VERNER’S PRIDE.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF “EAST LYNNE.”
CHAPTER XXXV. “I SEE’D A DEAD MAN!”
Jan Verner was turning in at his own door—the surgery—at a swinging pace. Jan’s natural pace was a deliberate one; but Jan found so much to do, now he was alone in the business, that he had no resource but to move at the rate of a steam-engine. Otherwise, he would never have got through his day’s work. Jan had tried one assistant, who had proved to be more plague than profit, and Jan was better without him. Master Cheese, promoted now to tail-coats and turn-up collars, was coming on, and could attend to trifling cases. Master Cheese wished to be promoted also to “Mister” Cheese: but he remained obstinately excessively short, and people would still call him “Master.” He appeared to grow in breadth instead of height, and underwent, in consequence, a perpetual inward mortification. Jan would tell him he should eat less and walk more; but the advice was not taken.
Jan Verner was turning into the surgery at a swinging pace, and came in violent contact with Master Cheese, who was coming out at another. Jan rubbed his chest, and Cheese his head.
“I say, Jan,” said he, “can’t you look where you’re going?”
“Can’t you look?” returned Jan. “Where are you off to?”
“There’s something the matter at Duff’s. About a dozen came here in a body, wanting you. Dan Duff was dying, Bob says.”
Jan turned his eyes on Bob, the surgery-boy. Bob answered the look:
“It’s what they said, sir. They said as Dan Duff was a-dying and a-frothing at the mouth. It’s about five minutes ago, sir.”
“Did you go over?” asked Jan of Cheese. “I saw a crowd round the door.”
“No I didn’t. I am going now. I was in-doors, having my supper.”
“Then you need not trouble yourself,” returned Jan. “Stop where you are, and digest your supper.”
He, Jan, was speeding off, when a fresh deputation arrived. Twenty anxious faces at the least, in a commotion, all their tongues going together.
“Dan was frothing dreadful, and his legs was twitchin’ like one in the convulsions.”
“What has caused it?” asked Jan. “I saw him well enough an hour or two ago.”
“He see a dead man, sir; as it’s said. We can’t come to the bottom of it, ’cause of his not answering no questions. He be too bad, that he be.”
“He did see a dead man,” put in Polly Dawson, who made one of the deputation, and was proud of being able to add her testimony to the asserted fact. “Leastways, he said he did. I was a-buying some silk, sir, in at Mother Duff’s shop, and Susan Peckaby was in there too, she was, a-talking rubbish about her white donkey, when Dan flounders in upon us in a state not to be told, a-frightening of us dreadful, and a-smashing in the winder with his arm. And he said he’d seen a dead man.”
Jan could not make sense of the tale. There was nobody lying dead in Deerham that he knew of. He pushed the crowd round the door right and left to get space to enter. The shop was pretty full already, but numbers pushed in after Jan. Dan had been carried into the kitchen at the back of the shop, and was laid upon the floor, a pillow under his head. The kitchen was more crowded than the shop; there was not breathing space; and room could hardly be found for Jan.
The shop was Mrs. Duff’s department. If she chose to pack it full of people to the ceiling, it was her affair: but Jan made the kitchen, where the boy lay, his.
“What’s the matter with him, sir?” was the eager question, the moment Jan cast his eyes on the invalid.
“I may be able to ascertain as soon as I have elbow room,” replied Jan. “Suppose you give it me? Mrs. Duff may stop, but nobody else.”
Jan’s easy words carried authority in their tone, and the company turned tail and began to file out.
“Couldn’t you do with me in, as well as his mother, sir?” asked Susan Peckaby. I was here when he came in, I was; and I knowed what it was a’most afore he spoke. He have been frightened by that thing in the pound. Only a few minutes afore, it had turned my inside a’most out.”
“No, I can’t,” answered Jan. “I must have the room clear. Perhaps I shall send away his mother.”
“I should ha’ liked to know for sure,” meekly observed Susan Peckaby, resigning herself to her fate. “I hope you’ll ask him, sir, when he comes to, whether it were not that thing in the pound as frightened him. I took it for some’at else, more’s the grief! but it looks, for all the world, like a ghost in the moonlight.”
“What is in the pound?” demanded Jan.
“It’s a white cow,” responded Susan Peckaby. “And it strikes me as it’s Farmer Blow’s. He have got a white cow, you know, sir, like he have got a white pony, and they be always a giving me a turn, one or t’other of ’em. I’d like old Blow to be indicted for a pest, I would! a-keeping white animals to upset folks. It’s not a week ago that I met the cow in the road at dusk,—strayed through a gap in the hedge. Tiresome beast! a-causing my heart to leap into my mouth!”
“If Dan have put himself into this state, and done all this damage, through nothing but seeing of a white cow, won’t I baste him!” emphatically rejoined Mrs. Duff.
Jan at length succeeded in getting the kitchen clear. But for some time, in spite of all his skill and attention—and he spared neither—he could make no impression upon the unhappy Dan. His
