Verner's Pride. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ she had always thought. She was over forty then, and she had to come to England and begin teaching for a living. She is fifty now, and nearly all she gets she sends to Heidelberg to her poor sick sister. I wonder how much good warm cloaks do cost?"

      Lucy Tempest spoke the last sentence dreamily. She was evidently debating the question in her own mind. Her small white hands rested inertly upon her pink dress, her clear face with its delicate bloom was still, her eyes were bent on the fire. But that Lionel's heart was elsewhere, it might have gone out, there and then, to that young girl and her attractive simplicity.

      "What a pretty child you are!" involuntarily broke from him.

      Up came those eyes to him, soft and luminous, their only expression being surprise, not a shade of vanity.

      "I am not a child; why do you call me one? But Mrs. Cust said you would all be taking me for a child, until you knew me."

      "How old are you?" asked Lionel.

      "I was eighteen last September."

      "Eighteen!" involuntarily repeated Lionel.

      "Yes; eighteen. We had a party on my birthday. Mr. Cust gave me a most beautifully bound copy of Thomas à Kempis; he had had it bound on purpose. I will show it to you when my books are unpacked. You would like Mr. Cust, if you knew him. He is an old man now, and he has white hair. He is twenty years older than Mrs. Cust; but he is so good!"

      "How is it," almost vehemently broke forth Lionel, "that you are so different from others?"

      "I don't know. Am I different?"

      "So different—so different—that—that—"

      "What is the matter with me?" she asked timidly, almost humbly, the delicate colour in her cheeks deepening to crimson.

      "There is nothing the matter with you," he answered, smiling; "a good thing if there were as little the matter with everybody else. Do you know that I never saw any one whom I liked so much at first sight as I like you, although you appear to me only as a child? If I call here often I shall grow to love you almost as much as I love my sister Decima."

      "Is not this your home?"

      "No. My home is at Verner's Pride."

      CHAPTER XII.

      DR. WEST'S HOME

      The house of Dr. West was already lighted up. Gas at its front door, gas at its surgery door, gas inside its windows: no habitation in the place was ever so extensively lighted as Dr. West's. The house was inclosed with iron railings, and on its side—detached—was the surgery. A very low place, this surgery; you had to go down a step or two, and then plunge into a low door. In the time of the last tenant it had been used as a garden tool-house. It was a tolerably large room, and had a tolerably small window, which was in front, the door being on the side, opposite the side entrance of the house. A counter ran along the room at the back, and a table, covered with miscellaneous articles, stood on the right. Shelves were ranged completely round the room aloft, and a pair of steps, used for getting down the jars and bottles, rested in a corner. There was another room behind it, used exclusively by Dr. West.

      Seated on the counter, pounding desperately away at something in a mortar, as if his life depended on it, was a peculiar-looking gentleman in shirt-sleeves. Very tall, very thin, with legs and arms that bore the appearance of being too long even for his tall body, great hands and feet, a thin face dark and red, a thin aquiline nose, black hair, and black prominent eyes that seemed to be always on the stare—there sat he, his legs dangling and his fingers working. A straightforward, honest, simple fellow looked he, all utility and practicalness—if there is such a word. One, plain in all ways.

      It was Janus Verner—never, in the memory of anybody, called anything but "Jan"—second and youngest son of Lady Verner, brother to Lionel. He brother to courtly Lionel, to stately Decima, son to refined Lady Verner? He certainly was; though Lady Verner in her cross moods would declare that Jan must have been changed at nurse—an assertion without foundation, since he had been nursed at home under her own eye. Never in his life had he been called anything but Jan; address him as Janus, or as Mr. Verner, and it may be questioned if Jan would have answered to it. People called him "droll," and, if to be of plain, unvarnished manners and speech is to be droll, Jan decidedly was so. Some said Jan was a fool, some said he was a bear. Lady Verner did not accord him any great amount of favour herself. She had tried to make Jan what she called a gentleman, to beat into him suavity, gracefulness, tact, gloss of speech and bearing, something between a Lord Chesterfield and a Sir Roger de Coverley; and she had been obliged lo give it up as a hopeless job. Jan was utterly irreclaimable: Nature had made him plain and straightforward, and so he remained. But there was many a one that the world would bow down to as a model, whose intrinsic worth was poor compared to unoffending Jan's. Lady Verner would tell Jan he was undutiful. Jan tried to be as dutiful to her as ever he could; but he could not change his ungainly person, his awkward manner. As well try to wash a negro white.

      Lady Verner had proposed that Jan should go into the army, Jan (plain spoken as a boy, as he was still) had responded that he'd rather not go out to be shot at. What was she to do with him? Lady Verner peevishly asked. She had no money, she lamented, and she would take care Jan was not helped by Mr. Verner. To make him a barrister, or a clergyman, or a Member of Parliament (it was what Lady Verner said), would cost vast sums of money; a commission could be obtained for him gratis, in consideration of his father's services.

      "Make me an apothecary," said Jan.

      "An apothecary!" echoed Lady Verner, aghast. "That's not a gentleman's calling."

      Jan opened his great eyes. Had he taken a liking for carpentering, he would have deemed it gentlemanly enough for him.

      "What has put an apothecary's business into your head?" cried Lady Verner.

      "I should like the pounding," replied Jan.

      "The pounding!" reiterated Lady Verner, in astonishment.

      "I should like it altogether," concluded Jan, "I wish you'd let me go apprentice to Dr. West."

      Jan held to his liking. In due course of time he was apprenticed to Dr. West, and pounded away to his heart's content. Thence he went to London to walk the hospitals, afterwards completing his studies in Paris. It was at the latter period that the accident happened to Jan that called Lionel to Paris. Jan was knocked down by a carriage in the street, his leg broken, and he was otherwise injured. Time and skill cured him. Time and perseverance completed his studies, and Jan became a licensed surgeon of no mean skill. He returned to Deerham, and was engaged as assistant to Dr. West. No very ambitious position, but "it's good enough for Jan," slightingly said Lady Verner. Jan probably thought the same, or he would have sought a better. He was four-and-twenty now. Dr. West was a general practitioner, holding an Edinburgh degree only. There was plenty to do in Deerham and its neighbourhood, what with the rich and what with the poor. Dr. West chiefly attended the rich himself and left Jan to take care of the poor. It was all one to Jan.

      Jan sat on the counter in the surgery, pounding and pounding. He had just come in from his visit to Deerham Court, summoned thither by the slight accident to his sister Decima. Leaning his two elbows on the counter, his pale, puffy cheeks on his hands, and intently watching Jan with his light eyes, was a young gentleman rising fifteen, with an apron tied round his waist. This was Master Cheese; an apprentice, as Jan once had been. In point of fact, the pounding now was Master Cheese's proper work, but he was fat and lazy, and as sure as Jan came into the surgery, so sure would young Cheese begin to grunt and groan, and vow that his arms were "knocked off" with the work. Jan, in his indolent manner—and in motion and СКАЧАТЬ