The Trial

‘I declare,’ grumbled Henry, as he examined the remaining amount of damage, ‘these day-schools are a great inconvenience; there’s no keeping a place fit to be seen with a great uncivilized lad always hanging about!’

‘Leonard is considered particularly gentlemanlike,’ said Ave, with lips compressed, to keep back something about old bachelors.

‘Now, I should have thought a lady would have some regard to her own drawing-room, and object to slovenliness—elbows on table, feet everywhere!’

‘Nothing is in worse taste than constraint,’ said Ave from the corners of her mouth—’at least for those that can trust their manners without it.’

‘I tell you, Ave, you are spoiling the boy. He is more conceited than ever since the Mays noticed him.’

‘Leonard conceited!’

‘Yes; he is getting as stuck up as Tom May himself—your model I believe!’

‘I thought he was yours!’

‘Mine?’

‘Yes; you always seem to aim at a poor imitation of him.’

There was a blushing angry stammer in reply; and she suppressed her smile, but felt triumphant in having hit the mark. Unready at retort, he gathered himself up, and said: ‘Well, Ave, I have only this to say, that if you choose to support that boy in his impertinences, there will be no bearing it; and I shall see what I shall do.’

Seeing what shall be done is a threat stimulating to some, but appalling to others; and Averil was of the latter class, with no desire for such a spectacle, be it what it might. She did not apologize for the trifle—possible ink, a spot of wax, a borrowed book, were far beneath an apology; but she made up her mind to humour Henry’s follies magnanimously, and avoid collisions, like an admirable peace-maker. As soon as bed-time came, she repaired to Leonard’s room; and Henry, as he went along the passage, heard the two young voices ringing with laughter! Her retort had been particularly delightful to Leonard. ‘That’s right, Ave! I’m glad you set him down, for I thought afterwards whether I ought not to have stood by you, only his way of pitching into me through you puts me into such a rage: I shall do something desperate some day!’

‘Never mind it, Leonard; it does not hurt me; and if it did, I should like to bear a great deal for you.’

‘That’s all the wrong way,’ said Leonard, smiling affectionately.

‘No; men do and women suffer.’

‘That’s trite!’ said Leonard, patting her fondly. ‘I like you to do—as you call it—Miss May does, and every one that is worth anything. I say, Ave, when I go out to the islands, you are coming too?’

‘Oh yes! I know I could do a great deal. If nothing else, I could sing; and they have a great aptitude for singing, Mary was telling me. But that reminds me I must finish copying the hymn for next Sunday; Henry hindered me, and I have six copies more to do.’

‘I’ll do some of them,’ said Leonard. ‘Let us go down now the coast is clear, if the fire is not out.’

They went down softly, Mab and all, nursed up the fire that Henry had raked out; and if Saturnalia could be held over the writing out of a hymn tune, they did it! At any rate, it had the charm of an assertion of independence; and to Averil it was something like a midnight meeting of persecuted Christians—to Leonard it was ‘great fun.’

That evening was not a solitary specimen.

Averil and Leonard intended to obviate causes of offence; but they were young and heedless, and did not feel bound to obedience. A very little temptation made them forget or defy Henry’s fancies; and Leonard was easily lashed into answers really unbecoming and violent, for which he could not bring himself to be sorry, when he thought over the petty interference and annoyance that had caused them.

These small tyrannies and frets made Averil the more devoted to the music, which was her rest, her delight, and not only exalted her above cares, but sanctioned her oblivion of them. The occupation grew upon her, never ending, still beginning, with fresh occasions for practice and new lessons, but though Bankside boys were willing to be taught, yet it was chiefly in hope of preferment as choristers at the Minster; and she soon found that a scholar no sooner proved his voice good for anything, than he went off to be trained for the choir on the foundation, which fed, clothed, and apprenticed its young singers. She found she must betake herself to an elder race if she wanted a reliable staff of voices; and some young men and women showing themselves willing, a practice, with Mr. Scudamour to keep order, was organized for late evenings, twice in the week. This was rather much! Henry opposed at first, on the ground that the evening would be broken up; to which she answered that for such a purpose they ought to be willing to sacrifice a little domestic comfort; and when he muttered a petulant ‘Pshaw,’ looked at him in reproof for sacrilege. She was not going to be one of the womankind sitting up in a row till their lords and masters should be pleased to want them!

Next, he insisted that he would not have her going about the place after dark, but she was fortified by the curate’s promise to escort her safely, and reduced him to a semi-imprecation which she again viewed as extremely wicked. The existence of that meek little helpless Mrs. Scudamour, always shut up in a warm room with her delicate baby, cut off Henry from any other possible objection, and he was obliged to submit.

Leonard would gladly have been his sister’s companion on her expeditions, but he must remain at home and prepare for the morrow’s school-work, and endure the first hour of dreariness unenlivened by her smile and greeting, and, what was worse, without the scanty infusion of peace produced by her presence. Her rapid departure after dinner always discomposed Henry; and the usual vent for his ill-humour was either a murmur against the clergy and all their measures, or the discovery of some of Leonard’s transgressions of his code. Fretted and irritable at the destruction of evening comfort, he in his turn teased the fiery temper of his brother. If there were nothing worse, his grumbling remarks interrupted, and too often they were that sort of censure that is expressively called nagging. Leonard would reply angrily, and the flashes of his passion generally produced silence. Neither brother spoke to Averil of these evening interludes, which were becoming almost habitual, but they kept Leonard in a constant sore sense of injury, yet of uneasy conscience. He looked to the Randall scholarship as his best hope of leaving home and its torments, but his illness had thrown him back: he had not only lost the last quarter, but the acquirements of the one before it were obscured; and the vexations themselves so harassed and interrupted his evening studies, that he knew it was unreasonable to hope for it at the next examination, which, from various causes, was to come after the Christmas holidays; and it would be well if he could even succeed in the summer.

Innocent as the Mays were of the harmonium business, Henry included them in the annoyance it gave. It was the work of the curate—and was not Dr. May one in everything with the clergy? had he not been instrumental in building the chapel? was it not the Mays and the clergy who had made Ave inconveniently religious and opinionative, to say nothing of Leonard? The whole town was priest—led and bigoted; and Dr. May was the despot to whom all bowed down.

This was an opinion Henry would hardly have originated: it was the shaft of an abler man than he—no other than Harvey Anderson, who had lately become known to the world by a book proving King John to have been the most enlightened and patriotic of English sovereigns, enduring the Interdict on a pure principle of national independence, and devising Magna Charta from his own generous brain—in fact, presenting a magnificent and misunderstood anticipation of the most advanced theories of the nineteenth century. The book had made so much noise in the world, that the author had been induced to quit his college tutorship, and become editor of a popular magazine. He lived in London, but often came down to spend Sunday with his mother, and had begun to be looked on as rather the lion of the place. Henry took in his magazine, and courted his notice, often bringing him into Averil’s way that she might hear her heroes treated with irony more effectual than home-made satire; but Ave was staunch. She hated the sight of Mr. Anderson; never cut the leaves of his magazine; and if driven to sing to him, took as little pains as her musical nature would let her do. But the very strength of her dislike gave it an air of prejudice, and it was set down less to principle than to party spirit and May influence.

There was another cause for Henry’s being soured. He was not of the nature to be filial with Dr. May; and therefore gratitude oppressed, and patronage embittered him. The first months of warm feeling at an end, the old spirit of independence revived, and he avoided consulting the physician as much as possible. More than once his management of a case was not approved by Dr. May; and the strong and hasty language, and the sharp reproofs that ensued, were not taken as the signs of the warm heart and friendly interest, but as the greatest offences—sullenly, but not the less bitterly endured.

Moreover, one of the Whitford surgeons had been called in by a few of the outlying families who had hitherto been patients of the Wards; and worse than all, Mrs. Rivers took her child up to London for three days in November, and it became known—through a chain of tongues—that it was for the enlargement of tonsils, on which Mr. Ward had operated a year before.

‘Old May was playing him false!’ was Henry’s cry. ‘His professions were humbug. He would endure no one who did not submit to his dictation; and he would bring in a stranger to ruin them all!’

Little did Henry know of Dr. May’s near approach to untruth in denying that he had a house to let to the opposition surgeon—of his attestations to his daughter that young Ward was a skilful operator—or of his vexation when she professed herself ready to undergo anything for his pleasure, but said that little Margaret’s health was another thing.

Yet even this might have been forgiven, but for that worst rub of all—Tom May’s manners. His politeness was intense—most punctilious and condescending in form—and yet provoking beyond measure to persons who, like Henry and Averil, had not playfulness enough to detect with certainty whether they were being made game of or not, nor whether his smoothly-uttered compliments were not innuendoes. Henry was certain of being despised, and naturally chafed against the prospect of the future connection between the two medical men of the town; and though Tom was gone back to Cambridge, it was the rankling remembrance of his supercilious looks that, more than any present offence or independence of spirit, made the young surgeon kick against direction from the physician. Here, too, Averil was of the same mind. She had heard Tom May observe that his sister Gertrude would play quite well enough for a lady; for the mission of a lady’s music was to put one to sleep at home, and cover conversation at a party; as to the rest—unprofessionals were a mistake!

After that, the civil speeches with which Tom would approach the piano only added insult to injury.

CHAPTER VIII

Ne’er readier at alarm-bell’s call, Thy burghers rose to man thy wall, Than now in danger shall be thine, Thy dauntless voluntary line.—Marmion

‘Drive fast, Will,’ said Dr. May, hastily stepping into his carriage in the early darkness of a December evening. ‘Five already, and he is to be there by 5.25.’

‘He’ was no other than Harry May, and ‘there’ was the station. With the tidings of the terrible fight of Peiho had come a letter from a messmate of Harry’s with an account of his serious wound in the chest, describing it as just short of immediately dangerous. Another letter had notified his amendment, and that he was invalided home, a few cheery words from Harry himself scrawled at the end showing that his power was far less than his good-will: and after two months’ waiting and suspense, a telegram had come from Plymouth, with the words, ‘Stoneborough, 5.25.’

In ignorance as to the state of the traveller, and expecting to find him in a condition requiring great care and watching, Dr. May had laid his injunctions on the eager family not to rush up to the station en masse to excite and overwhelm, but to leave the meeting there entirely to himself and his brougham. He had, therefore, been exceedingly annoyed that one of Henry Ward’s pieces of self-assertion had delayed him unnecessarily at a consultation; and when at last he had escaped, he spent most of his journey with his body half out of the window, hurrying Will Adams, and making noises of encouragement to the horse; or else in a strange tumult of sensation between hope and fear, pain and pleasure, suspense and thankfulness, the predominant feeling being vexation at not having provided against this contingency by sending Richard to the station.

After all the best efforts of the stout old chestnut, he and the train were simultaneously at the station, and the passengers were getting out on the opposite platform. The Doctor made a dash to cross in the rear of the train, but was caught and held fast by a porter with the angry exclamation, ‘She’s backing, sir;’ and there he stood in an agony, feeling all Harry’s blank disappointment, and the guilt of it besides, and straining his eyes through the narrow gaps between the blocks of carriages.

The train rushed on, and he was across the line the same instant, but the blank was his. Up and down the gas-lighted platform he looked in vain among the crowd, only his eye suddenly lit on a black case close to his feet, with the three letters MAY, and the next moment a huge chest appeared out of the darkness, bearing the same letters, and lifted on a truck by the joint strength of a green porter, and a pair of broad blue shoulders. Too ill to come on—telegraph, mail train—rushed through the poor Doctor’s brain as he stepped forward as if to interrogate the chest. The blue shoulders turned, a ruddy sun-burnt face lighted up, and the inarticulate exclamation on either side was of the most intense relief and satisfaction.

‘Where are the rest?’ said Harry, holding his father’s hand in no sick man’s grasp.

‘At home, I told them not to come up; I thought—’

‘Well, we’ll walk down together! I’ve got you all to myself. I thought you had missed my telegram. Hollo, Will, how d’ye do? what, this thing to drive down in?’

‘I thought you were an invalid, Harry,’ said Dr. May, with a laughing yet tearful ring in his agitated tone, as he packed himself and his son in.

‘Ay! I wished I could have let you know sooner how well I had got over it,’ said Harry, in the deep full voice of strong healthy manhood. ‘I am afraid you have been very anxious.’

‘We are used to it, my boy,’ said the Doctor huskily, stroking the great firm fingers that were lying lovingly on his knee, ‘and if it always ends in this way, it ought to do us more good than harm.’

‘It has not done harm, I hope,’ said Harry, catching him up quick. ‘Not to old Mary?’

‘No, Mary works things off, good girl. I flatter myself you will find us all in high preservation.’

‘All—all at home! That’s right.’

‘Yes, those infants from Maplewood and all. You are sure you are all right, Harry?’

‘As sure as my own feelings can make me, and the surgeon of the Dexter to back them,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t believe my lungs were touched after all, but you shall all sit upon me when you like—Tom and all. It was a greater escape than I looked for,’ he added, in a lower voice. ‘I did not think to have had another Christmas here.’

The silence lasted for the few moments till the carriage drew up behind the limes; the doors were thrown open, and the Doctor shouted to the timid anxious figure that alone was allowed to appear in the hall, ‘Come and lift him out, Mary.’

The drawing-room was a goodly sight that evening; and the Doctor, as he sat leaning back in weary happiness, might be well satisfied with the bright garland that still clustered round his hearth, though the age of almost all forbade their old title of Daisies. The only one who still asserted her right to that name was perched on the sailor’s knee, insisting on establishing that there was as much room for her there as there had been three years ago; though, as he had seated himself on a low footstool, her feet were sometimes on the ground, and moreover her throne was subject to sudden earthquakes, which made her, nothing loth, cling to his neck, draw his arm closer round her, and lean on his broad breast, proud that universal consent declared her his likeness in the family; and the two presenting a pleasant contrasting similarity—the open honest features, blue eyes, and smile, expressive of hearty good-will and simple happiness, were so entirely of the same mould in the plump, white-skinned, rosy-cheeked, golden-haired girl, and in the large, powerful, bronzed, ruddy sailor, with the thick mass of curls, at which Tom looked with hostility as fixed, though less declared, than that of his Eton days.

Those were the idle members upon the hearth-rug. On the sofa, with a small table to herself, and a tall embroidery frame before her, nearly hiding her slight person, sat Mrs. Ernescliffe, her pretty head occasionally looking out over the top of her work to smile an answer, and her artistically arranged hair and the crispness of her white dress and broad blue ribbons marking that there was a step in life between her and her sisters; her husband sat beside her on the sofa, with a red volume in his hand, with ‘Orders,’ the only word visible above the fingers, one of which was keeping his place. Hector looked very happy and spirited, though his visage was not greatly ornamented by a moustache, sandier even than his hair, giving effect to every freckle on his honest face. A little behind was Mary, winding one of Blanche’s silks over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry’s face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with those wonderful fingers of his.

Richard and Ethel were arranging the ‘sick albums’ which they had constructed—one of cheap religious prints, with texts and hymns, to be lent in cases of lingering illness; the other, commonly called the ‘profane,’ of such scraps as might please a sick child, pictures from worn-out books or advertisements, which Ethel was colouring—Aubrey volunteering aid that was received rather distrustfully, as his love of effect caused him to array the model school-children in colours gaudy enough, as Gertrude complained, ‘to corrupt a saint.’ Nor was his dilettante help more appreciated at a small stand, well provided with tiny drawers, and holding a shaded lamp, according to Gertrude, ‘burning something horrible ending in gen, that would kill anybody but Tom, who managed it,’ but which threw a beautiful light upon the various glass dishes, tubes, and slides, and the tall brass microscope that Tom was said to love better than all his kith and kin, and which afforded him occupation for his leisure moments.

‘I say, Harry,’ he asked, ‘did you get my letter?’

‘Your letter—of what date? I got none since Mary’s of the second of May, when every one was down in the fever. Poor old Ward, I never was more shocked; what is become of the young ones?’

‘Oh! you must ask Mary, Miss Ward is a bosom friend of hers.’

‘What! the girl that sang like the lark? I must hear her again. But she won’t be in tune for singing now, poor thing! What are they doing? Henry Ward taken to the practice? He used to be the dirtiest little sneak going, but I hope he is mended now.’

‘Ask my father,’ said mischievous Tom; and Dr. May answered not, nor revealed his day’s annoyance with Henry.

‘He is doing his best to make a home for his brother and sisters,’ said Richard.

‘My letter,’ said Tom, ‘was written in Whitsun week; I wish you had had it.’

‘Ay, it would have been precious from its rarity,’ said Harry. ‘What commission did it contain, may I ask?’

‘You have not by good luck brought me home a Chinese flea?’

‘He has all the fleas in creation,’ said Daisy confidentially, ‘cats’ and dogs’, and hedgehogs’, and human; and you would have been twice as welcome if you had brought one.’

‘I’ve brought no present to nobody. I’d got my eye on a splendid ivory junk, for Blanche’s wedding present, at Canton, but I couldn’t even speak to send any one after it. You have uncommon bad luck for a sailor’s relatives.’

‘As long as you bring yourself home we don’t care,’ said Blanche, treating the loss of the junk with far more resignation than did Tom that of the flea.

‘If you only had a morsel of river mud sticking anywhere,’ added Tom, ‘you don’t know the value the infusoria might be.’

‘I had a good deal more than a morsel sticking to me once,’ said Harry; ‘it was owing to my boat’s crew that I am not ever so many feet deep in it now, like many better men. They never lost sight of me, and somehow hauled me out.’

Gertrude gave him a hug, and Mary’s eyes got so misty, that her skein fell into worse entanglements than ever.

‘Were you conscious?’ asked Ethel.

‘I can’t say. I’m clear of nothing but choking and gasping then, and a good while after. It was a treacherous, unlucky affair, and I’m afraid I shall miss the licking of rascally John Chinaman. If all I heard at Plymouth is true, we may have work handy to home.’

‘At home you may say,’ said his father, ‘Dulce et, &c. is our motto. Didn’t you know what a nest of heroes we have here to receive you? Let me introduce you to Captain Ernescliffe, of the Dorset Volunteer Rifle Corps; Private Thomas May, of the Cambridge University Corps; and Mr. Aubrey Spencer May, for whom I have found a rifle, and am expected to find a uniform as soon as the wise heads have settled what colour will be most becoming.’

‘Becoming! No, papa!’ indignantly shouted Aubrey: ‘it is the colour that will be most invisible in skirmishing.’

‘Gray, faced with scarlet,’ said Hector, decidedly.

‘Yes, that is the colour of the invincible Dorsets,’ said Dr. May. ‘There you see our great authority with his military instructions in his hand.’

‘No, sir,’ replied Hector, ‘it’s not military instructions, it is Crauford’s General Orders.’

‘And,’ added the Doctor, ‘there’s his bride working the colours, and Mary wanting to emulate her.’

‘I don’t think George will ever permit us to have colours,’ said Ethel; ‘he says that Rifles have no business with them, for that they are of no use to skirmishers.’

‘The matter has been taken out of George’s hands,’ said Aubrey; ‘there would not have been a volunteer in the country if he had his way.’

‘Yes,’ explained Ethel, ‘the real soldier can’t believe in volunteers, nor cavalry in infantry; but he is thoroughly in for it now.’

‘Owing to his Roman matron’ quoth Tom. ‘It was a wonderful opening for public spirit when Lady Walkinghame insisted on Sir Henry refusing the use of the park for practice, for fear we should make targets of the children. So the Spartan mother at Abbotstoke, gallantly setting Margaret aside, sent for the committee at once to choose the very best place in the park.’

‘Papa is chairman of the committee,’ added Aubrey, ‘he is mayor this year, so we must encourage it.’

‘And Aubrey hit four times at a hundred yards,’ triumphantly declared Gertrude, ‘when Edward Anderson and Henry Ward only got a ball in by accident.’

‘Henry Ward ought to be shot at himself,’ was Aubrey’s sentiment, ‘for not letting Leonard be in the corps.’

‘The fellow that you brought to Maplewood?’ asked Hector. ‘I thought he was at school.’

‘Didn’t you know that old Hoxton has given leave to any of the sixth form to drill and practise? and that trumpery fellow, Henry, says he can’t afford the outfit, though his sister would have given the uniform.’

