JAN'S SAVINGS.
Lionel Verner looked his situation full in the face. It was not a
desirable one. When he had been turned out of Verner's Pride before, it
is probable he had thought _that_ about the extremity of all human
calamity; but that, looking back upon it, appeared a position to be
coveted, as compared with this. In point of fact it was. He was free
then from pecuniary liabilities; he did not owe a shilling in the world;
he had five hundred pounds in his pocket; nobody but himself to look to;
and--he was a younger man. In the matter of years he was not so very
much older now; but Lionel Verner, since his marriage, had bought some
experience in human disappointment, and nothing ages a man's inward
feelings like it.
He was now, with his wife, a burden upon his mother; a burden she could
ill afford. Lady Verner was somewhat embarrassed in her own means, and
she was preparing to reduce her establishment to the size that it used
to be in her grumbling days. If Lionel had but been free! free from debt
and difficulty! he would have gone out into the world and put his
shoulder to the wheel.
Claims had poured in upon him without end. Besides the obligations he
already knew of, not a day passed but the post brought him from London
outstanding accounts, for debts contracted by his wife, with demands for
their speedy settlement. Mr. Verner of Verner's Pride might not have
been troubled with these accounts for years, had his wife so managed:
but Mr. Verner, turned from Verner's Pride, a--it is an ugly word, but
expressive of the truth--a pauper, found the demands come pouring thick
and threefold upon his head. It was of no _use_ to reproach Sibylla; of
no use even to speak, save to ask "Is such-and-such a bill a just
claim?" Any approach to such topics was the signal for an unseemly burst
of passion on her part; or for a fit of hysterics, in which fashionable
affectation Sibylla had lately become an adept. She _tried_ Lionel
terribly--worse than tongue can tell or pen can write. There was no
social confidential intercourse. Lionel could not go to her for
sympathy, for counsel, or for comfort. If he attempted to talk over any
plans for the future, for the immediate future; what they could do, what
they could not; what might be best, what worst; she met him with the
frivolousness of a child, or with a sullen reproach that he "did nothing
but worry her." For any purposes of companionship, his wife was a
nonentity; far better that he had been without one. She made his whole
life a penance; she betrayed the frivolous folly of her nature ten times
a day; she betrayed her pettish temper, her want of self-control, dyeing
Lionel's face of a blood-red. He felt ashamed for her; he felt doubly
ashamed for himself--that his mother, that Lucy Tempest should at last
become aware what sort of a wife he had taken to his bosom, what
description of wedded life was his.
What was he to do for a living? The only thing that appeared to be open
to him was to endeavour to get some sort of a situation, where, by means
of the hands or the head, he might earn a competence. And yet, to do
this, it was necessary to be free from the danger of arrest. He went
about in dread of it. Were he to show himself in London he felt sure
that not an hour would pass, but he would be sued and taken. If his
country creditors accorded him forbearance, his town ones would not. Any
fond hope that he had formerly entertained of studying for the Bar, was
not available now. He had neither the means nor the time to give to
it--the time for study ere remuneration should come. Occasionally a
thought would cross him that some friend or other of his prosperity
might procure for him a government situation. A consulship, or
vice-consulship abroad, for instance. _Any_ thing abroad. Not to avoid
the payment of his creditors, for whether abroad or at home, Lionel
would be sure to pay them, if by dint of pinching himself he could find
the means; but that he might run away from home and mortification, take
his wife and make the best of her. But consulships and other government
appointments are more easily talked of than obtained; as any body who
has tried for them under difficulties knows. Moreover, although Lionel
had never taken a prominent part in politics, the Verner interest had
always been given against the government party, then in power. He did
not see his way at all clear before him; and he found that it was to be
still further obstructed on another score.
After thinking and planning and plotting till his brain was nearly
bewildered, he at length made up his mind to go to London, and see
whether anything could be done. With regard to his creditors there, he
must lay the state of the case frankly before them, and say: "Will you
leave me my liberty, and wait? You will get nothing by putting me in
prison, for I have no money of my own, and no friend to come forward and
advance it to clear me. Give me time, accord me my liberty, and I will
endeavour to pay you off by degrees." It was, at any rate, a
straightforward mode of going to work, and Lionel determined to adopt
it. Before mentioning it to his wife, he spoke to Lady Verner.
And then occurred the obstruction. Lady Verner, though she did not
oppose the plan, declined to take charge of Sibylla, or to retain her in
her house during Lionel's absence.
"I could not take her with me," said Lionel. "There would be more
objections to it than one. In the first place, I have not the means; in
the second--"
He came to an abrupt pause, and turned the words off. He had been about
incautiously to say, "She would most likely, once in London, run me into
deeper debt." But Lionel had kept the fact of her having run him into
debt at all, a secret in his own breast. Whatever may have been his
wife's faults and failings, he did not make it his business to proclaim
them to the world. She proclaimed enough herself, to his grievous
chagrin, without his helping to do it.
