Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/166

158 few his offences are. He would make a faithful master of Verner’s Pride. Compare him to Fred Massingbird! Pshaw!”

Mr. Verner did not answer. His face had an aching look upon it, as it leaned out from the top of his stick. Mr. Bitterworth laid his hand upon his knee persuasively.

“Do not go out of the world committing an act of injustice; an act, too, that is irreparable, and of which the injustice must last for ever. Stephen, I will not leave you until you consent to repair what you have done.”

“It has been upon my mind to do it since I was taken worse yesterday,” murmured Stephen Verner. “Our Saviour taught us to forgive. Had it been against me only that he sinned, I would have forgiven him long ago.”

“You will forgive him now?”

“Forgiveness does not lie with me. It was not against me, I say, that he sinned. Let him ask forgiveness of God and of his own conscience. But he shall have Verner’s Pride.”

“Better that you should see it in its proper light at the eleventh hour, than not at all, Stephen,” said Mr. Bitterworth. “By every law of right and justice, Verner’s Pride, after you, belongs to Lionel.”

“You speak well, Bitterworth, when you call it the eleventh hour,” observed Mr. Verner. “If I am to make this change, you must get Matiss here without an instant’s delay. See him yourself, and bring him back. Tell him what the necessity is. He will make more haste for you than he might for one of my servants.”

“Does he know of the bequest to the Massingbirds?”

“Of course he knows. He made the will. I have never employed anybody but Matiss, since I came into the estate.”

Mr. Bitterworth, feeling there was little time to be lost, quitted the room without more delay. He was anxious that Lionel should have his own. Not so much because he liked and esteemed Lionel, as that he possessed a strong sense of justice within himself. Lionel heard him leaving the sick-room, and came to him, but Mr. Bitterworth would not stop.

“I can’t wait,” he said. “I am bound on an errand for your uncle.”

He was bound to the house of the lawyer, Mr. Matiss, who lived and had his office in the new part of Deerham, down by Dr. West’s. People wondered in so small a place that he managed to make a living: but he evidently did make one. Most of the gentry in the vicinity employed him for trifling things, and he held one or two good agencies. He kept no clerk. He was at home when Mr. Bitterworth entered, writing at a desk in his small office, which had maps hung round it. A quick-speaking man with dark hair and a good-natured face.

“Are you busy, Matiss?” began Mr. Bitterworth, when he entered, and the lawyer looked at him through the railings of his desk.

“Not particularly, Mr. Bitterworth. Do you want me?”

“Mr. Verner wants you. He has sent me to bring you to him without delay. You have heard that there’s a change in him?”

“Oh, yes, I have heard it,” replied the lawyer. “I am at his service, Mr. Bitterworth.”

“He wants his last will altered. Remedied, I should say,” continued Mr. Bitterworth, looking the lawyer full in the face, and nodding confidentially.

“Altered to what it was before?” eagerly cried the lawyer.

Mr. Bitterworth nodded again. “I called in upon him this morning, and in the course of conversation it came out what he had done about Verner’s Pride. And now he wants it undone.”

“I am glad of it; I am glad of it, Mr. Bitterworth. Between ourselves—though I mean no disrespect to them—the young Massingbirds were not fit heirs for Verner’s Pride. Mr. Lionel Verner is.”

“He is the rightful heir as well as the fit one, Matiss,” added Mr. Bitterworth, leaning over the desk’s railings, while the lawyer was hastily putting his papers in order, preparatory to leaving them, placing some aside on the desk, and locking up others, “what was the cause of his willing it away from Lionel Verner?”

“It’s more than I can tell. He gave no clue whatever to his motive. Many and many a time have I thought it over since, but I never came near fathoming it. I told Mr. Verner that it was not a just thing, when I took his instructions for the fresh will. That is, I intimated as much; it was not my place, of course, to speak out my mind offensively to Mr. Verner. Dr. West said a great deal more to him than I did; but he could make no impression.”

“Was Dr. West consulted, then, by Mr. Verner?”

“Not at all. When I called at Verner’s Pride with the fresh will, for Mr. Verner to execute it, it happened that Tynn was out. He and one of the other servants were to have witnessed the signature. Dr. West came in at the time, and Mr. Verner said he would do for a witness in Tynn’s place. Dr. West remonstrated most strongly when he found what it was, for Mr. Verner told him in confidence what had been done. He, the doctor, at first refused to put his hand to anything so unjust. He protested that the public would cry shame, would say John Massingbird had no human right to Verner’s Pride, would suspect he had obtained it by fraud or by some sort of underhand work. Mr. Verner replied that I—Matiss—could contradict that. At last the doctor signed.”

“When was this?”

“It was the very week after John started for Australia. I wondered why Mr. Verner should have allowed him to go if he meant to make him his heir. Dr. West wondered also, and said so to Mr. Verner, but Mr. Verner made no reply.”

“Mr. Verner has just told me that neither the Massingbirds nor Mrs. Verner knew anything of the fresh will. I understood him to imply that no person whatever was cognisant of it but himself and you.”

“And Dr. West. Nobody else.”