Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/616

 608 come over to mine. Return here in the morning with words of love and comfort for her, and none will welcome you more sincerely than I.”

“Answer me one thing, Mr. Verner. Do you believe in your heart that Frederick Massingbird is alive and has returned?”

“Unfortunately I have no resource but to believe it,” he replied.

“Then, to your way of thinking, I can never come,” returned Deborah in some agitation. “It is just sin, Mr. Verner, in the sight of Heaven.”

“I think not,” he quietly answered. “I am content to let Heaven judge me, and the motives that actuate me: a judgment more merciful than man’s.”

Deborah West, in her conscientious, but severe rectitude, turned to the hall door and departed, her hands uplifted still. Lionel ordered Tynn to attend Miss West home. He then procured some water for his wife and carried it in, as he had previously carried in the wine.

A fruitless service. Sibylla rejected it. She wanted neither water nor anything else, were all the thanks Lionel received, querulously spoken. He laid the glass upon the table: and, sitting down by her side in all patience, he set himself to the work of soothing her, gently and lovingly as though she had been what she was showing herself—a wayward child.

and Tynn proceeded on their way. The side path was dirty, and she chose the middle of the road, Tynn walking a step behind her. Deborah was of an affable nature, Tynn a long attached and valued servant, and she chatted with him familiarly. Deborah, in her simple good heart, could not have been brought to understand why she should not chat with him. Because he was a servant and she a lady, she thought there was only the more reason why she should, that the man might not be unpleasantly reminded of the social distinction between them.

She pressed down, so far as she could, the heavy affliction that was weighing upon her mind. She spoke of the weather, the harvest, of Mrs. Bitterworth’s recent dangerous attack, of other trifling topics patent at the moment to Deerham. Tynn chatted in his turn, never losing his respect of words and manner: a servant worth anything never does. Thus they progressed towards the village, utterly unconscious that a pair of eager eyes were following and an evil tongue was casting anathemas towards them.

The owner of the eyes and tongue was wanting to hold a few words of private colloquy with Tynn. Could Tynn have seen right round the corner of the pillar of the outer gate when he went out, he would have detected the man waiting there in ambush. It was Giles Roy. Roy was aware that Tynn sometimes attended departing visitors to the outer gate. Roy had come up, hoping that he might so attend them on this night. Tynn did appear, with Miss West, and Roy began to hug himself that fortune had so far favoured him: but when he saw that Tynn departed with the lady, instead of only standing politely to watch her off, Roy growled out vengeance against the unconscious offenders.

“He’s a-going to see her home belike,” snarled Roy, in soliloquy, following them with angry eyes and slow footsteps. “I must wait till he comes back—and be shot to both of ’em!”

Tynn left Miss West at her own door, declining the invitation to go in and take a bit of supper with the maids, or a glass of beer. He was trudging back again, his arms behind his back and wishing himself at home, for Tynn, fat and of short breath, did not like much walking, when, in a lonely part of the road, he came upon a man sitting astride upon a gate.

“Halloa! is that you, Mr. Tynn? Who’d ha’ thought of seeing you out to-night?”

For it was Mr. Roy’s wish, from private motives of his own, that Tynn should not know he had been looked for, but should believe the encounter to be accidental. Tynn turned off the road, and leaned his elbow upon the gate, rather glad of the opportunity to stand a minute and get his breath. It was somewhat up-hill to Verner’s Pride, the whole of the way from Deerham.

“Are you sitting here for pleasure?” asked he of Roy.

“I’m sitting here for grief,” returned Roy; and Tynn was not sharp enough to detect the hollow falseness of his tone. “I had to go up the road to-night on a matter of business, and, walking back by Verner’s Pride, it so overcome me that I was glad to bring myself to a anchor.”

“How should walking by Verner’s Pride overcome you?” demanded Tynn.

“Well,” said Roy, “it was the thoughts of poor Mr. and Mrs. Verner did it. He didn’t behave to me over liberal in turning me from the place I’d held so long under his uncle, but I’ve overgot that smart; it’s past and gone. My heart bleeds for him now, and that’s the truth.”

For Roy’s heart to “bleed” for any fellow-creature was a marvel that even Tynn, unsuspicious as he was, could not take in. Mrs. Tynn repeatedly assured him that he had been born into the world with one sole quality—credulity. Certainly Tynn was unusually inclined to put faith in fair outsides. Not that Roy could boast much of the latter advantage.

“What’s the matter with Mr. Verner?” he asked of Roy.

Roy groaned dismally.

“It’s a thing that is come to my knowledge,” said he—“a awful misfortin that is a-going to drop upon him. I’d not say a word to another soul but you, Mr. Tynn; but you be his friend if anybody be, and I feel that I must either speak or bust.”

Tynn peered at Roy’s face. As much as he could see of it; for the night was not a clear one.

“It seems quite a providence that I happened to meet you,” went on Roy, as if any meeting with the butler had been as far from his thoughts as an encounter with somebody at the North Pole. “Things does turn out lucky sometimes.”

“I must be getting home,” interposed Tynn. “If you have anything to say to me, Roy, you had better say it. I may be wanted.”