by Ellen Wood
“I can’t say. One year, two years, three years — it may be even more than that. I expect this will be a long and a lucrative engagement. Suppose, I say, that for the first year you transmit to me the one-half of the net profits, and, beyond that, hand over to Deborah a certain sum, as shall be agreed upon, towards housekeeping.”
“I don’t mind how it is,” said easy Jan. “They’ll stop here, then?”
“Of course they will. My dear Mr. Jan, everything, I hope, will go on just as it goes on now, save that I shall be absent. You and Cheese — whom I hope you’ll keep in order — and the errand boy: it will all be just as it has been. As to the assistant, that will be a future consideration.”
“I’d rather be without one, if I can do it,” cried Jan; “and Cheese will be coming on. Am I to live with ‘em?”
“With Deb and Amilly? Why not? Poor, unprotected old things, what would they do without you? And now, Mr. Jan, as that is settled so far, we will sit down, and go further into details. I know I can depend upon your not mentioning this abroad.”
“If you don’t want me to mention it, you can. But where’s the harm?”
“It is always well to keep these little arrangements private,” said the doctor. “Matiss will draw up the deed, and I will take you round and introduce you as my partner. But there need not be anything said beforehand. Neither need there be anything said at all about my going away, until I actually go. You will oblige me in this, Mr. Jan.”
“It’s all the same to me,” said accommodating Jan. “Whose will be this room, then?”
“Yours, to do as you please with, of course, so long as I am away.”
“I’ll have a turn-up bedstead put in it and sleep here, then,” quoth Jan. “When folks come in the night, and ring me up, I shall be handy. It’ll be better than disturbing the house, as is the case now.”
The doctor appeared struck with the proposition.
“I think it would be a very good plan, indeed,” he said. “I don’t fancy the room’s damp.”
“Not it,” said Jan. “If it were damp, it wouldn’t hurt me. I have no time to be ill, I haven’t. Damp — Who’s that?”
It was a visitor to the surgery — a patient of Dr. West’s — and, for the time, the conference was broken up, not to be renewed until evening.
Dr. West and Jan were both fully occupied all the afternoon. When business was over — as much so as a doctor’s business ever can be over — Jan knocked at the door of this room, where Dr. West again was.
It was opened about an inch, and the face of the doctor appeared in the aperture, peering out to ascertain who might be disturbing him. The same aperture which enabled him to see out, enabled Jan to see in.
“Why! what’s up?” cried unceremonious Jan.
Jan might well ask it. The room contained a table, a desk or two, some sets of drawers, and other receptacles for the custody of papers. All these were turned out, desks and drawers alike stood open, and their contents, a mass of papers, were scattered everywhere.
The doctor could not, in good manners, shut the door right in his proposed new partner’s face. He opened it an inch or two more. His own face was purple: it wore a startled, perplexed look, and the drops of moisture had gathered on his forehead. That he was not in the most easy frame of mind was evident. Jan put one foot into the room: he could not put two, unless he had stepped upon the papers.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jan, perceiving the signs of perturbation on the doctor’s countenance.
“I have had a loss,” said the doctor. “It’s the most extraordinary thing, but a — a paper, which was here this morning, I cannot find anywhere. I must find it!” he added, in ill-suppressed agitation. “I’d rather lose everything I possess, than lose that.”
“Where did you put it? When did you have it?” cried Jan, casting his eyes around.
“I kept it in a certain drawer,” replied Dr. West, too much disturbed to be anything but straightforward. “I have not had it in my hand for — oh, I cannot tell how long — months and months, until this morning. I wanted to refer to it then, and got it out. I was looking it over when a rough, ill-bred fellow burst the door open—”
“I heard of that,” interrupted Jan. “Cheese told me.”
“He burst the door open, and I put the paper back in its place before I spoke to him,” continued Dr. West. “Half an hour ago I went to take it out again, and I found it had disappeared.”
“The fellow must have walked it off,” cried Jan, a conclusion not unnatural.
