Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Verner's Pride - Part 32
VERNER’S PRIDE.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF “EAST LYNNE.”
CHAPTER LXIII. LIGHT THROWN ON OBSCURITY.
And so, the trouble and the uncertainty, the ups and the downs, the turnings out and the changes were at an end, and Lionel Verner was at rest. At rest, so far as rest can be, in this world. He was reinstalled at Verner’s Pride, its undisputed master; never again to be sent forth from it during life.
He had not done as John Massingbird did—gone right in, the first day, and taken up his place, sans cérémonie, without word and without apology, at the table’s head, leaving John to take his at the side or the foot, or where he could. Quite the contrary. Lionel’s refinement of mind, his almost sensitive consideration for the feelings of others, clung to him now, as it always had done, as it always would do, and he was chary of disturbing John Massingbird too early in his sway of the internal economy of Verner’s Pride. It had to be done, however; and John Massingbird remained on with him, his guest.
All that had passed: and the spring of the year was growing late. The codicil had been proved; the neighbourhood had tendered their congratulations to the new master, come into his own at last; the improvements, in which Lionel’s conscience held so deep a score, were begun and in good progress; and John Massingbird’s return to Australia was decided upon, and the day of his departure fixed. People surmised that Lionel would be glad to get rid of him, if only for the sake of his drawing-rooms. John Massingbird still lounged at full length on the amber satin couches, in dropping-off slippers or in dirty boots, as the case might be, still filled them with clouds of tobacco-smoke, so that you could not see across them. Mrs. Tynn declared, to as many people as she dared, that she prayed every night on her bended knees for Mr. Massingbird’s departure, before the furniture should be quite ruined, or they burnt in their beds.
Mr. Massingbird was not going alone. Luke Roy was returning with him. Luke’s intention always had been to return to Australia: he had but come home for a short visit to the old place and to see his mother. Luke had been doing well at the gold-fields. He did not dig, but he sold liquor to those who did dig; at which he was making money rapidly. He had a “chum,” he said, who managed the store while he was away. So glowing was his account of his prospects, that old Roy had decided upon going also, and trying his fortune there. Mrs. Roy looked aghast at the projected plan: she was too old for it, she urged. But she could not turn her husband. He had never studied her wishes too much, and he was not likely to begin to do so now. So Mrs. Roy, with incessantly dropping tears, and continued prognostications that the sea sickness would kill her, was forced to make her preparations for the voyage. Perhaps one motive, more than all else, had influenced Roy’s decision—the getting out of Deerham. Since his hopes of having something to do with the Verner’s Pride estate—as he had in Stephen Verner’s time—had been at an end, Roy had gone about in a perpetual state of inward mortification. This emigration would put an end to it: and what with the anticipation of making a fortune at the diggings, and what with his satisfaction at saying adieu to Deerham, and what with the thwarting of his wife, Roy was in a fever of complacency.
The time went on to the evening previous to the departure. Lionel and John Massingbird had dined alone, and now sat together at the open window, in the soft May twilight. A small table was at John’s elbow, a bottle of rum, a jar of tobacco, water and a glass being on it, ready to his hand. He had done his best to infect Lionel with a taste for rum-and-water—as a convenient beverage to be taken at any hour from seven o’clock in the morning onwards—but Lionel had been proof against it. John had the rum-drinking to himself, as he had the smoking. Lionel had behaved to him liberally. It was not in Lionel Verner’s nature to behave otherwise, no matter to whom. From the moment the codicil was found, John Massingbird had no further right to a single sixpence of the revenues of the estate. He was in the position of one who has nothing. It was Lionel who had found means for all: for his expenses; his voyage; for a purse when he should get to Australia. John Massingbird was thinking of this as he sat now, smoking and taking draughts of the rum-and-water.
“If ever I turn to work with a will and become a hundred-thousand-pound man, old fellow,” he suddenly broke out, “I’ll pay you back. This, and also what I got rid of while the estate was in my hands.”
