Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/192

184 at pleasure, and who would brook no more insubordination to his will. So Roy bowed, and eat humble pie, and hated Lionel all the while. Lionel had seen this; he had seen how the man longed to rebel, had he dared: and a flush of pain rose to his brow as he remembered that in that interview he had not been the master; that he was less master now than he had ever been. Roy would likewise remember it.

Mr. Bitterworth took Lionel aside. Sir Rufus Hautley had gone out after the blow had fallen, when the codicil had been searched for in vain—had gone out in anger, shaking the dust from his feet, declining to act as executor, to accept the mourning-ring, to have to do with anything so palpably unjust. The rest lingered yet: it seemed that they could not talk enough of it, could not tire of bringing forth new conjectures, could not give vent to all the phases of their astonishment.

“What could have been your offence, that your uncle should alter his will, two years ago, and leave the estate from you?” Mr. Bitterworth inquired of Lionel, drawing him aside.

“I am unable to conjecture,” replied Lionel. “I find by the date of this will that it was made the week subsequently to my departure for Paris, when Jan met with the accident. He was not displeased with me then, so far as I knew—”

“Did you go to Paris in opposition to his wish?” interrupted Mr. Bitterworth.

“On the contrary, he hurried me off. When the news of Jan’s accident arrived, and I went to my uncle with the message, he said to me,—I remember his very words,—‘Go off at once, don’t lose an instant,’ and he handed me money for the journey and for my stay; for Jan, also, should any great expense be needed for him; and in an hour I was away on my route. I stayed six months in Paris, as you may remember—the latter portion of the time for my own pleasure. When I did return home, I was perfectly thunderstruck at the change in my uncle’s appearance, and at the change in his manners to me. He was a bowed, broken man, with—as it seemed to me—something on his mind; and that I had offended him in some very unfortunate way, and to a great extent, was palpable. I never could get any solution to it, though I asked him repeatedly. I do not know, to this hour, what I had done. Sometimes I would think he was angry at my remaining so long away: but, if so, he might have given me a hint to return, or have suffered some one else to give it, for he never wrote to me.”

“Never wrote to you?” repeated Mr. Bitterworth.

“Not once, the whole of the time I was away. I wrote to him often; but if he had occasion to send me a message, Mrs. Verner or Fred Massingbird would write it. Of course, this will, disinheriting me, proves that my staying away could not have been the cause of displeasure—it is dated only the week after I went.”

“Whatever may be the cause, it is a grievous wrong inflicted on you. He was my dear friend, and we have but now returned from laying him in his grave, but still I must speak out my sentiments—that he had no right to deprive you of Verner’s Pride.”

Lionel knit his brow. That he thought the same; that he was feeling the injustice as a crying and unmerited wrong, was but too evident. Mr. Bitterworth had bent his head in a reverie, stealing a glance at Lionel, now and then.

“Is there nothing that you can charge your conscience with; no sin, which may have come to the knowledge of your uncle, and been deemed by him a just cause for disinheritance?” questioned Mr. Bitterworth, in a meaning tone.

“There is nothing, so help me, heaven!” replied Lionel, with emotion. “No sin, no shame; nothing that could be a cause, or the shade of a cause—I will not say for depriving me of Verner’s Pride, but even for my uncle’s displeasure.”

“It struck me—you will not be offended with me, Lionel, if I mention something that struck me a week back,” resumed Mr. Bitterworth. “I am a foolish old man, given to ponder much over cause and effect—to put two and two together, as we call it; and the day I first heard from your uncle that he had had good cause—this was what he said—for depriving you of Verner’s Pride, I went home, and set to work, thinking. The will had been made just after John Massingbird’s departure for Australia. I brought before me all the events which had occurred about that same time, and there rose up naturally, towering above every other reminiscence, the unhappy business touching Rachel Frost. Lionel,”—laying his hand on the young man’s shoulder, and dropping his voice to a whisper—“did you lead the girl astray?”

Lionel drew himself up to his full height, his lip curling with displeasure.

“Mr. Bitterworth!”

“To suspect you never would have occurred to me. I do not suspect you now. Were you to tell me that you were guilty of it, I should have difficulty in believing you. But it did occur to me that possibly your uncle may have cast that blame on you. I saw no other solution of the riddle. It could have been no light cause to induce Mr. Verner to deprive you of Verner’s Pride. He was not a capricious man.”

“It is impossible that my uncle could have cast a shade of suspicion on me, in regard to that affair,” said Lionel. “He knew me better. At the moment of its occurrence, when nobody could tell whom to suspect, I remember a word or two were dropped which caused me to assure him I was not the guilty party, and he stopped me. He would not allow me even to speak of defence; he said he cast no suspicion on me.”

“Well, it is a great mystery,” said Mr. Bitterworth. “You must excuse me, Lionel. I thought Mr. Verner might in some way have taken up the notion. Evil tales, which have no human foundation, are sometimes palmed upon credulous ears for fact, and do their work.”

“Were it as you suggest, my uncle would have spoken to me, had it been only to reproach,” said Lionel. “It is a mystery, certainly, as you observe; but that’s nothing to this mystery of the disappearance of the codicil—.”

“I am going, Lionel,” interrupted Jan, putting his head round the room-door.

“I must go, too,” said Lionel, starting from the sideboard against which he had been leaning.