"Listen, Lionel," said Lady Verner. "You know what my feeling always was
with regard to your wife. A closer intercourse has not tended to change
that feeling, or to lessen my dislike of her. Now you must forgive my
saying this; it is but a passing allusion. Stay on with me as long as
you like; stay on for ever, if you will, and she shall stay; but if you
leave, she must leave. I should be sorry to have her here, even for a
week, without you. In fact, I would not."
"It would be quite impossible for me to take her to London," deliberated
Lionel. "I can be there alone at a very trifling cost; but a lady
involves so much expense. There must be lodgings, which are dear; and
living, which is dear; and attendance; and--and--many other sources of
outlay."
"And pray, what should you do, allowing that you went alone, without
lodgings and living and attendance, and all the rest of it?" asked Lady
Verner. "Take a room at one of their model lodging-houses, at half a
crown a week, and live upon the London air?"
"Not very healthy air for fastidious lungs," observed Lionel, with a
smile. "I don't quite know how I should manage for myself, mother;
except that I should take care to condense my expenses into the very
narrowest compass that man ever condensed them yet."
"Not you, Lionel. You were never taught that sort of close economy."
"True," he answered. "But the most efficient of all instructors has come
to me now--necessity. I wish you would increase my gratitude and my
obligation to you by allowing Sibylla to remain here. In a little time,
if I have luck, I may make a home for her in London."
"Lionel, _it cannot be_," was the reply of Lady Verner. And he knew when
she spoke in that quiet tone of emphasis, that it could not be. "Why
should you go to London?" she resumed. "My opinion is that you will do
no good by going; that it is a wild-goose scheme altogether which you
have got in your head. I think I could tell you a better."
"What is yours?"
"Remain contentedly here with me until the return of Colonel Tempest. He
may even now be on his road. He will no doubt be able to get you some
civil appointment in one of the Presidencies; he has influence here with
the people that have to do with India. That will be the best plan,
Lionel. You are always wishing you could go abroad. Stay here quietly
until he comes; I should like you to stay, and I will put up with your
wife."
Some allusion, or allusions, in the words brought the flush to Lionel's
cheeks. "I cannot reconcile it to my conscience, mother, to remain on
here, a burden, upon your small income."
"But it is not a burden, Lionel," she said. "It is rather a help."
"How can that be?" he asked.
"So long as Jan pays."
"So long as Jan pays!" echoed Lionel, in astonishment. "Does Jan--pay?"
"Yes he does. I thought you knew it? Jan came here the day you
arrived--don't you remember it, when he had the pins in his shirt?
Decima had invited him to dinner, and he came in ten minutes before it,
and called me out of the room here, where I was with Lucy. The first
thing he did was to tumble into my lap a roll of bank-notes, which he
had been to Heartburg to get. A hundred and forty pounds, it was; the
result of his savings since he joined Dr. West in partnership. The next
thing he said was that all his own share of the profits of the practice,
he should bring to me to make up for the cost of you and Sibylla. Jan
said he had proposed that you should go to him; but Sibylla would not
consent to it."
Lionel's blood coursed on with a glow. Jan slaving and working for him!
"I never knew this," he cried.
"I am sure I thought you did," said Lady Verner. "I supposed it to have
been a prearranged thing between you and Jan. Lionel," looking up into
his face with an expression of care, and lowering her voice, "but for
that hundred and forty pounds, I don't see how I could have gone on. You
had been very liberal to me, but somehow debt upon debt seemed to come
in, and I was growing quite embarrassed. Jan's money set me partially
straight. My dear--as you see you are no 'burden,' as you call it, you
will give up this London scheme, will you not, and remain on?"
"I suppose I must," mechanically answered Lionel, who seemed buried in
thought.
He did suppose he must. He was literally without money, and his
intention had been to ask the loan of a twenty-pound note from generous
Jan, to carry him to London, and keep him there while he turned himself
about, and saw what could be done. How could he ask Jan now? There was
little doubt that Jan had left himself as void of ready cash as he,
Lionel, was. Dr. West's was not a business where patients went and paid
their guinea fee, two or three dozen patients a day. Dr. West (or Jan
for him) had to doctor his patients for a year, and send in his modest
bill at the end of it, very often waiting for another year before the
bill was paid. Sibylla on his hands, and no money, he did not see how he
was to get to London.
"But just think of it," resumed Lady Verner. "Jan's savings for nearly
three years of practice to amount only to a hundred and forty pounds! I
questioned him pretty sharply, asking him what on earth he could have
done with his money, and he acknowledged that he had given a good deal
away. He said Miss West had borrowed some, the doctor kept her so short;
then Jan, it seems, forgot to put down the expenses of the horse to the
general account, and that had to come out of his pocket. Another thing
he acknowledged having done. When he finds the poor can't conveniently
pay their bills, he crosses it off in the book, and furnishes the money
himself. He has not common-sense, you know, Lionel; and never had."
