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?"
"Only beginning, Jan."
"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.