‘Let me tell you, young folks,’ said the Doctor, ‘that you are not to suppose it always hails crack rifles on all sorts of improved systems, as it does when Captain Hector is in the house.’

‘They are only on trial, sir,’ apologized Hector.

‘Very odd then that they all have an eagle and H. E. on them,’ observed the Doctor dryly.

‘Oh! they’ll take them again, or I shall find a use for them,’ said Hector.

‘Well, if Henry can’t afford two,’ said Aubrey, holding to his point, ‘he ought to give up to his brother; he knows no more how to handle a rifle—’

‘That’s the very reason,’ muttered Tom.

‘And Flora is going to give a great party,’ proceeded Gertrude, ‘as soon as the uniform is settled, and they are enrolled. Blanche and Hector are to stay for it, and you’ll have to wear your lieutenant’s uniform, Harry.’

‘I can’t be going to balls till I’ve been up to report myself fit for service,’ said Harry.

‘It is not to be a ball,’ said Blanche’s soft, serious voice over her green silk banner; ‘it is to be a breakfast and concert, ending in a dance, such as we had at Maplewood.’

‘Hollo!’ said Harry, starting, ‘now I begin to believe in Mrs. Ernescliffe, when I hear her drawing down herself as an example to Flora.’

‘Only a precedent,’ said Blanche, blushing a little, but still grave. ‘We have had some experience, you know. Our corps was one of the earliest enrolled, and Hector managed it almost entirely. It was the reason we have not been able to come here sooner, but we thought it right to be foremost, as the enemy are sure to attempt our coast first.’

‘I believe the enemy are expected on every coast at first,’ was Ethel’s aside, but it was not heard; for Harry was declaring,

‘Your coast! they will never get the length of that. I was talking to an old messmate of mine in the train, who was telling me how we could burn their whole fleet before it could get out of Cherbourg.’

‘If they should slip by,’ began Hector.

‘Slip by!’ and Harry had well-nigh dislodged Daisy by his vehemence in demonstrating that they were welcome to volunteer, but that the Channel Fleet would prevent the rifles from being seriously put to the proof—a declaration highly satisfactory to the ladies, and heartily backed up by the Doctor, though Blanche looked rather discomfited, and Hector argued loud for the probability of active service.

‘I say, Aubrey,’ said Tom, rather tired of the land and sea debate, ‘do just reach me a card, to take up some of this sand upon.’

Aubrey obeyed, and reading the black-edged card as he handed it, said, ‘Mrs. Pug. What? Pug ought to have been calling upon Mab.’

‘Maybe she will, in good earnest,’ observed Tom again in Ethel’s ear; while the whole room rang with the laughter that always befalls the unlucky wight guilty of a blunder in a name.

‘You don’t mean that you don’t know who she is, Aubrey!’ was the cry.

‘I—how should I?’

‘What, not Mrs. Pugh?’ exclaimed Daisy.

‘Pew or Pug—I know nothing of either. Is this edge as mourning for all the old pews that have been demolished in the church?’

‘For shame, Aubrey,’ said Mary seriously. ‘You must know it is for her husband.’

Aubrey set up his eyebrows in utter ignorance.

‘How true it is that one half the world knows nothing of the other!’ exclaimed Ethel. ‘Do you really mean you have never found out the great Mrs. Pugh, Mrs. Ledwich’s dear suffering Matilda?’

‘I’ve seen a black lady sitting with Mrs. Ledwich in church.’

‘Such is life,’ said Ethel. ‘How little she thought herself living in such an unimpressible world!’

‘She is a pretty woman enough,’ observed Tom.

‘And very desirous of being useful,’ added Richard. ‘She and Mrs. Ledwich came over to Cocksmoor this morning, and offered any kind of assistance.’

‘At Cocksmoor!’ cried Ethel, much as if it had been the French.

‘Every district is filled up here, you know,’ said Richard, ‘and Mrs. Ledwich begged me as a personal favour to give her some occupation that would interest her and cheer her spirits, so I asked her to look after those new cottages at Gould’s End, quite out of your beat, Ethel, and she seemed to be going about energetically.’

Tom looked unutterable things at Ethel, who replied with a glance between diversion and dismay.

‘Who is the lady?’ said Blanche. ‘She assaulted me in the street with inquiries and congratulations about Harry, declaring she had known me as a child, a thing I particularly dislike:’ and Mrs. Ernescliffe looked like a ruffled goldfinch.

‘Forgetting her has not been easy to the payers of duty calls,’ said Ethel. ‘She was the daughter of Mrs. Ledwich’s brother, the Colonel of Marines, and used in old times to be with her aunt; there used to be urgent invitations to Flora and me to drink tea there because she was of our age. She married quite young, something very prosperous and rather aged, and the glories of dear Matilda’s villa at Bristol have been our staple subject, but Mr. Pugh died in the spring, leaving his lady five hundred a year absolutely her own, and she is come to stay with her aunt, and look for a house.’

‘Et cetera,’ added Tom.

‘What, in the buxom widow line?’ asked Harry.

‘No, no!’ said Richard, rather indignantly.

‘No, in the pathetic line,’ said Ethel; ‘but that requires some self-denial.’

‘Our tongues don’t lose their venom, you see, Harry,’ put in the Doctor.

‘No indeed, papa,’ said Ethel, really anxious to guard her brothers. ‘I was very sorry for her at first, and perhaps I pity her more now than even then. I was taken with her pale face and dark eyes, and I believe she was a good wife, and really concerned for her husband; but I can’t help seeing that she knows her grief is an attraction.’

‘To simple parsons,’ muttered Tom along the tube of his microscope.

‘The sound of her voice showed her to be full of pretension,’ said Blanche. ‘Besides, Mrs. Ledwich’s trumpeting would fix my opinion in a moment.’

‘Just so,’ observed the Doctor.

‘No, papa,’ said Ethel, ‘I was really pleased and touched in spite of Mrs. Ledwich’s devotion to her, till I found out a certain manoeuvring to put herself in the foreground, and not let her sorrow hinder her from any enjoyment or display.’

‘She can’t bear any one to do what she does not.’

‘What! Mary’s mouth open against her too?’ cried Dr. May.

‘Well, papa,’ insisted Mary, ‘nobody wanted her to insist on taking the harmonium at Bankside last Sunday, just because Averil had a cold in her head; and she played so fast, that every one was put out, and then said she would come to the practice that they might understand one another. She is not even in the Bankside district, so it is no business of hers.’

‘There, Richard, her favours are equally distributed,’ said Aubrey, ‘but if she would take that harmonium altogether, one would not mind—it makes Henry Ward as sulky as a bear to have his sister going out all the evening, and he visits it on Leonard. I dare say if she stayed at home he would not have been such a brute about the rifle.’

‘I should not wonder,’ said Dr. May. ‘I sometimes doubt if home is sweetened to my friend Henry.’

‘O, papa!’ cried Mary, bristling up, ‘Ave is very hard worked, and she gives up everything in the world but her church music, and that is her great duty and delight.’

‘Miss Ward’s music must be a sore trial to the Pug,’ said Tom, ‘will it be at this affair at Abbotstoke?’

‘That’s the question,’ said Ethel. ‘It never goes out, yet is to be met everywhere, just over-persuaded at the last moment. Now Flora, you will see, will think it absolutely improper to ask her; and she will be greatly disappointed not to have the chance of refusing, and then yielding at the last minute.’

‘Flora must have her,’ said Harry.

‘I trust not,’ said Blanche, shrinking.

‘Flora will not ask her,’ said Tom, ‘but she will be there.’

‘And will dance with me,’ said Harry.

‘No, with Richard,’ said Tom.

‘What!’ said Richard, looking up at the sound of his name. All laughed, but were ashamed to explain, and were relieved that their father rang the bell.

‘At that unhappy skein still, Mary?’ said Mrs. Ernescliffe, as the good nights were passing. ‘What a horrid state it is in!’

‘I shall do it in time,’ said Mary, ‘when there is nothing to distract my attention. I only hope I shall not hurt it for you.’

‘Chuck it into the fire at once; it is not worth the trouble,’ said Hector.

Each had a word of advice, but Mary held her purpose, and persevered till all had left the room except Richard, who quietly took the crimson tangle on his wrists, turned and twisted, opened passages for the winder, and by the magic of his dexterous hands, had found the clue to the maze, so that all was proceeding well, though slowly, when the study door opened, and Harry’s voice was heard in a last good night to his father. Mary’s eyes looked wistful, and one misdirection of her winder tightened an obdurate loop once more.

‘Run after Harry,’ said Richard, taking possession of the ivory. ‘Good night; I can always do these things best alone. I had rather—yes, really—good night:’ and his kiss had the elder brother’s authority of dismissal.

His Maimouna was too glad and grateful for more than a summary ‘Thank you,’ and flew up-stairs in time to find Harry turning, baffled, from her empty room. ‘What, only just done that interminable yarn?’ he said.

‘Richard is doing it. I could not help letting him, this first evening of you.’

‘Good old Richard! he is not a bit altered since I first went to sea, when I was so proud of that,’ said Harry, taking up his midshipman’s dirk, which formed a trophy on Mary’s mantelshelf.

‘Are we altered since you went last?’ said Mary.

‘The younger ones, of course. I was in hopes that Aubrey would have been more like old June, but he’ll never be so much of a fellow.’

‘He is a very dear good boy,’ said Mary, warmly.

‘Of course he is,’ said Harry, ‘but, somehow, he will always have a woman-bred way about him. Can’t be helped, of course; but what a pair of swells Tom and Blanche are come out!’ and he laughed good-naturedly.

‘Is not Blanche a beautiful dear darling?’ cried Mary, eagerly. ‘It is so nice to have her. They could not come at first because of the infection, and then because of the rifle corps, and now it is delicious to have all at home.’

‘Well, Molly, I’m glad it wasn’t you that have married. Mind, you mustn’t marry till I do.’

And Harry was really glad that Mary’s laugh was perfectly ‘fancy free,’ as she answered, ‘I’m sure I hope not, but I won’t promise, because that might be unreasonable, you know.’

‘Oh, you prudent, provident Polly! But,’ added Harry, recalled to a sense of time by a clock striking eleven, ‘I came to bring you something, Mary. You shall have it, if you will give me another.’

Mary recognized, with some difficulty, a Prayer-Book with limp covers that Margaret had given him after his first voyage. Not only was it worn by seven years’ use, but it was soiled and stained with dark brownish red, and a straight round hole perforated it from cover to cover.

‘Is it too bad to keep?’ said Harry. ‘Let me just cut out my name in Margaret’s hand, and the verse of the 107th Psalm; luckily the ball missed that.’

‘The ball?’ said Mary, beginning to understand.

‘Yes. Every one of those circles that you see cut out there, was in here,’ said Harry, laying his hand over his chest, ‘before the ball, which I have given to my father.’

‘O, Harry!’ was all Mary could say, pointing to her own name in a pencil scrawl on the fly-leaf.

‘Yes, I set that down because I could not speak to tell what was to be done with it, when we didn’t know that that book had really been the saving of my life. That hair’s-breadth deviation of the bullet made all the difference.’

Mary was kissing the blood-stained book, and sobbing.

‘Why, Mary, what is there to cry for? It is all over now, I tell you. I am as well as man would wish, and there’s no more about it but to thank God, and try to deserve His goodness.’

‘Yes, yes, I know, Harry; but to think how little we knew, or thought, or felt—going on in our own way when you were in such danger and suffering!’

‘Wasn’t I very glad you were going on in your own way!’ said Harry. ‘Why, Mary, it was that which did it—it has been always that thought of you at the Minster every day, that kept me to reading the Psalms, and so having the book about me. And did not it do one good to lie and think of the snug room, and my father’s spectacles, and all as usual? When they used to lay me on the deck of the Dexter at night, because I could not breathe below, I used to watch old Orion, who was my great friend in the Loyalty Isles, and wish the heathen name had not stuck to the old fellow, he always seemed so like the Christian warrior, climbing up with his shield before him and his. A home like this is a shield to a man in more ways than one, Mary. Hollo, was that the street door?’

‘Yes; Ritchie going home. Fancy his being at the silk all this time! I am so sorry!’

Maugre her sorrow, there were few happier maidens in England than Mary May, even though her service was distracted by the claims of three slave-owners at once, bound as she was, to Ethel, by habitual fidelity, to Harry, by eager adoration, to Blanche, by willing submission. Luckily, their requisitions (for the most part unconscious) seldom clashed, or, if they did, the two elders gave way, and the bride asserted her supremacy in the plenitude of her youthful importance and prosperity.

Thus she carried off Mary in her barouche to support her in the return of bridal calls, while the others were organizing a walk to visit Flora and the rifle target. Gertrude’s enthusiasm was not equal to walking with a weapon that might be loaded, nor to being ordered out to admire the practice, so she accompanied the sisters; Tom was reading hard; and Ethel found herself, Aubrey, and the sailor, the only ones ready to start.

This was a decided treat, for Aubrey and she were so nearly one, that it was almost a tete-a-tete with Harry, though it was not his way to enter by daylight, and without strong impulse, on what regarded himself, and there were no such confidences as those to Mary on the previous night; but in talking over home details, it was easier to speak without Tom’s ironical ears and caustic tongue.

Among other details, the story of the summer that Ethel and Aubrey had spent at Coombe was narrated, and Aubrey indulged himself by describing what he called Ethel’s conquest.

‘It is more a conquest of Norman’s, and of Melanesia,’ said Ethel. ‘If it were not nonsense to build upon people’s generous visions at seventeen, I should sometimes hope a spark had been lit that would shine some day in your islands, Harry.’

Going up that hill was not the place for Etheldred May to talk of the futility of youthful aspirations, but it did not so strike either of the brothers, to whom Cocksmoor had long been a familiar fact. Harry laughed to hear the old Ethel so like herself; and Aubrey said, ‘By the bye, what did you do, the day you walked him to Cocksmoor? he was fuller of those islands than ever after it.’

‘I did not mean it,’ said Ethel; ‘but the first day of the holidays I came on him disconsolate in the street, with nothing to do, and very sore about Henry’s refusal to let him volunteer; he walked on with me till we found ourselves close to Cocksmoor, and I found he had never seen the church, and would like to stay for evening service, so I put him into the parsonage while I was busy, and told him to take a book.’

‘I know,’ said Aubrey; ‘the liveliest literature you can get in Richard’s parlour are the Missionary Reports.’

‘Exactly so; and he got quite saturated with them; and when we walked home, I was so thankful that the rifle grievance should be a little displaced, that I led him on to talk and build castles rather more than according to my resolutions.’

‘Hollo, Ethel!’ said Harry.

‘Yes, I think spontaneous castles are admirable, but I mistrust all timber from other people’s woods.’

‘But isn’t this a horrid shame of Henry?’ said Aubrey. ‘Such a little prig as he is, to take the place of such a fellow as Leonard, a capital shot already.’

‘I wish Henry had been magnanimous,’ said Ethel.

‘I’d as soon talk of a magnanimous weasel, from what I recollect,’ said Harry.

‘And he is worse now, Harry,’ continued Aubrey. ‘So spruce and silky out of doors, and such a regular old tyrannical bachelor indoors. He is jealous of Leonard, any one can see, and that’s the reason he won’t give him his due.’

‘You observe,’ said Ethel, ‘that this boy thinks the youngest brother’s due is always to come first.’

‘So it is, in this family,’ said Harry. ‘No one comes so last as old Ritchie.’

‘But of course,’ said Aubrey, rather taken aback, ‘if I were not youngest, I should have to knock under to some one.’

Ethel and Harry both laughed heartily; one congratulating him on not having carried the principle into the cockpit, the other adding, ‘Don’t indoctrinate Leonard with it; there is enough already to breed bitterness between those brothers! Leonard ought to be kept in mind that Henry has so much to harass him, that his temper should be borne patiently with.’

‘He!’

‘I don’t think papa’s best endeavours have kept all his father’s practice for him, and I am sure their rate of living must make him feel pinched this Christmas.’

‘Whew! He will be in a sweeter humour than ever!’

‘I have been trying to show Leonard that there’s room for magnanimity on his side at least; and don’t you go and upset it all by commonplace abuse of tutors and governors.’

‘I upset it!’ cried Aubrey: ‘I might as well try to upset the Minster as a word from you to Leonard.’

‘Nonsense! What’s that?’ For they were hailed from behind, and looking round saw two tall figures, weapon in hand, in pursuit. They proved to be Hector Ernescliffe and Leonard Ward, each bearing one of what Dr. May called the H. E. rifles; but Leonard looked half shy, half grim, and so decidedly growled off all Aubrey’s attempts at inquiry or congratulation, that Ethel hazarded none, and Aubrey looked discomfited, wearing an expression which Harry took to mean that the weight of his rifle fatigued him, and insisted on carrying it for him, in, spite of his rather insulted protests and declarations that the sailor was an invalid; Ethel had walked forwards, and found Leonard at her side, with a darkening brow as he glanced back at the friendly contest.

‘Harry spoils Aubrey as much as all the others do,’ said Ethel lightly, deeming it best to draw out the sting of the rankling thought.

‘Ay! None of them would leave him to be pitied and offered favours by some chance person,’ said Leonard.

‘You don’t call my brother Hector a chance person?’

‘Did you say anything to him, Miss May?’ said Leonard, turning on her a flushed face, as if he could almost have been angered with her.

‘I said not one word.’

‘Nor Aubrey?’

‘The volunteer politics were discussed last night, and Henry got abused among us; but papa defended him, and said it did not rain rifles. That’s all—whatever Hector may have done was without a word to either of us—very likely on the moment’s impulse. Did he go to Bankside after you?’

‘No. I was looking in at Shearman’s window,’ said Leonard, rather sheepishly, ‘at the locks of the new lot he has got in, and he came and asked if I were going to choose one, for he had got a couple down from London, and the man had stupidly put his cipher on both, so he would be glad if I would take one off his hands. I didn’t accept—I made that clear—but then he begged, as if it was to oblige him, that I would come out to Abbotstoke and help him try the two, for he didn’t know which he should keep.’

‘Very ingenious of him,’ said Ethel laughing.

‘Now, Miss May, do tell me what I ought to do. It is such a beauty, better than any Shearman ever dreamt of; just look: at the finish of the lock.’

‘By the time you have shot with it—’

‘Now don’t, pray,’ said Leonard, ‘I haven’t any one to trust for advice but you.’

‘Indeed, Leonard, I can see no objection. It is a great boon to you, and no loss to Hector, and he is quite enough my father’s son for you to look on him as a friend. I can’t but be very glad, for the removal of this vexation ought to make you get on all the better with your brother.’

‘Ave would be delighted,’ said Leonard; ‘but somehow—’

‘Somehow’ was silenced by a coalescing of the party at a gate; and Hector and Harry were found deep in an argument in which the lieutenant’s Indian reminiscences of the Naval Brigade were at issue with the captain’s Southdown practice, and the experiences of the one meeting the technicalities of the other were so diverting, that Leonard forgot his scruples till at the entrance of the park he turned off towards the target with Hector and Aubrey, while the other two walked up to the house.

The Grange atmosphere always had a strange weight of tedium in it, such as was specially perceptible after the joyous ease of the house in the High Street. No one was in the drawing-room, and Harry gazed round at the stiff, almost petrified, aspect of the correct and tasteful arrangement of the tables and furniture, put his hands in his pockets, and yawned twice, asking Ethel why she did not go in search of Flora. Ethel shook her head; and in another moment Flora appeared in eager welcome; she had been dressing for a drive to Stoneborough to see her brother, little expecting him to be in a state for walking to her. With her came her little girl, a child whose aspect was always a shock to those who connected her with the two Margarets whose name she bore. She had inherited her father’s heavy mould of feature and dark complexion, and the black eyes had neither sparkle in themselves nor relief from the colour of the sallow cheek; the pouting lips were fretful, the whole appearance unhealthy, and the dark bullet-shaped head seemed too large for the thin bony little figure. Worn, fagged, and aged as Flora looked, she had still so much beauty, and far more of refinement and elegance, as to be a painful foil and contrast to the child that clung to her, waywardly refusing all response to her uncle’s advances.

Flora made a sign to him to discontinue them, and talked of her husband, who was hunting, and heard the history of Harry’s return and recovery. In the midst, little Margaret took heart of grace, crossed the room, and stood by the sailor, and holding up a great India-rubber ball as large as her own head, asked, ‘Uncle Harry, were you shot with a cannon-ball as big as this?’

