Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/53

. 3, 1863.] waited for me, and been welcome to me, after a hard day’s toil, so is my rest now at hand after my life’s toil. It is as surely waiting for me as ever was my bed; and I am longing to get to it.”

Lionel looked down at the calm, serene face, fair and smooth yet. The skin was drawn tight over it, especially over the well-formed nose, and the white locks fell on the pillow behind. It may be wrong to say there was a holy expression pervading the face; but it certainly gave that impression to Lionel Verner.

“I wish all the world—when their time comes—could die as you are dying, Matthew!” he exclaimed, in the impulse of his heart.

“Sir, all might. If they’d only live for it. It’s many a year ago now, Mr. Lionel, that I learnt to make a friend of God: He has stood me in good need. And those that do learn to make a friend of Him, sir, don’t fear to go to Him.”

Lionel drew forward a chair and sat down in it. The old man continued.

“Things seem to have been smoothed for me in a wonderful manner, sir. My great trouble, of late years, has been Robin. I feared how it might be with him when I went away and left him here alone: for you know the queer way he has been in, sir, since that great misfortune; and I have been a bit of a check on him, keeping him, as may be said, within bounds. Well, that trouble is done away with for me, sir; Robin he has got his mind at rest, and he won’t break out again. In a short while I am in hopes he’ll be quite what he used to be.”

“Matthew, it was my firm intention to continue your annuity to Robin,” spoke Lionel. “I am sorry the power to do so has been taken from me. You know that it will not rest with me now, but with Mr. Massingbird. I fear he is not likely to continue it.”

“Don’t regret it, sir. Robin, I say, is growing to be an industrious man again, and he can get a living well. If he had stopped a half-dazed do-nothing, he might have wanted that, or some other help; but it isn’t so. His trouble’s at rest, and his old energies are coming back to him. It seems to have left my mind at leisure, sir; and I can go away, praying for the souls of my poor daughter and of Frederick Massingbird.”

The name—his—aroused the attention of Lionel: more perhaps than he would have cared to confess. But his voice and manner retained their quiet calmness.

“What did you say, Matthew?”

“It was him, sir; Mr. Frederick Massingbird. It was nobody else.”

Down deep in Lionel Verner’s heart there had lain a conviction, almost ever since that fatal night, that the man had been no other than the one now spoken of, the younger Massingbird. Why the impression should have come to him he could not have told at the time: something perhaps in Frederick’s manner had given rise to it. On the night before John Massingbird’s departure for Australia, after the long interview he had held with Mr. Verner in the study, which was broken in upon by Lionel on the part of Robin Frost, the three young men—the Massingbirds and Lionel—had subsequently remained together, discussing the tragedy. In that interview, it was that a sudden doubt of Frederick Massingbird entered the mind of Lionel. It was impossible for him to tell why: he only knew that the impression, nay, it were more correct to say the conviction, seized hold upon him, never to be eradicated. He surmised not how far his guilt might have extended; but that he was the guilty one, he fully believed. It was not his business to proclaim this; had it been a certainty, instead of a fancy, Lionel would not have made it his business: but when Frederick Massingbird was on the point of marrying Sibylla, then Lionel partially broke through his reserve, and asked him whether he had nothing on his conscience that ought to prevent his making her his wife. Frederick answered freely and frankly to all appearance, and for the moment Lionel’s doubts were dissipated: only, however, to return afterwards with increased force. Consequently he was not surprised to hear this said, though surprised at Matthew Frost’s knowing it.

“How did you hear it, Matthew?” he asked.

“Robin got at it, sir. Poor Robin, he was altogether on the wrong scent for a long while, thinking it was Mr. John; but it’s set right now, and Robin, he’s at ease. May Heaven have mercy upon Frederick Massingbird!”

Successful rival though he had proved to him, guilty man that he had been, Lionel heartily echoed the prayer. He asked no more questions of the old man upon the subject, but afterwards, when he was going out, he met Robin and stopped him.

“Robin, what is this that your father has been telling me about Frederick Massingbird?”

“Only to think of it!” was Robin’s response, growing somewhat excited. “To think how our ways get balked! I had swore to be revenged—as you know, sir—and now the power of revenge is took from me! He’s gone where my revenge can’t reach him. It’s of no good—I see it—for us to plan. Our plans ’ll never be carried out, if they don’t please God.”

“And it was Frederick Massingbird?”

“It was Frederick Massingbird,” assented Robin, his breath coming thick and fast with agitation. “We had got but one little ewe lamb, and he must leave the world that was open to him, and pick her up, and destroy her! I ain’t calm yet to talk of it, sir.”

“But how did you ascertain this? Your suspicions, you know, were directed to Mr. John Massingbird. Wrongly, as I believed; as I told you.”

“Yes, they were wrong,” said Robin. “I was put upon the wrong scent: but not wilfully. You might remember a dairy wench that lived at Verner’s Pride in them days, sir; Dolly, her name was; she that went and got married after to Joe Stubbs, Mr. Bitterworth’s waggoner. It was she told me, sir. I used to be up there a good bit with Stubbs, and one day when I was sick and ill there, the wife told me she had seen one of the gentlemen come from the Willow Pool that past night. I pressed her to tell me which of them, and at first she said she couldn’t, and then she said it was Mr. John. I never thought but she