It’s hard to say how much he has left, poor fellow. Thousands—if one may judge by his letters—besides this great nugget that they killed him for, the villains! Yes, I’ll