Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/619

. 22, 1862.] Frederick Massingbird. Lionel started from the balustrade.

“Tynn! You saw him! Now?”

“Not five minutes ago, sir. He came right on to these grounds through the gap in the hedge. Oh, master! what will be done?” and the man’s voice rose to a wail in its anguish. “He may be coming on now to put in his claim to Verner’s Pride; to—to—to—all that’s in it!”

But that Lionel was nerved to self-control, he might have answered with another wail of anguish. His mind filled up the gap of words, that the delicacy of Tynn would not speak. “He may be coming to claim Sibylla.”

that the above title will disgust most magazine readers, as our periodicals were glutted with spiritualism a year ago; but the fact is, that I did not dare tell my story at the time when everybody was full of the subject, lest I should be claimed as a friend, or cold-shouldered as an enemy by the disputants in a controversy into which my inexperience utterly disqualifies me from entering. But I may now hope that the following account will be taken just for what it is, a narrative which does not bear upon the serious consideration of the question in any way whatever.

On the 18th of December, 1860, I was standing without a coat in the middle of my chambers, engaged in a violent contest with my portmanteau, trampling shirts and tearing at straps to a Lurline accompaniment, when my strains were interrupted by a knock at the outer door.

“It ithn’t a dun, and I know you are in, because I heard you thinging,” drawled a voice that I knew. Rather disconcerted at having had an audience to my “Gentle Troubadour,” considerably indignant at the assumption that I was in debt, and not so indifferent as I wished to the fact of being caught by so great a swell in such a state of disorder, I admitted Harold Ormond, a man of five-and-twenty, tall, with a good figure, regular features, pink and white skin, nice hair, and dressed as men are who make dress quite a study.

“How are you, old fellah?” said he, giving me a picture of a kid glove to shake. “I am glad I have found you in, by Jove!” and sticking his eye-glass in his eye, he surveyed my unfinished work. “What the dickenth are you up to?”

“I am going down to Suffolk to-morrow, to spend Christmas with my uncle,” I explained.

“That is just what I have called about; but, I thay, why don’t you let your man pack?”

“Because I have not got one.”

“By Jove! and so you pack yourself: I wonder if I could pack. Well, don’t let me interrupt you; I’ll sit in this easy chair and smoke, and we can talk all the thame. I thay, didn’t I hear you thinging ‘Fill this cup with parkling wine,’ as I came up the staircase?”

This being a creditable attempt at jocularity for one of his somewhat solemn set, I rewarded him with sherry, and commenced filling a carpet bag with boots. Ormond settled himself comfortably down, and then said, quietly:

“I am going to Morion Parvus with you, to-morrow, to be introduced as your friend; did not Mr. Morion tell you?”

“No,” I replied; “at least he did not mention your name; he said something about the pleasure they would all have in seeing any friend of mine, who had no better place to spend Christmas at.”

“That is it, he meant me; only the old boy was cautious, seeing that there is no pothitive engagement at prethent. Fact is, I ought to have told you all about it before, but you live so doothid far Eatht. I am going to marry your cousin Alice.”

“Going to marry Alice! You?” cried I.

“Yaas,” drawled the dandy, flicking off the ash of his cigar. “It is rayther a nuisance to have to get marwid so young; in justice to oneself one ought not to do it before forty; but you see I shall come to the title some day, and so my people baw me, and as I hate to be bawed, I am going to sacwifice myself. I thay, I don’t know anything about packing, but do you generally put lucifer-boxes loose among shirts? because, if it’s the thing to do, I don’t think Williams does; and I’ll tell him.”

“And what led you to select our family for the honour of an alliance with the Ormonds?” I asked in a tone intended to be satirical, but I missed fire, for he took my speech as a compliment, and made me a graceful inclination of the head as he replied:

“Well, I met your couthin Alice a good dea latht theathon, and thought if I must marwy, I had sooner it was her than any other girl. And I hinted something of the thort to old Morion at the club, and he of course was awfully glad, and asked me to come and thtay, but said that Alice was rather a self-willed sort of girl, and would set her face against the match if I was asked down on purpose to pwopose, so he said I had better come down in a chance sort of way as your friend: so Williams shall call and tell you the train I am going by.”

“I am going by the half-past nine train,” said I.

“What a baw! I don’t get up till eleven.”

“If you miss the train I mentioned, you will not get to Morion Parvus by dinner-time.”

“Bother! Well, then, I thall thee you at the stathon.”

And he went away, I am happy to reflect, without receiving any impulse from my foot, though I never felt more inclined to kick a man down stairs in my life. Alice, that beautiful, soft, plump, rosy, witty, most winning and exquisite Alice, to be disposed of in this cavalier fashion! Why, at the rash and unreflecting age of twelve I had been in love with her myself, only my passion had burnt out for want of a drop of Hope-oil, and I had always wondered at the hardihood of even Frank Jackson, poet, artist, musician, jockey, sparrer, linguist and Engineer officer as he was, in daring to make love, and in appearance not unsuccessfully, to that paragon of a girl. It seemed to me as if the man who should win such a Peri must be unlucky in everything else he undertook, seeing that all the happiness