JAN'S REMEDY FOR A COLD.
A cold bright day in mid-winter. Luncheon was just over at Deerham Court, and Lady Verner, Decima, and Lucy Tempest had gathered round the fire in the dining-room. Lucy had a cold. She laughed at it; said she was used to colds; but Lady Verner had insisted upon her wrapping herself in a shawl, and not stirring out of the dining-room—which was the warmest room in the house—for the day. So there reclined Lucy in state, in an arm-chair with cushions; half laughing at being made into an invalid, half rebelling at it.
Lady Verner sat opposite to her. She wore a rich black silk dress—the mourning for Mrs. Verner—and a white lace cap of the finest guipure. The white gloves on her hands were without a wrinkle, and her curiously fine handkerchief lay on her lap. Lady Verner could indulge her taste for snowy gloves and for delicate handkerchiefs now, untroubled by the thought of the money they cost. The addition to her income, which she had spurned from Stephen Verner, she accepted willingly from Lionel. Lionel was liberal as a man and as a son. He would have given the half of his fortune to his mother, and not said, "It is a gift." Deerham Court had its carriage and horses now, and Deerham Court had its additional servants. Lady Verner visited and received company, and the look of care had gone from her face, and the querulousness from her tone.
But it was in Lady Verner's nature to make a trouble of things; and if she could not do it in a large way, she must do it in a small. To-day, occurred this cold of Lucy's, and that afforded scope for Lady Verner. She sent for Jan as soon as breakfast was over, in defiance of the laughing protestations of Lucy. But Jan had not made his appearance yet, and Lady Verner waxed wroth.
He was coming in now—now, as the servant was carrying out the luncheon-tray, entering by his usual mode—the back-door, and nearly knocking over the servant and tray in his haste, as his long legs strode to the dining-room. Lady Verner had left off reproaching Jan for using the servants' entrance, finding it waste of breath: Jan would have come down the chimney with the sweeps, had it saved him a minute's time. "Who's ill?" asked he.
Lady Verner answered the question by a sharp reprimand, touching Jan's tardiness.
"I can't be in two places at once," good-humouredly replied Jan. "I have been with one patient since four o'clock this morning, until five minutes ago. Who is it that's ill?"
Lucy explained her ailments, giving Jan her own view of them, that there was nothing the matter with her but a bit of a cold.
"Law!" contemptuously returned Jan. "If I didn't think somebody must be dying! Cheese said they'd been after me about six times!"
"If you don't like to attend Miss Tempest, you can let it alone," said Lady Verner. "I can send elsewhere."
"I'll attend anybody that I'm wanted to attend," said Jan. "Where d'ye feel the symptoms of the cold?" asked he of Lucy. "In the head or chest?"
"I am beginning to feel them a little here," replied Lucy, touching her chest.
"Only beginning to feel them, Miss Lucy?"
"Well, then, you just wring out a long strip of rag in cold water, and put it round your neck, letting the ends rest on the chest," said Jan. "A double piece, from two to three inches broad. It must be covered outside with thin waterproof skin to keep the wet in; you know what I mean; Decima's got some; oil-skin's too thick. And get a lot of toast and water, or lemonade; any liquid you like; and sip a drop of it every minute, letting it go down your throat slowly. You'll soon get rid of your sore chest if you do this; and you'll have no cough."
Lady Verner listened to these directions of Jan's in unqualified amazement. She had been accustomed to the very professional remedies of Dr. West. Decima laughed. "Jan," said she, "I could fancy an old woman prescribing this, but not a doctor."
"It'll cure," returned Jan. "It will prevent the cough coming on; and prevention's better than cure. You try it at once, Miss Lucy; and you'll soon see. You will know then what to do if you catch cold in future."
"Jan," interposed Lady Verner, "I consider the very mention of such remedies beneath the dignity of a medical man."
Jan opened his eyes. "But if they are the best remedies, mother?"
"At any rate, Jan, if this is your fashion of prescribing, you will not fill your pockets," said Decima.
"I don't want to fill my pockets by robbing people," returned plain Jan. "If I know a remedy that costs nothing, why shouldn't I let my patients have the benefit of it, instead of charging them for drugs that won't do half the good?"
"Jan," said Lucy, "if it cost gold I should try it. I have great faith in what you say."
"All right," replied Jan. "But it must be done at once, mind. If you let the cold get ahead first, it will not be so efficacious. And now good-day to you all, for I must be off to my patients. Good-bye, mother."
