Sawn Off Part 2

"Teasing you? Well, isn't it a fact? You shot him through and through first time we were at church, and your victim has been our humble servant ever since."

"But, papa, do you think Thomas could have destroyed the h.o.a.rding?"

"Well, I don't know, my dear. He was very indignant about it, and said if this was his place he would soon down with the obstruction."

"Then it must have been he. You ought to scold him well."

"What, for getting rid of a nuisance?"

"No: for getting you into such trouble with Lord Pinemount."

"Hah!" said the Doctor dreamily; "it's a strange world, Very. Perhaps we had better go back to Iquique."

"Oh, papa!" cried the girl in dismay.

"Don't you want to go?"

"What, leave this lovely place, where it is always green, and the flowers are everywhere, for that dreadful dry desert place where one is parched to death? Ah, no, no, no!"

"Humph!" said the Doctor--"always green. Don't seem so, Very: something, to my mind, is getting ripe at a tremendous rate."

"I don't know what you mean, dear," said the girl consciously.

"Don't you? Ah well, never mind. But you need not be uneasy,--I do not mean to go back: this place will just suit me to write my book, and I'm not going to stir for all the Lord Pinemounts in England."

"I wonder how you could ever leave so beautiful a country as England, papa," said Veronica, as the breakfast went on.

"You wouldn't wonder, if you knew all," said the Doctor thoughtfully.

"All, papa?--all what?"

The Doctor was silent, and his child respected his silence. The breakfast was ended, and the paper was thrown down.

"I don't see why you should not know, my dear. You are a woman now, and thinking about such things."

Veronica looked across at him wonderingly.

"You asked me why I left England, or some such question. It was because of the woman I loved, my dear."

"Mamma? To join her at Iquique?"

"No," said the Doctor thoughtfully; "it was before I knew of her existence."

"Ah, papa!"

"Yes, my dear. I was desperately in love with a lady before I knew your dear mother."

Veronica rose with wondering eyes, and knelt down beside her father, resting her elbows on his knees and gazing up in his face.

"Do people--? You loved mamma very dearly, papa?" she whispered.

"Very, my child; and we were very happy till it pleased Heaven to take her away. She taught a poor, weak, foolish man what a good woman really is."

There was a long pause, and then Veronica said,--

"Do people love more than once, papa?"

"I don't know, dear," he said, smiling. "I loved here in England very desperately, and when the lady I wors.h.i.+pped threw me over for another, I swore I would never look a woman in the face again with the idea of wedding; and in utter disgust left England, and all I knew, to roam for a time in the Malay Archipelago; and from thence I went to South America, following out my natural history tasks. Then I found out I had been a fool."

"I do not understand you, papa."

"I found, my darling, that I had wasted the strength of a young man's first love upon a miserable handsome coquette."

"How did you find that out, papa?"

"By meeting your dear mother, who was everything a true woman should be; and instead of my life proving to be a miserable state of exile, it was all that joy could give till the day of the great pain."

There was another long pause, and then the Doctor said cheerfully,--

"And that's why Doctor Salado went away from England. By the way, Very, I'm not a regular doctor, though I studied medicine after I left England very hard."

"How can you say so, dear, when you know how all the poor people cried at your going away? They said no one would ever cure them of the fever again as you did. Why, they always called you the great doctor."

"Yes, my dear: but people here would call me the great quack. There, I'm going for my walk round. But--hullo! here's his lords.h.i.+p to see the burnt h.o.a.rding."

For just at that moment Lord Pinemount's loud, harsh voice floated in at the window.

"Disgraceful!" he cried.

Then there was a murmur of another voice, and again of another, as if two men were respectfully addressing his lords.h.i.+p.

"An old scoundrel!" came in at the window again.

"He means me!" cried the Doctor excitedly, rising.

"No, no, papa--please, please!" whispered Veronica, clinging to him.

"But I'm sure he does, Very."

"I mean, don't go out, papa dear: you would be so angry."

"Would be? I am!--furiously angry. How dare he call me an old scoundrel!"

"Pray, pray don't quarrel with him, dear."

"I'm not going to, pet; but I'll knock his head off for him."

"No, no; you shall not go out, dear. I will not have my dear father disgrace himself like that."