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