“He could not,” said Dr. West; “it is quite an impossibility. I went back there” — pointing to a bureau of drawers behind him— “and put the paper hastily in, and locked it in, returning the keys to my pocket. The man had not stepped over the threshold of the door then; he was a little taken to, I fancy, at his having burst the door, and he stood there staring.”
“Could he have got at it afterwards?” asked Jan.
“It is, I say, an impossibility. He never was within a yard or two of the bureau; and, if he had been, the place was firmly locked. That man it certainly was not. Nobody has been in the room since, save myself, and you for a few minutes to-day when I called you in. And yet the paper is gone!”
“Could anybody have come into the room by the other door?” asked Jan.
“No. It opens with a latch-key only, as this does, and the key was safe in my pocket.”
“Well, this beats everything,” cried Jan. “It’s like the codicil at Verner’s Pride.”
“The very thing it put me in mind of,” said Dr. West. “I’d rather — I’d rather have lost that codicil, had it been mine, than lose this, Mr. Jan.”
Jan opened his eyes. Jan had a knack of opening his eyes when anything surprised him — tolerably wide, too, “What paper was it, then?” he cried.
“It was a prescription, Mr. Jan.”
“A prescription!” returned Jan, the answer not lessening his wonder. “That’s not much. Isn’t it in the book?”
“No, it is not in the book,” said Dr. West. “It was too valuable to be in the book. You may look, Mr. Jan, but I mean what I say. This was a private prescription of inestimable value — a secret prescription, I may say. I would not have lost it for the whole world.”
The doctor wiped the dew from his perplexed forehead, and strove, though unsuccessfully, to control his agitated voice to calmness. Jan could only stare. All this fuss about a prescription!
“Did it contain the secret for compounding Life’s Elixir?” asked he.
“It contained what was more to me than that,” said Dr. West. “But you can’t help me, Mr. Jan. I would rather be left to the search alone.”
“I hope you’ll find it yet,” returned Jan, taking the hint and retreating to the surgery. “You must have overlooked it amongst some of these papers.”
“I hope I shall,” replied the doctor.
And he shut himself up to the search, and turned over the papers. But he never found what he had lost, although he was still turning and turning them at morning light.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MISS DEBORAH’S ASTONISHMENT.
One dark morning, near the beginning of November — in fact, it was the first morning of that gloomy month — Jan was busy in the surgery. Jan was arranging things there according to his own pleasure; for Dr. West had departed that morning early, and Jan was master of the field.
Jan had risen betimes. Never a sluggard, he had been up now for some hours, and had effected so great a metamorphosis in the surgery that the doctor himself would hardly have known it again: things in it previously never having been arranged to Jan’s satisfaction. And now he was looking at his watch to see whether breakfast time was coming on, Jan’s hunger reminding him that it might be acceptable. He had not yet been into the house; his bedroom now being the room you have heard of, the scene of Dr. West’s lost prescription. The doctor had gone by the six o’clock train, after a cordial farewell to Jan; he had gone — as it was s
oon to turn out — without having previously informed his daughters. But of this Jan knew nothing.
“Twenty minutes past eight,” quoth Jan, consulting his watch, a silver one, the size of a turnip. Jan had bought it when he was poor: had given about two pounds for it, second-hand. It never occurred to Jan to buy a better one while that legacy of his was lying idle. Why should he? Jan’s turnip kept time to a moment, and Jan did not understand buying things for show. “Ten minutes yet! I shall eat a double share of bacon this morning. — Good-morning, Miss Deb.”
Miss Deb was stealing into the surgery with a scared look and a white face. Miss Deb wore her usual winter morning costume, a huge brown cape. She was of a shivery nature at the best of times, but she shivered palpably now.
“Mr. Jan, have you got a drop of ether?” asked she, her poor teeth chattering together. Jan was too good-natured to tell Deerham those teeth were false, though Dr. West had betrayed the secret to Jan.
“Who’s it for?” asked Jan. “For you? Aren’t you well, Miss Deb? Eat some breakfast; that’s the best thing.”
