The Trial

She felt as if even Leonard’s death could be accepted thankfully as the captive’s release. But that sorrow was spared her.

The account of Leonard came from Mr. Wilmot, who had carried him the tidings. The prisoner had calmly met him with the words, ‘I know what you are come to tell me;’ and he heard all in perfect calmness and resignation, saying little, but accepting all that the clergyman said, exactly as could most be desired.

From the chaplain, likewise, Mr. Wilmot learnt that Leonard, though still only in the second stage of his penalty, stood morally in a very different position, and was relied on as a valuable assistant in all that was good, more effective among his fellow-prisoners than was possible to any one not in the same situation with themselves, and fully accepting that position when in contact either with convicts or officials. ‘He has never referred to what brought him here,’ said the chaplain, ‘nor would I press him to do so; but his whole tone is of repentance, and acceptance of the penalty, without, like most of them, regarding it as expiation. It is this that renders his example so valuable among the men.’

After such a report as this, it was disappointing, on Dr. May’s next visit to Portland, at two months’ end, to find Leonard drooping and downcast. The Doctor was dismayed at his pale, dejected, stooping appearance, and the silence and indifference with which he met their ordinary topics of conversation, till the Doctor began anxiously—

‘You are not well?’

‘Quite well, thank you.’

‘You are looking out of condition. Do you sleep?’

‘Some part of the night.’

‘You want more exercise. You should apply to go back to the carpenter’s shop—or shall I speak to the governor?’

‘No, thank you. I believe they want me in school.’

‘And you prefer school work?’

‘I don’t know, but it helps the master.’

‘Do you think you make any progress with the men? We heard you were very effective with them.’

‘I don’t see that much can be done any way, certainly not by me.’

Then the Doctor tried to talk of Henry and the sisters; but soon saw that Leonard had no power to dwell upon them. The brief answers were given with a stern compression and contraction of face; as if the manhood that had grown on him in these three years was no longer capable of the softening effusion of grief; and Dr. May, with all his tenderness, felt that it must be respected, and turned the conversation.

‘I have been calling at the Castle,’ he said, ‘with Ernescliffe, and the governor showed me a curious thing, a volume of Archbishop Usher, which had been the Duke of Lauderdale’s study after he was taken at Worcester. He has made a note in the fly-leaf, “I began this book at Windsor, and finished it during my imprisonment here;” and below are mottoes in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. I can’t construe the Hebrew. The Greek is oisteon kai elpisteon (one must bear and hope), the Latin is durate. Will you accept your predecessor’s legacy?’

‘I think I read about him in an account of the island,’ said Leonard, with a moment’s awakened intelligence; ‘was he not the L. of the Cabal, the persecutor in “Old Mortality?”’

‘I am afraid you are right. Prosperity must have been worse for him than adversity.’

‘Endure’ repeated Leonard, gravely. ‘I will think of that, and what he would mean by hope now.’

The Doctor came home much distressed; he had been unable to penetrate the dreary, resolute self-command that covered so much anguish; he had failed in probing or in healing, and feared that the apathy he had witnessed was a sign that the sustaining spring of vigour was failing in the monotonous life. The strong endurance had been a strain that the additional grief was rendering beyond his power; and the crushed resignation, and air of extinguished hope, together with the indications of failing health, filled the Doctor with misgivings.

‘It will not last much longer,’ he said. ‘I do not mean that he is ill; but to hold up in this way takes it out of a man, especially at his age. The first thing that lays hold of him, he will have no strength nor will to resist, and then—Well, I did hope to live to see God show the right.’

CHAPTER XXIV

We twa hae wandered o’er the braes, And pu’ed the gowans fine; I’ve wandered many a weary foot Sin auld lang syne.

These years had passed quietly at Stoneborough, with little change since Mary’s marriage. She was the happy excellent wife that she was made to be; and perhaps it was better for Ethel that the first severance had been so decisive that Mary’s attentions to her old home were received as favours, instead of as the mere scanty relics of her former attachment.

Mr. Cheviot, as the family shook down together, became less afraid of Ethel, and did not think it so needful to snub her either by his dignity or jocularity; though she still knew that she was only on terms of sufferance, and had been, more than once, made to repent of unguarded observations. He was admirable; and the school was so rapidly improving that Norman had put his father into ecstasies by proposing to send home little Dickie to begin his education there. Moreover, the one element wanting, to accomplish the town improvements, had been supplied by a headmaster on the side of progress, and Dr. Spencer’s victory had been won at last. There was a chance that Stoneborough might yet be clean, thanks to his reiteration of plans for purification, apropos to everything. Baths and wash-houses were adroitly carried as a monument to Prince Albert; and on the Prince of Wales’s marriage, his perseverance actually induced the committee to finish up the drains with all the contributions that were neither eaten up nor fired away! Never had he been more happy and triumphant; and Dr. May used to accuse him of perambulating the lower streets snuffing the deodorized air.

One autumn evening, contrary to his wont, he allowed himself to be drawn into the May drawing-room, and there fell into one of the bright bantering talks in which the two old friends delighted, quizzing each other, and bringing up stories of their life; while Ethel and Gertrude listened to and laughed at the traditions of a sunnier, gayer, and more reckless age than their own; and Ethel thought how insufficient are those pictures of life that close with the fever-dream of youthful passion, and leave untold those years of the real burthen of manhood, and still more the tranquil brightness when toil has been overlived, and the setting sun gilds the clouds that are drifting away.

Ethel’s first knowledge of outer life the next morning was the sound of voices in her father’s adjoining room, which made her call out, ‘Are you sent for, papa?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, and in an agitated tone, ‘Spencer; I’ll send word.’