Lionel, who had been looking from the window in a reverie, turned round and laughed. To imagine John Massingbird becoming a hundred-thousand-pound man through his own industry, was a marvellously comprehensive stretch of fancy.
“I have to make a clean breast of it to-night,” resumed John Massingbird, after puffing away for some minutes in silence. “Do you remember my saying to you, the day we heard news of the codicil’s being found, that I was in your debt?”
“I remember your saying it,” replied Lionel. “I did not understand what you meant. You were not in my debt.”
“Yes I was. I had a score to pay off as big as the moon. It’s as big still: for it’s one that never can be paid off; never will be.”
Lionel looked at him in surprise; his manner was so unusually serious.
“Fifty times, since I came back from Australia, have I been on the point of clearing myself of the secret. But, you see, there was Verner’s Pride in the way. You would naturally have said upon hearing it, ‘Give the place up to me; you can have no moral right to it.’ And I was not prepared to give it up: it seemed too comfortable a nest, just at first, after the knocking about over yonder. Don’t you perceive?”
“I don’t perceive, and I don’t understand,” replied Lionel. “You are speaking in an unknown language.”
“I’ll speak in a known one, then. It was through me that old Ste Verner left Verner’s Pride away from you.”
“What!” uttered Lionel.
“True,” nodded John with composure. “I told him a—a bit of scandal of you. And the strait-laced old simpleton took and altered his will on the strength of it. I did not know of that until afterwards.”
“And the scandal?” asked Lionel, quietly. “What may it have been?”
“False scandal,” carelessly answered John Massingbird. “But I thought it was true when I spoke it. I told your uncle that it was you who had played false with Rachel Frost.”
“Massingbird!”
“Don’t fancy I went to him open-mouthed, and said, ‘Lionel Verner’s the man.’ A fellow who could do such a sneaking trick would be only fit for hanging. The avowal to him was surprised from me in an unguarded moment: it slipped out in self-defence. I’d better tell you the tale.”
“I think you had,” said Lionel.
“You remember the bother there was, the commotion, the night Rachel was drowned. I came home and found Mr. Verner sitting at the inquiry. It never struck me, then, to suspect that it could be any one of us three who had been in the quarrel with Rachel. I knew that I had had no finger in the pie; I had no cause to think that you had; and, as to Fred, I’d as soon have suspected staid old Verner himself: besides, I believed Fred to have eyes only for Sibylla West. Not but what the affair appeared to me unaccountably strange; for, beyond Verner’s Pride, I did not think Rachel possessed an acquaintance.”
He stopped to take a few whiffs at his pipe, and then resumed, Lionel listening in silence.
“On the following morning by daylight I went down to the pond, the scene of the previous night. A few stragglers were already there. As we were looking about and talking, I saw on the very brink of the pond, partially hidden in the grass,—in fact trodden into it, as it seemed to me,—a glove. I picked it up, and was on the point of calling out that I had found a glove, when it struck me that the glove was yours. The others had seen me stoop, and one of them asked if I had found anything. I said ‘No.’ I had crushed the glove in my hand, and presently I transferred it to my pocket.”
“Your motive being good nature to me?” interrupted Lionel.
“To be sure it was. To have shown that, as Lionel Verner’s glove, would have fixed the affair on your shoulders at once. Why should I tell? I had been in scrapes myself. And I kept it, saying nothing to anybody. I examined the glove privately, saw it was really yours, and of course I drew my own conclusions—that it was you who had been in the quarrel. Though what cause of dispute you could have with Rachel, I was at a loss to divine. Next came the inquest, and the medical men’s revelation at it: and that cleared up the mystery. ‘Ho, ho,’ I said to myself, ‘so Master Lionel can do a bit of courting on his own account, steady as he seems.’ I—”
“Did you assume I threw her into the pond?” again interposed Lionel.