Away went Jan. And, amidst much laughter from Lucy, the wet "rag," Jan's elegant phrase for it, was put round her neck, and covered up. Lionel came in, and they amused him by reciting Jan's prescription.
"It is this house which has given her the cold," grumbled Lady Verner, who invariably laid faults and misfortunes upon something or somebody. "The servants are for ever opening that side-door, and then there comes a current of air throughout the passage. Lionel, I am not sure but I shall leave Deerham Court."
Lionel leaned against the mantel-piece, a smile upon his face. He had completely recovered his good looks, scared away though they had been for a time by his illness. He was in deep mourning for Mrs. Verner. Decima looked up, surprised at Lady Verner's last sentence.
"Leave Deerham Court, mamma! When you are so much attached to it!"
"I don't dislike it," acknowledged Lady Verner. "But it suited me better when we were living quietly, than it does now. If I could find a larger house with the same conveniences, and in an agreeable situation, I might leave this."
Decima did not reply. She felt sure that her mother was attached to the house, and would never quit it. Her eyes said as much as they encountered Lionel's.
"I wish my mother would leave Deerham Court!" he said aloud.
Lady Verner turned to him. "Why should you wish it, Lionel?"
"I wish you would leave it to come to me, mother. Verner's Pride wants a mistress."
"It will not find one in me," said Lady Verner. "Were you an old man, Lionel, I might then come. Not as it is."
"What difference can my age make?" asked he.
"Every difference," said Lady Verner. "Were you an old man, you might not be thinking of getting married; as it is, you will be. Your wife will reign at Verner's Pride, Lionel."
Lionel made no answer.
"You will be marrying sometime, I suppose?" reiterated Lady Verner, with emphasis.
"I suppose I shall be," replied Lionel; and his eyes, as he spoke, involuntarily strayed to Lucy. She caught the look, and blushed vividly.
"How much of that do you intend to drink, Miss Lucy?" asked Lionel, as she sipped the tumbler of lemonade, at her elbow.
"Ever so many tumblers of it," she answered. "Jan said I was to keep sipping it all day long. The water, going down slowly, heals the chest."
"I believe if Jan told you to drink boiling water, you'd do it, Lucy," cried Lady Verner. "You seem to fall in with all he says."
"Because I like him, Lady Verner. Because I have faith in him; and if Jan prescribes a thing, I know that he has faith in it."
"It is not displaying a refined taste to like Jan," observed Lady Verner, intending the words as a covert reprimand to Lucy.
But Lucy stood up for Jan. Even at the dread of openly disagreeing with Lady Verner, Lucy would not be unjust to one whom she deemed of sterling worth.
"I like Jan very much," said she resolutely, in her championship. "There's nobody I like so well as Jan, Lady Verner."
Lady Verner made a slight movement with her shoulders. It was almost as much as to say that Lucy was growing as hopelessly incorrigible as Jan. Lionel turned to Lucy.
"Nobody you like so well as Jan, did you say?"
Poor Lucy! If the look of Lionel, just before, had brought the hot blush to her cheek, that blush was nothing compared to the glowing crimson which mantled there now. She had not been thinking of one sort of liking when she so spoke of Jan: the words had come forth in the honest simplicity of her heart.
Did Lionel read the signs aright, as her eyes fell before his? Very probably. A smile stole over his lips.
"I do like Jan very much," stammered Lucy, essaying to mend the matter. "I may like him, I suppose? There's no harm in it."
"Oh! no harm, certainly," spoke Lady Verner, with a spice of irony. "I never thought Jan could be a favourite before. Not being fastidiously polished yourself, Lucy—forgive my saying it—you entertain, I conclude, a fellow feeling for Jan."
Lucy—for Jan's sake—would not be beaten.
"Don't you think it is better to be like Jan, Lady Verner, than—than—like Dr. West, for instance?"
"In what way?" returned Lady Verner.
"Jan is so true," debated Lucy, ignoring the question.
"And Dr. West was not, I suppose," retorted Lady Verner. "He wrote false prescriptions, perhaps? Gave false advice?"
Lucy looked a little foolish. "I will tell you the difference, as it seems to me, between Jan and other people," she said. "Jan is like a rough diamond—real within, unpolished without—but a genuine diamond withal. Many others are but the imitation stone—glittering outside, false within."
Lionel was amused.
"Am I one of the false ones, Miss Lucy?"
She took the question literally.
"No; you are true," she answered, shaking her head, and speaking with grave earnestness.