Should she mention what she had two years ago heard from Tom? There was no time, for the next moment she heard him hurrying down-stairs, she saw him speeding up the garden. There was nothing for her to do but to dress as fast as possible, and as she was finishing she heard his tread slowly mounting, the very footfall warning her what to expect. She opened the door and met him. ‘Thank God,’ he said, as he took her hand into his own, ‘it has been very merciful.’

‘Is it—?’

‘Yes. It must have been soon after he lay down at night. As calm as sleep. The heart. I am very thankful. I had thought he would have had much to suffer.’

And then it appeared that his own observations had made him sure of what Ethel had learnt from Tom; but as long as it was unavowed by his friend, he had thought himself bound to ignore it, and had so dreaded the protracted suffering, that the actual stroke was accepted as a loving dispensation.

Still, as the close of a lifelong friendship, the end of a daily refreshing and sustaining intimacy, the loss was very great, and would be increasingly felt after the first stimulus was over. It would make Tom’s defection a daily grievance, since much detail of hospital care, and, above all, town work, his chief fatigue, would now again fall upon him. But this was not his present thought. His first care was, that his friend’s remains should rest with those with whom his lot in life had been cast, in the cloister of the old Grammar-school; but here Mr. Cheviot looked concerned, and with reluctance, but decision, declared it to be his duty not to consent, cited the funeral of one of his scholars at the cemetery, and referred to recent sanatory measures.

Dr. May quickly exclaimed that he had looked into the matter, and that the cloister did not come under the Act.

‘Not technically, sir,’ said Mr. Cheviot; ‘but I am equally convinced of my duty, however much I may regret it.’ And then, with a few words about Mary’s presently coming up, he departed; while ‘That is too bad,’ was the general indignant outburst, even from Richard; from all but Dr. May himself.

‘He is quite right,’ he said. ‘Dear Spencer would be the first to say so. Richard, your church is his best monument, and you’ll not shut him out of your churchyard nor me either.’

‘Cheviot could not have meant—’ began Richard.

‘Yes, he did, I understood him, and I am glad you should have had it out now,’ said Dr. May, though not without a quivering lip. ‘Your mother has one by her side, and we’ll find each other out just as well as if we were in the cloister. I’ll walk over to Cocksmoor with you, Ritchie, and mark the place.’

Thus sweetly did he put aside what might have been so severe a shock; and he took extra pains to show his son-in-law his complete acquiescence both for the present and the future. Charles Cheviot expressed to Richard his great satisfaction in finding sentiment thus surmounted by sense, not perceiving that it was faith and love surmounting both.

Dr. Spencer’s only surviving relation was a brother’s son, who, on his arrival, proved to be an underbred, shrewd-looking man, evidently with strong prepossessions against the May family, whose hospitality he did not accept, consorting chiefly with ‘Bramshaw and Anderson.’ His disposition to reverse the arrangement for burying his uncle in ‘an obscure village churchyard,’ occasioned a reference to the will, drawn up two years previously. The executors were Thomas and Etheldred May, and it was marked on the outside that they were to have the sole direction of the funeral. Ethel, greatly astonished, but as much bewildered as touched, was infinitely relieved that this same day had brought a hurried note from Paris, announcing Tom’s intention of coming to attend the funeral. He would be able to talk to the angry and suspicious nephew, without, like his father, betraying either indignation or disgust.

Another person was extremely anxious for Tom’s arrival, namely, Sir Matthew Fleet, who, not a little to Dr. May’s gratification, came to show his respect to his old fellow-student; and arriving the evening before Tom, was urgent to know the probabilities of his appearance. An appointment in London was about to be vacant, so desirable in itself, and so valuable an introduction, that there was sure to be a great competition; but Sir Matthew was persuaded that with his own support, and an early canvass, Tom might be certain of success. Dr. May could not help being grateful and gratified, declaring that the boy deserved it, and that dear Spencer would have been very much pleased; and then he told Ethel that it was wonderful to see the blessing upon Maggie’s children; and went back, as usual, to his dear old Tate and Brady, with—

‘His house the seat of wealth shall be, An inexhausted treasury; His justice, free from all decay, Shall blessings to his heirs convey.’

And Ethel, within herself, hoped it was no disrespect to smile at his having so unconsciously turned away the blessing from the father’s to the mother’s side.

It was his great pride and pleasure that so many of Maggie’s children were round him to do honour to her old friend’s burial—three sons, and four daughters, and three sons-in-law. They all stood round the grave, as near as might be to the stone that Gertrude, as a child, had laid under his care, when his silver hair had mingled with her golden locks; and with them was a concourse that evidently impressed the nephew with a new idea of the estimation in which his uncle had been held.

Tom had travelled all night, and had arrived only just in time. Nobody was able to say a word to him before setting off; and almost immediately after the return, Sir Matthew Fleet seized upon him to walk up to the station with him, and, to the infinite disgust of the nephew, the reading of the will was thus delayed until the executor came back, extremely grave and thoughtful.

After all, Mr. Spencer had no available grievance. His uncle’s property was very little altogether, amounting scarcely to a thousand pounds, but the bulk was bequeathed to the nephew; to Aubrey May was left his watch, and a piece of plate presented to him on his leaving India; to Dr. May a few books; to Tom the chief of his library, his papers, notes, and instruments, and the manuscript of a work upon diseases connected with climate, on which he had been engaged for many years, but had never succeeded in polishing to his own fastidious satisfaction, or in coming to the end of new discoveries. To Etheldred, his only legacy was his writing-desk, with all its contents. And Mr. Spencer looked so suspicious of those contents, that Tom made her open it before him, and show that they were nothing but letters.

It had been a morning of the mixture of feelings and restless bustle, so apt to take place where the affection is not explained by relationship; and when the strangers were gone, and the family were once again alone, there was a drawing of freer breath, and the Doctor threw himself back in his chair, and indulged in a long, heavy sigh, with a weary sound in it.