“Not a bit of it. What next, Lionel? The ignoring of some of the Commandments comes natural enough to the conscience; but the sixth—one does not ignore that. I believed that you and Rachel might have come to mutual loggerheads, and that she, in a passion, flung herself in. I held the glove still in my pocket: it seemed to be the safest place for it; and I intended, before I left, to hand it over to you, and to give you my word I’d keep counsel. On the night of the inquest, you were closeted in the study with Mr. Verner. I chafed at it, for I wished to be closeted with him myself. Unless I could get off from Verner’s Pride the next day, there would be no chance of my sailing in the projected ship—where our passages had been already secured by Luke Roy. By and by you came into the dining-room—do you remember it?—and told me Mr. Verner wanted me in the study. It was just what I wanted: and I went in. I shan’t forget my surprise to the last hour of my life. His greeting was an accusation of me: of me: that it was I who had played false with Rachel. He had proof he said. One of the house girls had seen one of us three young men coming from the scene that night—and he, Stephen Verner, knew it could only be me. Fred was too cautious, he said; Lionel he could depend upon; and he bitterly declared that he would not give me a penny piece of the promised money, to take me on my way. A pretty state of things, was it not, Lionel, to have one’s projects put an end to in that manner! In my dismay and anger, I blurted out the truth: that one of us might have been seen coming from the scene, but it was not myself; it was Lionel: and I took the glove out of my pocket, and showed it to him.”
John Massingbird paused to take a draught of the rum-and-water, and then resumed.
“I never saw any man so agitated as Mr. Verner. Upon my word, had I foreseen the effect the news would have had upon him, I hardly think I should have told it. His face turned ghastly; he lay back in his chair, uttering groans of despair; in short, it had completely prostrated him. I never knew how deeply he must have been attached to you, Lionel, until that night.”
“He believed the story?” said Lionel.
“Of course he believed it,” assented John Massingbird. “I told it him as a certainty, as a thing about which there was no admission for the slightest doubt: I assumed it, myself, to be a certainty. When he was a little recovered, he took possession of the glove, and bound me to secrecy. You would never have forgotten it, Lionel, had you seen his shaking hands, his imploring eyes, heard his voice of despair; all lifted to beseech secrecy for you—for the sake of his dead brother—for the name of Verner—for his own sake. I heartily promised it: and he handed me over a more liberal sum than even I had expected, enjoined me to depart with the morrow’s dawn, and bade me God speed. I believe he was glad that I was going, lest I might drop some chance word during the present excitement of Deerham, and by those means direct suspicion to you. He need not have feared. I was already abusing myself mentally for having told him, although it had gained me my ends: ‘Live and let live’ had been my motto hitherto. The interview was nearly over when you came to interrupt it, asking if Mr. Verner would see Robin Frost. Mr. Verner answered that he might come in. He came; you and Fred with him. Do you recollect old Verner’s excitement?—his vehement words in answer to Robin’s request that a reward should be posted up? ‘He’ll never be found, Robin,—the villain will never be found, so long as you and I and the world shall last.’ I recollect them, you see, word for word, to this hour: but none, save myself, knew what caused Mr. Verner’s excitement, or that the word ‘villain’ was applied to you. Upon my word and honour, old boy, I felt as if I had the deeper right to it; and I felt angry with old Verner for looking at the affair in so strong a light. But there was no help for it. I went away the next morning—”
“Stay,” interrupted Lionel. “A single word to me would have set the misapprehension straight. Why did you not speak it?”
“I wish I had, now. But—it wasn’t done. There! The knowledge that turns up with the future we can’t call to aid in the present. If I had had a doubt that it was you I should have spoken. We were some days out at sea on our voyage to Australia when I and Luke got comparing notes; and I found, to my everlasting astonishment, that it was not you, after all, who had been with Rachel, but Fred.”
“You should have written home, to do me justice with Mr. Verner. You ought not to have delayed one instant, when the knowledge came to you.”
“And how was I to send the letter? Chuck it into the sea in the ship’s wake, and give it orders to swim back to port?”
