Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/30

22 “But surely you would go back to it if you could, for Sibylla’s sake?”

“Were I a rich man, able to rent Verner’s Pride from John Massingbird, I might ask him to let it me, if it would gratify Sibylla. But, to return there as its master, on sufferance, liable to be expelled again at any moment,—never! John Massingbird holds the right to Verner’s Pride, and he will exercise it, for me.”

“Then you will not accept my offer—to try and get you back again; and to make me a substantial honorarium if I do it?”

“I do not understand you, Dr. West. The question cannot arise.”

“If I make it arise; and carry it out?”

“I beg your pardon—No.”

It was an emphatic denial, and Dr. West may have felt himself foiled, as he had been foiled by Jan’s confession of empty pockets, earlier in the evening.

“Nevertheless,” observed he equably, as he shook hands with Lionel, before entering his own house, “I shall see John Massingbird to-morrow, and urge the hardship of the case upon him.”

It was probably with that view that Dr. West proceeded early on the following morning to Verner’s Pride, after his night of search, instead of sleep, astonishing John Massingbird not a little. That gentleman was enjoying himself in a comfortable sort of way in his bedroom. A substantial breakfast was laid out on a table by the bed-side, while he, not risen, smoked a pipe as he lay, by way of whetting his appetite. Dr. West entered without ceremony.

“My stars!” uttered John, when he could believe his eyes. “It’s never you, Uncle West! Did you drop from a balloon?”

Dr. West explained. That he had come over for a few hours’ sojourn. The state of his dear daughter Sibylla was giving him considerable uneasiness, and he had just put himself to the expense and inconvenience of a journey to see her, and judge of her state himself.

That there were a few trifling inaccuracies in this statement, inasmuch as that his daughter’s state had had nothing to do with the doctor’s journey, was of little consequence. It was all one to John Massingbird. He made a hasty toilette, and invited the doctor to take some breakfast.

Dr. West was nothing loth. He had breakfasted at home; but a breakfast, or any other meal, more or less, was nothing to Dr. West. He sat down to the table, and took a choice morsel of boned chicken on his plate.

“John, I have come up to talk to you about Verner’s Pride.”

“What about it?” asked John, speaking with his mouth full of devilled kidneys.

“The place is Lionel Verner’s.”

“How d’ye make out that?” asked John.

“That codicil revoked the will which left the estate to you. It gave it to him.”

“But the codicil vanished,” answered John.

“True. I was present at the consternation it excited. It disappeared in some unaccountably mysterious way; but there’s no doubt that Mr. Verner died, believing the estate would go in its direct line—to Lionel. In fact, I know he did. Therefore you ought to act as though the codicil were in existence, and resign the estate to Lionel Verner.”

The recommendation excessively tickled the fancy of John Massingbird. It set him laughing for five minutes.

“In short, you never ought to have attempted to enter upon it,” continued Dr. West. “Will you resign it to him?”

“Uncle West, you’ll kill me with laughter, if you joke like that,” was the reply.

“I have little doubt that the codicil is still in existence,” urged Dr. West. “I remember, my impression at the time was, that it was only mislaid, temporarily lost. If that codicil turned up, you would be obliged to quit.”

“So I should,” said John, with equanimity. Let“Let [sic] Lionel Verner produce it, and I’ll vacate the next hour. That will never turn up: don’t you fret yourself, Uncle West.”

“Will you not resign it to him?”

“No, that I won’t. Verner’s Pride is mine by law. I should be a simpleton to give it up.”

“Sibylla’s pining for it,” resumed the doctor, trying what a little pathetic pleading would do. “She will as surely die, unless she can come back to Verner’s Pride, as that you and I are at breakfast here.”

“If you ask my opinion, Uncle West, I should say that she’d die, any way. She looks like it. She’s fading away just as the other two did. But she won’t die a day sooner for being away from Verner’s Pride; and she would not have lived an hour longer had she remained in it. That’s my belief.”

“Verner’s Pride never was intended for you, John,” cried the Doctor. “Some freak caused Mr. Verner to will it away from Lionel; but he came to his senses before he died, and repaired the injury.”

“Then I am so much the more obliged to the freak,” was the good-humoured but uncompromising rejoinder of John Massingbird.

And, more than that, Dr. West could not make of him. John was evidently determined to stand by Verner’s Pride. The doctor then changed his tactics, and tried a little business on his own account—that of borrowing from John Massingbird as much money as that gentleman would lend.

It was not much. John, in his laughing way, protested he was always “cleaned out.” Nobody knew but himself—but he did not mind hinting it to Uncle West—the heaps of money he had been obliged to “shell out” before he could repose in tranquillity at Verner’s Pride. There were back entanglements and present expenses. Not to speak of sums spent in benevolence. “Benevolence?” the doctor exclaimed. “Yes, benevolence,” John replied with a semi-grave face: he had had to give away an unlimited amount of bank-notes to the neighbourhood, as a recompense for having terrified it into fits. There were times when he thought he should have to come upon Lionel Verner for the mesne profits, he observed. A procedure which he was unwilling to resort to for two