Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/590

 582 from the same port as my husband—Melbourne. Quite a gentleman, my husband said he was, with grand relations in England. He had not been out there over long—hardly as long as my husband, I fancy—and my husband don’t think he has made much, any more than himself has.”

Lionel had regained all his outward impassiveness. He stood by the talkative woman, his arms folded. “What sort of a looking man was this Mr. Massingbird?” he asked. “I knew a gentleman once of that name, who went to Australia.”

The woman glanced up at him, measuring his height. “I should say he was as tall as you, sir, or close upon it, but he was broader made, and had got a stoop in the shoulders. He was dark; had dark eyes and hair, and a pale face. Not the clear paleness of your face, sir, but one of them sallow faces that get darker and yellower with travelling; never red.”

Every word was as fresh testimony to the suspicion that it was Frederick Massingbird. “Had he a black mark upon his cheek?” inquired Lionel.

“Likely he might have had, sir, but I couldn’t see his cheeks. He wore a sort of fur cap with the ears tied down. My husband saw a good bit of him on the voyage, though he was only a middle-deck passenger, and the gentleman was a cabin. His friends have had a surprise before this,” she continued, after a pause. He“He [sic] told my husband that they all supposed him dead; had thought he had been dead this two years and more, past; and he had never sent home to contradict it.”

Then it was Frederick Massingbird! Lionel Verner quitted the woman’s side, and leaned over the rail of the steamer, apparently watching the water. He could not, by any dint of reasoning or supposition, make out the mystery. How Frederick Massingbird could be alive; or, being alive, why he had not come home before to claim Sibylla—why he had not claimed her before she left Australia—why he did not claim her now he was come. A man without a wife might go roving where he would and as long as he would, letting his friends think him dead if it pleased him; but a man with a wife could not, in his sane senses, be supposed to act so. It was a strange thing, his meeting with this woman—a singular coincidence: one that he would hardly have believed, if related to him, as happening to another.

It was striking five when he again knocked at Dr. Cannonby’s. He wished to see Captain Cannonby still; it would be the crowning confirmation: but he had no doubt whatever that that gentleman’s report would be: “I saw Frederick Massingbird die—as I believed, and I quitted him immediately. I conclude that I must have been in error in supposing he was dead.”

Dr. Cannonby had returned, the servant said. He desired Lionel to walk in, and threw open the door of the room. Seven or eight people were sitting in it, waiting. The servant had evidently mistaken him for a patient, and placed him there to wait his turn with the rest. He took his card from his pocket, wrote on it a few words, and desired the servant to carry it to his master.

The man came back with an apology.

“I beg your pardon, sir. Will you step this way?”

The physician was bowing a lady out as he entered the room—a room lined with books, and containing casts of heads. He came forward to shake hands, a cordial-mannered man. He knew Lionel by reputation, but had never seen him.

“My visit was not to you, but to your brother,” explained Lionel. “I was in hopes to have found him here.”

“Then he and you have been playing at cross-purposes to-day,” remarked the doctor, with a smile. “Lawrence started this morning for Verner’s Pride.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Lionel. “Cross purposes indeed!” he uttered to himself.

“He heard some news in Paris which concerned you, I believe, and hastened home to pay you a visit.”

“Which concerned me!” repeated Lionel.

“Or rather Mrs. Massingbird—Mrs. Verner, I should say.”

A sickly smile crossed Lionel’s lips. Mrs. Massingbird! Was it already known?

“Why,” he asked, “did you call her Mrs. Massingbird?”

“I beg your pardon for my inadvertence, Mr. Verner,” was the reply of Dr. Cannonby. “Lawrence knew her as Mrs. Massingbird, and on his return from Australia he frequently spoke of her to me as Mrs. Massingbird, so that I got into the habit of thinking of her as such. It was not until he went to Paris that he heard she had exchanged the name for that of Verner.”

A thought crossed Lionel that this was the news which had taken Captain Cannonby down to him. He might know of the existence of Frederick Massingbird, and had gone to break the news to him, Lionel; to tell him that his wife was not his wife.

“You do not know precisely what his business was with me?” he inquired, quite wistfully.

“No, I don’t. I don’t know that it was much beyond the pleasure of seeing you and Mrs. Verner.”

Lionel rose.

“If I—”

“But you will stay and dine with me, Mr. Verner?”

“Thank you, I am going back at once. I wish to be home this evening if possible, and there’s nothing to hinder it now.”

“A letter or two has come for Lawrence since the morning,” observed the doctor as he shook hands. “Will you take charge of them for him?”

“With pleasure.”

Dr. Cannonby turned to a letter rack over the mantelpiece, selected three letters from it, and handed them to Lionel.

Back again all the weary way. His strong suspicions were no longer suspicions now, but confirmed certainties. The night grew dark: it was not darker than the cloud which had fallen upon his spirit.

Thought was busy with his brain. How could it be otherwise? Should he get home to find the news public property? Had Captain Cannonby