‘Can I go anywhere for you, father?’ said Tom, turning to him with a kind and respectful manner.

‘Oh no—no, thank you,’ he said, rousing himself, and laying his hand on the bell, ‘I must go over to Overfield; but I shall be glad of the drive. Well, Dr. Tom, what did you say to Fleet’s proposal?’

‘I said I would come up to town and settle about it when I had got through this executor business.’

‘You always were a lucky fellow, Tom,’ said Dr. May, trying to be interested and sympathetic. ‘You would not wish for anything better.’

‘I don’t know, I have not had time to think about it yet,’ said Tom, pulling off his spectacles and pushing back his hair, with an action of sadness and fatigue.

‘Ah! it was not the best of times to choose for the communication; but it was kindly meant. I never expected to see Fleet take so much trouble for any one. But you are done up, Tom, with your night journey.’

‘Not at all,’ he answered, briskly, ‘if I can do anything for you. Could not I go down to the hospital?’

‘Why, if I were not to be back till five,’ began Dr. May, considering, and calling him into the hall to receive directions, from which he came back, saying, ‘There! now then, Ethel, we had better look over things, and get them in train.’

‘You are so tired, Tom.’

‘Not too much for that,’ he said. But it was a vain boast; he was too much fatigued to turn his mind to business requiring thought, though capable of slow, languid reading and sorting of papers.

Aubrey’s legacy was discovered with much difficulty. In fact, it had never been heard of, nor seen the light, since its presentation, and was at last found in a lumber closet, in a strong box, in Indian packing. It was a compromise between an epergne and a candelabrum, growing out of the howdah of an unfortunate elephant, pinning one tiger to the ground, and with another hanging on behind, in the midst of a jungle of palm-trees and cobras; and beneath was an elaborate inscription, so laudatory of Aubrey Spencer, M. D., that nobody wondered he had never unpacked it, and that it was yellow with tarnish—the only marvel was, that he had never disposed of it; but that it was likely to wait for the days when Aubrey might be a general and own a side-board.

The other bequests were far more appreciated. Tom had known of the book in hand, was certain of its value to the faculty, and was much gratified by the charge of it, both as a matter of feeling and of interest. But while he looked over and sorted the mass of curious notes, his attention was far more set on the desk, that reverently, almost timidly, Ethel examined, well knowing why she had been selected as the depositary of these relics. There they were, some embrowned by a burn in the corner, as though there had been an attempt to destroy them, in which there had been no heart to persevere. It was but little, after all, two formal notes in which Professor Norman Mackenzie asked the honour of Mr. Spencer’s company to dinner, but in handwriting that was none of the professor’s—writing better known to Ethel than to Tom—and a series of their father’s letters, from their first separation till the traveller’s own silence had caused their correspondence to drop. Charming letters they were, such as people wrote before the penny-post had spoilt the epistolary art—long, minute, and overflowing with brilliant happiness. Several of them were urgent invitations to Stoneborough, and one of these was finished in that other hand—the delicate, well-rounded writing that would not be inherited—entreating Dr. Spencer to give a few days to Stoneborough, ‘it would be such a pleasure to Richard to show him the children.’

Ethel did not feel sure whether to see these would give pain or pleasure to her father. He would certainly be grieved to see how much suffering he must have inflicted in the innocence of his heart, and in the glory of his happiness; and Tom, with a sort of shudder, advised her to keep them to herself, he was sure they would give nothing but pain.

She had no choice just then, for it was a time of unusual occupation, and the difference made by their loss told immediately—the more, perhaps, because it was the beginning of November, and there was much municipal business to be attended to.

However it might be for the future, during the ensuing week Dr. May never came in for a meal with the rest of the family; was too much fagged for anything but sleep when he came home at night; and on the Sunday morning, when they all had reckoned on going to Cocksmoor together, he was obliged to give it up, and only come into the Minster at the end of the prayers. Every one knew that he was not a good manager of his time, and this made things worse; and he declared that he should make arrangements for being less taken up; but it was sad to see him overburthened, and Tom, as only a casual visitor, could do little to lessen his toil, though that little was done readily and attentively. There were no rubs between the two, and scarcely any conversation. Tom would not discuss his prospects; and it was not clear whether he meant to avail himself of Sir Matthew’s patronage; he committed himself to nothing but his wish that it were possible to stay in Paris; and he avoided even talking to his sister.

Not till a week after he had left home for London came a letter

‘Dear Ethel,

‘I have told Fleet that I am convinced of my only right course. I could never get the book finished properly if I got into his line, and I must have peaceable evenings for it at home. I suppose my father would not like to let Dr. Spencer’s house. If I might have it, and keep my own hours and habits, I think it would conduce to our working better together. I am afraid I kept you in needless distress about him, but I wanted to judge for myself of the necessity, and to think over the resignation of that quest. I must commit it to Brown. I hope it is not too great a risk; but it can’t be helped. It is a matter of course that I should come home now the helper is gone; I always knew it would come to that. Manage it as quietly as you can. I must go to Paris for a fortnight, to bring home my things, and by that time my father had better get me appointed to the hospital.

‘Yours ever, ‘TH. MAY.’

