Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/54

46 told me right, but it seems—as she confesses now—that she only said it was him to satisfy me, and because she thought he was dead, over in Australia, and it wouldn’t matter if she did say it. I worried her life out over it, she says: and it’s like I did. She says now, if she was put upon her Bible oath, she couldn’t say which of the gentlemen it was, more nor the other: but she did see one of ’em.”

“But this is not telling me how you know it to have been Mr. Frederick, Robin.”

“I learnt it from Mr. John,” was the reply. “When he come back I saw him; I knew it was him; and I got a gun and watched for him. I meant to take my revenge, sir. Roy, he found me out; and in a night or two, he brought me face to face with Mr. John, and Mr. John, he told me the truth. But he’d only tell it me upon my giving him my promise not to expose his brother. So I’m balked even of that revenge. I had always counted on the exposing of the man,” added Robin, in a dreamy tone, as if he were looking back into the past: “when I thought it was Mr. John, I only waited for Luke Roy to come home, that I might expose him. I thought Luke, being so much with him in Australia, might have heard a slip word drop as would confirm it. Somehow, though I thought Dolly Stubbs spoke truth, I didn’t feel so sure of her, as to noise it abroad.”

“You say it was Mr. John Massingbird who told you it was his brother?”

“He told me, sir. He told me at Roy’s, when he was a hiding there. When the folks here was going mad about the ghost, I knowed who the ghost was, and had my laugh at ’em. It seemed that I could laugh then,” added Robin, looking at Mr. Verner, as if he deemed an apology for the words necessary. “My mind was set at rest.”

Did a thought cross Lionel Verner that John Massingbird, finding his own life in peril from Robin’s violence, had thrown the blame upon his brother falsely? It might have done so, but for his own deeply-rooted suspicions. That John would not be scrupulously particular to truth, he believed, where his own turn was to be served. Lionel at any rate felt that he should like, for his own satisfaction, to have the matter set at rest, and he took his way to Verner’s Pride.

John Massingbird, his costume not improved in elegance, or his clay pipe in length, was lounging at his ease on one of the amber damask satin couches of the drawing-room, his feet on the back of a proximate chair, and his slippers fallen off on the carpet. A copious tumbler of rum-and-water—his favourite beverage since his return—was on a table, handy; and there he lay, enjoying his ease.

“Halloa, old fellow! How are you?” was his greeting to Lionel, given without changing his position in the least.

“Massingbird, I want to speak to you,” rejoined Lionel. “I have been to see old Matthew Frost, and he has said something which surprises me—”

“The old man’s about to make a start of it, I hear,” was the interruption of Massingbird.

“He cannot last long. He has been speaking—naturally—of that unhappy business of his daughter’s. He lays it to the door of Frederick; and Robin tells me that he had the information from you.”

“I was obliged to give it him, in self-defence,” said John Massingbird. “The fellow had got it into his head, in some unaccountable manner, that I was the black sheep, and was prowling about with a gun, ready capped and loaded, to put a bullet into me. I don’t set so much store by my life as some fidgets do, but it’s not pleasant to be shot off in that summary fashion. So I sent for Mr. Robin and satisfied him that he was making the same blunder that Deerham just then was doing—mistaking one brother for the other.”

“Was it Frederick?”

“It was.”

“Did you know it at the time?”

“No. Never suspected him at all.”

“Then how did you learn it afterwards?”

John Massingbird took his legs from the chair. He rose, and brought himself to an anchor on a seat facing Lionel, puffing still at his incessant pipe.

“I don’t mind trusting you, old chap, being one of us, and I couldn’t help trusting Robin Frost. Roy, he knew it before: at least, his wife did; which amounts to something of the same; and she spoke of it to me. I have ordered them to keep a close tongue, under pain of unheard-of penalties. Which I should never inflict: but it’s as well to let poor Fred’s memory rest in quiet and good odour. I believe honestly it’s the only scrape of the sort he ever got into. He was cold and cautious.”

“But how did you learn it?” reiterated Lionel.

“I’ll tell you. I learnt it from Luke Roy.”

“From Luke Roy!” repeated Lionel, more at sea than before.

“Do you remember that I had sent Luke on to London a few days before this happened? He was to get things forward for our voyage. He was fou—as the French say—after Rachel; and what did he do but come back again in secret, to get a last look at her, perhaps a word. It happened to be this very night, and Luke was a partial witness to the scene at the Willow Pond. He saw and heard her meeting with Frederick; heard quite enough to know that there was no chance for him; and he was stealing away, leaving Fred and Rachel at the termination of their quarrel, when he met his mother. She knew him, it seems, and to that encounter we are indebted for her display when before Mr. Verner, and her lame account of the ‘ghost.’ You must recollect it. She got up the ghost tale to excuse her own terror; to throw the scent off Luke. The woman says her life, since, has been that of a martyr, ever fearing that suspicion might fall upon her son. She recognised him beyond doubt; and nearly died with the consternation. He glided off, never speaking to her, but the fear and consternation remained. She recognised, too, she says, the voice of Frederick as the one that was quarrelling: but she did not dare confess it. For one thing, she knew not how far Luke might be implicated.”

Lionel leaned his brow on his hand, deep in