“You might have posted it at the first place you touched at.”
“Look here, Lionel. I never regarded it in that grave light. How was I to suppose that old Verner would disinherit you for that trumpery escapade? I never knew why he had disinherited you, until I came home and heard from yourself the story of the enclosed glove, which he left you as a legacy. It’s since then that I have been wanting to make a clean breast of it. I say, only fancy Fred’s deepness! We should never have thought it of him. The quarrel between him and Rachel that night appeared to arise from the fact of her having seen him with Sibylla; having overheard that there was more between them than was pleasant to her. At least, so far as Luke could gather it. Lionel, what should have brought your glove lying by the pond?”
“I am unable to say. I had not been there, to drop it. The most feasible solution that I can come to, is, that Rachel may have had it about her for the purpose of mending, and let it drop herself, when she fell in, or jumped in.”
“Ay. That’s the most likely. There was a hole in it, I remember; and it was Rachel who attended to such things in the household. It must have been so.”
Lionel fell into a reverie. How—but for this mistake of John Massingbird’s, this revelation to his uncle—the whole course of his life’s events might have been changed! Verner’s Pride left to him, never left at all to the Massingbirds, it was scarcely likely that Sibylla, in returning home, would have driven to Verner’s Pride. Had she not driven to it that night, he might never have been so surprised by his old feelings as to have proposed to her. He might have married Lucy Tempest; have lived, sheltered with her in Verner’s Pride from the storms of life; he might—”
“Will you forgive me, old chap?’
It was John Massingbird who spoke, interrupting his day dreams. Lionel shook them off, and took the offered hand, stretched out.
“Yes,” he heartily said. “You did not do me the injury intentionally. It was the result of a mistake, led to by circumstances.”
“No, that I did not, by Jove!” answered John Massingbird. “I don’t think I ever did a fellow an intentional injury in my life. You would have been the last I should single out for it. I have had many ups and downs, Lionel, but somehow I have hitherto always managed to alight on my legs; and I believe it’s because I let other folks get along. Tit for tat, you see. A fellow who is for ever putting his hindering spoke in the wheel of others, is safe to get hindering spokes put into his. I am not a pattern model,” comically added John Massingbird; “but I have never done wilful injury to others, and my worst enemy (if I possess one) can’t charge it upon me.”
True enough. With all Mr. John Massingbird’s failings, his heart was not a bad one. In the old days his escapades had been numerous; his brother Frederick’s, none (so far as the world knew); but the one was liked a thousand times better than the other.
“We part friends, old fellow!” he said to Lionel the following morning, when all was ready, and the final moment of departure had come.
“To be sure we do,” answered Lionel. “Should England ever see you again, you will not forget Verner’s Pride.”
“I don’t think it ever will see me again. Thanks, old chap, all the same. Should I be done up some unlucky day for the want of a twenty-pound note, you won’t refuse to let me have it, for old times’ sake?”
“Very well,” laughed Lionel. And so they parted. And Verner’s Pride was quit of Mr. John Massingbird, and Deerham of its long-looked upon bête noire, old Grip Roy. Luke had gone forward to make arrangements for the sailing, as he had done once before; and Mrs. Roy took her seat with her husband in a third-class carriage, crying enough tears to float the train.
CHAPTER LXIV. “MEDICAL ATTENDANCE GRATIS, PHYSIC INCLUDED.”
As a matter of course, the discovery of the codicil, and the grave charge it served to establish against Dr. West, could not be hid under a bushel. Deerham was remarkably free in its comments, and was pleased to rake up various unpleasant reports, which from time to time in the former days had arisen, touching that gentleman. Deerham might say what it liked, and nobody be much the worse; but a more serious question arose with Jan. Easy as Jan was, little given to think ill, even he could not look over this. Jan felt that if he would maintain his respectability as a medical man and a gentleman, if he would retain his higher class of patients, he must give up his association with Dr. West.