Ethel was not so much surprised as her father, who thought she must have been working upon Tom’s feelings; but this she disavowed, except that it had been impossible not to growl at patients sending at unreasonable hours. Then he hoped that Fleet had not been disappointing the lad; but this notion was nullified by a remonstrance from the knight, on the impolicy of burying such talents for the sake of present help; and even proposing to send a promising young man in Tom’s stead. ‘Not too good for poor Stoneborough,’ said Dr. May, smiling. ‘No, no, I’m not so decrepit as that, whatever he and Tom may have thought me; I fancy I could tire out both of them. I can’t have the poor boy giving up all his prospects for my sake, Ethel. I never looked for it, and I shall write and tell him so! Mind, Ethel, I shall write, not you! I know you would only stroke him down, and bring him home to regret it. No, no, I won’t always be treated like Karl, in “Debit and Credit”, who the old giant thought could neither write nor be written to, because his finger was off.’

And Dr. May’s letter was the first which this son had ever had from him.

‘My Dear Tom,

‘I feel your kind intentions to the heart; it is like all the rest of your dear mother’s children; but the young ought not to be sacrificed to the old, and I won’t have it done. The whole tone of practice has altered since my time, and I do not want to bind you down to the routine. I had left off thinking of it since I knew of your distaste. I have some years of work in me yet, that will see out most of my old patients; and for the rest, Wright is a great advance on poor Ward, and I will leave more to him as I grow older. I mean to see you a great man yet, and I think you will be the greater and happier for the sacrifice you have been willing to make. His blessing on you.

‘Your loving father, ‘R. M.’

What was Tom’s answer, but one of his cool ‘good letters,’ a demonstration that he was actuated by the calmest motives of convenience and self-interest, in preferring the certainties of Stoneborough to the contingencies of London, and that he only wanted time for study and the completion of Dr. Spencer’s book, enforcing his request for the house.

His resolution was, as usual, too evident to be combated, and it was also plain that he chose to keep on the mask of prudent selfishness, which he wore so naturally that it was hard to give him credit for any other features; but this time Dr. May was not deceived. He fully estimated the sacrifice, and would have prevented it if he could; but he never questioned the sincerity of the motive, as it was not upon the surface; and the token of dutiful affection, as coming from the least likely quarter of his family, touched and comforted him. He dwelt on it with increasing satisfaction, and answered all hurries and worries with, ‘I shall have time when Tome is come;’ re-opened old schemes that had died away when he feared to have no successor, and now and then showed a certain comical dread of being drilled into conformity with Tom’s orderly habits.

There was less danger of their clashing, as the son had outgrown the presumptions of early youth, and a change had passed over his nature which Ethel had felt, rather than seen, during his fleeting visits at home, more marked by negatives than positives, and untraced by confidences. The bitterness and self-assertion had ceased to tinge his words, the uncomfortable doubt that they were underlaid by satire had passed away, and methodical and self-possessed as he always was, the atmosphere of ‘number one’ was no longer apparent round all his doings. He could be out of spirits and reserved without being either ill-tempered or ironical; and Ethel, with this as the upshot of her week’s observations, was reassured as to the hopes of the father and son working together without collisions. As soon as the die was cast, and there was no danger of undue persuasion in ‘stroking him down,’ she indulged herself by a warmly-grateful letter, and after she had sent it, was tormented by the fear that it would be a great offence. The answer was much longer than she had dared to expect, and alarmed her lest it should be one of his careful ways of making the worst of himself; but there was a large ‘Private,’ scored in almost menacing letters on the top of the first sheet, and so much blotted in the folding, that it was plain that he had taken alarm at the unreserve of his own letter.

‘My Dear Ethel,

‘I have been to Portland. Really my father ought to make a stir and get Ward’s health attended to; he looks very much altered, but will not own to anything being amiss. They say he has been depressed ever since he heard of Minna’s death. I should say he ought to be doing out-of-doors work—perhaps at Gibraltar, but then he would be out of our reach. I could not get much from him, but that patient, contented look is almost more than one can bear. It laid hold of me when I saw him the first time, and has haunted me ever since. Verily I believe it is what is bringing me home! You need not thank me, for it is sober calculation that convinces me that no success on earth would compensate for the perpetual sense that my father was wearing himself out, and you pining over the sight. Except just at first, I always meant to come and see how the land lay before pledging myself to anything; and nothing can be clearer than that, in the state of things my father has allowed to spring up, he must have help. I am glad you have got me the old house, for I can be at peace there till I have learnt to stand his unmethodical ways. Don’t let him expect too much of me, as I see he is going to do. It is not in me to be like Norman or Harry, and he must not look for it, least of all now. If you did not understand, and know when to hold your tongue, I do not think I could come home at all; as it is, you are all the comfort I look for. I cross to Paris tomorrow. That is a page I am very sorry to close. I had a confidence that I should have hunted down that fellow, and the sight of Portland and the accounts from Massissauga alike make one long to have one’s hands on his throat; but that hope is ended now, and to loiter about Paris in search of him, when it it a plain duty to come away, would be one of the presumptuous acts that come to no good. Let them discuss what they will, there’s nothing so hard to believe in as Divine Justice! And yet that uncomplaining face accepts it! You need say nothing about this letter. I will talk about Leonard with my father when I get home.

‘Ever yours, ‘Thomas May.’

CHAPTER XXV

But soon as once the genial plain Has drunk the life-blood of the slain, Indelible the spots remain; And aye for vengeance call, Till racking pangs of piercing pain Upon the guilty fall. AEschylus. (Translated by Professor Anstice.)

If Tom May’s arrival at home was eagerly anticipated there, it was with a heavy heart that he prepared for what he had never ceased to look on as a treadmill life. He had enjoyed Paris, both from the society and the abstract study, since he still retained that taste for theory rather than practice, which made him prefer diseases to sick people, and all sick people to those of Stoneborough. The student life, in the freedom of a foreign capital, was, even while devoid of license and irregularity, much pleasanter than what he foresaw at home, even though he had obtained a separate establishment. His residence at Paris, with the vague hope it afforded, cost him more in the resignation than his prospects in London. It was the week when he would have been canvassing for the appointment, and he was glad to linger abroad out of reach of Sir Matthew’s remonstrances, and his father’s compunction, while he was engaged in arranging for a French translation of Dr. Spencer’s book, and likewise in watching an interesting case, esteemed a great medical curiosity, at the Hotel Dieu.