Thereupon she was on his knee, and as he had all his father’s fascination for children, he absolutely beguiled her into ten minutes of genuine childish mirth, a sight so rare and precious to her mother, that she could not keep up her feint of talking to Ethel. The elderly dame, part nurse, part nursery governess, presently came to take Miss Rivers out, but Miss Rivers, with a whine in her voice, insisted on going nowhere but to see the shooting, and Uncle Harry must come with her; and come he did, the little bony fingers clasping tight hold of one of his large ones.

‘Dear Harry!’ said Flora, ‘he wins every one! It is like a cool refreshing wind from the sea when he comes in.’

In Flora’s whole air, voice, and manner, there was apparent a relaxation and absence of constraint such as she never allowed herself except when alone with Ethel. Then only did she relieve the constant strain, then only did the veritable woman show herself, and the effort, the toil, the weariness, the heartache of her life become visible; but close together as the sisters lived, such tete-a-tetes were rare, and perhaps were rather shunned than sought, as perilous and doubtful indulgences. Even now, Flora at once fixed a limit by ordering the carriage to meet her in a quarter of an hour at the nearest point to the rifle-ground, saying she would walk there, and then take home Ethel and any brother who might be tired.

‘And see that Margaret does not come to harm,’ said Ethel.

‘I am not afraid of that,’ said Flora, something in her eye belying her; ‘but she might be troublesome to Harry, and I had rather he did not see one of her fights with Miss Morton.’

‘How has she been? I thought her looking clearer and better to-day,’ said Ethel, kindly.

‘Yes, she is pretty well just now,’ said Flora, allowing herself in one of her long deep sighs, before descending into the particulars of the child’s anxiously-watched health. If she had been describing them to her father, there would have been the same minuteness, but the tone would have implied cheerful hope; whereas to Ethel she took no pains to mask her dejection. One of the points of anxiety was whether one shoulder were not outgrowing the other, but it was not easy to discover whether the appearance were not merely owing to the child’s feeble and ungainly carriage. ‘I cannot torment her about that,’ said Flora. ‘There are enough miseries for her already without making more, and as long as it does not affect her health, it matters little.’

‘No, certainly not,’ said Ethel, who had hardly expected this from Flora.

Perhaps her sister guessed her thought, for she said, ‘Things are best as they are, Ethel; I am not fit to have a beautiful admired daughter. All the past would too easily come over again, and my poor Margaret’s troubles may be the best balance for her.’

‘Yes,’ said Ethel, ‘it is bad enough to be an heiress, but a beautiful heiress is in a worse predicament.’

‘Health would improve her looks,’ began the maternal instinct of defence, but then breaking off. ‘We met Lord H–- yesterday, and the uniform is to be like the northern division. Papa will hear it officially tomorrow.’

‘The northern has gray, and green facings.’

‘You are more up in it than I. All we begged for was, that it might be inexpensive, for the sake of the townspeople.’

‘I hear of little else,’ said Ethel, laughing; ‘Dr. Spencer is as hot on it as all the boys. Now, I suppose, your party is to come off!’

‘Yes, it ought,’ said Flora, languidly, ‘I waited to see how Harry was, he is a great element towards making it go off well. I will talk it over with Blanche, it will give somebody pleasure if she thinks she manages it.’

‘Will it give George no pleasure?’

‘I don’t know; he calls it a great nuisance, but he would not like not to come forward, and it is quite right that he should.’

‘Quite right,’ said Ethel; ‘it is every one’s duty to try to keep it up.’

With these words the sisters came within sight of the targets, and found Margaret under Harry’s charge, much interested, and considerably in the way. The tidings of the colour of the uniform were highly appreciated; Aubrey observed that it would choke off the snobs who only wanted to be like the rifle brigade, and Leonard treated its inexpensiveness as a personal matter, having apparently cast off his doubts, under Hector’s complimentary tuition. Indeed, before it grew too dark for taking aim, he and the weapon were so thoroughly united, that no further difficulty remained but of getting out his thanks to Mr. Ernescliffe.

Averil was sitting alone over the fire in the twilight, in a somewhat forlorn mood, when the door was pushed ajar, and the muzzle of a gun entered, causing her to start up in alarm, scarcely diminished by the sight of an exultant visage, though the words were, ‘Your money or your life.’

‘Leonard, don’t play with it, pray!’

‘It’s not loaded.’

‘Oh! but one never can tell:’ then, half ashamed of her terror, ‘Pray put it back, or we shall have an uproar with Henry.’

‘This is none of Henry’s. He will never own such a beauty as this.’

‘Whose is it? Not yours? Is it really a rifle! H. E.? What’s that?’

‘Hector Ernescliffe! Didn’t I tell you he was a princely fellow?’

‘Given it to you? Leonard, dear, I am so happy! Now I don’t care for anything! What a gallant volunteer you will make!’ and she kissed him fondly. We will order the uniform as soon as ever it is settled, and I hope it will be a very handsome one.’

‘It will be a cheap one, which is more to the purpose. I could get part myself, only there’s the tax for Mab, and the subscription to the cricket club.’

‘I would not have you get any of it! You are my volunteer, and I’ll not give up my right to any one, except that Minna and Ella want to give your belt.’

‘Where are those children?’ he asked.

‘Henry has taken them to Laburnum Grove, where I am afraid they are being crammed with cake and all sorts of nonsense.’

‘What could have made him take them there?’

‘Oh! some wish of Mrs. Pugh’s to see the poor little dears,’ said Averil, the cloud returning that had been for a moment dispelled.

‘What’s the row?’ asked Leonard, kindly. ‘Has he been bothering you?’

‘He wants me to sound Mary May about an invitation for Mrs. Pugh to Mrs. Rivers’s volunteer entertainment. I am glad I did not say no one in mourning ought to go, for I must go now you are a volunteer.’

‘But you didn’t consent to mention her?’

‘No, indeed! I knew very well you would say it was a most improper use to make of the Mays’ kindness, and I can’t see what business she has there! Then he said, no, she was certain not to go, but the attention would be gratifying and proper.’

‘That is Mrs. Rivers’s look-out.’

‘So I said, but Henry never will hear reason. I did not tell you of our scene yesterday over the accounts; he says that we must contract our expenses, or he shall be ruined; so I told him I was ready to give up the hot-house, or the footman, or the other horse, or anything he would specify; but he would not hear of it—he says it would be fatal to alter our style of living, and that it is all my fault for not being economical! O, Leonard, it is very hard to give up all one cared for to this housekeeping, and then never to please!’

Leonard felt his brother a tyrant. ‘Never mind, Ave dear,’ said he, ‘go on doing right, and then you need not care for his unreasonableness. You are a dear good girl, and I can’t think how he can have the heart to vex you.’

‘I don’t care while I have you, Leonard,’ she said, clinging to him.

At that moment the others were heard returning, and an ironical look passed between the brother and sister at certain injunctions that were heard passing about the little India-rubber goloshes; but Henry had returned in high good-humour, was pleased to hear of his brother’s good fortune, pronounced it very handsome in Mr. Ernescliffe, and even offered to provide the rest of the equipment; but this was proudly rejected by Averil, with some of the manifestations of exclusive partiality that naturally wounded the elder brother. He then announced an engagement that he had made with Mrs. Ledwich for a musical evening the next week. Averil had her harmonium at her tongue’s end, but the evening was a free one, chosen on purpose to accommodate her; she had no excuse, and must submit.

‘And practise some of your best pieces, Ave,’ said Henry. ‘Mrs. Pugh was kind enough to offer to come and get up some duets with yon.’

‘I am greatly obliged,’ said Averil, dryly, ‘but I do not play duets.’

‘You would do wisely to accept her kindness, argued Henry. ‘It would be a great advantage to you to be intimate with a lady of her opportunities.’

‘I do not like patronage,’ said Averil.

‘Ave! Ave!’ cried the children, who had been trying to attract her attention, ‘if you will let us go to Laburnum Grove by twelve o’clock tomorrow, Mis. Pugh will show us her book of the pretty devices of letters, and teach us to make one.’

‘You will have not finished lessons by twelve.’

‘But if we have?’

‘No, certainly not, I can’t have you bothering every one about that nonsensical fashion.’

‘You shall go, my dears,’ said Henry. ‘I can’t think why your sister should be so ill-natured.’

Averil felt that this was the way to destroy her authority, and though she kept silence, the tears were in her eyes, and her champion broke forth, ‘How can you be such a brute, Henry?’

‘Come away, my dears,’ said Averil, rising, and holding out her hands to her sisters, as she recollected how bad the scene was for them, but it was only Minna who obeyed the call, Ella hung about Henry, declaring that Leonard was naughty, and Ave was cross.

‘Well,’ shouted Leonard, ‘I shan’t stay to see that child set against her sister! I wonder what you mean her to come to, Henry!’

It was no wonder that Minna and Ella squabbled together as to which was cross, Henry or Averil, and the spirit of party took up its fatal abode in the house of Bankside.

CHAPTER IX

Too oft my anxious eye has spied That secret grief thou fain wouldst hide— The passing pang of humbled pride.—SCOTT

The winter was gay, between musical evenings, children’s parties, clerical feastings of district visitors, soirees for Sunday-school teachers, and Christmas-trees for their scholars. Such a universal favourite as Harry, with so keen a relish for amusement, was sure to fall an easy prey to invitations; but the rest of the family stood amazed to see him accompanied everywhere by Tom, to whom the secular and the religious dissipations of Stoneborough had always hitherto been equally distasteful. Yet be submitted to a Christmas course of music, carpet-dances, and jeux de societe on the one hand, and on the other conferred inestimable obligations on the ecclesiastical staff by exhibitions of his microscope and of some of the ornamental sports of chemistry.

‘The truth is,’ was the explanation privately dropped out to Ethel, ‘that some one really must see that those two don’t make fools of themselves.’

Ethel stared; then, coming to the perception who ‘those two’ meant, burst out laughing, and said, ‘My dear Tom, I beg your pardon, but, on the whole, I think that is more likely to befall some one else.’

Tom held his head loftily, and would not condescend to understand anything so foolish.

He considered Bankside as the most dangerous quarter, for Harry was enraptured with Miss Ward’s music, extolled her dark eyes, and openly avowed her attraction; but there were far more subtle perils at Laburnum Grove. The fair widow was really pretty, almost elegant, her weeds becoming; and her disposition so good, so religious, so charitable, that, with her activity, intelligence, and curate-worship, she was a dangerous snare to such of mankind as were not sensible of her touch of pretension. As to womankind, it needed a great deal of submissiveness to endure her at all; and this was not Averil Ward’s leading characteristic.

In fact, the ubiquity of Mrs. Pugh was a sore trial to that young lady, just so superior herself as to detect the flimsiness of the widow’s attainments. It was vexatious to find that by means of age, assumption, and position, these shallow accomplishments made a prodigious show in the world, while her own were entirely overlooked. She thought she despised the admiration of the second-rate world of Stoneborough, but it nettled her to see it thus misplaced; and there was something provoking in the species of semi-homage paid in that quarter by the youths of the May family.

As to the sailor, Averil frankly liked him very much; he was the pleasantest young man, of the most open and agreeable manners, who had ever fallen in her way. He was worthy to be Mary’s brother, for he was friendly to Leonard, and to herself had a truthfully flattering way that was delightful. Without any sentiment in the case, she always felt disappointed and defrauded if she were prevented from having a conversation with him; and when this happened, it was generally either from his being seized upon by Mrs. Pugh, or from her being baited by his brother Tom.

Averil was hard to please, for she was as much annoyed by seeing Tom May sitting courteous and deferential by the side of Mrs. Pugh, as by his attentions to herself. She knew that he was playing the widow off, and that, when most smooth and bland in look and tone, he was inwardly chuckling; and to find the identical politeness transferred to herself, made her feel not only affronted but insulted by being placed on the same level. Thus, when, at a ‘reunion’ at Laburnum Grove, she had been looking on with intense disgust while Tom was admiring Mrs. Pugh’s famous book of devices from letters, translating the mottoes, and promising contributions, the offence was greatly increased by his coming up to her (and that too just as Harry was released by the button-holding Mr. Grey) and saying,

‘Of course you are a collector too, Miss Ward; I can secure some duplicates for you.’

She hoard such fooleries? She have Mrs. Pugh’s duplicates? No wonder she coldly answered, ‘My little sister has been slightly infected, thank you, but I do not care for such things.’

‘Indeed! Well, I always preserve as many as I can, as passports to a lady’s favour.’

‘That depends on how much sense the lady has,’ said Averil, trusting that this was a spirited set down.

‘You do not consider. Philosophically treated, they become a perfect school in historical heraldry, nay, in languages, in mathematical drawing, in illumination, said Tom, looking across to the album in which Mrs. Pugh’s collection was enshrined, each device appropriately framed in bright colours. His gravity was intolerable. Was this mockery or not? However, as answer she must, she said,

‘A very poor purpose for which to learn such things, and a poor way of learning them.’

‘True,’ said Tom, ‘one pastime is as good as another; and the less it pretends to, the better. On the whole, it may be a beneficial outlet for the revival of illumination.’

Did this intolerable person know that there was an ‘illuminator’s guide’ at home, and a great deal of red, blue, and gold paint, with grand designs for the ornamentation of Bankside chapel? Whether he knew it or not, she could not help answering, ‘Illumination is desecrated by being used on such subjects.’

‘And is not that better than the subjects being desecrated by illumination?’

Mrs. Pugh came to insist on that ‘sweet thing of Mendelssohn’s‘ from her dear Miss Ward; and Averil obeyed, not so glad to escape as inflamed by vexation at being prevented from fighting it out, and learning what he really meant; though she was so far used to the slippery nature of his arguments as to know that it was highly improbable that she should get at anything in earnest.

‘If his sisters were silly, I should not mind,’ said she to Leonard; ‘then he might hold all women cheap from knowing no better; but when they like sensible things, why is every one else to be treated like an ape?’

‘Never mind,’ said Leonard, ‘he sneers at everybody all alike! I can’t think how Dr. May came to have such a son, or how Aubrey can run after him so.’

‘I should like to know whether they really think it irreverent to do illuminations.’

‘Nonsense, Ave; why should you trouble yourself about what he says to tease you? bad luck to him!’

Nevertheless, Averil was not at ease till she had asked Mary’s opinion of illumination, and Mary had referred to Ethel, and brought back word that all depended on the spirit of the work; that it was a dangerous thing, for mere fashion, to make playthings of texts of Scripture; but that no one could tell the blessing there might be in dwelling on them with loving decoration, or having them placed where the eye and thought might be won by them. In fact, Ethel always hated fashion, but feared prejudice.

The crown of the whole carnival was to be the Abbotstoke entertainment on the enrolment of the volunteers. Preparations went on with great spirit, and the drill sergeant had unremitting work, the target little peace, and Aubrey and Leonard were justly accused of making fetishes of their rifles. The town was frantic, no clothes but uniforms could be had, and the tradesmen forgot their customers in the excitement of electing officers.

Averil thought it very officious of Mrs. Pugh to collect a romantic party of banner-working young ladies before the member’s wife or the mayor’s family had authorized it; and she refused to join, both on the plea of want of time, and because she heard that Mr. Elvers, a real dragoon, declared colours to be inappropriate to riflemen. And so he did; but his wife said the point was not martial correctness, but popular feeling; so Mary gratified the party by bringing her needle, Dr. Spencer took care the blazonry of the arms of the old abbey was correct, and Flora asked the great lady of the county to present the banner, and gave the invitation to Mrs. Pugh, who sighed, shook her head, dried her eyes, and said something about goodness and spirits; and Mrs. Rivers professed to understand, and hope Mrs. Pugh would do exactly as best suited her.

Was this manoeuvring, or only living in the present?

Mary accompanied Harry for a long day of shopping in London when he went to report himself, starting and returning in the clouds of night, and transacting a prodigious amount of business with intense delight and no fatigue; and she was considered to have fitted out the mayor’s daughters suitably with his municipal dignity, of which Ethel piqued herself on being proud.

The entertainment was not easy to arrange at such a season, and Blanche’s ‘experience,’ being of early autumn, was at fault; but Flora sent for all that could embellish her conservatories, and by one of the charities by which she loved to kill two birds with one stone, imported a young lady who gained her livelihood by singing at private concerts, and with her for a star, supported by the Minster and Cathedral choirs, hoped to get up sufficient music to occupy people till it should be late enough to dance. She still had some diplomacy to exercise, for Mrs. Ledwich suggested asking dear Ave Ward to sing, her own dearest Matilda would not object on such an occasion to assist the sweet girl; and Mrs. Rivers, after her usual prudent fashion, giving neither denial nor assent, Mrs. Ledwich trotted off, and put Averil into an agony that raised a needless storm in the Bankside house; Leonard declaring the request an insult, and Henry insisting that Ave ought to have no scruples in doing anything Mrs. Pugh thought proper to be done. And finally, when Ave rushed with her despair to Mary May, it was to be relieved at finding that Mrs. Rivers had never dreamt of exposing her to such an ordeal.

Though it was the year 1860, the sun shone on the great day, and there were exhilarating tokens of spring, singing birds, opening buds, sparkling drops, and a general sense of festivity; as the gray and green began to flit about the streets, and while Mr. Mayor repaired to the Town Hall to administer the oaths to the corps, his unmartial sons and his daughters started for the Grange to assist Flora in the reception of her guests.

The Lord Lieutenant’s wife and daughters, as well as the Ernescliffes, had slept there, and Ethel found them all with Flora in the great hall, which looked like a winter garden, interspersed with tables covered with plate and glass, where eating and drinking might go on all day long. But Ethel’s heart sank within her at the sight of Flora’s haggard face and sunken eyes. ‘What is the matter?’ she asked Blanche, an image of contented beauty.

‘Matter? Oh, they have been stupid in marking the ground, and Hector is gone to see about it. That’s all. He is not at all tired.’

‘I never supposed he was,’ said Ethel, ‘but what makes Flora look so ill?’

‘Oh, that tiresome child has got another cold, and fretted half the night. It is all their fault for giving way to her; and she has done nothing but whine this whole morning because she is not well enough to go out and see the practice! I am sure it is no misfortune that she is not to come down and be looked at.’

Ethel crossed over to Flora, and asked whether she should go up and see little Margaret.

‘I should be so thankful,’ said poor Flora; ‘but don’t excite her. She is not at all well, and has had very little sleep.’

Ethel ran up-stairs, and found herself in the midst of a fight between the governess and Margaret, who wanted to go to the draughty passage window, which she fancied had a better view than that of her nursery. Luckily, Aunt Ethel was almost the only person whom Margaret did not like to see her naughty; and she subsided into a much less objectionable lamentation after Uncle Harry and his anchor buttons. Ethel promised to try whether he could be found, and confident in his good-nature, ran down, and boldly captured him as he was setting out to see Hector’s operations. He came with a ready smile, and the child was happy throughout his stay. Flora presently stole a moment’s visit, intending her sister’s release as well as his; but Ethel, in pity to governess as well as pupil, declared the nursery window to be a prime post of observation, and begged to be there left.

Margaret began to believe that they were very snug there, and by the time the bugles were heard, had forgotten her troubles in watching the arrivals.

Up came the gray files, and Ethel’s heart throbbed and her eye glistened at their regular tread and military bearing. Quickly Margaret made out papa; but he was too real a soldier to evince consciousness of being at his own door, before the eyes of his wife and daughter; and Aubrey’s young face was made up in imitation of his impassiveness. Other eyes were less under control, and of these were a brown pair that wandered restlessly, till they were raised to the nursery window, and there found satisfaction.

The aunt and niece were too immediately above the terrace to see what passed upon it, nor could they hear the words; so they only beheld the approach of the Ensign, and after a brief interval, his return with the tall green silk colours, with the arms of the old abbey embroidered in the corner, and heard the enthusiastic cheer that rang out from all the corps.

Then the colours led the way to the ground for practice, for manoeuvres were as yet not ready for exhibition. Almost all the gentlemen followed; and such ladies as did not object to gunpowder or damp grass, thither betook themselves, guided by the ardent Mrs. Ernescliffe. Having disposed of the others in the drawing-rooms and gardens, Flora and her father came to the nursery, and Ethel was set at liberty to witness the prowess of her young champions, being assured by Flora that she would be of more use there in keeping the youthful population out of danger than in entertaining the more timid in the house.