“I have had a dreadful shock, Mr. Jan. I have had bad news. That is — what has been done to the surgery?” she broke off, casting her eyes around it in wonder.
“Not much,” said Jan. “I have been making some odds and ends of alteration. Is the news from Australia?” he continued, the open letter in her hand helping him to the suggestion. “A mail’s due.”
Miss Deborah shook her head. “It is from my father, Mr. Jan. The first thing I saw, upon going into the breakfast parlour, was this note for me, propped against the vase on the mantel-piece. Mr. Jan” — dropping her voice to confidence— “it says he is gone! That he is gone away for an indefinite period.”
“You don’t mean to say he never told you of it before!” exclaimed Jan.
“I never heard a syllable from him,” cried poor Deborah. “He says you’ll explain to us as much as is necessary. You can read the note. Mr. Jan, where’s he gone?”
Jan ran his eyes over the note; feeling himself probably in somewhat of a dilemma as to how much or how little it might be expedient to explain.
“He thought some travelling might be beneficial to his health,” said Jan. “He has got a rare good post as travelling doctor to some young chap of quality.”
Miss Deborah was looking very hard at Jan. Something seemed to be on her mind; some great fear. “He says he may not be back for ever so long to come, Mr. Jan.”
“So he told me,” said Jan.
“And is that the reason he took you into partnership, Mr. Jan?”
“Yes,” said Jan. “Couldn’t leave an assistant for an indefinite period.”
“You will never be able to do it all yourself. I little thought, when all this bustle and changing of bedrooms was going on, what was up. You might have told me, Mr. Jan,” she added, in a reproachful tone.
“It wasn’t my place to tell you,” returned Jan. “It was the doctor’s.”
Miss Deborah looked timidly round, and then sunk her voice to a lower whisper. “Mr. Jan, why has he gone away?”
“For his health,” persisted Jan.
“They are saying — they are saying — Mr. Jan, what is it that they are saying about papa and those ladies at Chalk Cottage?”
Jan laid hold of the pestle and mortar, popped in a big lump of some hard-looking white substance, and began pounding away at it. “How should I know anything about the ladies at Chalk Cottage?” asked he. “I never was inside their door; I never spoke to any one of ‘em.”
“But you know that things are being said,” urged Miss Deborah, with almost feverish eagerness. “Don’t you?”
“Who told you anything was being said?” asked Jan.
“It was Master Cheese. Mr. Jan, folks have seemed queer lately. The servants have whispered together, and then have glanced at me and Amilly, and I knew there was something wrong, but I could not get at it. This morning, when I picked up this note — it’s not five minutes ago, Mr. Jan — in my fright and perplexity I shrieked out; and Master Cheese, he said something about Chalk Cottage.”
“What did he say?” asked Jan.
Miss Deborah’s pale face turned to crimson. “I can’t tell,” she said. “I did not hear the words rightly. Master Cheese caught them up again. Mr. Jan, I have come to you to tell me.”
Jan answered nothing. He was pounding very fiercely.
“Mr. Jan, I ought to know it,” she went on. “I am not a child. If you please I must request you to tell me.”
“What are you shivering for?” asked Jan.
“I can’t help it. Is — is it anything that — that he can be taken up for?”
“Taken up!” replied Jan, ceasing from his pounding, and fixing his wide-open eyes on Miss Deborah. “Can I be taken up for doing this?” — and he brought down the pestle with such force as to threaten the destruction of the mortar.
“You’ll tell me, please,” she shivered.
“Well,” said Jan, “if you must know it, the doctor had a misfortune.”
“A misfortune! He! What misfortune! A misfortune at Chalk Cottage?”
Jan gravely nodded. “And they were in an awful rage with him, and said he should pay expenses, and all that. And he wouldn’t pay expenses — the chimney-glass alone was twelve pound fifteen; and there was a regular quarrel, and they turned him out.”
“But what was the nature of the misfortune?”
“He set the parlour chimney on fire.”
Miss Deborah’s lips parted with amazement; she appeared to find some difficulty in closing them again.