He was waiting in the lecture-room, when one of the house surgeons came in, saying, ‘Ah! I am glad to see you here. A compatriot of yours has been brought in, mortally injured in a gambling fray. You may perhaps assist in getting him identified.’

Tom followed him to the accident ward, and beheld a senseless figure, with bloated and discoloured features, distorted by the effects of the injury, a blow upon the temple, which had caused a fall backwards on the sharp edge of a stove, occasioning fatal injury to the spine. Albeit well accustomed to gaze critically upon the tokens of mortal agony, Tom felt an unusual shudder of horror and repugnance as he glanced on the countenance, so disfigured and contorted that there was no chance of recognition, and turned his attention to the clothes, which lay in a heap on the floor. The contents of the pockets had been taken out, and consisted only of some pawnbroker’s duplicates, a cigar-case, and a memorandum-book, which last he took in his hand, and began to unfasten, without looking at it, while he took part in the conversation of the surgeons on the technical nature of the injuries. Thus he stood for some seconds, before, on the house surgeon asking if he had found any address, he cast his eyes on the pages which lay open in his hand.

‘Ha! What have you found?—He does not hear! Is it the portrait of the beloved object? Is it a brother—an enemy—or a debt? But he is truly transfixed! It is an effect of the Gorgon’s head!’

‘July 15th, 1860. Received L120. ‘L. A. WARD.’

There stood Tom May, like one petrified, deaf to the words around, his dazzled eyes fixed on the letters, his faculties concentrated in the endeavour to ascertain whether they were sight or imagination. Yes, there they were, the very words in the well-known writing, the schoolboy’s forming into the clerk’s, there was the blot in the top of the L! Tom’s heart gave one wild bound, then all sensation, except the sight of the writing, ceased, the exclamations of those around him came surging gradually on his ear, as if from a distance, and he did not yet hear them distinctly when he replied alertly, almost lightly, ‘Here is a name that surprises me. Let me look at the patient again.’

‘No dear friend?’ asked his chief intimate, in a tone ready to become gaiety or sympathy.

‘No, indeed,’ said Tom, shuddering as he stood over the insensible wretch, and perceived what it had been which had thrilled him with such unwonted horror, for, fixed by the paralyzing convulsion of the fatal blow, he saw the scowl and grin of deadly malevolence that had been the terror of his childhood, and that had fascinated his eyes at the moment of Leonard’s sentence. Changed by debauchery, defaced by violence, contorted by the injured brain, the features would scarcely have been recalled to him but for the frightful expression stamped on his memory by the miseries of his timid boyhood.

‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ The awful thought, answering his own struggle for faith in Divine Justice, crossed him, as he heard the injury on the head defined, in almost the same scientific terms that had so often rung on his ears as the causes of Francis Axworthy’s death; but this was no society where he could give vent to his feelings, and mastering himself with difficulty he answered, ‘I know Him. He is from my own town.’

‘Has he friends or relations?’

‘Relations, yes,’ said Tom, hardly able to restrain a trembling of the lip, half horror, half irony. ‘None here, none near. They shall know.’

‘And means?’

‘Once he had. Probably none now.’

To Tom’s great relief, a new case drew off general attention. There only remained the surgeon who had called him at first, and with whom he was particularly intimate.

‘Gaspard,’ he said, ‘shall you have charge of this case?’

‘Brief charge it will be, apparently! I will volunteer to watch it, if it is your desire! Is it friendship, or enmity, or simple humanity?’

‘All!’ said Tom, hastily. ‘It is the clearing up of a horrible mystery—freedom for an innocent prisoner—I must tell you the rest at leisure. There is much to be done now in case of his reviving.’

This was remotely possible, but very doubtful; and Tom impressed on both Gaspard and the nursing sister the most stringent entreaties to summon him on the first symptom. He then gave the name of the unhappy man, and, though unwilling to separate himself from that invaluable pocket-book, perceived the necessity of leaving it as a deposit with the authorities of the hospital, after he had fully examined it, recognizing Leonard’s description in each particular, the cipher F. A. on the tarnished silver clasp, the shagreen cover, and the receipt on a page a little past the middle. On the other half of the leaf was the entry of some sums due to the house; and it contained other papers which the guilty wretch had been evidently eager to secure, yet afraid to employ, and that, no doubt, were the cause that, like so many other murderers on record, he had preserved that which was the most fatal proof against himself. Or could it be with some notion of future relenting, that he had refrained from its destruction?

With brain still seeming to reel at the discovery, and limbs actually trembling with the shock, Tom managed to preserve sufficient coolness and discretion to bring back to mind the measures he had so often planned for any such contingency. Calling a cabriolet, he repaired to the police-station nearest to the scene of the contest, and there learnt that Axworthy had long been watched as a dangerous subject, full of turbulence, and with no visible means of maintenance. The officials had taken charge of the few personal effects in his miserable lodgings, and were endeavouring to secure the person who had struck the fatal blow.

His next measure was to go to the British Embassy, where, through his sister Flora’s introductions, and his own Eton connections, he was already well known; and telling his story there, without any attempt to conceal his breathless agitation, he had no difficulty in bringing with him a companion who would authenticate the discovery of the receipt, and certify to any confession that might be obtained.