Lionel caught up his hat, and went out in the moment's impulse, seeking
Jan. Jan was in the surgery alone, making up pills, packing up
medicines, answering callers; doing, in fact, Master Cheese's work.
Master Cheese had a headache, and was groaning dismally in consequence
in an arm-chair, in front of Miss Deb's sitting-room fire, and sipping
some hot elder wine, with sippets of toast in it, which he had assured
Miss Deb was a sovereign specific, though it might not be generally
known, to keep off the sickness.
"Jan," said Lionel, going straight up, and grasping him by the hand;
"what am I to say to you? I did not know, until ten minutes ago, what it
is that you are doing for me."
Jan put down a pill-box he held, and looked at Lionel. "What am I doing
for you?" he asked.
"I speak of this money that I find you have handed to my mother. Of the
money you have undertaken to hand to her."
"Law, is that all?" said Jan, taking up the pill-box again, and biting
one of the pills in two to test its quality. "I thought you were going
to tell me I had sent you poison, or something; coming in like that."
"Jan, I can never repay you. The money I may, some time; I hope I shall:
the debt of gratitude, never."
"There's nothing to repay," returned Jan, with composure. "As long as I
have meat and drink and clothes, what do I want with extra money? You
are heartily welcome to it, Lionel."
"You are working your days away, Jan, and for no benefit to yourself. I
am reaping it."
"A man can but work," responded Jan. "I like work, for my part; I
wouldn't be without it. If old West came home and said he'd take all the
patients for a week, and give me a holiday, I should only set on and
pound. Look here," pointing to the array on the counter, "I have done
more work in two hours than Cheese gets through in a week."
Lionel could not help smiling. Jan went on--
"I don't work for the sake of accumulating money, but because work is
life's business, and I like work for its own sake. If I got no money by
it, I should work. Don't think about the money, Lionel. While it lay in
that bank where was the use of it? Better for my mother to have it, than
for me to be hoarding it."
"Jan, did it never strike you that it might be well to make some
provision for contingencies? Old age, say; or sudden deprivation of
strength, through accident or other cause? If you give away all you
might save for yourself, what should you do were the evil day to come?"
Jan looked at his arms. "I am tolerably strong," said he; "feel me. My
head's all right, and my limbs are all right. If I should be deprived of
strength before my time, I dare say, God, in taking it, would find some
means just to keep me from want."
The answer was delivered in the most straightforward simplicity. Lionel
looked at him until his eyes grew moist.
"A pretty fellow I should be, to hoard up money while anybody else
wanted it!" continued Jan. "You and Sibylla make yourselves comfortable,
Lionel, that's all."
They were interrupted by the entrance of John Massingbird and his pipe.
John appeared to find his time hang rather heavily on his hands: _he_
could not say that work was the business of his life. He might be seen
lounging about Deerham at all hours of the day and night, smoking and
gossiping. Jan was often honoured with a visit. Mr. Massingbird of
Verner's Pride was not a whit altered from Mr. Massingbird of nowhere:
John favoured the tap-rooms as much as he had used to favour them.
"The very man I wanted to see!" cried he, giving Lionel a hearty slap on
the shoulder. "I want to talk to you a bit on a matter of business. Will
you come up to Verner's Pride?"
"When?" asked Lionel.
"This evening, if you will. Come to dinner: only our two selves."
"Very well," replied Lionel. And he went out of the surgery, leaving
John Massingbird talking to his brother.
"On business," John Massingbird had said. Was it to ask him about the
mesne profits?--when he could refund them?--to tell him he would be
sued, unless he did refund them? Lionel did not know; but he had been
expecting John Massingbird to take some such steps.
In going back home, choosing the near cross-field way, as Jan often did,
Lionel suddenly came upon Mrs. Peckaby, seated on the stump of a tree,
in a very disconsolate fashion. To witness her thus, off the watch for
the white animal that might be arriving before her door, surprised
Lionel.
"I'm a'most sick of it, sir," she said. "I'm sick to the heart with
looking and watching. My brain gets weary and my eyes gets tired. The
white quadruple don't come, and Peckaby, he's a-rowing at me
everlastin'. I'm come out here for a bit o' peace."
"Don't you think it would be better to give the white donkey up for a
bad job, Mrs. Peckaby?"
"Give it up!" she uttered, aghast. "Give up going to New Jerusalem on a
white donkey! No, sir, that would be a misfortin' in life!"
Lionel smiled sadly as he left her.
"There are worse misfortunes in life, Mrs. Peckaby, than not going to
New Jerusalem on a white donkey."