"Lucy, my dear, I would not espouse Jan's cause so warmly, were I you," advised Lady Verner. "It might be misconstrued."
"How so?" simply asked Lucy.
"It might be thought that you—pray excuse the common vulgarity of the suggestion—were in love with Jan."
"In love with Jan!" Lucy paused for a moment after the words, and then burst into a merry fit of laughter. "Oh, Lady Verner! I cannot fancy anybody falling in love with Jan. I don't think he would know what to do."
"I don't think he would," quietly replied Lady Verner.
A peal at the courtyard bell, and the letting down the steps of a carriage. Visitors for Lady Verner. They were shown to the drawing-room, and the servant came in.
"The Countess of Elmsley and Lady Mary, my lady."
Lady Verner rose with alacrity. They were favourite friends of hers—nearly the only close friends she had made in her retirement.
"Lucy, you must not venture into the drawing-room," she stayed to say. "The room is colder than this. Come."
The last "come" was addressed conjointly to her son and daughter. Decima responded to it, and followed; Lionel remained where he was.
"The cold room would not hurt me, but I am glad not to go," began Lucy, subsiding into a more easy tone, a more social manner, than she ventured on in the presence of Lady Verner. "I think morning visiting the greatest waste of time! I wonder who invented it?"
"Somebody who wanted to kill time," answered Lionel.
"It is not as though friends, who really cared for each other, met and talked. The calls are made just for form's sake, and for nothing else, I will never fall into it when I am my own mistress."
"When is that to be?" asked Lionel, smiling.
"Oh! I don't know," she answered, looking up at him in all confiding simplicity. "When papa comes home, I suppose."
Lionel crossed over to where she was sitting.
"Lucy, I thank you for your partisanship of Jan," he said, in a low, earnest tone. "I do not believe anybody living knows his worth."
"Yes; for I do," she replied, her eyes sparkling.
"Only, don't you get to like him too much—as Lady Verner hinted," continued Lionel, his eyes dancing with merriment at his own words.
Lucy's eyelashes fell on her hot cheek. "Please not to be so foolish," she answered, in a pleading tone.
"Or a certain place—that has been mentioned this morning—might have to go without a mistress for good," he whispered.
What made him say it? It is true he spoke in a light, joking tone; but the words were not justifiable, unless he meant to follow them up seriously in future. He did mean to do so when he spoke them.
Decima came in, sent by Lady Verner to demand Lionel's attendance.
"I am coming directly," replied Lionel. And Decima went back again.
"You ought to take Jan to live at Verner's Pride," said Lucy to him, the words unconsciously proving that she had understood Lionel's allusion to it. "If he were my brother, I would not let him be always slaving himself at his profession."
"If he were your brother, Lucy, you would find that Jan would slave just as he does now, in spite of you. Were Jan to come into Verner's Pride to-morrow, through my death, I really believe he would let it, and live on where he does, and doctor the parish to the end of time."
"Will Verner's Pride go to Jan after you?"
"That depends. It would, were I to die as I am now, a single man. But I may have a wife and children some time, Lucy."
"So you may," said Lucy, filling up her tumbler from the jug of lemonade. "Please to go into the drawing-room now, or Lady Verner will be angry. Mary Elmsley's there, you know."
She gave him a saucy glance from her soft bright eyes. Lionel laughed.
"Who made you so wise about Mary Elmsley, young lady?"
"Lady Verner," was Lucy's answer, her voice subsiding into a confidential tone. "She tells us all about it, me and Decima, when we are sitting by the fire of an evening. She is to be the mistress of Verner's Pride."
"Oh, indeed," said Lionel. "She is, is she! Shall I tell you something, Lucy?"
"Well?"
"If that mistress-ship—is there such a word?—ever comes to pass, I shall not be the master of it."
Lucy looked pleased. "That is just what Decima says. She says it to Lady Verner. I wish you would go to them."
"So I will. Good-bye. I shall not come in again. I have a hundred and one things to do this afternoon."
He took her hand and held it. She, ever courteous of manner, simple though she was, rose and stood before him to say her adieu, her eyes raised to his, her pretty face upturned.
Lionel gazed down upon it, and, as he had forgotten himself once before, so he now forgot himself again. He clasped it to him with a sudden movement of affection, and left on it some fervent kisses, whispering tenderly—
"Take care of yourself, my darling Lucy!"
Leaving her to make the best of the business, Mr. Lionel proceeded to the drawing-room. A few minutes' stay in it, and then he pleaded an engagement, and departed.