The finding of the codicil had been communicated to Dr. West by Matiss, the lawyer, who officially demanded at the same time an explanation of its having been placed where it was found. The doctor replied to the communication, but conveniently ignored the question. He was “charmed” to hear that the long-missing deed was found, which restored Verner’s Pride to the rightful owner, Lionel Verner: but he appeared not to have read, or else not to have understood the very broad hint implicating himself; for, not a word was returned to that part, in answer. The silence was not less a conclusive proof than the admission of guilt would have been; and it was so regarded by those concerned.
Jan was the next to write. A characteristic letter. He said not a word of reproach to the doctor; he appeared, indeed, to ignore the facts as completely as the doctor himself had done in his answer to Matiss; he simply said that he would prefer to “get along” now alone. The practice had much increased, and there was room for them both. He would remove to another residence; a lodging would do, he said; and run his chance of patients coming to him. It was not his intention to take one from Dr. West by solicitation. The doctor could either come back and resume practice in person, or take a partner in place of him, Jan.
To this a bland answer was received. Dr. West was agreeable to the dissolution of partnership; but he had no intention of resuming practice in Deerham. He and his noble charge (who was decidedly benefiting by his care, skill, and companionship, he elaborately wrote), were upon the best of terms: his engagement with him was likely to be a long one (for the poor youth would require a personal guide up to his fortieth year, nay, to his eightieth, if he lived so long); and therefore (not to be fettered) he, Dr. West, was anxious to sever his ties with Deerham. If Mr. Jan would undertake to pay him a trifling sum, say five hundred pounds, or so, he could have the entire business; and the purchase-money, if more convenient, might be paid by instalments. Mr. Jan of course would become sole proprietor of the house, (the rent of which had hitherto been paid out of the joint concern,) but perhaps he would not object to allow those “two poor old things, Deborah and Amilly, a corner in it.” He should of course undertake to provide for them, remitting them a liberal annual sum.
In writing this, fair, nay liberal, as the offered terms appeared to the sight of single-hearted Jan, Dr. West had probably had as great an eye as ever to his own interest. It was the result of mature consideration. He had a shrewd suspicion that, the house divided, his, Dr. West’s, would stand but a poor chance against Jan Verner’s. That Jan would be entirely true and honourable in not soliciting the old patients to come to him, he knew; but he equally knew that the patients would flock to Jan unsolicited. Dr. West had not lived in ignorance of what was going on in Deerham; he had one or two private correspondents there; besides the open ones, his daughters and Jan; and he had learnt how popular Jan had grown with all classes. Yes, it was decidedly politic on Dr. West’s part to offer Jan terms of purchase. And Jan closed with them.
“I couldn’t have done it six months ago, you know, Lionel,” he said to his brother. “But now that you have come in again to Verner’s Pride, you won’t care to have my earnings any longer.”
“What I shall care for now, Jan, will be to repay you; so far as I can. The money can be repaid: the kindness never.”
“Law!” cried Jan, “that’s nothing. Wouldn’t you have done as much for me? To go back to old West: I shall be able to complete the purchase in little more than a year, taking it out of the profits. The expenses will be something considerable. There’ll be the house, and the horses, for I must have two, and I shall take a qualified assistant as soon as Cheese leaves, which will be in autumn; but there’ll be a margin of six or seven hundred a-year profit left me then. And the business is increasing. Yes, I shall be able to pay him out in a year or thereabouts. In offering me these easy terms, I think he is behaving liberally. Don’t you, Lionel?”
“That may be a matter of opinion, Jan,” was Lionel’s answer. “He has stood to me in the relation of father-in-law, and I don’t care to express mine too definitely. He is wise enough to know that when you leave him, his chance of practice is gone. But I don’t advise you to cavil with the terms. I should say accept them.”
“I have done it,” answered Jan. “I wrote this morning. I must get a new brass plate for the door. ‘Jan Verner, Surgeon, &c.,’ in place of the present one, ‘West and Verner.’”