She slipped out and hurried down a narrow path towards the scene of action, presently becoming aware of four figures before her, which her glass resolved into Harry and Tom, a lady in black, and a child. Evidently the devoted Tom was keeping guard over one of the enchantresses, for the figure was that of Averil Ward, though, as Ethel said, shaking hands, she was hardly to be known with only one sister.

‘We have been delayed,’ said Averil; ‘poor little Ella was in an agony about the firing, and we could not leave her till your brother’—indicating Harry—’was so kind as to take her to Gertrude.’

‘True to the Englishwoman’s boast of never having seen the smoke of an engagement,’ said Tom.

‘A practising is not an engagement,’ said Ethel.

‘There may be quite as many casualties,’ quoth Tom, indulging in some of the current ready-made wit on the dangers of volunteering, for the pure purpose of teasing; but he was vigorously fallen upon by Harry and Ethel, and Averil brightened as she heard him put to the rout. The shots were already heard, when two more black figures were seen in the distance, going towards the gate.

‘Is that Richard?’ exclaimed Tom.

‘Ay, and I do believe, the widow!’ rejoined Harry.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Averil. ‘I heard her talking about Abbotstoke Church, and saying how much she wished to see it. She must have got Mr. May to show it to her.’

Ethel, who had no real fears for Richard herself, looked on amused to watch how the guardian spirit was going to act. He exclaimed, ‘By the bye, Miss Ward, would you not like to see it? They have a very nice brass to old Mr. Rivers, and have been doing up the chancel.’

‘Thank you, said Ave, ‘I should prefer going to see how Leonard is getting on.’

‘Right, Miss Ward,’ said Harry; ‘the church won’t run away.’

‘Well, then,’ said Tom, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘I think I shall just run down, as the church is open, and see what sort of work they have made of the chancel.’

Ethel had the strongest fancy to try what he would do if she were to be seized with a desire to inspect the chancel; but she did not wish to let Harry and Averil appear on the ground under no escort but Minna’s, and so permitted Tom to leave them to her keeping, and watched him hasten to break up the tete-a-tete.

Coming among the spectators, who, chiefly drawn up on the carriage drive, were watching from a safe distance the gray figures in turn take aim and emit from their rifles the flash and cotton-wool-like tuft of smoke, Ethel’s interest was somewhat diminished by hearing that all the other marksmen had been distanced by the head keepers of Abbotstoke and Drydale, between whom the contest really lay.

‘The rest is a study of character,’ said Dr. Spencer, taking a turn up and down the road with her. ‘I have been watching the various pairs of brothers; and I doubt if any stand the test as well as the house of May.’

‘There’s only one in the field to-day.’

‘Yes, but I’ve seen them together before now, and I will say for even Tom that he has no black looks when his junior shoots better than he does.’

‘Oh, yes! But then it is Aubrey.’

Dr. Spencer laughed. ‘Lucky household where that “it is” accounts for all favours to the youngest, instead of for the countenance falling at his successes.’

‘I am afraid I know whom you mean. But he has no generosity in him.’

‘And his sister helps to make him jealous.’

‘I am afraid she does; but though it is very sad, one can’t wonder at her preference of the great to the small.’

‘Poor girl, I wonder how she will get on when there is a new inmate in the happy family.’

‘Ha! you shocking old gossip, what have you found out now?’

‘Negotiation for the introduction of a Pug dog from the best circles—eh?’

‘Well, if he were alone in the world, it would be a capital match.’

‘So she thinks, I fancy; but L600 a year might do better than purchase so many incumbrances. Depend upon it, the late lamented will remain in the ascendant till there are no breakers ahead.’

In process of time, ladies, volunteers, and all, were assembled in the great music-room for the concert; and Ethel, having worked hard in the service of the company, thought her present duty lay with the sick child, and quietly crept away, taking, however, one full view of the entire scene, partly for her own satisfaction, partly in case Margaret should be inclined to question her on what every one was doing.

There was the orchestra, whose erection Richard had superintended; there was the conductor in his station, and the broad back of the Cathedral organist at the piano, the jolly red visages of the singing men in their ranks, the fresh faces of the choristers full of elation, the star from London, looking quiet and ladylike, courteously led to her place by George Rivers himself. But, for all his civility, how bored and sullen he looked! and how weary were poor Flora’s smiles, though her manner was so engaging, and her universal attention so unremitting! What a contrast to the serene, self-enfolded look of happiness and prosperity on the pretty youthful face of Blanche, her rich delicate silk spreading far beyond the sofa where she sat among the great ladies; and her tall yellow-haired husband leaning against the wall behind her, in wondering contemplation of his Blanche taking her place in her own county.

Farther back, among the more ordinary herd, Ethel perceived Mrs. Pugh, bridling demurely, with Tom on guard over her on one side, and Henry Ward looking sulky on the other, with his youngest sister in his charge. The other was looking very happy upon Leonard’s knee, close to Averil and Mary, who were evidently highly satisfied to have coalesced. Averil was looking strikingly pretty—the light fell favourably on her profuse glossy hair, straight features, and brilliant colouring; her dark eyes were full of animation, and her lips were apart with a smile as she listened to Leonard’s eager narration; and Ethel glanced towards Harry to see whether he were admiring. No; Harry was bringing in a hall arm-chair in the background, for a vary large, heavy, vulgar-looking old man, who seemed too ponderous and infirm for a place on the benches. Richard made one of a black mass of clergy, and Aubrey and Gertrude had asserted their independence by perching themselves on a window-seat, as far as possible from all relations, whence they nodded a merry saucy greeting to Ethel, and she smiled back again, thinking her tall boy in his gray tunic and black belt, and her plump girl in white with green ribbons, were as goodly a pair as the room contained.

But where was the Doctor?

Ethel had a shrewd suspicion where she should find him; and in the nursery he was, playing at spillekens with his left hand.

It was not easy to persuade him that the music would be wasted on her, and that he ought to go down that it might receive justice; but Margaret settled the question. ‘You may go, grandpapa. Aunt Ethel is best to play at spillekens, for she has not got a left hand.’

‘There’s honour for me, who used to have two!’ and therewith Ethel turned him out in time for the overture.

Margaret respected her aunt sufficiently not to be extra wayward with her, and between the spillekens, and a long story about Cousin Dickie in New Zealand, all went well till bed-time. There was something in the child’s nervous temperament that made the first hours of the night peculiarly painful to her, and the sounds of the distant festivity added to her excitability. She fretted and tossed, moaned and wailed, sat up in bed and cried, snapped off attempts at hymns, would not listen to stories, and received Ethel’s attempts at calm grave commands with bursts of crying, and calls for mamma and papa. The music had ceased, tuning of violins was heard, and Ethel dreaded the cries being heard down-stairs. She was at her wits’ end, and was thinking who would most avail, and could be fetched with least sensation, when there was a soft knock at the door, and Harry’s voice said, ‘Hollo, what’s the matter here?’ In he came with his white glove half on, and perceiving the state of the case said, ‘Can’t go to sleep?’

‘Oh, Uncle Harry, take me;’ and the arms were stretched out, and the tear-stained face raised up.

‘We’ll put you to sleep as sound as if you were in a hammock just off middle watch,’ said Harry; and the next moment he had her rolled up in her little blue dressing-gown, nestling on his broad shoulder, while he walked up and down the room, crooning out a nautical song, not in first-rate style, but the effect was perfect; the struggles and sobs were over, and when at the end of a quarter of an hour Harry paused and looked at the little thin sharp face, it was softened by peaceful sleep.

Ethel pointed to the door. There stood Flora, her eyes full of tears.

Harry laid the little sleeper on her bed, and covered her up. Flora laid her arm on his shoulder and gave him such a kiss as she had not given even when he had come back as from the dead. Then she signed to them to come, but sped away before them, not trusting herself to speak. Ethel tarried with Harry, who was in difficulties with gloves too small for his broad hand, and was pshawing at himself at having let Tom get them for him at Whitford.

‘O, Harry,’ said Ethel, ‘you are the most really like papa of us all! How did you come to think of it!’

‘I’d have given a good deal if any one would have walked quarter-deck with me some nights last summer,’ said Harry, still intent on the glove. ‘What is to be done, Ethel! that rogue Tom always snaps up all the beauty. I dare say he has engaged Miss Ward and the widow both.’

It was no time for sentiment; so Ethel suggested getting half into one glove, and carrying the other.

‘You’ll be quite irresistible enough, Harry! And if all the beauty is engaged, I’ll dance with you myself.’

‘Will you?’ cried the lieutenant, with sparkling eyes, ‘then you are a jolly old Ethel! Come along, then;’ and he took her on his arm, ran down-stairs with her, and before she well knew where she was, or what was going on, she found herself in his great grasp passive as a doll, dragged off into the midst of a vehement polka that took her breath away. She trusted to him, and remained in a passive, half-frightened state, glad he was so happy; but in the first pause heartily wishing he would let her go, instead of which she only heard, ‘Well done, old Ethel, you’ll be a prime dancer yet! you’re as light as a feather;’ and before she had recovered her breath, off he led her with ‘Go it again!’

When at length, panting and bewildered, she was safely placed on a seat, with ‘You’ve had enough, have you? mind, I shan’t let you off another time,’ she found that her aberration had excited a good deal of sensation in her own family. Blanche and Gertrude could not repress their amusement; and Dr. May, with merry eyes, declared that she was coming out in a new light. She had only time to confide to him the reason that she had let Harry do what he pleased with her, before two volunteers were at her side.

‘Miss May, I did not think you ever danced!’

‘Nor I,’ said Ethel; ‘but you see what sailors can do with one.’

‘Now, Ethel’ said the other over his shoulder, ‘now you have danced with Harry, you must have this waltz with me.’

‘A dangerous precedent, Ethel,’ said the Doctor, laughing.

‘I couldn’t waltz to save my life, Aubrey,’ said Ethel; ‘but if you can bear me through a polka as well as Harry did, you may try the next.’

‘And won’t you—will you—for once dance with me? said his companion imploringly.

‘Very well, Leonard, if I can get through a quadrille;’ and therewith Ethel was seized upon by both boys to hear the story of every hit and miss, and of each of the difficulties that their unpractised corps had encountered in getting round the corners between Stoneborough and the Grange. Then came Leonard’s quadrille, which it might be hoped was gratifying to him; but which he executed with as much solemn deference as if he had been treading a minuet with a princess, plainly regarding it as the great event of the day. In due time, he resigned her to Aubrey; but poor Aubrey had been deluded by the facility with which the strong and practised sailor had swept his victim along; and Ethel grew terrified at the danger of collisions, and released herself and pulled him aside by force, just in time to avoid being borne down by the ponderous weight of Miss Boulder and her partner.

‘You did not come to grief with Harry!’ muttered the discomfited boy.

‘No more did the lamb damage the eagle; but remember the fate of the jackdaw, Mr. Gray-coat! I deserve some ice for my exertions, so come into the hall and get some, and tell me if you have had better luck elsewhere.’

‘I have had no partner but Minna Ward, and she trips as if one was a dancing-master.’

‘And how has Tom been managing?’

‘Stunningly civil! He began with Ave Ward, in the Lancers, and it was such fun—he chaffed her in his solemn way, about music I believe it was, and her harmonium. I could not quite hear, but I could see she was in a tremendous taking, and she won’t recover it all the evening.’

‘What a shame it is of Tom!’

‘Oh! but it is such fun! And since that he has been parading with Pug.’

‘She has not danced!’

‘Oh no! She got an audience into Meta’s little sitting-room—Henry Ward, Harvey Anderson, and some of the curates; they shut the door, and had some music on their own hook.’

‘Was Richard there!’

‘At first; but either he could not bear to see Meta’s piano profaned, or he thought it too strong when they got to the sacred line, for he bolted, and is gone home.’

‘There’s Harry dancing with Fanny Anderson. He has not got Miss Ward all this time.’

‘Nor will,’ said Aubrey. ‘Tom had put her in such a rage that she did not choose to dance with that cousin of hers, Sam Axworthy, so she was obliged to refuse every one else; and I had to put up with that child!’

‘Sam Axworthy! He does not belong to our corps. How does he come here?’

‘Oh! the old man has some houses in the borough, and an omnium gatherum like this was a good time to do the civil thing to him. There he is; peep into the card-room, and you’ll see his great porpoise back, the same old man that Harry in his benevolence assisted to a chair. He shook hands with Leonard, and told him there was a snug desk at the Vintry Mill for him.’

‘I dare say!’

‘And when Leonard thanked him, and said he hoped to get off to Cambridge, he laughed that horrid fat laugh, and told him learning would never put him in good case. Where shall I find you a place to sit down? Pug and her tail have taken up all the room,’ whispered Aubrey, as by the chief of the glittering tables in the hall, he saw Mrs. Pugh, drinking tea, surrounded by her attendant gentlemen, and with her aunt and Ella Ward, like satellites, a little way from her.

‘Here is a coign of vantage,’ said Ethel, seating herself on a step a little way up the staircase. ‘How those people have taken possession of that child all day!’

‘I fancy Leonard is come to reclaim her,’ said Aubrey, ‘don’t you see him trying to work through and get at her! and Miss Ward told me she was going home early, to put the children to bed. Ha! what’s the row? There’s Leonard flaring up in a regular rage! Only look at his eyes—and Henry just like Gertrude’s Java sparrow in a taking—’

‘It must not be,’ cried Ethel, starting up to attempt she knew not what, as she heard Leonard’s words, ‘Say it was a mistake, Henry! You cannot be so base as to persist!’

There it became evident that Ethel and Aubrey were seen over the balusters; Leonard’s colour deepened, but his eye did not flinch; though Henry quailed and backed, and the widow gave a disconcerted laugh; then Leonard pounced on his little sister and carried her off to the cloak-room. ‘What treason could it have been?’ muttered Aubrey; ‘we shall get it all from Ward;’ but when Leonard reappeared it was with his sister cloaked and bonneted on his arm, each leading a little one; he took them to the entrance and was seen no more.

Nor was the true history of that explosion ever revealed in the May family, though it had grave consequences at Bankside.

Rumour had long declared at Stoneborough that the member’s little daughter was carefully secluded on account of some deformity, and Mrs. Pugh had been one of many ladies who had hoped to satisfy their curiosity on this head upon the present occasion. She had asked Henry Ward whether it were so, and he had replied with pique that he had no means of judging, he had never been called in at the Grange. By way of salve to his feelings, the sympathizing lady had suggested that the preference for London advice might be from the desire of secrecy, and improbable as he knew this to be, his vanity had forbidden him to argue against it. When no little Miss Rivers appeared, the notion of her affliction gained ground, and Leonard, whose gray back was undistinguishable from other gray backs, heard Mrs. Pugh citing his brother as an authority for the misfortune which Mr. and Mrs. Rivers so carefully concealed as to employ no surgeon from their own neighbourhood.

Falsehood, slander, cruelty, ingratitude, breach of hospitality, were the imputations that fired the hot brain of Leonard, and writhed his lips, as he started round, confronted the lady, and assured her it was a—a—a gross mistake. His father had always attended the child, and she must have misunderstood his brother. Then, seeing Henry at a little distance, Leonard summoned him to contradict the allegation; but at that moment the sudden appearance of the two Mays put the whole conclave to silence.

Not aware that Mrs. Pugh had confounded together his intelligence and her surmise, and made him responsible for both, Henry was shocked and grieved at his brother’s insulting and violent demeanour, and exhausted himself in apologies and denunciations; while the kind-hearted lady interceded, for the boy, declaring that she doted on his generous spirit, but not confessing the piece of female embroidery which had embroiled the matter; probably not even aware of it, though sincerely and kindly desirous to avert the brother’s anger. Her amiability, therefore, only strengthened Henry’s sense of his brothers outrage, and his resolve to call him to account.

It was impossible that night, for Leonard had gone home with the sisters, and was in bed long before his brother returned. But at breakfast Henry found the forces drawn up against him, and his first attempt to remonstrate was retorted by the demand what he could mean by spreading such an abominable report—cruel—unfounded—ungrateful—spiteful—

Averil indeed divined that it was Mrs. Pugh’s invention; but Henry was not inclined to give up Mrs. Pugh, and continued in the belief that Leonard’s fiery imagination had fabricated the sentence, and then most improperly charged it on the lady, and on himself. Had it been as Leonard stated, said Henry, his conduct was shameful and required an apology, whereupon Leonard burst out in passion at being disbelieved, and Averil was no less indignant. The storm raged till the business of the day interrupted it; and in Henry’s absence, Averil and her brother worked up their wrath again, at the atrocity of the assertion regarding the child of their entertainers, the granddaughter of their truest, kindest friend.

Averil would have rushed to Mary with the whole story, but for Leonard’s solemn asseveration that if ever it came to the ears of any one of the Mays, he should send back his rifle to Mr. Ernescliffe, and work his way out to one of the colonies rather than again look any of the family in the face.

Henry divided his opponents next time, asking Leonard, in his sister’s absence, whether he had come to his senses and would apologize? Leonard hoped Henry had come to his! On the whole, the dispute had lost some asperity by the absence of Averil, and though Leonard held his ground, and maintained that he had every right to deny the statement, and that it was Henry’s duty to make Mrs. Pugh contradict it everywhere, yet the two approached nearer together, and there was less misunderstanding, fewer personalities.

But Averil could not forget or forgive. She persisted in manifesting her displeasure, and recurred to the subject till her pertinacity wore out Leonard himself.

‘Nonsense, Ave,’ he said at last, ‘it was a foolish woman’s gossip that Henry ought to have quashed; but that is no reason you should treat them like toads.’

‘Would you have me sanction vile slander?’

‘As if you were sanctioning slander by being decently civil! Is not it an intolerable thing that we three should never sit down to a meal in peace together?’

‘O, Leonard, don’t you think I feel the misery?’

Put an end to it then, and don’t pit those poor children one against the other. Just fancy Minna’s saying to me, “I love you and sister, but Ella loves Mrs. Pugh and Henry.”’

‘Yes, they have set Ella against me. She always appeals to Henry, and I can do nothing with her.’

Leonard looked out of the window and whistled, then said, as if he had made a discovery, ‘I’ll tell you what, Ave, something must be done to set things to rights between us, and I believe the best thing will be to call on Mrs. Pugh.’

‘Not to apologize! O, Leonard!’

‘Stuff and nonsense! Only to show we don’t bear malice. Henry had been at you to call ever so long before this, had he not?’

‘I can’t see any reason for intimacy.’

‘I declare, Ave, you are too bad! I only want you just to keep the peace with your own brother. You have led him the life of a dog these three days, and now when I want you to be a little obliging, you talk of intimacy!’

‘Only because I know how it will be. If I give that woman an inch, she will take an ell.’

‘Let her then. It would be much better than always living at daggers-drawn with one’s brother.’ Then, after waiting for her to say something, he added, ‘If you won’t go with me, I shall go alone.’

Averil rose, subdued but not convinced, reverencing her brother, but afraid of his concessions.

However, the call turned out well. Mrs. Pugh had a talent for making herself agreeable, and probably had liked the boy for his outburst. She would not let Mab be excluded, loaded her with admiration, and was extremely interested in the volunteer practice, so that both the young people were subjugated for the time by her pleasant manners, and went away ashamed of their own rancour against one so friendly and good-natured, and considerably relieved of their burden of animosity.

Their greeting to their brother was so cordial that he perceived their good-will, and was sorry that the dread of an evening of warfare had induced him to accept an invitation to dine at the Swan with Sam Axworthy and a party of his friends.

CHAPTER X

This night is my departing night, For here nae longer must I stay; There’s neither friend nor foe of mine But wishes me away. What I have done through lack of wit, I never, never can recall: I hope ye’re all my friends as yet. Good night, and joy be with you all. Armstrong’s Good Night

The storm had blown over, but heavy flakes of cloud still cumbered the air, and gusts of wind portended that it might gather again.

Henry Ward took this opportunity of giving his first dinner party. He said it was a necessary return for the civilities they had received; and to Averil’s representation that it transgressed the system of rigid economy that so much tormented her, he replied by referring her to Mrs. Pugh for lessons in the combination of style and inexpensiveness.

