Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/253

. 23, 1862.] Lionel took up the deed. His finger was upon the seal when a thought crossed him: ought he to open it without further witnesses? He spoke his doubt aloud to Mrs. Verner.

“Ring the bell and have in Tynn,” said she. “His wife also: she found it.”

Lionel rang. Tynn and his wife both came in, in obedience to the request. Tynn looked at it curiously: and began rehearsing mentally a private lecture for his wife, for acting upon her own responsibility.

The seal was broken. The stiff writing-paper of the outer cover revealed a second cover of stiff writing-paper precisely similar to the first: but on this last there was no superscription. It was tied round with fine white twine. Lionel cut it. Tynn and Mrs. Tynn waited with the utmost eagerness: even Mrs. Verner’s eyes were opened wider than usual.

Alas for the hopes of Lionel! The parcel contained nothing but a glove, and a small piece of writing paper, folded once. Lionel unfolded it, and read the following lines:

“This glove has come into my possession. When I tell you that I know where it was found and how you lost it, you will not wonder at the shock the discovery has been to me. I hush it up, Lionel, for your late father’s sake, as much as for that of the name of Verner. I am about to seal it up that it may be given to you after my death: and you will then know why I disinherit you. S. V.”

Lionel gazed on the lines like one in a dream. They were in the handwriting of his uncle. Understand them, he could not. He took up the glove, a thick, fawn-coloured riding-glove, and remembered it for one of his own. When he had lost it, or where he had lost it, he knew no more than did the table he was standing by. He had worn dozens of these gloves in the years gone by: up to the period when he had gone in mourning for John Massingbird, and, subsequently, for his uncle.

“What is it, Lionel?”

Lionel put the lines in his pocket, and pushed the glove towards Mrs. Verner. “I do not understand it in the least,” he said. “My uncle appears to have found the glove somewhere, and he writes to say that he returns it to me. The chief matter that concerns us is”—turning his eyes on the servants—“that it is not the codicil!”

Mrs. Tynn lifted her hands. “How one may be deceived!” she uttered. “Mr. Lionel, I’d freely have laid my life upon it.”

“It was not exactly my place to speak, sir; to give my opinion beforehand,” interposed Tynn, “but I was sure that was not the lost codicil, by the very look of it. The codicil might have been about that size, and it had a big seal like that; but it was different in appearance.”

“All that puzzled me was, how it could have got into the shirt-drawer,” cried Mrs. Tynn. “As it has turned out not to be the codicil, of course there’s no mystery about that. It may have been lying there weeks and weeks before the master died.”

Lionel signed to them to leave the room: there was nothing to call for their remaining in it. Mrs. Verner asked him what the glove meant.

“I assure you I do not know,” was his reply. And he took it up, and examined it well again. One of his riding gloves, scarcely worn, with a tear near the thumb: but there was nothing upon it, not so much as a trace, a spot, to afford any information. He rolled it up mechanically in the two papers, and placed them in his pocket, lost in thought.

“Do you know that I have heard from Australia?” asked Mrs. Verner.

The words aroused him thoroughly. “Have you? I did not know it.”

“I wonder Mary Tynn did not tell you,you. [sic] The letters came this morning. If you look about”—turning her eyes on the tables and places—“you will find them somewhere.”

Lionel knew that Mary Tynn had been too much absorbed in his business, to find room in her thoughts for letters from Australia. “Are these the letters?” he asked, taking up two from a side table.

“You’ll know them by the post-marks. Do sit down and read them to me, Lionel. My sight is not good for letters now, and I couldn’t read half that was in them. The ink’s as pale as water. If it was the ink Fred took out, the sea must have washed into it. Yes, yes, you must read both to me, and I shall not let you go away before dinner.”

He did not like, in his good-nature, to refuse her. And he sat there and read the long letters. Read Sibylla’s. Before the last one was fully accomplished, Lionel’s cheeks wore their scarlet hectic.

They had made a very quick and excellent passage. But Sibylla found Melbourne hateful. And Fred was ill; ill with fever. A fever was raging in a part of the crowded town, and he had caught it. She did not think it was a catching fever either, she added; people said it arose from the over-population. They could not as yet hear of John, or his money, or anything about him: but Fred would see into it when he got better. They were at a part of Melbourne called Canvas Town, and she, Sibylla, was sick of it, and Fred drank heaps of brandy. If it were all land between her and home, she should set off at once on foot, and toil her way back again. She wished she had never come! Everything she cared for, except Fred, seemed to be left behind in England.

Such was her letter. Fred’s was gloomy also, in a different way. He said nothing about any fever; he mentioned, casually as it appeared, that he was not well, but that was all. He had not learnt tidings of John, but had not had time yet to make inquiries. The worst piece of news he mentioned was the loss of his desk: which had contained the chief portion of his money. It had disappeared in a mysterious manner immediately after being taken off the ship—he concluded by the light-fingers of some crimp, or thief, shoals of whom crowded on the quay. He was in hopes yet to find it, and had not told Sibylla. That was all he had to say at present, but would write again by the next packet.

“It is not very cheering news on the whole,