“I think I should put Janus Verner, instead of Jan,” suggested Lionel, with a half smile.
“Law!” repeated Jan. “Nobody would know it was meant for me if I put Janus. Shall I have ‘Mr.’ tacked on to it, Lionel?—‘Mr. Jan Verner.’”
“Of course you will,” answered Lionel. “What is going to be done about Deborah and Amilly West?”
“In what way?”
“As to their residence?”
“You saw what Dr. West says in his letter. They can stop.”
“It is not a desirable arrangement, Jan, their remaining in the house.”
“They won’t hurt me,” responded Jan. “They are welcome.”
“I think, Jan, your connection with the West family should be entirely closed. The opportunity offers now: and, if not embraced, you don’t know when another may arise. Suppose, a short while hence, you were to marry? It might be painful to your feelings, then, to have to say to Deborah and Amilly—‘You must leave my house: there’s no further place for you in it.’ Now, in this dissolution of partnership, the change can take place as in the natural course of events.”
Jan had opened his great eyes wonderingly at the words. “I, marry!” uttered he. “What should bring me marrying?”
“You may be marrying sometime, Jan.”
“Not I,” answered Jan. “Nobody would have me. They can stop on in the house, Lionel. What does it matter? I don’t see how I and Cheese should get on without them. Who’d make the pies? Cheese would die of chagrin, if he didn’t get one every day.”
“I see a great deal of inconvenience in the way,” persisted Lionel. “The house will be yours then. Upon what terms would they remain? As visitors, as lodgers—as what?”
Jan opened his eyes wider. “Visitors! lodgers!” cried he. “I don’t know what you mean, Lionel. They’d stop on as they always have done—as though the house was theirs. They’d be welcome, for me.”
“You must do as you like, Jan. But I do not think the arrangement a desirable one. It would be establishing a claim which Dr. West may be presuming upon later. With his daughters in the house, as of right, he may be for coming back some time and taking up his abode in it. It would be better for you and the Miss Wests to separate; to have your establishments apart.”
“I shall never turn them out,” said Jan. “They’d break their hearts. Look at the buttons, too! Who’d sew them on? Cheese bursts off two a day, good.”
“As you please, Jan. My motive in speaking was not ill-nature towards the Miss Wests; but regard for you. As the sisters of my late wife, I shall take care that they do not want—should their resources from Dr. West fail. He speaks of allowing them a liberal sum annually: but I fear they must not make sure that the promise will be carried out. Should it not be, they will have no one to look to, I expect, but myself.”
“They won’t want much,” said Jan. “Just a trifle for their bonnets and shoes, and such like. I shall pay the house bills, you know. In fact I’d as soon give them enough for their clothes, as not. I dare say I should have enough, even the first year, after paying expenses and old West’s five hundred.”
It was hopeless to contend with Jan upon the subject of money, especially when it was his money. Lionel said no more. But he had not the slightest doubt it would end in Jan’s house being saddled with the Miss Wests: and that help for them from Dr. West would never come.
Miss West herself was thinking the same.
This conversation, between Jan and Lionel, had taken place at Verner’s Pride, in the afternoon of the morning which had witnessed the arrival of Dr. West’s letter. Deborah West had also received one from her father. She learnt by it that he was about to retire from the partnership, and that Mr. Jan Verner would carry on the practice alone. The doctor intimated that she and Amilly would continue to live on in the house with Mr. Jan’s permission, whom he had asked to afford them houseroom: and he more loudly promised to transmit them one hundred pounds per annum, in different payments, as might be convenient to him.
The letter was read three times over by both sisters. Amilly did not like it, but upon Deborah it made a painfully deep impression. Poor ladies! Since the discovery of the codicil they had gone about Deerham with veils over their faces and their heads down, inclined to think that lots in this world were dealt out all too unequally.