Averil had almost refused, but the lady herself proffered her instructions, and reluctance was of no avail; nothing but demonstrations from which her conscience shrank, could have served to defend her from the officious interference so eagerly and thankfully encouraged by the master of the house. Vainly did she protest against pretension, and quote the example of the Grange; she found herself compelled to sacrifice the children’s lessons to learn of Mrs. Pugh to make the paper flowers that, with bonbons and sweetmeats, were to save the expense of good food on the dinner-table, and which she feared would be despised by Miss May, nay, perhaps laughed over with ‘Mr. Tom!’

She hated the whole concern, even the invitation to Dr. and Miss May, knowing that it was sent in formal vanity, accepted in pure good-nature, would bring them into society they did not like, and expose her brother’s bad taste. Only one thing could have added to her dislike, namely—that which all Stoneborough perceived excepting herself and Leonard—that this dinner was intended as a step in Henry’s courtship, and possibly as an encouragement of Harvey Anderson’s liking for herself. Averil held her head so high, and was so little popular, that no one of less assurance than Mrs. Ledwich herself would have dared approach her with personal gossip; and even Mrs. Ledwich was silent here; so that Averil, too young and innocent to connect second marriages with recent widowhood, drew no conclusions from Henry’s restless eagerness that his household should present the most imposing appearance.

While the bill of fare was worrying Averil, Leonard was told by Aubrey, that his father had brought home a fossil Tower of Babel, dug up with some earth out of a new well, three miles off, with tidings of other unheard-of treasures, and a walk was projected in quest of them, in which Leonard was invited to join. He gladly came to the early dinner, where he met reduced numbers—the Ernescliffes being at Maplewood, Tom at Cambridge, and Harry in the Channel fleet; and as usual, he felt the difference between the perfect understanding and friendship in the one home, and the dread of dangerous subjects in the other. The expedition had all the charms of the Coombe times; and the geological discoveries were so numerous and precious, that the load became sufficient to break down the finders, and Ethel engaged a market-woman to bring the baskets in her cart the next morning.

That morning a note from Richard begged Ethel to come early to Cocksmoor to see Granny Hall, who was dying. Thus left to their own devices, Aubrey and Gertrude conscientiously went through some of their studies; then proceeded to unpack their treasury of fossils, and endeavour to sort out Leonard’s share, as to which doubts arose. Daisy proposed to carry the specimens at once to Bankside, where she wanted to see Leonard’s prime echinus; and Aubrey readily agreed, neither of the young heads having learnt the undesirableness of a morning visit in a house preparing for a dinner-party too big for it.

However, Leonard made them extremely welcome. It was too foggy a day for rifle practice, and all the best plate and china were in the schoolroom, his only place of refuge; Ave was fluttering about in hopes of getting everything done before Mrs. Pugh could take it out of her hands, and the energies of the household were spent on laying out the dining-table. It was clearly impossible to take Gertrude anywhere but into the drawing-room, which was in demi-toilette state, the lustres released from their veils, the gayer cushions taken out of their hiding-places, and the brown holland covers half off. This was the only tranquil spot, and so poor little Mab thought, forbidden ground though it was. Even in her own home, the schoolroom, a strange man had twice trod upon her toes; so no wonder, when she saw her own master and his friends in the drawing-room, that she ventured in, and leaping on a velvet cushion she had never seen before, and had never been ordered off, she there curled herself up and went to sleep, unseen by Leonard, who was in eager controversy upon the specimens, which Gertrude, as she unpacked, set down on floor, chair, or ottoman, unaware of the offence she was committing. So, unmolested, the young geologists talked, named, and sorted the specimens, till the clock striking the half-hour, warned the Mays that they must return; and Leonard let them out at the window, and crossed the lawn to the side gate with them to save the distance.

He had just returned, and was kneeling on the floor hastily collecting the fossils, when the door opened, and Henry Ward, coming home to inspect the preparations, beheld the drawing-room bestrewn with the rough stones that he had proscribed, and Mab, not only in the room, but reposing in the centre of the most magnificent cushion in the house!

His first movement of indignation was to seize the dog with no gentle hand. She whined loudly; and Leonard, whom he had not seen, shouted angrily, ‘Let her alone;’ then, at another cry from her, finding his advance to her rescue impeded by a barricade of the crowded and disarranged furniture, he grew mad with passion, and launched the stone in his hand, a long sharp-pointed belemnite. It did not strike Henry, but a sound proclaimed the mischief, as it fell back from the surface of the mirror, making a huge star of cracks, unmarked by Leonard, who, pushing sofa and ottoman to the right and left, thundered up to his brother, and with uplifted hand demanded what he meant by his cruelty.

‘Is—is this defiance?’ stammered Henry, pointing to the disordered room.

‘Look here, Averil,’ as she appeared at the sounds, ‘do you defend this boy now he has very nearly killed me?’

‘Killed you!’ and Leonard laughed angrily; but when Henry held up the elf-bolt, and he saw its sharp point, he was shocked, and he saw horror in Averil’s face.

‘I see,’ he said gravely. ‘It was a mercy I did not!’ and he paused. ‘I did not know what I was about when you were misusing my dog, Henry. Shake hands; I am sorry for it.’

But Henry had been very much frightened as well as angered, and thought, perhaps, it was a moment to pursue his advantage.

‘You treat things lightly,’ he said, not accepting the hand.

‘See what you have done.’

‘I am glad it was not your head,’ said Leonard. ‘What does it cost? I’ll pay.’

‘More than your keep for a year,’ moaned Henry, as he sighed over the long limbs of the starfish-like fracture.

‘Well, I will give up anything you like, if you will only not be sulky about it, Henry. It was unlucky, and I’m sorry for it; I can’t say more!’

‘But I can,’ said Henry with angry dignity, reinforced by the sight of the seamed reflection of his visage in the shivered glass. ‘I tell you, Leonard, there’s no having you in the house; you defy my authority, you insult my friends, you waste and destroy more than you are worth, and you are absolutely dangerous. I would as soon have a wild beast about the place. If you don’t get the Randall next week, and get off to the University, to old Axworthy’s office you go at once.’

‘Very well, I will,’ said Leonard, turning to collect the fossils, as if he had done with the subject.

‘Henry, Henry, what are you saying?’ cried the sister.

‘Not a word, Ave,’ said Leonard. ‘I had rather break stones on the road than live where my keep is grudged, and there’s not spirit enough to get over a moment’s fright.’

‘It is not any one individual thing,’ began Henry, in a tone of annoyance, ‘but your whole course—’

There he paused, perceiving that Leonard paid no attention to his words, continuing quietly to replace the furniture and collect the fossils, as it no one else were in the room, after which he carried the basket up-stairs.

Averil hurried after him. ‘Leonard! oh, why don’t you explain? Why don’t you tell him how the stones came there?’

Leonard shook his head sternly.

‘Don’t you mean to do anything?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But you wanted another year before trying for the scholarship.’

‘Yes; I have no chance there.’

‘He will not do it! He cannot mean it!’

‘I do then. I will get my own living, and not be a burthen, where my brother cannot forgive a broken glass or a moment’s fright,’ said Leonard; and she felt that his calm resentment was worse than his violence.

‘He will be cooler, and then—’

‘I will have no more said to him. It is plain that we cannot live together, and there’s an end of it. Don’t cry, or you won’t be fit to be seen.’

‘I won’t come down to dinner.’

‘Yes, you will. Let us have no more about it. Some one wants you.’

‘Please, ma’am, the fish is come.’

‘Sister, sister, come and see how I have done up the macaroons in green leaves.’

‘Sister, sister, do come and reach me down some calycanthus out of the greenhouse!’

‘I will,’ said Leonard, descending; and for the rest of the day he was an efficient assistant in the decorations, and the past adventure was only apparent in the shattered glass, and the stern ceremonious courtesy of the younger brother towards the elder.

Averil hurried about, devoid of all her former interest in so doing things for herself as to save interference; and when Mrs. Ledwich and Mrs. Pugh walked in, overflowing with suggestions, she let them have their way, and toiled under them with the sensation of being like ‘dumb driven cattle.’ If Leonard were to be an exile, what mattered it to her who ruled, or what appearance things made?

Only when she went to her own room to dress, had she a moment to realize the catastrophe, its consequences, and the means of averting them. So appalled was she, that she sat with her hair on her shoulders as if spell-bound, till the first ring at the door aroused her to speed and consternation, perhaps a little lessened by one of her sisters rushing in to say that it was Mrs. Ledwich and Mrs. Pugh, and that Henry was still in the cellar, decanting the wine.

Long before the hosts were ready, Dr. May and Ethel had likewise arrived, and became cognizant of the fracture of the mirror, for, though the nucleus was concealed by a large photograph stuck into the frame, one long crack extended even to the opposite corner. The two ladies were not slow to relate all that they knew; and while the aunt dismayed Ethel by her story, the niece, with much anxiety, asked Dr. May how it was that these dear, nice, superior young people should have such unfortunate tempers—was it from any error in management? So earnest was her manner, so inquiring her look, that Dr. May suspected that she was feeling for his opinion on personal grounds, and tried to avert the danger by talking of the excellence of the parents, but he was recalled from his eulogium on poor Mrs. Ward.

‘Oh yes! one felt for them so very much, and they are so religious, so well principled, and all that one could wish; but family dissension is so dreadful. I am very little used to young men or boys, and I never knew anything like this.’

‘The lads are too nearly of an age,’ said the Doctor.

‘And would such things be likely to happen among any brothers?’

‘I should trust not!’ said the Doctor emphatically.

‘I should so like to know in confidence which you think likely to be most to blame.’

Never was the Doctor more glad that Averil made her appearance! He carefully avoided getting near Mrs. Pugh for the rest of the evening, but he could not help observing that she was less gracious than usual to the master of the house; while she summoned Leonard to her side to ask about the volunteer proceedings, and formed her immediate court of Harvey Anderson and Mr. Scudamour.

The dinner went on fairly, though heavily. Averil, in her one great trouble, lost the sense of the minor offences that would have distressed her pride and her taste had she been able to attend to them, and forgot the dulness of the scene in her anxiety to seek sympathy and counsel in the only quarter where she cared for it. She went mechanically through her duties as lady of the house, talking commonplace subjects dreamily to Dr. May, and scarcely even giving herself the trouble to be brief with Mr. Anderson, who was on her other side at dinner.

In the drawing-room, she left the other ladies to their own devices in her eagerness to secure a few minutes with Ethel May, and disabuse her of whatever Mrs. Ledwich or Mrs. Pugh might have said. Ethel had been more hopeful before she heard the true version; she had hitherto allowed much for Mrs. Ledwich’s embellishments; and she was shocked and took shame to her own guiltless head for Gertrude’s thoughtlessness.

‘Oh no!’ said Averil, ‘there was nothing that any one need have minded, if Henry had waited for explanation! And now, will you get Dr. May to speak to him? If he only knew how people would think of his treating Leonard so, I am sure he would not do it.’

‘He cannot!’ said Ethel. ‘Don’t you know what he thinks of it himself? He said to papa last year that your father would as soon have sent Leonard to the hulks as to the Vintry Mill.’

‘Oh, I am so glad some one heard him. He would care about having that cast up against him, if he cared for nothing else.’

‘It must have been a mere threat. Leonard surely has only to ask his pardon.’

‘No, indeed, not again, Miss May!’ said Averil. ‘Leonard asked once, and was refused, and cannot ask again. No, the only difficulty is whether he ought not to keep to his word, and go to the mill if he does not get the Randall.’

‘Did he say he would?’

‘Of course he did, when Henry threatened him with it, and talked of the burden of his maintenance! He said, “Very well, I will,” and he means it!’

‘He will not mean it when the spirit of repentance has had time to waken.’

‘He will take nothing that is grudged him,’ said Averil. ‘Oh! is it not hard that I cannot get at my own money, and send him at once to Cambridge, and never ask Henry for another farthing?’

‘Nay, Averil; I think you can do a better part by trying to make them forgive one another.’

Averil had no notion of Leonard’s again abasing himself, and though she might try to bring Henry to reason by reproaches, she would not persuade. She wished her guest had been the sympathizing Mary rather than Miss May, who was sure to take the part of the elder and the authority. Repentance! Forgiveness! If Miss May should work on Leonard to sue for pardon and toleration, and Mrs. Pugh should intercede with Henry to take him into favour, she had rather he were at the Vintry Mill at once in his dignity, and Henry be left to his disgrace.

Ethel thought of Dr. Spencer’s words on the beach at Coombe, ‘Never threaten Providence!’ She longed to repeat them to Leonard, as she watched his stern determined face, and the elaborately quiet motions that spoke of a fixed resentful purpose; but to her disappointment and misgiving, he gave her no opportunity, and for the first time since their seaside intercourse, held aloof from her.

Nor did she see him again during the week that intervened before the decision of the scholarship, though three days of it were holidays. Aubrey, whom she desired to bring him in after the rifle drill, reported that he pronounced himself sorry to refuse, but too busy to come in, and he seemed to be cramming with fiery vehemence for the mere chance of success.

The chance was small. The only hope lay in the possibility of some hindrance preventing the return of either Forder or Folliot; and in the meantime the Mays anxiously thought over Leonard’s prospects. His remaining at home was evidently too great a trial for both brothers, and without a scholarship he could not go to the University. The evils of the alternative offered by his brother were duly weighed by the Doctor and Ethel with an attempt to be impartial.

Mr. Axworthy, though the mill was the centre of his business, was in fact a corn merchant of considerable wealth, and with opportunities of extending his connection much farther. Had his personal character been otherwise, Dr. May thought a young man could not have a better opening than a seat in his office, and the future power of taking shares in his trade; there need be no loss of position, and there was great likelihood both of prosperity and the means of extensive usefulness.

Ethel sighed at the thought of the higher aspirations that she had fostered till her own mind was set on them.

‘Nay,’ said the Doctor, ‘depend upon it, the desk is admirable training for good soldiers of the Church. See the fearful evil that befalls great schemes intrusted to people who cannot deal with money matters; and see, on the other hand, what our merchants and men of business have done for the Church, and do not scorn “the receipt of custom.”’

‘But the man, papa!’

‘Yes, there lies the hitch! If Leonard fails, I can lay things before Henry, such as perhaps he may be too young to know, and which must change his purpose.’

Mr. Axworthy’s career during his youth and early manhood was guessed at rather than known, but even since his return and occupation of the Vintry Mill, his vicious habits had scandalized the neighbourhood, and though the more flagrant of these had been discontinued as he advanced in age, there was no reason to hope that he had so much ‘left off his sins, as that his sins had left him off.’ His great-nephew, who lived with him and assisted in his business, was a dashing sporting young man of no good character, known to be often intoxicated, and concerned in much low dissipation, and as dangerous an associate as could be conceived for a high-spirited lad like Leonard. Dr. May could not believe that any provocation of temper, any motive of economy, any desire to be rid of encumbrances to his courtship, could induce a man with so much good in him, as there certainly was in Henry Ward, to expose his orphan brother to such temptations; and he only reserved his remonstrance in the trust that it would not be needed, and the desire to offer some better alternative of present relief.

One of the examiners was Norman’s old school and college friend, Charles Cheviot, now a clergyman and an under-master at one of the great schools recently opened for the middle classes, where he was meeting with great success, and was considered a capital judge of boys’ characters. He was the guest of the Mays during the examination; and though his shy formal manner, and convulsive efforts at young lady talk, greatly affronted Gertrude, the brothers liked him.

He was in consternation at the decline of Stoneborough school since Mr. Wilmot had ceased to be an under-master; the whole tone of the school had degenerated, and it was no wonder that the Government inquiries were ominously directed in that quarter. Scholarship was at a low ebb, Dr. Hoxton seemed to have lost what power of teaching he had ever possessed, and as Dr. May observed, the poor old school was going to the dogs. But even in the present state of things, Leonard had no chance of excelling his competitors. His study, like theirs, had been mere task-work, and though he showed more native power than the rest, yet perhaps this had made the mere learning by rote even more difficult to an active mind full of inquiry. He was a whole year younger than any other who touched the foremost ranks, two years younger than several; and though he now and then showed a feverish spark of genius, reminding Mr. Cheviot of Norman in his famous examination, it was not sustained—there were will and force, but not scholarship—and besides, there was a wide blurred spot in his memory, as though all the brain-work of the quarter before his illness had been confused, and had not yet become clear. There was every likelihood that a few years would make him superior to the chosen Randall scholar, but at present his utmost efforts did not even place him among the seven whose names appeared honourably in the newspaper. It was a failure; but Mr. Cheviot had become much interested in the boy for his own sake, as well as from what he heard from the Mays, and he strongly advised that Leonard should at Easter obtain employment for a couple of years at the school in which he himself was concerned. He would thus be maintaining himself, and pursuing his own studies under good direction, so as to have every probability of success in getting an open scholarship at one of the Universities.

Nothing could be better, and there was a perfect jubilee among the Mays at the proposal. Aubrey was despatched as soon as breakfast was over to bring Leonard to talk it over, and Dr. May undertook to propound it to Henry on meeting him at the hospital; but Aubrey came back looking very blank—Leonard had started of his own accord that morning to announce to his uncle his acceptance of a clerk’s desk at the Vintry Mill!

Averil followed upon Aubrey’s footsteps, and arrived while the schoolroom was ringing with notes of vexation and consternation. She was all upon the defensive. She said that not a word had passed on the subject since the dinner-party, and there had not been a shadow of a dispute between the brothers; in fact, she evidently was delighted with Leonard’s dignified position and strength of determination, and thought this expedition to the Vintry Mill a signal victory.

When she heard what the Mays had to propose, she was enchanted, she had no doubt of Henry’s willing consent, and felt that Leonard’s triumph and independence were secured without the sacrifice of prospects, which she had begun to regard as a considerable price for his dignity.

But Dr. May was not so successful with Henry Ward. He did not want to disoblige his uncle, who had taken a fancy to Leonard, and might do much for the family; he thought his father would have changed his views of the uncle and nephew had he known them better, he would not accept the opinion of a stranger against people of his own family, and he had always understood the position of an usher to be most wretched, nor would he perceive the vast difference between the staff of the middle school and of the private commercial academy. He evidently was pleased to stand upon his rights, to disappoint Dr. May, and perhaps to gratify his jealousy by denying his brother a superior education.

Yet in spite of this ebullition, which had greatly exasperated Dr. May, there was every probability that Henry’s consent might be wrung out or dispensed with, and plans of attack were being arranged at the tea-table, when a new obstacle in the shape of a note from Leonard himself.

‘My Dear Aubrey,

‘I am very much obliged to Dr. May and Mr. Cheviot for their kind intentions; but I have quite settled with Mr. Axworthy, and I enter on my new duties next week. I am sorry to leave our corps, but it is too far off, and I must enter the Whitford one.

‘Yours, ‘L. A. Ward.’

‘The boy is mad with pride and temper,’ said the Doctor.

‘And his sister has made him so,’ added Ethel.

‘Shall I run down to Bankside and tell him it is all bosh?’ said Aubrey, jumping up.

‘I don’t think that is quite possible under Henry’s very nose,’ said Ethel. ‘Perhaps they will all be tamer by tomorrow, now they have blown their trumpets; but I am very much vexed.’

‘And really,’ added Mr. Cheviot, ‘if he is so wrongheaded, I begin to doubt if I could recommend him.’

‘You do not know how he has been galled and irritated,’ said the general voice.

‘I wonder what Mrs. Pugh thinks of it,’ presently observed the Doctor.

‘Ah!’ said Ethel, ‘Mrs. Pugh is reading “John of Anjou”.’

‘Indeed!’ said the Doctor; ‘I suspected the wind was getting into that quarter. Master Henry does not know his own interest: she was sure to take part with a handsome lad.’

‘Why have you never got Mrs. Pugh to speak for him?’ said Mary. ‘I am sure she would.’

‘O, Mary! simple Mary, you to be Ave’s friend, and not know that her interposition is the only thing wanting to complete the frenzy of the other two!’

