that my nephew, John Massingbird, should enjoy Verner’s Pride.”
“Of course it’s not,” answered Jan. “Only things don’t go by rights always, you know. It’s but seldom they do.”
“He ought to give it up to Mr. Verner.”
“So I told him,” said Jan. “I should, in his place.”
“What did he say?”
“Say? Laughed at me, and called me green.”
Dr. West sat thoughtfully pulling his great dark whiskers. Dark as they were, they had yet a tinge of red in the fire-light. “It was a curious thing; a very curious thing, that both brothers should die, as was supposed, in Australia,” said he. “Better—as things have turned out—that Fred should have turned up afterwards, than John.”
“I don’t know that,” spoke Jan, with his accustomed truth-telling freedom. “The pair were not good for much, but John was the best of them.”
“I was thinking of Sibylla,” candidly admitted the doctor. “It would have been better for her.”
Jan opened his eyes considerably.
“Better for her!—for it to turn out that she had two husbands living? That’s logic, that is.”
“Dear me, to be sure!” cried the doctor. “I was not thinking of that phase of the affair, Mr. Jan. Is she in spirits?”
“Who? Sibylla? She’s fretting herself into her grave.”
Dr. West turned his head with a start.
“What at? The loss of Verner’s Pride?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Jan, ever plain-spoken. “She puzzles me. When she was at Verner’s Pride, she never seemed satisfied: she was perpetually hankering after excitement, and didn’t seem to care for Lionel or for anybody else, and kept the house full of people from top to bottom. She has a restless, dissatisfied temper, and it keeps her on the worry. Folks with such tempers know no peace, and let nobody else know any that’s about them. A nice life she leads Lionel! Not that he’d drop a hint of it. He’d cut out his tongue before he’d speak a word against his wife: he’d rather make her out to be an angel.”
“Are they pretty comfortably off for money?” inquired Dr. West, after a pause. “I suppose Mr. Verner must have managed to feather his nest a little, before leaving?”
“Not a bit of it,” returned Jan. “He was over head and ears in debt. Sibylla helped him to a good portion of it. She went the pace. John Massingbird waives the question of the mesne profits, or Lionel would be in worse embarrassment than he is.”
Dr. West looked crestfallen.
“What do they live on?” he asked. “Does Lady Verner keep them? She can’t have too much for herself now.”
“Oh! it’s managed somehow,” said Jan.
Dr. West sat for some time in ruminating silence, pulling his whiskers as before, running his hands through his hair, the large clear blue sapphire ring, which he always wore on his finger, conspuous. Jan swayed his legs about, and waited to afford any further information. Presently the doctor turned to him, a charming expression of open confidence on his countenance.
“Mr. Jan, I am in great hopes that you will do me a little favour. I have temporary need for a trifle of pecuniary aid—some slight debts which have grown upon me abroad,” he added, carelessly, with a short cough—“and, knowing your good heart, I have resolved to apply to you. If you can oblige me with a couple of hundred pounds or so, I’ll give you my acknowledgment, and return it punctually as soon as I am able.”
“I’d let you have it with all the pleasure in life, if I had got it,” heartily replied Jan. “But I have not.”
“My dear Mr. Jan! Not got it! You must have quite a nice little nest of savings laid by in the bank, surely! I know you never spend a shilling on yourself.”
“All I had in the bank and what I have drawn since has been handed over to my mother. I wanted Lionel and Sibylla to come here: and Miss Deb arranged it all; and in that case I should have given the money to Miss Deb. But Sibylla refused: she would not come here, she would not go anywhere but to Lady Verner’s. So I handed the money to my mother.”
The confession appeared to put the doctor out considerably.
“How very imprudent, Mr. Jan! To give away all you possessed, leaving nothing for yourself! I never heard of such a thing!”
“Lionel and his wife were turned out of everything, and had nobody to look to. I don’t see that I could have put the money to better use,” stoutly returned Jan. “It was not much. There’s such a lot of the Clay Lane folks always wanting things when they are ill. And Miss Deb, she had had something. You keep her so short, doctor.”
“But you pay her the sum that was agreed upon for housekeeping?” said Dr. West.
“What should hinder me?” returned Jan. “She can’t make both ends meet, she says, and then she has to come to me. I’m willing: only I can’t give money away and put it by, you see.”
Dr. West probably did see it. He saw, beyond doubt, that all hope of ready money from easy Jan was gone—from the simple fact that Jan’s coffers were just now empty. The fact did not afford him satisfaction.
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Jan,” said he, brightening up, “you shall give me your signature to a little bill—a bill at two months, let us say. It will be the same as money.”
“Can’t,” said Jan.
“You can’t!” replied Dr. West.
“No!” said Jan, resolutely. “I’d give away all I had in hand to give, and welcome; but I’d never sign bills. A doctor has no business with ’em. Don’t you remember what they did for Jones at Bartholomew’s?”
“I don’t remember Jones at Bartholomew’s,” frigidly returned the doctor.
“No! Why, what’s gone with your memory?” innocently asked Jan. “If you think a bit, you’ll recollect about him, and what his end was. Bills did it; the signing of bills to oblige some friend.