Yussuf the Guide Part 2

As they entered, a pale attenuated lad of about seventeen, who was lying back in an easy-chair, with his head supported by a pillow, and a book in his hand, turned to them slightly, and his unnaturally large eyes had in them rather a wondering look, which was succeeded by a smile as the professor strode to his side, and took his long, thin, girlish hand.

"Why, Lawrence, my boy, I did not know you were so ill."

"Ill? Nonsense, man!" said the lawyer shortly. "He's not ill. Are you, my lad?"

He shook hands rather roughly as he spoke from the other side of the invalid lad's chair, while Mrs Dunn gave her hands an impatient jerk, and went behind to brush the long dark hair from the boy's forehead.

He turned up his eyes to her to smile his thanks, and then laid his cheek against the hand that had been smoothing his hair.

"No, Mr Burne, I don't think I'm ill," he said in a low voice. "I only feel as if I were so terribly weak and tired. I get too tired to read sometimes, and I never do anything at all to make me so."

"Hah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the lawyer.

"I thought it was the doctor come back," continued the lad. "I say, Mr Preston--you are my guardian, you know--is there any need for him to come? I am so tired of cod-liver oil."

"Yah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the lawyer; "it would tire anybody but a lamp."

He snorted this out, and then blew another blast upon his nose, which made some ornament upon the chimney-piece rattle.

"Doctor?" said the professor rather dreamily, as he sat down beside the patient. "I suppose he knows best. I did not know you were so ill, my boy."

"I'm not ill, sir."

"But they say you are, my lad. I was going abroad; but I heard that you were not so well, and--and I came up."

"I am very glad," said the lad, "for it is very dull lying here. Old Dunny is very good to me, only she will bother me so to take more medicine, and things that she says will do me good, and I do get so tired of everything. How is the book getting on, sir?"

"Oh, very slowly, my lad," said the professor, with more animation. "I was going abroad to travel and study the places about which I am writing, but--"

"When do you go?" cried the lad eagerly.

"I was going within a few days, but--"

"Whereto?"

"Smyrna first, and then to the south coast of Asia Minor, and from thence up into the mountains."

"Is it a beautiful country, Mr Preston?"

"Yes; a very wild and lovely country, I believe."

"With mountains and valleys and flowers?"

"Oh, yes, a glorious place."

"And when are you going?"

"I was going within a few days, my boy," said the professor kindly; "but--"

"Is it warm and sunshiny there, sir?"

"Very."

"In winter?"

"Oh, yes, in the valleys; in the mountains there is eternal snow."

"But it is warm in the winter?"

"Oh, yes; the climate is glorious, my lad."

"And here, before long, the leaves will fall from that plane-tree in the corner of the square, that one whose top you can just see; and it will get colder, and the nights long, and the gas always burning in the lamps, and shining dimly through the blinds; and then the fog will fill the streets, and creep in through the cracks of the window; and the blacks will fall and come in upon my book, and it will be so bitterly cold, and that dreadful cough will begin again. Oh, dear!"

There was silence in the room as the lad finished with a weary sigh; and though it was a bright morning in September, each of the elder personages seemed to conjure up the scenes the invalid portrayed, and thought of him lying back there in the desolate London winter, miserable in spirit, and ill at ease from his complaint.

Then three of the four present started, for the lawyer blew a challenge on his trumpet.

"There is no better climate anywhere, sir," he said, addressing the professor, "and no more healthy spot than London."

"Bless the man!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs Dunn.

"I beg to differ from you, sir," said the professor in a loud voice, as if he were addressing a cla.s.s. "By the reports of the meteorological society--"

"Hang the meteorological society, sir!" cried the lawyer, "I go by my own knowledge."

"Pray, gentlemen!" cried Mrs Dunn, "you forget how weak the patient is."

"Hush, Mrs Dunn," said the lad eagerly; "let them talk. I like to hear."

"I beg pardon," said the professor; "and we are forgetting the object of our visit. Lawrence, my boy, would you like to go to Brighton or Hastings, or the Isle of Wight?"

"No," said the lad sadly, "it is too much bother."

"To Devonshire, then--to Torquay?"

"No, sir. I went there last winter, and I believe it made me worse. I don't want to be always seeing sick people in invalid chairs, and be always hearing them talk about their doctors. How long shall you be gone, sir?"

"How long? I don't know, my lad. Why?"

The boy was silent, and lay back gazing out of the window in a dreamy way for some moments before he spoke again, and then his hearers were startled by his words.

"I feel," he said, speaking as if to himself, "as if I should soon get better if I could go to a land where the sun shone, and the sea was blue, and the sweet soft cool breezes blew down from the mountains that tower up into the clear sky--where there were fresh things to see, and there would be none of this dreadful winter fog."

The professor and the lawyer exchanged glances, and the latter took a great pinch of snuff out of his box, and held it half-way up towards his nose.

Then he started, and let it fall upon the carpet--so much brown dust, for the boy suddenly changed his tone, and in a quick excited manner exclaimed, as he started forward:

"Oh! Mr Preston, pray--pray--take me with you when you go."