Ethel said little more that evening, she was too much grieved and too anxious. She was extremely disappointed in Leonard, and almost hopeless as to his future. She saw but one chance of preventing his seeking this place of temptation, and that was in the exertion of her personal influence. His avoidance of her showed that he dreaded it, but one attempt must be made. All night was spent in broken dreams of just failing to meet him, or of being unable to utter what was on her tongue; and in her waking moments she almost reproached herself for the discovery how near her heart he was, and how much pleasure his devotion had given her.

Nothing but resolution on her own part could bring about a meeting, and she was resolute. She stormed the castle in person, and told Averil she must speak to Leonard. Ave was on her side now, and answered with tears in her eyes that she should be most grateful to have Leonard persuaded out of this dreadful plan, and put in the way of excelling as he ought to do; she never thought it would come to this.

‘No,’ thought Ethel; ‘people blow sparks without thinking they may burn a house down.’

Ave conducted her to the summer-house, where Leonard was packing up his fossils. He met them with a face resolutely bent on brightness. ‘I am to take all my household gods,’ he said, as he shook hands with Ethel.

‘I see,’ said Ethel, gravely; and as Averil was already falling out of hearing, she added, ‘I thought you were entirely breaking with your old life.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Leonard, turning to walk with her in the paths; ‘I am leaving the place where it is most impossible to live in.’

‘This has been a place of great, over-great trial, I know,’ said Ethel, ‘but I do not ask you to stay in it.’

‘My word is my word,’ said Leonard, snapping little boughs off the laurels as he walked.

‘A hasty word ought not to be kept.’

His face looked rigid, and he answered not.

‘Leonard,’ she said, ‘I have been very unhappy about you, for I see you doing wilfully wrong, and entering a place of temptation in a dangerous spirit.’

‘I have given my word,’ repeated Leonard.

‘O, Leonard, it is pride that is speaking, not the love of truth and constancy.’

‘I never defend myself,’ said Leonard.

Ethel felt deeply the obduracy and pride of these answers; her eyes filled with tears, and her hopes failed.

Perhaps Leonard saw the pain he was giving, for he softened, and said, ‘Miss May, I have thought it over, and I cannot go back. I know I was carried away by passion at the first moment, and I was willing to make amends. I was rejected, as you know. Was it fit that we should go on living together?’

‘I do not ask you to live together.’

‘When he reproached me with the cost of my maintenance, and threatened me with the mill if I lost the scholarship, which he knew I could not get, I said I would abide by those words. I do abide by them.’

‘There is no reason that you should. Why should you give up all your best and highest hopes, because you cannot forgive your brother?’

‘Miss May, if I lived with you and the Doctor, I could have such aims. Henry has taken care to make them sacrilege for me. I shall never be fit now, and there’s an end of it.’

‘You might—’

‘No, no, no! A school, indeed! I should be dismissed for licking the boys before a week was out! Besides, I want the readiest way to get on in the world; I must take care of my sisters; I don’t trust one moment to Henry’s affection for any of them. This is no home for me, and it soon may be no home for them!’ and the boy’s eyes were full of tears, though his voice struggled for firmness and indifference.

‘I am very sorry for you, Leonard,’ said Ethel, much more affectionately, as she felt herself nearer her friend of Coombe. ‘I am glad you have some better motives, but I do not see how you will be more able to help them in this way.’

‘I shall be near them,’ said Leonard; ‘I can watch over them. And if—if—it is true what they say about Henry and Mrs. Pugh—then they could have a cottage near the mill, and I could live with them. Don’t you see, Miss May?’

‘Yes; but I question whether, on further acquaintance, you will wish for your sisters to be with their relations there. The other course would put you in the way of a better atmosphere for them.’

‘But not for six years,’ said Leonard. ‘No, Miss May; to show you it is not what you think in me, I will tell you that I had resolved the last thing to ask Henry’s pardon for my share in this unhappy half-year; but this is the only resource for me or my sisters, and my mind is made up.’

‘O, Leonard, are you not deceiving yourself? Are the grapes ever so sour, or the nightshade below so sweet, as when the fox has leapt too short, and is too proud to climb?’

‘Nightshade! Why, pray?’

‘My father would tell you; I know he thinks your cousin no safe companion.’

‘I know that already, but I can keep out of his way.’

‘Then this is the end of it,’ said Ethel, feeling only half justified in going so far, ‘the end of all we thought and talked of at Coombe!’

There was a struggle in the boy’s face, and she did not know whether she had touched or angered him. ‘I can’t help it,’ he said, as if he would have recalled his former hardness; but then softening, ‘No, Miss May, why should it be? A man can do his duty in any state of life.’

‘In any state of life where God has placed him; but how when it is his own self-will?’

‘There are times when one must judge for one’s self.’

‘Very well, then, I have done, Leonard. If you can conscientiously feel that you are acting for the best, and not to gratify your pride, then I can only say I hope you will be helped through the course you have chosen. Good-bye.’

‘But—Miss May—though I cannot take your advice—’ he hesitated, ‘this is not giving me up?’

‘Never, while you let me esteem you.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, brightening, ‘that is something to keep my head above water, even if this place were all you think it.’

‘My father thinks,’ said Ethel.

‘I am engaged now; I cannot go back,’ said Leonard. ‘Thank you. Miss May.’

‘Thank you for listening patiently,’ said Ethel. ‘Good-bye.’

‘And—and,’ he added earnestly, following her back to the house, ‘you do not think the Coombe days cancelled?’

‘If you mean my hopes of you,’ said Ethel, with a swelling heart, ‘as long as you do your duty—for—for the highest reason, they will only take another course, and I will try to think it the right one.’

Ethel had mentally made this interview the test of her regard for Leonard. She had failed, and so had her test; her influence had not succeeded, but it had not snapped; the boy, in all his wilfulness, had been too much for her, and she could no longer condemn and throw him off!

Oh! why will not the rights and wrongs of this world be more clearly divided!

CHAPTER XI

The stream was deeper than I thought When first I ventured here, I stood upon its sloping edge Without a rising fear.—H. BONAR

It was a comfort to find that the brothers parted on good terms. The elder was beholden to the younger for the acquiescence that removed the odium of tyranny from the expulsion, and when the one great disturbance had silenced the ephemeral dissensions that had kept both minds in a constant state of irritation, Henry wanted, by kindness and consideration, to prove to himself and the world that Leonard’s real interests were his sole object; and Leonard rejoiced in being at peace, so long as his pride and resolution were not sacrificed. He went off as though his employment had been the unanimous choice of the family, carrying with him his dog, his rifle, his fishing-rod, his fossils, and all his other possessions, but with the understanding that his Sundays were to be passed at home, by way of safeguard to his religion and morals, bespeaking the care and consideration of his senior, as Henry assured himself and Mrs. Pugh, and tried to persuade his sister and Dr. May.

But Dr. May was more implacable than all the rest. He called Henry’s action the deed of Joseph’s brethren, and viewed the matter as the responsible head of a family; he had a more vivid contemporaneous knowledge of the Axworthy antecedents, and he had been a witness to Henry’s original indignant repudiation of such a destiny for his brother. He was in the mood of a man whose charity had endured long, and refused to condemn, but whose condemnation, when forced from him, was therefore doubly strong. The displeasure of a loving charitable man is indeed a grave misfortune.

Never had he known a more selfish and unprincipled measure, deliberately flying in the face of his parents’ known wishes before they had been a year in their graves, exposing his brother to ruinous temptation with his eyes open. The lad was destroyed body and soul, as much as if he had been set down in Satan’s own clutches; and if they did not mind what they were about, he would drag Aubrey after him! As sure as his name was Dick May, he would sooner have cut his hand off than have sent the boys to Coombe together, could he have guessed that this was to be the result.

Such discourses did not tend to make Ethel comfortable. If she had been silly enough to indulge in a dream of her influence availing to strengthen Leonard against temptation, she must still have refrained from exerting it through her wonted medium, since it was her father’s express desire that Aubrey, for his own sake, should be detached from his friend as much as possible.

Aubrey was the greatest present difficulty. Long before their illness the boys had been the resource of each other’s leisure, and Coombe had made their intimacy a friendship of the warmest nature. Aubrey was at an age peculiarly dependent on equal companionship, and in the absence of his brothers, the loss of his daily intercourse with Leonard took away all the zest of life. Even the volunteer practice lost its charm without the rival with whom he chiefly contended, yet whose success against others was hotter to him than his own; his other occupations all wanted partnership, and for the first time in his life he showed weariness and contempt of his sisters’ society and pursuits. He rushed off on Sunday evenings for a walk with Leonard; and though Dr. May did not interfere, the daughters saw that the abstinence was an effort of prudence, and were proportionately disturbed when one day at dinner, in his father’s absence, Aubrey, who had been overlooking his fishing-flies with some reviving interest, refused all his sisters’ proposals for the afternoon, and when they represented that it was not a good fishing-day, owned that it was not, but that he was going over to consult Leonard Ward about some gray hackles.

‘But you mustn’t, Aubrey,’ cried Gertrude, aghast.

Aubrey made her a low mocking bow.

‘I am sure papa would be very much vexed,’ added she, conclusively.

‘I believe it was luckless Hal that the mill-wheel tore in your nursery rhymes, eh, Daisy,’ said Aubrey.

‘Nursery rhymes, indeed!’ returned the offended young lady; ‘you know it is a very wicked place, and papa would be very angry at your going there.’ She looked at Ethel, extremely shocked at her not having interfered, and disregarding all signs to keep silence.

‘Axworthy—worthy of the axe,’ said Aubrey, well pleased to retort a little teasing by the way; ‘young Axworthy baiting the trap, and old Axworthy sitting up in his den to grind the unwary limb from limb!’

‘Ethel, why don’t you tell him not?’ exclaimed Gertrude.

‘Because he knows papa’s wishes as well as I do,’ said Ethel; ‘and it is to them that he must attend, not to you or me.’

Aubrey muttered something about his father having said nothing to him; and Ethel succeeded in preventing Daisy from resenting this answer. She herself hoped to catch him in private, but he easily contrived to baffle this attempt, and was soon marching out of Stoneborough in a state of rampant independence, manhood, and resolute friendship, which nevertheless chose the way where he was least likely to encounter a little brown brougham.

Otherwise he might have reckoned three and a half miles of ploughed field, soppy lane, and water meadow, as more than equivalent to five miles of good turnpike road.

Be that as it might, he was extremely glad when, after forcing his way through a sticky clayey path through a hazel copse, his eye fell on a wide reach of meadow land, the railroad making a hard line across it at one end, and in the midst, about half a mile off, the river meandering like a blue ribbon lying loosely across the green flat, the handsome buildings of the Vintry Mill lying in its embrace.

Aubrey knew the outward aspect of the place, for the foreman at the mill was a frequent patient of his father’s, and he had often waited in the old gig at the cottage door at no great distance; but he looked with more critical eyes at the home of his friend.

It was a place with much capacity, built, like the Grange, by the monks of the convent, which had been the germ of the cathedral, and showing the grand old monastic style in the solidity of its stone barns and storehouses, all arranged around a court, whereof the dwelling-house occupied one side, the lawn behind it with fine old trees, and sloping down to the water, which was full of bright ripples after its agitation around the great mill-wheel. The house was of more recent date, having been built by a wealthy yeoman of Queen Anne’s time, and had long ranges of square-headed sash windows, surmounted by a pediment, carved with emblems of Ceres and Bacchus, and a very tall front door, also with a pediment, and with stone stops leading up to it. Of the same era appeared to be the great gateway, and the turret above it, containing a clock, the hands of which pointed to 3.40.

Aubrey had rather it had been four, at which time the office closed. He looked round the court, which seemed very dean and rather empty—stables, barns, buildings, and dwelling-house not showing much sign of life, excepting the ceaseless hum and clack of the mill, and the dash of the water which propelled it. The windows nearest to him were so large and low, that he could look in and see that the first two or three belonged to living rooms, and the next two showed him business fittings, and a back that he took to be Leonard’s; but he paused in doubt how to present himself, and whether this were a welcome moment, and he was very glad to see in a doorway of the upper story of the mill buildings, the honest floury face of his father’s old patient—the foreman.

Greeting him in the open cordial way common to all Dr. May’s children, Aubrey was at once recognized, and the old man came down a step-ladder in the interior to welcome him, and answer his question where he should find Mr. Ward.

‘He is in the office, sir, there, to the left hand as you go in at the front door, but—’ and he looked up at the clock, ‘maybe, you would not mind waiting a bit till it strikes four. I don’t know whether master might be best pleased at young gentlemen coming to see him in office hours.’

‘Thank you,’ said Aubrey. ‘I did not mean to be too soon, Hardy, but I did not know how long the walk would be.’

Perhaps it would have been more true had he said that he had wanted to elude his sisters, but he was glad to accept a seat on a bundle of sacks tremulous with the motion of the mill, and to enter into a conversation with the old foreman, one of those good old peasants whose integrity and skill render them privileged persons, worth their weight in gold long after their bodily strength has given way.

‘Well, Hardy, do you mean to make a thorough good miller of Mr. Ward?’

‘Bless you, Master May, he’ll never stay here long enough.’

‘Why not?’

‘No, nor his friends didn’t ought to let him stay!’ added Hardy.

‘Why?’ said Aubrey. ‘Do you think so badly of your own trade, Hardy?’

But he could not get an answer from the oracle on this head. Hardy continued, ‘He’s a nice young gentleman, but he’ll never put up with it.’

‘Put up with what?’ asked Aubrey, anxiously; but at that instant a carter appeared at the door with a question for Master Hardy, and Aubrey was left to his own devices, and the hum and clatter of the mill, till the clock had struck four; and beginning to think that Hardy had forgotten him, he was about to set out and reconnoitre, when to his great joy Leonard himself came hurrying up, and heartily shook him by the hand.

‘Hardy told me you were here,’ he said. ‘Well done, old fellow, I didn’t think they would have let you come and see me.’

‘The girls did make a great row about it,’ said Aubrey, triumphantly, ‘but I was not going to stand any nonsense.’

Leonard looked a little doubtful; then said, ‘Well, will you see the place, or come and sit in my room? There is the parlour, but we shall not be so quiet there.’

Aubrey decided for Leonard’s room, and was taken through the front door into a vestibule paved with white stone, with black lozenges at the intersections. ‘There,’ said Leonard, ‘the office is here, you see, and my uncle’s rooms beyond, all on the ground floor, he is too infirm to go up-stairs. This way is the dining-room, and Sam has got a sitting-room beyond, then there are the servants’ rooms. It is a great place, and horridly empty.’

Aubrey thought so, as his footsteps echoed up the handsome but ill-kept stone staircase, with its fanciful balusters half choked with dust, and followed Leonard along a corridor, with deep windows overlooking the garden and river, and great panelled doors opposite, neither looking as if they were often either cleaned or opened, and the passage smelling very fusty.

‘Pah!’ said Aubrey; ‘it puts me in mind of the wings of houses in books that get shut up because somebody has been murdered! Are you sure it is not haunted, Leonard?’

‘Only by the rats,’ he answered, laughing; ‘they make such an intolerable row, that poor little Mab is frightened out of her wits, and I don’t know whether they would not eat her up if she did not creep up close to me. I’m tired of going at them with the poker, and would poison every man Jack of them if it were not for the fear of her getting the dose by mistake.’

‘Is that what Hardy says you will never put up with?’ asked Aubrey; but instead of answering, Leonard turned to one of the great windows, saying,

‘There now, would not this be a charming place if it were properly kept?’ and Aubrey looked out at the great cedar, spreading out its straight limbs and flakes of dark foliage over the sloping lawn, one branch so near the window as to invite adventurous exits, and a little boat lying moored in the dancing water below.

‘Perfect!’ said Aubrey. ‘What fish there must lie in the mill tail!’

‘Ay, I mean to have a try at them some of these days, I should like you to come and help, but perhaps—Ha, little Mab, do you wonder what I’m after so long? Here’s a friend for you: as the little dog danced delighted round him, and paid Aubrey her affectionate respects. Her delicate drawing-room beauty did not match with the spacious but neglected-looking room whence she issued. It had three great uncurtained windows looking into the court, with deep window-seats, olive-coloured painted walls, the worse for damp and wear, a small amount of old-fashioned solid furniture, and all Leonard’s individual goods, chiefly disposed of in a cupboard in the wall, but Averil’s beautiful water-coloured drawings hung over the chimney. To Aubrey’s petted home-bred notions it was very bare and dreary, and he could not help exclaiming, ‘Well, they don’t lodge you sumptuously!’

‘I don’t fancy many clerks in her Majesty’s dominions have so big and airy an apartment to boast of,’ said Leonard. ‘Let’s see these flies of yours.’

Their mysteries occupied the boys for some space; but Aubrey returned to the charge. ‘What is it that Hardy says you’ll never put up with, Leonard?’

‘What did the old fellow say?’ asked Leonard, laughing; and as Aubrey repeated the conversation, ending with the oracular prediction, he laughed again, but said proudly, ‘He’ll see himself wrong then. I’ll put up with whatever I’ve undertaken.’

‘But what does he mean?’

‘Serving one’s apprenticeship, I suppose,’ said Leonard; ‘they all think me a fine gentleman, and above the work, I know, though I’ve never stuck at anything yet. If I take to the business, I suppose it is capable of being raised up to me—it need not pull me down to it, eh?’

‘There need be no down in the case,’ said Aubrey. ‘My father always says there is no down except in meanness and wrong. But,’ as if that mention brought a recollection to his mind, ‘what o’clock is it? I must not stay much longer.’

‘I’ll walk a bit of the way home with you,’ said Leonard, ‘but I must be back by five for dinner. I go to rifle practice two days in the week, and I don’t like to miss the others, for Sam’s often out, and the poor old man does not like being left alone at meals.’

The two boys were at the room door, when Aubrey heard a step, felt the fustiness enlivened by the odour of a cigar, and saw a figure at the top of the stairs.

‘I say, Ward,’ observed Mr. Sam, in a rude domineering voice, ‘Spelman’s account must be all looked over to-night; he says that there is a blunder. D’ye hear?’

‘Very well.’

‘Who have you got there?’

‘It is Aubrey May.’

‘Oh! good morning to you,’ making a kind of salutation; ‘have you been looking at the water? We’ve got some fine fish there, if you like to throw a line any day.—Well, that account must be done to-night, and if you can’t find the error, you’ll only have to do it over again.’

Leonard’s colour had risen a good deal, but he said nothing, and his cousin ran down-stairs and drove off in his dog-cart.

‘Is it much of a business?’ said Aubrey, feeling extremely indignant.

‘Look here,’ said Leonard, leading the way down-stairs and into the office, where he pointed to two huge account books. ‘Every page in that one must I turn over this blessed night; and if he had only told me three hours ago, I could have done the chief of it, instead of kicking my heels all the afternoon.’

‘Has he any right to order you about, out of office hours, and without a civil word either? Why do you stand it?’

‘Because I can stand anything better than being returned on Henry’s hands,’ said Leonard, ‘and he has spite enough for that. The thing must be done, and if he won’t do it, I must, that’s all. Come along.’

As they went out the unwieldy figure of the elder Mr. Axworthy was seen, leaning out of his open window, smoking a clay pipe. He spoke in a much more friendly tone, as he said, ‘Going out, eh? Mind the dinner-time.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Leonard, coming nearer, ‘I’m not going far.’

‘Who have you got there?’ was again asked.

‘One of the young Mays, sir. I was going to walk part of the way back.’

Aubrey thought the grunt not very civil; and as the boys and Mab passed under the gateway, Leonard continued, ‘There’s not much love lost between him and your father; he hates the very name.’

‘I should expect he would,’ said Aubrey, as if his hatred were an honour.

‘I fancy there’s some old grievance,’ said Leonard, ‘where he was wrong of course. Not that that need hinder your coming over, Aubrey; I’ve a right to my own friends, but—’

‘And so have I to mine,’ said Aubrey eagerly.

‘But you see,’ added Leonard, ‘I wouldn’t have you do it—if—if it vexes your sister. I can see you every Sunday, you know, and we can have some fun together on Saturdays when the evenings get longer.’

Aubrey’s face fell; he had a strong inclination for Leonard’s company, and likewise for the trout in the mill tail, and he did not like his independence to be unappreciated.

‘You see,’ said Leonard, laying his hand kindly on his shoulder, ‘it is very jolly of you, but I know they would hate it in the High Street if you were often here, and it is not worth that. Besides, Aubrey, to tell the plain truth, Sam’s not fit company for any decent fellow.’

