Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “The fact is, Master Cheese, you have the jam so often, in one way or another, that there’s very little left. It will not last the season out.”

  “The green gooseberries’ll be coming on, Miss Deb,” was Master Cheese’s insinuating reply. “And there’s always apples, you know. With plenty of lemon and a clove or two, apples make as good a pudding as anything else.”

  Miss Deb, always good-natured, went to get him what he had asked for, and Master Cheese took his seat in front of the fire, and toasted his toes.

  “There was a great mistake made when you were put to a surgeon,” said Miss Amilly, laughing. “You should have gone apprentice to a pastry-cook.”

  “She’s a regular fidgety old woman, that Miss Hautley,” broke out Master Cheese with temper, passing over Miss Amilly’s remark. “It’s not two months yet that she has been at the Hall, and she has had one or the other of us up six times at least. I wonder what business she had to come to it? The Hall wouldn’t have run away before Sir Edmund could get home.”

  Miss Deb came back with the bread-and-jam; a good thick slice, as the gentleman had requested. To look at him eating, one would think he had had nothing for a week. It disappeared in no time, and Master Cheese went out sucking his fingers and his lips. Deborah West folded up the work, and put things straight generally in the room. Then she sat down again, drawing her chair to the side of the fire.

  “I do think that Cheese has got a wolf inside him,” cried Amilly, with a laugh.

  “He is a great gourmand. He said this morning—” began Miss Deb, and then she stopped.

  Finding what she was about to say thus brought to an abrupt conclusion, Amilly West looked at her sister. Miss Deb’s attention was riveted on the room door. Her mouth was open, her eyes seemed starting from her head with a fixed stare, and her countenance was growing white. Amilly turned her eyes hastily to the same direction, and saw a dark, obscure form filling up the doorway.

  Not obscure for long. Amilly, more impulsive than her sister, rose up with a shriek, and darted forward with outstretched arms of welcome; Deborah followed, stretching out hers.

  “My dear father!”

  It was no other than Dr. West. He gave them each a cool kiss, walked to the fire and sat down, bidding them not smother him. For some little while they could not get over their surprise or believe their senses. They knew nothing of his intention to return, and had deemed him hundreds of miles away. Question after question they showered down upon him, the result of their amazement. He answered just as much as he chose. He had only come home for a day or so, he said, and did not care that it should be known he was there, to be tormented with a shoal of callers.

  “Where’s Mr. Jan?” asked he.

  “In the surgery,” said Deborah.

  “Is he by himself?”

  “Yes, dear papa. Master Cheese has just gone up to Deerham Hall, and the boy is out.”

  Dr. West rose, and made his way to the surgery. The surgery was empty. But the light of a fire from the half-opened door, led him to Jan’s bedroom. It was a room that would persist in remaining obstinately damp, and Jan, albeit not over careful of himself, judged it well to have an occasional fire lighted. The room, seen by this light, looked comfortable. The small, low, iron bed stood in the far corner; in the opposite corner the bureau, as in Dr. West’s time, the door opening to the garden (never used now) between them, at the end of the room. The window was on the side opposite the fire, a table in the middle. Jan was then occupied in stirring the fire into a blaze, and its cheerful light flickered on every part of the room.

  “Good-evening, Mr. Jan.”

  Jan turned round, poker in hand, and stared amiably. “Law!” cried he. “Who’d have thought it?”

  The old word; the word he had learned at school — law. It was Jan’s favourite mode of expressing surprise still, and Lady Verner never could break him of it. He shook hands cordially with Dr. West.

  The doctor shut the door, slipping the bolt, and sat down to the fire. Jan cleared a space on the table, which was covered with jars and glass vases, cylinders, and other apparatus, seemingly for chemical purposes, and took his seat there.

  The doctor had taken a run home, “making a morning call, as it might be metaphorically observed,” he said to Jan. Just to have a sight of home faces, and hear a little home news. Would Mr. Jan recite to him somewhat of the latter?

  Jan did so; touching upon all he could recollect. From John Massingbird’s return to Verner’s Pride, and the consequent turning out of Mr. Verner and his wife, down to the death of Sir Rufus Hautley; not forgetting the pranks played by the “ghost,” and the foiled expedition of Mrs. Peckaby to New Jerusalem. Some of these items of intelligence the doctor had heard before, for Jan periodically wrote to him. The doctor looked taller, and stouter, and redder than ever, and as he leaned thoughtfully forward, and the crimson blaze played upon his face, Jan thought how like he was growing to his sister, the late Mrs. Verner.

  “Mr. Jan,” said the doctor, “it is not right 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 — 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, conspicuous. 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 of 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! I know you never spend a shilling on yourself.”

  “All I had in the bank, and what I have drawn since, has been handed to my mother. I wanted Lionel and Sibylla to come here: I 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. “Of course I do. But she cannot 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. I’ll never sign a bill, doctor. I wouldn’t do it for my own mother.”

  Thus the doctor’s expectations were put a final end to, so far as Jan went — and very certain expectations they had, no doubt, been. As to Jan, a thought may have crossed him that the doctor and his daughter Sibylla appeared to have the same propensity for getting out of money. Dr. West recovered his equanimity, and magnanimously waived the affair as a trifle not worth dwelling on.

  “How does Cheese get on?” he asked.

  “First rate — in the eating line,” replied Jan.

  “Have you got him out of his idleness yet?”

  “It would take a more clever man than I to do that, doctor. It’s constitutional. When he goes up to London, in the autumn, I shall take an assistant: unless you should be coming home yourself.”

  “I have no intention of it at present, Mr. Jan. Am I to understand you that Sibylla has serious symptoms of disease?”