A confession! That was the one matter of the most intense interest. Tom considered whether to secure the presence of a clergyman, but suspected that this would put Axworthy on his guard rather than soften him, and therefore only wrote to the chaplain, begging him to hold himself in readiness for a summons to the Hotel Dieu, whither he drove rapidly back with his diplomatic friend, whom he wrought up well-nigh to his own pitch of expectation. He had already decided on his own first address—pitying, but manifesting that nothing, not even vengeance, could be gained by concealment; and then, according to the effect, would he try either softening or threatening to extort the truth.

Gaspard was eagerly awaiting them. ‘I had already sent for you,’ he said. ‘The agony is commencing; he has spoken, but he has not his full consciousness.’

Tom hurried on, drawing after him the young diplomate, who would have hung back, questioning if there were any use in his witnessing the dying struggles of a delirious man.

‘Come, come,’ peremptorily repeated Tom, ‘there must be some last words. Every moment is of importance.’

Yet his trust was shaken by the perception of the progress that death had made in the miserable frame during his absence. The fixed expression of malignity had been forced to yield to exhaustion and anguish, the lips moved, but the murmurs between the moans were scarcely articulate.

‘He is almost past it,’ said Tom, ‘but there is the one chance that he may be roused by my voice.’

And having placed his friend conveniently, both for listening and making notes, he came close to the bed, and spoke in a tone of compassion. ‘Axworthy, I say, Axworthy, is there anything I can do for you?’

There was a motion of the lid of the fast-glazing eye; but the terrible face of hatred came back, with the audible words, ‘I tell you, you old fool, none of the Mays are to come prying about my place.’

Appalled by the deadly malice of the imprecation and the look that accompanied this partial recognition of his voice, Tom was nerving himself to speak again, when the dying man, as if roused by the echo of his own thought, burst out, ‘Who? What is it? I say Dr. May shall not be called in! He never attended the old man! Let him mind his own business! I was all night at the Three Goblets. Yes, I was! The new darling will catch it—going off with the money upon him—’ and the laugh made their blood run cold. ‘I’ve got the receipt;’ and he made an attempt at thrusting his hand under the pillow, but failing, swore, shouted, howled with his last strength, that he had been robbed—the pocket-book—it would hang him! and with one of the most fearful shrieks of despair that had perhaps ever rung through that asylum of pain, woe, and death, the wretched spirit departed.

Tom May turned aside, made a few steps, and, to the infinite surprise of every one, fell helplessly down in a swoon. A nature of deep and real sensibility, though repressed by external reserve and prudence, could not with entire impunity undergo such a scene. The sudden discovery, the vehement excitement forced down, the intense strain of expectation, and finally, the closing horror of such a death, betraying the crime without repenting of it, passing to the other world with imprecations on the lips, and hatred in the glare of the eye, all the frightfulness enhanced by the familiarity of the allusions, and the ghastly association of the tones that had tempted and tyrannized over his childhood, altogether crushed and annihilated his faculties, mental and bodily.

Oh, when our very hearts burn for justice, how little do we know how intolerable would be the sight of it! Tom’s caution and readiness returned as soon as—after a somewhat long interval—he began to distinguish the voices round him, and perceive the amazement he had created. Before he was able to sit up on the couch, where he had been laid out of sight of the scene which had affected him so strongly, he was urging his friend to set down all that had been spoken, and on Gaspard’s writing a separate deposition. The pocket-book, and other effects, were readily ceded to the British authority, and were carried away with them.

How Tom got through the remaining hours of the day and the night he never recollected, though he knew it must have been in the bustle of preparation, and that he had imparted the tidings to Leonard’s friend Brown, for when he and his friend had attended that which answered to an inquest on the body, and had obtained a report of the proceedings, he was ready to start by the night train, bearing with him the attestations of the death-bed scene at the Hotel Dieu, and the long-lost memorandum-book, and was assured that the next mail would carry an official letter to the Home Office, detailing the circumstances of Samuel Axworthy’s decease. Brown came to bid him farewell, full of gladness and warm congratulation, which he longed to send to his friend, but which Tom only received with hasty, half-comprehending assents.

Late in the afternoon he reached Stoneborough, found no one come in, and sat down in the fire-light, where, for all his impatience, fatigue had made him drop asleep, when he was roused by Gertrude’s voice, exclaiming, ‘Here really is Tom come, as you said he would, without writing. Here are all his goods in the hall.’

‘Is it you, Tom!’ cried Ethel. ‘Notice or no notice, we are glad of you. But what is the matter?’

‘Where’s my father?’

‘Coming. Charles Cheviot took him down to look at one of the boys. Is there anything the matter?’ she added, after a pause.

‘No, nothing.’

‘You look very odd,’ added Gertrude.

He gave a nervous laugh. ‘You would look odd, if you had travelled all night.’

They commented, and began to tell home news; but Ethel noted that he neither spoke nor heard, only listened for his father. Gertrude grew tired of inattentive answers, and said she should go and dress. Ethel was turning to follow, when he caught hold of her cloak, and drew her close to him. ‘Ethel,’ he said, in a husky, stifled voice, ‘do you know this?’

On her knees, by the red fire-light, she saw the ‘L. A. Ward,’ and looked up. ‘Is it?’ she said. He bowed his head.

And then Ethel put her arm round his neck, as he knelt down by her; and he found that her tears, her rare tears, were streaming down, silent but irrepressible. She had not spoken, had asked no question, made no remark, when Dr. Mays entrance was heard, and she loosed her hold on her brother, out without rising from the floor, looked up from under the shade of her hat, and said, ‘O, papa! it is found, and he has done it! Look there!’

Her choked voice, and tokens of emotion, startled the Doctor; but Tom, in a matter-of-fact tone, took up the word: ‘How are you, father?—Yes. I have only met with this little memorandum.’