‘I can’t think how he came to ask me to fish.’

‘Just to show he is master, because he knew the poor old man would not like it! It is one reason he is so savage with me, because his uncle took me without his consent.’

‘But, Leonard, it must be worse than the living at home ever was.’

Leonard laughed. ‘It’s different being jawed in the way of business and at one’s own home. I’d go through a good deal more than I do here in the week to have home what it is now on Sunday. Why, Henry really seems glad to see me, and we have not had the shadow of a row since I came over here. Don’t you tell Ave all this, mind, and you may just as well not talk about it at home, you know, or they will think I’m going to cry off.’

Aubrey was going to ask what he looked to; but Leonard saw, or thought he saw, a weasel in the hedge, and the consequent charge and pursuit finished the dialogue, the boys parted, and Aubrey walked home, his satisfaction in his expedition oozing away at every step, though his resolve to assert his liberty grew in proportion.

Of course it had not been possible to conceal from Dr. May where Aubrey was gone, and his annoyance had burst out vehemently, the whole round of objurgations against the Wards, the Vintry Mill, and his own folly in fostering the friendship, were gone through, and Ethel had come in for more than she could easily bear, for not having prevented the escapade. Gertrude had hardly ever seen her father so angry, and sat quaking for her brother; and Ethel meekly avoided answering again, with the happy trustfulness of experienced love.

At last, as the tea was nearly over, Aubrey walked in, quite ready for self-defence. Nobody spoke for a little while, except to supply him with food; but presently Dr. May said, not at all in the tone in which he had talked of his son’s journey, ‘You might as well have told me of your intentions, Aubrey.’

‘I didn’t think they mattered to anybody,’ said Aubrey; ‘we generally go our own way in the afternoon.’

‘Oh!’ said Dr. May. ‘Interference with the liberty of the subject?’

Aubrey coloured, and felt he had not quite spoken truth. ‘I could not give him up, father,’ he said, less defiantly.

‘No, certainly not; but I had rather you only saw him at home. It will be more for our peace of mind.’

‘Well, father,’ said Aubrey, ‘I am not going there any more. He told me not himself:’ and then with laughing eyes he added, ‘He said you would not like it, Ethel.’

‘Poor boy!’ said Ethel, greatly touched.

‘Very right of him,’ said Dr. May, well pleased. ‘He is a fine lad, and full of proper feeling. What sort of a berth has the old rogue given him, Aubrey?’

Much relieved that matters had taken this course, Aubrey tried to tell only as much as his friend would approve, but the medium was not easily found, and pretty nearly the whole came out. Dr. May was really delighted to hear how Sam treated him.

‘If that fellow takes the oppressive line, there may be some hope,’ he said. ‘His friendship is the worse danger than his enmity.’

When the sisters had bidden good night, the Doctor detained Aubrey to say very kindly, ‘My boy, I do not like to hear of your running counter to your sister.

‘I’m not going there again,’ said Aubrey, willing to escape.

‘Wait a minute, Aubrey,’ said Dr. May; ‘I want to tell you that I feel for you in this matter more than my way of talking may have made it seem to you. I have a great regard for your friend Leonard, and think he has been scandalously used, and I don’t want to lessen your attachment to him. Far be it from me to think lightly of a friendship, especially of one formed at your age. Your very name, my boy, shows that I am not likely to do that!’

Aubrey smiled frankly, his offended self-assertion entirely melted.

‘I know it is very hard on you, but you can understand that the very reasons that made me so averse to Leonard’s taking this situation, would make me anxious to keep you away from his relations there, not necessarily from him. As long as he is what he is now, I would not lift a finger to keep you from him. Have I ever done so, Aubrey?’

‘No, papa.’

‘Nor will I, as long as he is what I see him now. After this, Aubrey, is it too much to ask of you to keep out of the way of the persons with whom he is thrown?’

‘I will do so, papa. He wishes it himself.’ Then with an effort, he added, ‘I am sorry I went to-day; I ought not, but—’ and he looked a little foolish.

‘You did not like taking orders from the girls? No wonder, Aubrey; I have been very thankful to you for bearing it as you have done. It is the worst of home education that these spirits of manliness generally have no vent but mischief. But you are old enough now to be thankful for such a friend and adviser as Ethel, and I don’t imagine that she orders you.’

‘No,’ said Aubrey, smiling and mumbling; ‘but Daisy—’

‘Oh, I can quite understand the aggravation of Daisy happening to be right; but you must really be man enough to mind your own conscience, even if Daisy is imprudent enough to enforce it.’

‘It was not only that,’ said Aubrey, ‘but I could not have Ward thinking I turned up my nose at his having got into business.’

‘No, Aubrey, he need never fancy it is the business that I object to, but the men. Make that clear to him, and ask him to this house as much as you please. The more “thorough” he is in his business, the more I shall respect him.’

Aubrey smiled, and thanked his father with a cleared brow, wondering at himself for having gone without consulting him.

‘Good night, my boy. May this friendship of yours be a lifelong stay and blessing to you both, even though it may cost you some pain and self-command, as all good things must, Aubrey.’

That evening Ethel had been writing to Cambridge. Tom had passed his examination with great credit, and taken an excellent degree, after which he projected a tour in Germany, for which he had for some time been economizing, as a well-earned holiday before commencing his course of hospitals and lectures. Tom was no great correspondent, and had drilled his sisters into putting nothing but the essential into their letters, instead, as he said, of concealing it in flummery. This is a specimen of the way Tom liked to be written to.

‘Stoneborough, Feb. 20th. ‘My Dear Tom,

‘Dr. Spencer says nothing answers so well as a knapsack. Get one at –-. The price is L. s. d. Order extra fittings as required, including a knife and fork. Letters from N. Z. of the 1st of November, all well. I wish Aubrey was going with you; he misses Leonard Ward so sorely, as to be tempted to follow him to the Vintry Mill. I suspect your words are coming true, and the days of petticoat government ending. However, even if he would not be in your way, he could not afford to lose six months’ study before going into residence.

‘Your affectionate sister, ‘Etheldred May.’

Tom wrote that he should spend a night in London and come home. When he came, the family exclaimed that his microscope, whose handsome case he carried in his hand, was much grown. ‘And improved too, I hope’ said Tom, proceeding to show off various new acquisitions and exchanges in the way of eye-pieces, lenses, and other appliances of the most expensive order, till his father exclaimed,

‘Really, Tom, I wish I had the secret of your purse.’

‘The fact is,’ said Tom, ‘that I thought more would be gained by staying at home, so I turned my travels into a binocular tube,’ &C.

Aubrey and Gertrude shouted that Tom certainly did love the microscope better than any earthly thing; and he coolly accepted the inference.

Somewhat later, he announced that he had decided that he should be better able to profit by the London lectures and hospitals, if he first studied for half a year at the one at Stoneborough, under the direction of his father and Dr. Spencer.

Dr. May was extremely gratified, and really esteemed this one of the greatest compliments his science had ever received; Dr. Spencer could not help observing, ‘I did not think it was in him to do such a wise thing. I never can fathom the rogue. I hope he was not bitten during his benevolent exertions last winter.’

Meantime, Tom had observed that he had time to see that Aubrey was decently prepared for Cambridge, and further promoted the boy to be his out-of-door companion, removing all the tedium and perplexity of the last few weeks, though apparently merely indulging his own inclinations. Ethel recognized the fruit of her letter, and could well forgive the extra care in housekeeping required for Tom’s critical tastes, nay, the cool expulsion of herself and Gertrude from her twenty years’ home, the schoolroom, and her final severance from Aubrey’s studies, though at the cost of a pang that reminded her of her girlhood’s sorrow at letting Norman shoot ahead of her. She gave no hint; she knew that implicit reserve was the condition of his strange silent confidence in her, and that it would be utterly forfeited unless she allowed his fraternal sacrifice to pass for mere long-headed prudence.

Aubrey’s Saturday and Sunday meetings with his friend were not yielded, even to Tom, who endeavoured to interfere with them, and would fain have cut the connection with the entire family, treating Miss Ward with the most distant and supercilious bows on the unpleasantly numerous occasions of meeting her in the street, and contriving to be markedly scornful in his punctilious civility to Henry Ward when they met at the hospital. His very look appeared a sarcasm, to the fancy of the Wards; and he had a fashion of kindly inquiring after Leonard, that seemed to both a deliberate reproach and insult.

Disputes had become less frequent at Bankside since Leonard’s departure, and few occasions of actual dissension arose; but the spirit of party was not extinguished, and the brother and sister had adopted lines that perhaps clashed less because they diverged more.

Averil had, in reply to the constant exhortations to economize, resolved to decline all invitations, and this kept her constantly at home, or with her harmonium, whereas Henry made such constant engagements, that their dining together was the exception, not the rule. After conscientiously teaching her sisters in the morning, she devoted the rest of her day to their walk, and to usefulness in the parish. She liked her tasks, and would have been very happy in them, but for the constant anxiety that hung over her lest her home should soon cease to be her home.

Henry’s devotion to Mrs. Pugh could no longer be mistaken. The conviction of his intentions grew upon his sister, first from a mere absurd notion, banished from her mind with derision, then from a misgiving angrily silenced, to a fixed expectation, confirmed by the evident opinion of all around her, and calling for decision and self-command on her own part.

Perhaps her feelings were unnecessarily strong, and in some degree unjust to Mrs. Pugh; but she had the misfortune to be naturally proud and sensitive, as well as by breeding too refined in tone for most of those who surrounded her. She had taken a personal dislike to Mrs. Pugh from the first; she regarded pretension as insincerity, and officiousness as deliberate insult, and she took the recoil of her taste for the judgment of principle. To see such a woman ruling in her mother’s, her own, home would be bad enough; but to be ruled by her, and resign to her the management of the children, would be intolerable beyond measure. Too unhappy to speak of her anticipations even to Leonard or to Mary May, she merely endeavoured to throw them off from day to day, till one evening, when the days had grown so long that she could linger in the twilight in the garden before her singing practice, she was joined by Henry, with the long apprehended ‘I want to speak to you, Ave.’

Was it coming? Her heart beat so fast, that she could hardly hear his kind commencement about her excellent endeavours, and the house’s unhappy want of a mistress, the children’s advantage, and so on. She knew it could only tend to one point, and longed to have it reached and passed. Of course she would be prepared to hear who was the object of his choice, and she could not but murmur ‘Yes,’ and ‘Well.’

‘And, Ave, you will, I hope, be gratified to hear that I am not entirely rejected. The fact is, that I spoke too soon.’ Averil could have jumped for joy, and was glad it was too dusk for her face to be seen. ‘I do not believe that her late husband could have had any strong hold on her affections; but she has not recovered the shock of his loss, and entreated, as a favour granted to her sentiments of respect for his memory, not to hear the subject mentioned for at least another year. I am permitted to visit at the house as usual, and no difference is to be made in the terms on which we stand. Now, Ave, will you—may I ask of you, to do what you can to remove any impression that she might not be welcome in the family?’

‘I never meant—’ faltered Averil, checked by sincerity.

‘You have always been—so—so cold and backward in cultivating her acquaintance, that I cannot wonder if she should think it disagreeable to you; but, Ave, when you consider my happiness, and the immense advantage to all of you, I am sure you will do what is in your power in my behalf.’ He spoke more affectionately and earnestly than he had done for months; and Averil was touched, and felt that to hang back would be unkind.

‘I will try,’ she said. ‘I do hope it may turn out for your happiness, Henry.’

‘For all our happiness,’ said Henry, walking down to the gate and along the road with her, proving all the way that he was acting solely for the good of the others, and that Averil and the children would find their home infinitely happier.

A whole year—a year’s reprieve—was the one thought in Averil’s head, that made her listen so graciously, and answer so amiably, that Henry parted with her full of kind, warm feeling.

As the sage said, who was to be beheaded if he could not in a year teach the king’s ass to speak—what might not happen in a year; the king might die, the ass might die, or he might die—any way there was so much gained: and Averil, for the time, felt as light-hearted as if Mrs. Pugh had vanished into empty air. To be sure, her own life had, of late, been far from happy; but this extension of it was bailed with suppressed ecstasy—almost as an answer to her prayers. Ah, Ave, little did you know what you wished in hoping for anything to prevent the marriage!

She did obey her brother so far as to call upon Mrs. Pugh, whom she found in ordinary mourning, and capless—a sign that dismayed her; but, on the other hand, the lady, though very good-natured and patronizing, entertained her with the praises of King John, and showed her a copy of Magna Charta in process of illumination. Also, during her call, Tom May walked in with a little book on drops of water; and Averil found the lady had become inspired with a microscopic furore, and was thinking of setting up a lens, and preparing objects for herself, under good tuition.

Though Averil was very desirous that Mrs. Pugh should refuse her brother, yet this was the last service she wished the May family to render her. She was sure Tom May must dislike and despise the widow as much as she did; and since the whole town was unluckily aware of Henry’s intentions, any interference with them was base and malicious, if in the way of mere amusement and flirtation. She was resolved to see what the game was, but only did see that her presence greatly disconcerted ‘Mr. Thomas May.’

Henry was wretched and irritable in the velvet paws of the widow, who encouraged him enough to give him hope, and then held him aloof, or was equally amiable to some one else. Perhaps the real interpretation was, that she loved attention. She was in all sincerity resolved to observe a proper period of widowhood, and not determined whether, when, or how, it should terminate: courtship amused her, and though attracted by Henry and his good house, the evidences of temper and harshness had made her unwilling to commit herself; besides that, she was afraid of Averil, and she was more flattered by the civilities of a lioncel like Harvey Anderson; or if she could be sure of what Mr. Thomas May’s intentions were, she would have preferred an embryo physician to a full-grown surgeon—at any rate, it was right by her poor dear Mr. Pugh to wait.

She need not have feared having Averil as an inmate. Averil talked it over with Leonard, and determined that no power on earth should make her live with Mrs. Pugh. If that were necessary to forward his suit, she would make it plain that she was ready to depart.

‘Oh, Leonard, if my uncle were but a nice sort of person, how pleasant it would be for me and the children to live there, and keep his house; and I could make him so comfortable, and nurse him!’

‘Never, Ave!’ cried Leonard; ‘don’t let the thing be talked of.’

‘Oh no, I know it would not do with Samuel there; but should we be too young for your old scheme of having a cottage together near?’

‘I did not know what the Axworthys were like,’ returned Leonard.

‘But need we see them much?’

‘I’ll tell you what, Ave, I’ve heard them both—yes, the old man the worst of the two—say things about women that made my blood boil.’ Leonard was quite red as he spoke. ‘My father never let my mother see any of the concern, and now I know why. I’ll never let you do so.’

‘Then there is only one other thing to be done,’ said Averil; ‘and that is for me to go back to school as a parlour boarder, and take the children with me. It would be very good for them, and dear Mrs. Wood would be very glad to have me.’

‘Yes,’ said Leonard, ‘that is the only right thing, Ave; and the Mays will say so, too. Have you talked it over with them!’

‘No. I hate talking of this thing.’

‘Well, you had better get their advice. It is the best thing going!’ said Leonard, with a sigh that sounded as if he wished he had taken it.

But it was not to Averil that he said so. To her he spoke brightly of serving the time for which he was bound to his uncle; then of making a fresh engagement, that would open a home to her; or, better still, suppose Sam did not wish to go on with the business, he might take it, and make the mill the lovely place it might be. It was to Aubrey May that the boy’s real feelings came out, as, on the Sunday evening, they slowly wandered along the bank of the river. Aubrey had seen a specimen of his life at the mill, and had been kept up to the knowledge of its events, and he well knew that Leonard was heartily sick of it. That the occupation was uncongenial and tedious in the extreme to a boy of good ability and superior education—nay, that the drudgery was made unnecessarily oppressive, was not the point he complained of, though it was more trying than he had expected, that was the bed that he had made, and that he must lie upon. It was the suspicion of frauds and tricks of the trade, and, still worse, the company that he lived in. Sam Axworthy hated and tyrannized over him too much to make dissipation alluring; and he was only disgusted by the foul language, coarse manners, and the remains of intemperance worked on in violent temper.

The old man, though helpless and past active vice, was even more coarse in mind and conversation than his nephew; and yet his feebleness, and Sam’s almost savage treatment of him, enlisted Leonard’s pity on his side. In general, the old man was kind to Leonard, but would abuse him roundly when the evidences of his better principles and training, or his allegiance to Dr. May, came forward, and Leonard, though greatly compassionating him, could not always bear his reproaches with patience, and was held back from more attention to him than common humanity required, by an unlucky suggestion that he was currying favour in the hope of supplanting Sam.

‘Old Hardy is the only honest man in the place, I do believe,’ said Leonard. ‘I’ll tell you what, Aubrey, I have made up my mind, there is one thing I will not do. If ever they want to make me a party to any of their cheatings, I’ll be off. That window and the cedar-tree stand very handy. I’ve been out there to bathe in the early summer mornings, plenty of times already, so never you be surprised if some fine day you hear—non est inventus.’

‘And where would you go?’

‘Get up to London, and see if my quarter’s salary would take me out in the steerage to some diggings or other. What would your brother say to me if I turned up at the Grange—New Zealand?’

‘Say! Mention Ethel, and see what he would not say.’

And the two boys proceeded to arrange the details of the evasion in such vivid colouring, that they had nearly forgotten all present troubles, above all when Leonard proceeded to declare that New Zealand was too tame and too settled for him, he should certainly find something to do in the Feejee Isles, where the high spirit of the natives, their painted visages, and marvellous head-dresses, as depicted in Captain Erskine’s voyage, had greatly fired his fancy, and they even settled how the gold fields should rebuild the Market Cross.

‘And when I’m gone, Aubrey, mind you see to Mab,’ he said, laughing.

‘Oh! I thought Mab was to act Whittington’s cat.’

‘I’m afraid they would eat her up; besides, there’s the voyage. No, you must keep her till I come home, even if she is to end like Argus. Would you die of joy at seeing me, eh, little black neb?’

CHAPTER XII

Let us meet, And question this most bloody piece of work, To know it farther. Macbeth

‘If you please, sir, Master Hardy from the Vintry Mill wants to see you, said a voice at Dr. May’s door early in the morning; and the Doctor completed his dressing in haste, muttering to himself exclamations of concern that the old man’s malady should have returned.

On entering the study, Hardy’s appearance, whiter than even the proverbial hue of his trade, his agitation of feature, confused eye, and trembling lip, inspired fears that the case was more alarming than had been apprehended; but to cheer him, the Doctor began, ‘Frightened about yourself, Master Hardy, eh! You’ve come out without breakfast, and that’s enough to put any man out of heart.’

‘No, sir,’ said the old man, ‘it is nothing about myself; I wish it were no worse; but I’ve not got the heart to go to tell the poor young gentleman, and I thought—’

‘What—what has happened to the boy?’ exclaimed Dr. May, sharply, standing as if ready to receive the rifle shot which he already believed had destroyed Leonard.

‘That’s what we can’t say, sir,’ returned Hardy; ‘but he is gone, no one knows where. And, sir, my poor master was found at five o’clock this morning, in his chair in his sitting-room, stone dead from a blow on the head.’

‘Mind what you are saying!’ shouted the Doctor passionately. ‘You old scoundrel, you don’t mean to tell me that you are accusing the lad!’

‘I accuse nobody, sir,’ said the old man, standing his ground, and speaking steadily, but respectfully, ‘I wouldn’t say nothing to bring any one into trouble if I could help it, and I came to ask you what was to be done.’

‘Yes, yes; I beg your pardon, Hardy, but it sounded enough to overset one. Your poor master murdered, you say!’

Hardy nodded assent.

‘And young Ward missing? Why, the burglars must have hurt the poor fellow in defending his uncle. Have you searched the place?’

‘I never thought of that, sir,’ said Hardy, his countenance much relieved; ‘it would be more like such a young gentleman as Mr. Ward.’

‘Then we’ll get over to the mill as fast as we can, and see what can be done,’ said Dr. May, snatching up his hat and gloves. ‘You come and walk with me to Bankside, and tell me by the way about this terrible business. Good heavens! they’ll have thrown the boy into the river!’