At the very time that Jan was at Verner’s Pride that afternoon, Deborah sat alone in the dining-room, pondering over the future. Since the finding of the codicil, neither of the sisters had cared to seat themselves in state in the drawing-room, ready to receive visitors, should they call. They had no heart for it. They chose, rather, to sit in plain attire, and hide themselves in the humblest and most retired room. They took no pride now in anointing their scanty curls with castor oil, in contriving for their dress, in setting off their persons. Vanity seemed to have departed from Deborah and Amilly West.
Deborah sat there in the dining-room, her hair looking grievously thin, her morning dress of black print with white spots upon it not changed for the old turned black silk of the afternoon. Her elbow rested on the faded and not very clean table cover, and her fingers were running unconsciously through that scanty hair. The prospect before her looked, to her mind, as hopelessly forlorn as she looked.
But it was necessary that she should gaze at the future steadily; should not turn aside from it in carelessness or in apathy; should face it, and make the best of it. If Jan Verner and her father were about to dissolve partnership, and the practice henceforth was to be Jan’s, what was to become of her and Amilly? Taught by past experience, she knew how much dependence was to be placed upon her father’s promise to pay to them an income. Very little reliance indeed could be placed on Dr. West in any way; this very letter in her hand and the tidings it contained, might be true, or might be—pretty little cullings from Dr. West’s imagination. The proposed dissolution of partnership she believed in: she had expected Jan to take the step ever since that night which restored the codicil.
“I had better ask Mr. Jan about it,” she murmured. “It is of no use to remain in this uncertainty.”
Rising from her seat, she proceeded to the side-door, opened it, and glanced cautiously out, through the rain, not caring to be seen by strangers in her present attire. There was nobody about, and she crossed the little path and entered the surgery. Master Cheese, with somewhat of a scorchy look in the eyebrows, but full of strength and appetite as ever, turned round at her entrance.
“Is Mr. Jan in?” she asked.
“No, he is not,” responded Master Cheese, speaking indistinctly, for he had just filled his mouth with Spanish liquorice. “Did you want him, Miss Deb?”
“I wanted to speak to him,” she replied. “Will he be long?”
“He didn’t announce the hour of his return,” replied Master Cheese. “I wish he would come back! If a message comes for one of us, I don’t care to go out in this rain: Jan doesn’t mind it. It’s sure to be my luck! The other day, when it was pouring cats and dogs, a summons came from Lady Hautley’s. Jan was out, and I had to go, and got dripping wet. After all, it was only my lady’s maid, with a sorry whitlow on her finger.”
“Be so kind as tell Mr. Jan, when he does come in, that I should be glad to speak a word to him, if he can step into the parlour.”
Miss Deb turned back as she spoke, ran across through the rain, and sat down in the parlour, as before. She knew that she ought to go up and dress, but she had not spirits for it.
She sat there until Jan entered. Full an hour, it must have been, and she had turned over all points in her mind, what could and what could not be done. It did not appear that much could be. Jan came in, rather wet. On his road from Verner’s Pride he had overtaken one of his poor patients, who was in delicate health, and had lent the woman his huge cotton umbrella, hastening on, himself, without one.
“Cheese says you wish to see me, Miss Deb.”
Miss Deb turned round from her listless attitude, and asked Mr. Jan to take a chair. Mr. Jan responded by partially sitting down on the arm of one.
“What is it?” asked he, rather wondering.
“I have had a letter from Prussia this morning, Mr. Jan, from my father. He says you and he are about to dissolve partnership; that the practice will be carried on by you alone, on your own account; and that—but you had better read it,” she broke off, taking the letter from her pocket, and handing it to Jan.
He ran his eyes over it. Dr. West’s was not a plain handwriting, but Jan was accustomed to it. The letter was soon read.
“It’s true, Miss Deb,” said he. “The doctor thinks he shall not be returning to Deerham, and so I am going to take to the whole of the practice,” continued Jan, who possessed too much innate good feeling to hint to Miss Deb of any other cause.