Dr. May recognized it with a burst of incoherent inquiry and exclamation, wringing Tom’s hand, and giving no time for an answer; and, indeed, his son attempted none—till, calming himself, the Doctor subsided into his arm-chair, and with a deep sigh, exclaimed, ‘Now then, Tom, let us hear. Where does this come from?’

‘From the casualty ward at the Hotel Dieu.’

‘And from—’

‘He is dead,’ said Tom, answering the unspoken question. ‘You will find it all here. Ethel, do I sleep here to-night? My old room?’ As he spoke, he bent to light a spill at the fire, and then the two candles on the side-table; but his hand shook nervously, and though he turned away his face, his father and sister saw the paleness of his cheek, and knew that he must have received a great shock. Neither spoke, while he put one candle conveniently for his father, took up the other, and went away with it. With one inquisitive glance at each other, they turned to the papers, and with eager eyes devoured the written narratives of Tom himself and of the attache, then, with no less avidity, the French reports accompanying them. Hardly a word was spoken while Ethel leant against her father’s knee, and he almost singed his hair in the candle, as they helped one another out in the difficulties of the crooked foreign writing.

‘Will it be enough?’ asked Ethel, at last, holding her breath for the answer.

‘If there is justice in England!’ said Dr. May. ‘Heaven forgive me, Ethel, this business has tried my trust more than anything that ever befell me; but it will all be right now, and righter than right, if that boy comes out what I think him.’

‘And oh, how soon?’

‘Not a moment longer than can be helped. I’d go up by the mail train this very night if it would do any good.’

Tom, who reappeared as soon as he had spared himself the necessity of the narration, was willing and eager to set out; but Dr. May, who by this time had gathered some idea of what he had gone through, and saw that he was restless, nervous, and unhinged, began to reconsider the expedience of another night journey, and was, for once in his life, the person cool enough to see that it would be wisest to call Bramshaw into their counsels, and only that night to send up a note mentioning that they would do themselves the honour of calling at the Home Office the next day, on matters connected with the intelligence received that morning from the British Embassy at Paris.

Tom was disappointed; he was in no mood for sitting still, and far less for talking. As a matter of business, he would elucidate any question, but conversation on what he had witnessed was impossible to him; and when Gertrude, with a girl’s lightness, lamented over being balked of a confession and explanation, he gravely answered, that she did not know what she was talking of; and his father led away from the subject. Indeed, Dr. May was full of kindness and consideration, being evidently not only grateful for the discovery, but touched by his entire absence of exulting triumph, and his strong sense of awe in the retribution.

That changed and awe-struck manner impressed both the sisters, so that all the evening Ethel felt subdued as by a strange shock, and even through the night and morning could hardly realize that it was intense relief—joy, not sorrow—that made her feel so unlike herself, and that the burthen was taken away from her heart. Even then, there was a trembling of anxiety. The prisoner might be set free; but who could give back to him the sister who had pined away in exile, or the three years of his youthful brightness? There might be better things in store; but she knew she must not look again for the boy of ingenuous countenance, whose chivalrous devotion to herself had had such a charm, even while she tried to prize it at its lightest worth. It was foolish to recollect it with a pang, but there was no helping it. In the great tragedy, she had forgotten that the pretty comedy was over, but she regretted it, rather as she did the pleasant baby-days of Aubrey and Gertrude.

Indeed, during the day of suspense, while the two physicians were gone to London, taking with them the papers, and a minute detail of the evidence at the trial, Gertrude’s high spirits, triumph over Charles Cheviot, and desire to trumpet forth the good news, were oppressive. How many times that day was Mab stroked, and assured that her master would come back! And how often did the two sisters endeavour to persuade themselves that she was not grown broader in the back! Mary was, of course, told early in the day, but Gertrude got less sympathy from her than answered to that damsel’s extortionate expectations, for, according to her wicked account, Mary’s little Charlie had sneezed three times, and his mamma must regret what sent all the medical science of Stoneborough away by the early train.

However, Tom came home at night. The interview had been satisfactory. The letters received in the morning had prepared the way, and revived the recollection of the unsatisfactory case of Leonard Axworthy Ward, and of the representations of the then Mayor of Market Stoneborough. After all the new lights upon the matter had been looked into, the father and son had been assured that, as soon as possible, a free pardon should be issued, so drawn up as to imply a declaration of innocence—the nearest possible approach to a reversal of the sentence; and they further were told of a mention of his exemplary conduct in a late report from Portland, containing a request that he might be promoted to a post of greater influence and trust before the ordinary time of probation had passed. Dr. May was eager to be at Portland at the same time as the pardon, so to give Leonard the first intelligence, and to bring him home; and he had warmly closed with Tom’s offer to look after the work, while he himself waited till the necessary forms had been complied with. He had absolutely begged Tom’s pardon for going in his stead. ‘It is your right,’ he said; ‘but, somehow, I think, as I have been more with him, I might do better.’ To which Tom had assented with all his heart, and had added that he would not go if he were paid for it. He had further taken care that the Doctor should take with him a suit of clothes for Leonard to come home in, and had himself made the selection; then came back with the tidings that filled the house with the certainty of joy, and the uncertainty of expectation.

Nobody was, however, in such a fever as Tom himself. He was marvellously restless all the morning. Gertrude asserted it was because he was miserable at not venturing to set his father’s study to rights; and to be sure he was seen looking round at the litter with a face of great disgust, and declaring that he was ashamed to see a patient in a room in such a mess. But this did not fully account for his being in and out, backwards and forwards, all the morning, looking wistfully at Ethel, and then asking some trivial question about messages left for his father, or matters respecting his own new abode, where he kept on Dr. Spencer’s old housekeeper, and was about to turn in paperers and painters. He had actually brought a drawing-room paper from Paris, a most delicate and graceful affair, much too ladylike for the old house, as Daisy told him, when she pursued him and her sister down to a consultation.