“Set the parlour chimney on fire, Mr. Jan!”
“Very careless of him,” continued Jan, with composure. “He had no business to carry gunpowder about with him. Of course they won’t believe but he flung it in purposely.”
Miss Deborah could not gather her senses. “Who won’t? — the ladies at Chalk Cottage?”
“The ladies at Chalk Cottage,” assented Jan. “If I saw all these bottles go to smithereens, through Cheese stowing gunpowder in his trousers’ pockets, I might go into a passion too, Miss Deb.”
“But, Mr. Jan — this is not what’s being said in Deerham?”
“Law, if you go by all that’s said in Deerham, you’ll have enough to do,” cried Jan. “One says one thing and one says another. No two are ever in the same tale. When that codicil was lost at Verner’s Pride, ten different people were accused by Deerham of stealing it.”
“Were they?” responded Miss Deborah abstractedly.
“Did you never hear it! You just ask Deerham about the row between the doctor and Chalk Cottage, and you’ll hear ten versions, all different. What else could be expected? As if he’d take the trouble to explain the rights of it to them! Not that I should advise you to ask,” concluded Jan pointedly. “Miss Deborah, do you know the time?”
“It must be half-past eight,” she repeated mechanically, her thoughts buried in a reverie.
“And turned,” said Jan. “I’d be glad of breakfast. I shall have the gratis patients here.”
“It shall be ready in two minutes,” said Miss Deborah meekly. And she went out of the surgery.
Presently young Cheese came leaping into it. “The breakfast’s ready,” cried he.
Jan stretched out his long arm, and pinned Master Cheese.
“What have you been saying to Miss Deb?” he asked. “Look here; who is your master now?”
“You are, I suppose,” said the young gentleman.
“Very well. You just bear that in mind; and don’t go carrying tales indoors of what Deerham says. Attend to your own business and leave Dr. West’s alone.”
Master Cheese was considerably astonished. He had never heard such a speech from easy Jan.
“I say, though, are you going to turn out a bashaw with three tails?” asked he.
“Yes,” replied Jan. “I have promised Dr. West to keep you in order, and I shall do it.”
CHAPTER XXIX.
AN INTERCEPTED JOURNEY.
Dr. West’s was not the only departure from Deerham that was projected for that day. The other was that of Lionel Verner. Fully recovered, he had deemed it well to waste no more time. Lady Verner suggested that he should remain in Deerham until the completion of the year; Lionel replied that he had remained in it rather too long already, that he must be up and doing. He was eager to be “up and doing,” and his first step towards it was the proceeding to London and engaging chambers. He fixed upon the first day of November for his departure, unconscious that that day had also been fixed upon by Dr. West for his. However, the doctor was off long before Lionel was out of bed.
Lionel rose all excitement — all impulse to begin his journey, to be away from Deerham. Somebody else rose with feelings less pleasurable; and that was Lucy Tempest. Now that the real time of separation had come, Lucy awoke to the state of her own feelings; to the fact, that the whole world contained but one beloved face for her — that of Lionel Verner.
She awoke with no start, she saw nothing wrong in it, she did not ask herself how it was to end, what the future was to be; any vision of marrying Lionel, which might have flashed across the active brain of a more sophisticated young lady, never occurred to Lucy. All she knew was that she had somehow glided into a state of existence different from anything she had ever experienced before; that her days were all brightness, the world an Eden, and that it was the presence of Lionel that made the sunshine.
She stood before the glass, twisting her soft brown hair, her cheeks crimson with excitement, her eyes bright. The morrow morning would be listless enough; but this, the last on which she would see him, was gay with rose hues of love. Stay! not gay; that is a wrong expression. It would have been gay but for that undercurrent of feeling which was whispering that, in a short hour or two, all would change to the darkest shade.
“He says it may be a twelvemonth before he shall come home again,” she said to herself, her white fingers trembling as she fastened her pretty morning-dress. “How lonely it will be! What shall we do all that while without him? Oh, dear, what’s the matter with me this morning?”