“Yes. But—it will place me and Amilly in a very embarrassing position, Mr. Jan,” added the poor lady, her thin cheeks flushing painfully;—“we shall have no right to stay in this house then.”
“You are welcome to remain,” said Jan.
Miss Deb shook her head. She felt, as she said, that they should have no “right.”
“I’d rather you did,” pursued Jan, in his good nature. “What do I and Cheese want with all this big house to ourselves? Besides, if you and Amilly go, who’d see to our shirts and the puddings?”
“When papa went away at first, was there not some arrangement made by which the furniture became yours?”
“No,” stoutly answered Jan. “I paid something to him, to give me, as he called it, a half-share in it with himself. It was a stupid sort of arrangement, and one I should never act upon, Miss Deb. The furniture is yours; not mine.”
“Mr. Jan, you would give up your right in everything, I believe. You will never get rich.”
“I shall get as rich as I want to, I daresay,” was Jan’s answer. “Things can go on just the same as usual, you know, Miss Deb, and I can pay the housekeeping bills. Your stopping here will be a saving,” good-naturedly added Jan. “With nobody in the house to manage, except servants, only think the waste there’d be! Cheese would be for getting two dinners a-day served, fish, and fowls, and tarts at each.”
The tears were struggling in Deborah West’s eyes. She did her best to repress them: but it could not be, and she gave way with a burst.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Jan,” she said. "Sometimes I feel as if there was no longer any place in the world for me and Amilly. You may be sure I would not mention it, but that you know it as well as I do—that there is, I fear, no dependence to be placed on this promise of papa’s, to allow us an income. I have been thinking—”
“Don’t let that trouble you, Miss Deb,” interrupted Jan, tilting himself backwards over the arm of the chair in a very ungraceful fashion, and leaving his legs dangling. “Others will, if he wo—if he can’t. Lionel has just been saying that as Sibylla’s sisters, he shall see that you don’t want.”
“You and he are very kind,” she answered, the tears dropping faster than she could wipe them away. “But it seems to me the time is come when we ought to try and do something for ourselves. I have been thinking, Mr. Jan, that we might get a few pupils, I and Amilly. There’s not a single good school in Deerham, as you know; I think we might establish one.”
“So you might,” said Jan, “if you’d like it.”
“We should both like it. And perhaps you’d not mind our staying on in this house while we were getting a few together; establishing it, as it were. They would not put you out, I hope, Mr. Jan.”
“Not they,” answered Jan. “I shouldn’t eat them. Look here, Miss Deb, I’d doctor them for nothing. Couldn’t you put that in the prospectus. It might prove an attraction.”
It was a novel feature in a school prospectus, and Miss Deb had to take some minutes to consider it. She came to the conclusion that it would look remarkably well in print. “Medical attendance gratis.”
“Including physic,” put in Jan.
“Medical attendance gratis, including physic,” repeated Miss Deb. “Mr. Jan, it would be sure to take with the parents. I am so much obliged to you. But I hope,” she added, moderating her tone of satisfaction, “that they’d not think it meant Master Cheese. People would not have much faith in him, I fear.”
“Tell them to the contrary,” answered Jan. “And Cheese will be leaving shortly, you know.”
“True,” said Miss Deb. “Mr. Jan,” she added, a strange eagerness in her tone, in her meek blue eyes, “if we, I and Amilly, can only get into the way of doing something for ourselves, by which we may be a little independent, and look forward to be kept out of the workhouse in our old age, we shall feel as if removed from a dreadful nightmare. Circumstances have been preying upon us, Mr. Jan: care is making us begin to look old before we might have looked it.”
Jan answered with a laugh. That notion of the workhouse was so good, he said. As well set on and think that he should come to the penitentiary! It had been no laughing matter, though, to the hearts of the two sisters, and Miss Deb sat on, crying silent tears.
How many of these silent tears must be shed in the path through life! It appears that the lot of some is only made to shed them, and to bear.