Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/141

. 24, 1863.] “Mr. Jan, you have told us nothing yet about the wedding in the morning.”

“It went off,” answered Jan.

“But the details? How did the ladies look?”

“They looked as usual, for all I saw,” replied Jan.

“What did they wear?”

“Wear? Gowns, I suppose.”

“Oh, Mr. Jan! Surely you saw better than that! Can’t you tell what sort of gowns?”

Jan really could not. It may be questioned whether he could have told a petticoat from a gown. Miss Amilly was waiting with breathless interest, her lips apart.

“Some were in white, and some were in colours, I think,” hazarded Jan, trying to be correct in his goodnature. “Decima was in a veil.”

“Of course she was,” acquiesced Miss Amilly with emphasis. “Did the bridesmaids—”

What pertinent question relating to the bridesmaids Miss Amilly was about to put, never was known. A fearful sound interrupted it. A sound nearly impossible to describe. Was it a crash of thunder? Had an engine from the distant railway taken up its station outside their house, and gone off with a bang? Or had the surgery blown up? The room they were in shook, the windows rattled, the Miss Wests screamed with real terror, and Jan started from his seat.

“It can’t be an explosion of gas!” he muttered.

Bursting out of the room, he nearly knocked down Martha, who was bursting into it. Instinct, or perhaps sound, took Jan to the surgery, and they all followed in his wake. Bob, the image of terrified consternation, stood in the midst of a débris of glass, his mouth open, and his hair standing on end. The glass bottles and jars of the establishment had flown from their shelves, causing the unhappy Bob to believe that the world had come to an end.

But what was the débris there, compared to the débris in the next room, Jan’s. The window was out, the furniture was split, the various chemical apparatus had been shivered into a hundred pieces, the tamarind jar was in two, and Master Cheese was extended on the floor on his back, his hands scorched, his eyebrows singed off, his face black, and the end of his nose burning.

“Oh! that’s it, is it?” said Jan, when his eyes took in the state of things. “I knew it would come to it.”

“He have been and blowed hisself up,” remarked Bob, who had stolen in after them.

“Is it the gas?” sobbed Miss Amilly, hardly able to speak for terror.

“No, it’s not the gas,” returned Jan, examining the débris more closely. “It’s one of that gentleman’s chemical experiments.”

Deborah West was bending over the prostrate form in alarm. “He surely can’t be dead!” she shivered.

“Not he,” said Jan. “Come, get up,” he added, taking Master Cheese by the arm to assist him.

He was placed in a chair, and there he sat, coming to, and emitting sundry dismal groans.

“I told you what you’d bring it to, if you persisted in attempting experiments that you know nothing about,” was Jan’s reprimand, delivered in a sharp tone. “A pretty state of things, this is.”

Master Cheese groaned again.

“Are you much hurt?” asked Miss Deb, in a sympathising accent.

“Oh-o-o-o-o-o-h!” replied Master Cheese.

“Is there anything we can get for you?” resumed Miss Deb.

“Oh-o-o-o-o-o-h!” repeated Master Cheese. “A glass of wine might revive me.”

“Get up,” said Jan, “and let’s see if you can walk. He’s not hurt, Miss Deb.”

Master Cheese, yielding to the peremptory movement of Jan’s arm, had no resource but to show them that he could walk. He had taken a step or two as dolefully as it was possible for him to do, keeping his eyes shut, and stretching out his hands before him after the manner of the blind, when an interruption came from Miss Amilly.

“What can this be, lying here?”

She was bending her head near the old bureau, which had been rent in the explosion, her eyes fixed upon some large letter or paper on the floor,floor. [sic] They crowded round at the words, Jan picked it up, and found it to be a folded parchment, bearing a great seal.

“Halloa!” exclaimed Jan.

On the outside was written “Codicil to the will of Stephen Verner.”

“What is it?” exclaimed Miss Deborah, and even Master Cheese contrived to get his eyes open to look.

“It is the lost codicil,” replied Jan. “It must have been in that bureau. How did it get there?”

How indeed? There ensued a pause.

“It must have been placed there”—Jan was beginning, and then he stopped himself. He would not, before those ladies, say—“by Dr. West.”

But to Jan it was now perfectly clear. That old hunting for the “prescription” which had puzzled him at the time, was explained now. There was the “prescription”—the codicil! Dr. West had had it in his hand when disturbed in that room by a stranger: he had flung it back in the bureau in his hurry, pushed it back: by some unexplainable means he must have pushed it too far, out of sight. And there it had lain until now, intact and undiscovered.

The hearts of the Miss Wests were turning to sickness, their countenances to pallor. That it could be no other than their father who had stolen the codicil from Stephen Verner’s dying chamber, was present to their conviction. His motive could only have been to prevent Verner’s Pride passing to Lionel, over his daughter and her husband. What did he think of his work when the news came of Frederick’s death? What did he think of it when John Massingbird returned in person? What did he think of it when he read Sibylla’s dying message, written to him by Amilly—“Tell papa it is the leaving Verner’s Pride that has killed me”?