  “There’s no doubt of it,” said Jan. “You always prophesied it for her, you know. When she was at Verner’s Pride she was continually ailing: not a week passed but I was called in to attend her. She was so imprudent too — she would be. Going out and getting her feet wet; sitting up half the night. We tried to bring her to reason; but it was of no use. She defied Lionel; she would not listen to me — as well speak to a post.”

  “Why should she defy her husband? Are they on bad terms?”

  “They are on as good terms as any man and wife could be, Sibylla being the wife,” was Jan’s rejoinder. “You know something of her temper and disposition, doctor — it is of no use to mince matters — you remember how it had used to be with her here at home. Lionel’s a husband in a thousand. How he can possibly put up with her, and be always patient and kind, puzzles me more than any problem ever did in Euclid. If Fred had lived — why, he’d have broken her spirit or her heart long before this.”

  Dr. West rose and stretched himself. The failings of Sibylla were not a pleasant topic, thus openly mentioned by Jan; but none knew better than the doctor how true were the grounds on which he spoke. None knew better, either, that disease for her was to be feared.

  “Her sisters went off about this age, or a little later,” he said musingly. “I could not save them.”

  “And Sibylla’s as surely going after them, doctor, as that I am here,” returned Jan. “Lionel intends to call in Dr. Hayes to her.”

  “Since when has she been so ill?”

  “Not since any time in particular. There appears to be no real illness yet — only symptoms. She coughs, and gets as thin as a skeleton. Sometimes I think, if she could call up a cheerful temper, she’d keep well. You will see what you think of her.”

  The doctor walked towards the bureau at the far corner. “Have you ever opened it, Mr. Jan?”

  “It’s not likely,” said Jan. “Didn’t you tell me not to open it? Your own papers are in it, and you hold the key.”

  “It’s not inconvenient to your room, my retaining it I hope?” asked the doctor. “I don’t know where else I should put my papers.”

  “Not a bit of it,” said Jan. “Have another in here as well, if you like. It’s safe here.”

  “Do you know, Mr. Jan, I feel as if I’d rather sleep in your little bed to-night than indoors,” said the doctor looking at Jan’s bed. “The room seems like an old friend to me: I feel at home in it.”

  “Sleep in it, if you like,” returned Jan, in his easy good nature. “Miss Deb can put me into some room or other. I say, doctor, it’s past tea-time. Wouldn’t you like some refreshment?”

  “I had a good dinner on my road,” replied Dr. West; which Jan might have guessed, for Dr. West was quite sure to take care of himself. “We will go in, if you like; Deb and Amilly will wonder what has become of me. How old they begin to look!”

  “I don’t suppose any of us look younger,” answered Jan.

  They went into the house. Deborah and Amilly were in a flutter of hospitality, lading the tea-table with good things that it would have gladdened Master Cheese’s heart to see. They had been upstairs to smooth out their curls, to put on clean white sleeves and collars, a gold chain, and suchlike little additions, setting themselves off as they were now setting off the tea-table, all in their affectionate welcome to their father. And Dr. West, who liked eating as well as ever did Master Cheese, surveyed the table with complacency as he sat down to it, ignoring the dinner he had spoken of to Jan. Amilly sat by him, heaping his plate with what he liked best, and Deborah made the tea.

  “I have been observing to Mr. Jan that you are beginning to look very old, Deb,” remarked the doctor; “Amilly also.”

  It was a cruel shaft. A bitter return for their loving welcome. Perhaps they were looking older, but he need not have said it so point blank, and before Jan. They turned crimson, poor ladies, and bent to sip their tea, and tried to turn the words off with a laugh, and did not know where to look. In true innate delicacy of feeling, Dr. West and his daughter, Sibylla, rivalled each other.

  The meal over, the doctor proposed to pay a visit to Deerham Court, and did so, Jan walking with him, first of all mentioning to Deborah the wish expressed by Dr. West as to occupy
ing Jan’s room for the night, that she might see the arrangement carried out.

  Which she did. And Jan, at the retiring hour — though this is a little anticipating, for the evening is not yet over — escorted the doctor to the door of the room, and wished him a good night’s rest, never imagining but that he enjoyed one. But had fire, or any other accident, burst open the room to public gaze in the lone night hours, Dr. West would have been seen at work, instead of asleep. Every drawer of the bureau was out, every paper it contained was misplaced. The doctor was evidently searching for something, as sedulously as he had once searched for that lost prescription, which at the time appeared so much to disturb his peace.

  CHAPTER LXXVII.

  AN EVENING AT LADY VERNER’S.

  In the well-lighted drawing-room at Deerham Court was its mistress, Lady Verner. Seated with her on the same sofa was her son, Lionel. Decima, at a little distance, was standing talking to Lord Garle. Lucy Tempest sat at the table cutting the leaves of a new book; and Sibylla was bending over the fire in a shivering attitude, as if she could not get enough of its heat. Lord Garle had been dining with them.

  The door opened and Jan entered. “I have brought you a visitor, Sibylla,” said he, in his unceremonious fashion, without any sort of greeting to anybody. “Come in, doctor.”

  It caused quite a confusion, the entrance of Dr. West. All were surprised. Lionel rose, Lucy rose; Lord Garle and Decima came forward, and Sibylla sprang towards him with a cry. Lady Verner was the only one who retained entire calmness.

  “Papa! it cannot be you! When did you come?”

  Dr. West kissed her, and turned to Lady Verner with some courtly words. Dr. West was an adept at such. Not the courtly words that spring genuinely from a kindly and refined nature; but those that are put on to hide a false one. All people, true-hearted ones, too, cannot distinguish between them; the false and the real. Next, the doctor grasped the hand of Lionel.