And calling out that his carriage should follow to Bankside, the Doctor dashed up-stairs, and knocked at Ethel’s door. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘there has been a robbery or something at the Vintry Mill. I must go and see Henry Ward about it. Poor old Axworthy is murdered, and I’m terribly afraid Leonard has met with some foul play. You or Mary had better go and see about Ave presently, but don’t believe a word of anything till you see me again.’

And shutting the door, while Ethel felt as if the room were reeling round with her, Dr. May was in a few seconds more hastening along by Hardy’s side, extracting from him the little he had to tell. The old man had been unlocking the door of the mill at five o’clock, when he was summoned by loud shrieks from the window of Mr. Axworthy’s sitting-room, and found that the little maid had been appalled by the sight of her master sunk forward from his gouty chair upon the table, his hair covered with blood. Hardy had been the first to touch him, and to perceive that he had long been dead. The housekeeper, the only other servant who slept in the house, had rushed in half-dressed; but neither nephew appeared. Young Axworthy had gone the previous day to the county races, leaving the time of his return doubtful, and Leonard Ward did not answer when called. It was then found that his room was empty, his bed untouched, and the passage window outside his door left open. The terrified servants held confused consultation, and while the groom had hurried off to give the alarm at Whitford, and ride on in search of Sam Axworthy, Hardy had taken another horse and started to inform Henry Ward, but his heart failing him, he had come to beg the Doctor to break the intelligence to the family.

Dr. May had few doubts that the robbers must have entered by the passage window, and meeting resistance from Leonard, must have dragged him out, and perhaps thrown him from it, then having gone on to their murderous work in the old man’s sitting-room. In that great rambling house, where the maids slept afar off, and the rats held nightly gambols, strange noises were not likely to be observed; and the thought of Leonard lying stunned and insensible on the grass, made the Doctor’s pace almost a run, as if he were hastening to the rescue.

When Mr. Ward sent down word that he was not up, Dr. May replied that he must see him in bed, and followed upon the very heels of the messenger, encountering no amiable face, for Henry had armed himself for defence against any possible reproaches for his treatment of any patient. Even when Dr. May began, ‘Henry, my poor fellow, I have frightful news for you,’ his month was opening to reply, ‘I knew we should lose that case,’ let the patient be who he might, when the few simple words put to flight all petulant jealousy, and restored Henry Ward to what he had been when in his hour of sickness and affliction he had leant in full confidence on Dr. May’s unfailing kindness.

He was dressed by the time the brougham was at the door, and would have hurried off without telling his sister of the alarm; but Dr. May, knowing that the town must soon be ringing with the news, was sending him to Averil’s room, when both rejoiced to see Mary enter the house. Charging her to keep Averil quiet, and believe nothing but what came from themselves, they thrust on her the terrible commission and hastened away, dwelling on the hope that every moment might be important.

Old Hardy had already mounted his cart-horse, and for him farm roads so shortened the distance, that he received them at the entrance of the courtyard, which was crowded with excited gazers and important policemen.

‘Found him?’ was the instantaneous question of both; but Hardy shook his head so sadly, that the Doctor hastily exclaimed, ‘What then?’

‘Sir,’ said Hardy very low, and with a deprecating look, ‘he did go up by the mail train to London last night—got in at Blewer station at 12.15. They have telegraphed up, sir.’

‘I’ll lay my life it is all a mistake,’ said Dr. May, grasping Henry’s arm as if to give him support, and looking him in the face as though resolved that neither should be cast down.

‘That’s not all, sir,’ added Hardy, still addressing himself to the elder gentleman. ‘There’s his rifle, sir.’

‘Why, he was not shot!’ sharply cried Dr. May. ‘You told me so yourself.’

‘No, sir; but—You’ll see for yourself presently! There’s the blood and gray hairs on the stock, sir.’

‘Never fear, Henry; we shall see,’ said Dr. May, pressing on, and adding as soon as they were out of hearing, ‘Nothing those folks, even the best of them, like so well as laying on horrors thick enough.’

A policeman stood at the house door to keep off idlers; but Dr. May’s character and profession, as well as his municipal rank, caused way to be instantly made for them. They found a superintendent within, and he at once began, ‘Most unfortunate business, Mr. Mayor—very mysterious;’ then, as a sign from the Doctor made him aware of Henry Ward’s near concern, he added, ‘Shall I inform young Mr. Axworthy that you are here?’

‘Is he come?’

‘Yes, sir. He had only slept at the Three Goblets, not half a mile across the fields, you know, Mr. Mayor—came home too late to disturb the house here, slept there, and was on the spot at the first intelligence—before I was myself,’ added the superintendent a little jealously.

‘Where is he?’

‘In his room, sir. He was extremely overcome, and retired to his room as soon as the necessary steps had been taken. Would you wish to see the room, sir? We are keeping it locked till the inquest takes place; but—’

Henry asked, ‘When?’ his first word since his arrival, and almost inarticulate.

He was answered that it would probably be at two that afternoon; the Whitford coroner had intimated that he was ready, and the down train would be in by one. A telegram had just arrived, reporting that the electric message had anticipated the mail train, and that young Mr. Ward would be brought down in time.

‘Never mind, never heed, Henry,’ persisted Dr. May, pressing the young man’s arm as they proceeded to the door of the sitting-room; ‘he must be intensely shocked, but he will explain the whole. Nay, I’ve no doubt we shall clear him. His rifle, indeed! I could swear to his rifle anywhere.’

The superintendent had by this time opened the door of the sitting-room, communicating on one side with the office, on the other with the old man’s bedroom.

Except that the body had been carried to the bed in the inner chamber, all remained as it had been found. There were no signs of robbery—not even of a struggle. The cushions of the easy-chair still bore the impress of the sitter’s weight; the footstool was hardly pushed aside; the massive library table was undisturbed; the silver spoons and sugar-tongs beside the tumbler and plate on the supper tray; the yellow light of the lamp still burnt; not a paper was ruffled, not a drawer pulled out. Only a rifle stood leaning against the window shutter, and towards it both friend and brother went at once, hoping and trusting that it would be a stranger to their eyes.

Alas! alas! only too familiar were the rich brown mottlings of the stock, the steel mountings, the eagle crest, and twisted H. E. cipher! and in sickness of heart the Doctor could not hide from himself the dark clot of gore and the few white hairs adhering to the wood, and answering to the stain that dyed the leather of the desk.

Henry could not repress an agonized groan, and averted his face; but his companion undaunted met the superintendent’s eye and query, ‘You know it, sir!’

‘I do. It was my son-in-law’s present to him. I wonder where he kept it, for the ruffians to get hold of it.’

The superintendent remained civil and impassive, and no one spoke to break the deathly hush of the silent room, filled with the appliances of ordinary business life, but tainted with the awful unexplained mark that there had been the foot of the shedder of blood in silence and at unawares.

The man in authority at length continued his piteous exhibition. Dr. Rankin of Whitford had arrived on the first alarm; but would not the gentlemen see the body? And he led them on, Dr. May’s eyes on the alert to seize on anything exculpatory, but detecting nothing, seeing only the unwieldy helpless form and aged feeble countenance of the deceased, and receiving fresh impressions of the brutality and cowardice of the hand that could have struck the blow. He looked, examined, defined the injury, and explained that it must have caused instant death, thus hoping to divert attention from his pale horror-stricken companion, whose too apparent despondency almost provoked him.

At the Doctor’s request they were taken up the staircase into the corridor, and shown the window, which had been found nearly closed but not fastened, as though it had been partially shut down from the outside. The cedar bough almost brushed the glass, and the slope of turf came so high up the wall, that an active youth could easily swing himself down to it; and the superintendent significantly remarked that the punt was on the farther side of the stream, whereas the evening before it had been on the nearer. Dr. May leant out over the window-sill, still in the lingering hope of seeing—he knew not what, but he only became oppressed by the bright still summer beauty of the trees and grass and sparkling water, insensible of the horror that brooded over all. He drew back his head; and as the door hard by was opened, Leonard’s little dog sprang from her basket kennel, wagging her tail in hopes of her master, but in her disappointment greeting one whom dogs always hailed as a friend,

‘Poor little doggie! good little Mab! If only you could tell us!’ and the creature fondly responded to his gentle hand, though keeping aloof from Henry, in mindfulness of past passages between them, while Henry could evidently not bear to look at her.

They gazed round the room, but it conveyed no elucidation of the mystery. There were Leonard’s books in their range on the drawers, his fossils in his cupboard, his mother’s photograph on his mantel-piece, his sister’s drawings on the wall. His gray uniform lay on the bed as if recently taken off, his ordinary office coat was folded on a chair, and he seemed to have dressed and gone in his best clothes. While anxiously seeking some note of explanation, they heard a step, and Sam Axworthy entered, speaking fast and low in apology for not having sooner appeared, but he had been thoroughly upset; as indeed he looked, his whole appearance betraying the disorder of the evening’s dissipation, followed by the morning’s shock.

Most unfortunate, he said, that he had not returned earlier. His friend Black—Tom Black, of Edsall Green—had driven him home in his dog-cart, set him down at the turn to cross the fields—moon as light as day—no notion, of the lateness till he got in sight of the great clock, and saw it was half-past twelve; so knowing the early habits of the place, he had thought it best to turn back, and get a bed at the Three Goblets. If he had only come home, he might have prevented mischief! There ensued a few commonplace words on the old man’s infirm state, yet his independent habits, and reluctance to let any servant assist him, or even sleep near him. Sam spoke as if in a dream, and was evidently so unwell, that Dr. May thought it charitable to follow the dictates of his own disgust at breaking bread in that house of horrors, and refuse offers of breakfast. He said he must go home, but would return for the inquest, and asked whether Henry would remain to meet his brother.

‘No, no, thank you,’ said Henry huskily, as with the driest of throats, and a perceptible shudder, he turned to go away; the Doctor pausing to caress little Mab, and say, ‘I had better take home this poor little thing. She may come to harm here, and may be a comfort to the sister.’

No objection came from Sam, but Mab herself ran back to her house, and even snarled at the attempt to detach her from it. ‘You are a faithful little beast,’ he said, ‘and your master will soon be here to set all straight, so I will leave you for the present;’ and therewith he signed farewell, and breathed more freely as he gained the outer air.

‘I’ll tell you what, Henry,’ he said, as they drove out of the courtyard, ‘we’ll bring out Bramshaw to watch the case. He will see through this horrible mystery, and throw the suspicion in the right quarter, whatever that may be, depend upon it.’

Henry had thrown himself back in the carriage with averted face, and only answered by a groan.

‘Come, don’t be so downcast,’ said Dr. May; ‘it is a frightful affair, no doubt, and Leonard has chosen a most unlucky moment for this escapade; but he will have a thorough warning against frolics.’

‘Frolics indeed!’ said Henry, bitterly.

‘Well, I’ll be bound that’s all he has attempted, and it has got him into a horrid scrape; and ten to one but the police have got the real ruffians in their hands by this time.’

‘I have no hope,’ said Henry.

‘More shame for you not to feel a certain confidence that He who sees all will show the right.’

‘If!’ said Henry, breaking off with a sound and look of such intense misery as almost to stagger the Doctor himself, by reminding him of Leonard’s violent temper, and the cause Henry had to remember his promptness of hand; but that Ethel’s pupil, Aubrey’s friend, the boy of ingenuous face, could under any provocation strike helpless old age, or, having struck, could abscond without calling aid, actuated by terror, not by pity or repentance, was more than Dr. May could believe, and after brief musing, he broke out in indignant refutation.

‘I should have thought so. I wish I still could believe so’ sighed Henry; ‘but—’ and there they lapsed into silence, till, as they came near the town, Dr. May offered to set him down at Bankside.

‘No! no, thank you,’ he cried in entreaty. ‘I cannot see her—Ave.’

‘Then come home with me. You shall see no one, and you will look up when you are not faint and fasting. You young men don’t stand up against these things like us old stagers.’

As the carriage stopped, several anxious faces were seen on the watch, but the Doctor signed them back till he had deposited Henry in his study, and then came among them.

Gertrude was the first to speak. ‘O, papa, papa, what is it! Mrs. Pugh has been here to ask, and Ethel won’t let me hear, though Tom and Aubrey know.’

‘I took refuge in your order to believe nothing till you came,’ said Ethel, with hands tightly clasped together.

‘It is true, then?’ asked Tom.

‘True that it looks as bad as bad can be,’ said the Doctor, sighing heavily, and proceeding to state the aspect of the case.

‘It is a trick—a plot,’ cried Aubrey passionately; ‘I know it is! He always said he would run away if they tried to teach him dishonesty; and now they have done this and driven him away, and laid the blame on him. Ethel, why don’t you say you are sure of it?’

‘Leonard would be changed indeed if this were so,’ said Ethel, trembling as she stood, and hardly able to speak articulately.

Aubrey broke out with a furious ‘If,’ very different from Henry Ward’s.

‘It would not be the Leonard we knew at Coombe,’ said Ethel. ‘He might be blind with rage, but he would never be cowardly. No. Unless he own it, nothing shall ever make me believe it.’

‘Own it! For shame, Ethel,’ cried Aubrey. And even the Doctor exclaimed, ‘You are as bad as poor Henry himself, who has not got soul enough to be capable of trusting his brother.’

‘I do trust,’ said Ethel, looking up. ‘I shall trust his own word,’ and she sat down without speaking, and knitted fast, but her needles clattered.

‘And how about that poor girl at Bankside?’ said the Doctor.

‘I went down there,’ said Tom, ‘just to caution the servants against bringing in stories. She found out I was there, and I had to go in and make the best of it.’

‘And what sort of a best?’ said the Doctor.

‘Why, she knew he used to get out in the morning to bathe, and was persuaded he had been drowned; so I told her I knew he was alive and well, and she would hear all about it when you came back. I brought the youngest child away with me, and Gertrude has got her up-stairs; the other would not come. Poor thing! Mary says she is very good and patient; and I must say she was wonderfully reasonable when I talked to her.’

‘Thank you, Tom,’ said his father with warmth, ‘it was very kind of you. I wonder if Ave knew anything of this runaway business; it might be the saving of him!’

‘I did,’ said Aubrey eagerly; ‘at least, I know he said he would not stay if they wanted to put him up to their dishonest tricks; and he talked of that very window!’

‘Yes, you imprudent fellow; and you were telling Mrs. Pugh so, if I hadn’t stopped you,’ said Tom. ‘You’ll be taken up for an accomplice next, if you don’t hold your tongue.’

‘What did he say?’ asked the Doctor, impatiently; and then declared that he must instantly go to Bankside, as soon as both he and Henry had taken some food; ‘for,’ he added, ‘we are both too much shaken to deal rationally with her.’

Ethel started up in shame and dismay at having neglected to order anything. The Doctor was served in the study alone with Henry, and after the briefest meal, was on his way to Bankside.

He found Averil with the crimson cheek and beseeching eye that he knew so well, as she laid her trembling hand on his, and mutely looked up like a dumb creature awaiting a blow.

‘Yes, my dear,’ he said, tenderly, ‘your brother needs prayer such as when we watched him last year, he is in peril of grave suspicion.’ And as she stood waiting and watching for further explanation, he continued, ‘My dear, he told you everything. You do not know of any notion of his of going away, or going out without leave?’

‘Why is Leonard to be always suspected of such things?’ cried Averil. ‘He never did them!’

‘Do you know?’ persisted Dr. May.

‘But you are mayor!’ cried Averil, indignantly, withdrawing her hand. ‘You want me to accuse him!’

‘My dear, if I were ten times mayor, it would make no difference. My jurisdiction does not even cross the river here; and if it did, this is a graver case than I deal with. I am come, as his friend, to beg you to help me to account for his unhappy absence in any harmless way. Were it ever so foolish or wrong, it would be the best news that ever I heard.’

‘But—but I can’t,’ said Averil. ‘I never knew he was going out! I know he used to get out at the passage window to bathe and fish before the house was astir—and—you know he is safe, Dr. May?’

Dr. May would almost sooner have known that he was at the bottom of the deepest pool in the river, than where he was. ‘He is safe, my poor child. He is well, and I trust he will be able to prove his innocence; but he must so account for his absence as to clear himself. Averil, there is a charge against him—of being concerned in your uncle’s death.’

Averil’s eyes dilated, and she breathed short and fast, standing like a statue. Little Minna, whom the Doctor had scarcely perceived, standing in a dark corner, sprang forward, exclaiming, ‘O, Ave, don’t be afraid! Nobody can hurt him for what he did not do!’

The words roused Averil, and starting forward, she cried, ‘Dr. May, Dr. May, you will save him! He is fatherless and motherless, and his brother has always been harsh to him; but you will not forsake him; you said you would be a father to us! Oh, save Leonard!’

‘My dear, as I would try to save my own son, I will do my utmost for him; but little or nothing depends on me or on any man. By truth and justice he must stand or fall; and you must depend on the Father of the fatherless, who seeth the truth! as this dear child tells you,’ with his hand on Minna’s head, ‘he cannot be really injured while he is innocent.’

Awed into calm, Averil let him seat her beside him, and put her in possession of the main facts of the case, Minna standing by him, her hand in his, evidently understanding and feeling all that passed.

Neither could throw light on anything. Leonard had been less communicative to them than to Aubrey, and had kept his resolution of uncomplainingly drinking the brewst he had brewed for himself. All Averil could tell was, that her uncle had once spoken to Henry in commendation of his steadiness and trustworthiness, though at the same time abusing him for airs and puppyism.

‘Henry would tell you. Where is Henry?’ she added.

‘In my study. He could not bear to bring you these tidings. You must be ready to comfort him, Ave.’

‘Don’t let him come,’ she cried. ‘He never was kind to Leonard. He drove him there. I shall always feel that it was his doing.’

‘Averil,’ said Dr. May gravely, ‘do you forget how much that increases his suffering? Nothing but mutual charity can help you through this fiery trial. Do not let anger and recrimination take from you the last shreds of comfort, and poison your prayers. Promise me to be kind to Henry, for indeed he needs it.’

‘O, Dr. May,’ said Minna, looking up with her eyes full of tears, ‘indeed I will. I was cross to Henry because he was cross to Leonard, but I won’t be so any more.’

Ave drooped her head, as if it were almost impossible to her to speak.

Dr. May patted Minna’s dark head caressingly, and said to the elder sister, ‘I will not urge you more. Perhaps you may have Leonard back, and then joy will open your hearts; or if not, my poor Ave, the sight of Henry will do more than my words.’

Mary looked greatly grieved, but said nothing, only following her father to take his last words and directions. ‘Keep her as quiet as you can. Do not worry her, but get out this root of bitterness if you can. Poor, poor things!’

‘That little Minna is a dear child!’ said Mary. ‘She is grown so much older than Ella, or than she was last year. She seems to understand and feel like a grown-up person. I do think she may soften poor Ave more than I can; but, papa, there is excuse. Mr. Ward must have made them more miserable than we guessed.’

‘The more reason she must forgive him. O, Mary, I fear a grievous lesson is coming to them; but I must do all I can. Good-bye, my dear; do the best you can for them;’ and he set forth again with a bleeding heart.

At the attorney’s office, he found the principal from home, but the partner, Edward Anderson, on the qui vive for a summons to attend on behalf of his fellow-townsman, and confident that however bad were the present aspect of affairs, his professional eye would instantly find a clue.

Aubrey was in an agony of excitement, but unable to endure the notion of approaching the scene of action; and his half-choked surly ‘Don’t’ was sufficient to deter his brother Thomas, who had never shown himself so kind, considerate, and free from sneer or assumption. In ‘hours of ease’ he might seem selfish and exacting, but a crisis evoked the latent good in him, and drew him out of himself.

Nor would Henry return to Bankside. After many vacillations, the moment for starting found him in a fit of despair about the family disgrace, only able to beg that ‘the unhappy boy’ should be assured that no expense should be spared in his defence; or else, that if he were cleared and returned home, his welcome should be most joyful. But there Henry broke off, groaned, said they should never look up again, and must leave the place.

Except for Averil’s own sake, Dr. May would almost have regretted his exhortations in favour of her eldest brother.

In due time the Doctor arrived at the mill, where the inquest was to take place, as the public-house was small, and inconveniently distant; and there was ample accommodation in the large rambling building. So crowded was the courtyard, that the Doctor did not easily make his way to the steps of the hall door; but there, after one brief question to the policeman in charge, he waited, though several times invited in.