Late in the afternoon, as the sisters were coming up the High Street, they met him setting out in Hector’s dog-cart. ‘Oh, I say, Ethel,’ he said, drawing up, ‘do you like a drive out to Chilford? Here’s a note come to ask my father to see the old lady there, and I want some one to give me courage to be looked at, like the curate in the pulpit instead of the crack preacher.’

It was an offer not to be despised, though Ethel knew what a waiting there would be, and what a dark drive home. Up she jumped, and Tom showed his usual thoughtfulness by ordering Gertrude to run home and fetch her muff and an additional cloak, tucking her up himself with the carriage rug. That affection of Tom’s had been slow in coming, but always gave her a sense of gratitude and enjoyment.

They drove all the seven miles to Chilford without twenty words passing between them; and when there, she sat in the road, and watched one constellation after another fill up its complement of stars as well as the moon permitted, wondering whether Tom’s near-sighted driving would be safe in the dark; but her heart was so light, so glad, that she could not be afraid, she did not care how long she waited, it was only sitting still to recollect that deliverance had come to the captive—Leonard was free—’free as heart can think or eye can see,’ as would keep ringing in her ears like a joy-bell; and some better things, too. ‘Until the time came that his cause was known, the Word of the Lord tried him.’

Whether she were really too happy to note time, or that gossipry was deducted from the visit, Tom certainly returned sooner than her experience had led her to expect, made an exclamation of dismay at finding the machine was innocent of lamps, and remounted to his seat, prepared to be extremely careful.

‘I could not get them to take me for my father in a new wig,’ he said; ‘but it was a very easy-going rheumatic case, and I think I satisfied her.’

Then on he drove for a mile, till he was out of the bad cross-country road, and at last he said, ‘Ethel, I have made up my mind. There’s no press of work just now, and I find it is advisable I should go to America before I get into harness here.’

‘To America!’

‘Yes, about this book of dear old Spencer’s. It is a thing that must be complete, and I find he was in correspondence with some men of science there. I could satisfy my mind on a few points, which would make it infinitely more valuable, you see—and get it published there too. I know my father would wish every justice to be done to it.’

‘I know he would; and,’ continued Ethel, as innocently as she could, ‘shall you see the Wards?’

‘Why,’ said Tom, in his deliberate voice, ‘that is just one thing; I want particularly to see Henry. I had a talk with Wright this morning, and he tells me that young Baines, at Whitford, is going to the dogs, and the practice coming in to him. He thinks of having a partner, and I put out a feeler in case Henry Ward should choose to come back, and found it might do very well. But the proposal must come from him, and there’s no time to be lost, so I thought of setting out as soon as I hear my father is on his way back.’

‘Not waiting to see Leonard?’

‘I did see him not a month ago. Besides—’ and his voice came to a sudden end.

‘Yes, the first news,’ said Ethel. ‘Indeed it is due to you, Tom.’

Ten minutes more of silence.

‘Ethel, did she ever tell you?’

‘Never,’ said Ethel, her heart beating.

‘Then how did you know all about it?’

‘I didn’t know. I only saw—’

‘Saw what?’

‘That you were very much distressed.’

‘And very kind and rational you were about it,’ said Tom, warmly; ‘I never thought any woman could have guessed so much, without making mischief. But you must not put any misconstruction on my present intention. All I mean to do as yet is to induce Henry to remove them out of that dismal swamp, and bring them home to comfort and civilization. Then it may be time to—’

He became silent; and Ethel longed ardently to ask further, but still she durst not, and he presently began again.

‘Ethel, was I very intolerable that winter of the volunteers, when Harry was at home?’

‘You are very much improved since,’ she answered.

‘That’s just like Flora. Answer like yourself.’

‘Well, you were! You were terribly rampant in Eton refinement, and very anxious to hinder all the others from making fools of themselves.’

‘I remember! I thought you had all got into intimacies that were for nobody’s good, and I still think it was foolish. I know it has done for me! Well,’ hastily catching up this last admission, as if it had dropped out at unawares, ‘you think I made myself disagreeable?’

‘On principle.’

‘Ah! then you would not wonder at what she said—that she had never seen anything in me but contemptuous irony.’

‘I think, sometimes feeling that you were satirical, she took all your courtesy for irony—whatever you meant. I have heard other people say the same. But when—was this on the day—the day you went to remonstrate?’

‘Yes. I declare to you, Ethel, that I had no conception of what I was going to do! I never dreamt that I was in for it. I knew she was—was attractive—and that made me hate to see Harry with her, and I could not bear her being carried off to this horrible place—but as to myself, I never thought of it till I saw her—white and broken—’ and then came that old action Ethel knew so well in her father, of clearing the dew from the glasses, and his voice was half sob, ‘and with no creature but that selfish brother to take care of her. I couldn’t help it, Ethel—no one could—and this—this was her answer. I don’t wonder. I had been a supercilious prig, and I ought to have known better than to think I could comfort her.’

‘I think the remembrance must have comforted her since.’

‘What—what, has she said anything?’

‘Oh no, she could not, you know. But I am sure, if it did anger her at the moment, there must have been comfort in recollecting that even such a terrible trouble had not alienated you. And now—’

‘Now that’s just what I don’t want! I don’t want to stalk in and say here’s the hero of romance that has saved your brother! I want to get her home, and show her that I can be civil without being satirical, and then, perhaps, she would forgive me.’

‘Forgive you—’

‘I mean forgiveness won, not purchased. And after all, you know it was mere accident—Providence if you please—that brought me to that poor wretch; all my plans of tracking him had come to an end; any one else could have done what I did.’

‘She will not feel that,’ said Ethel; ‘but indeed, Tom, I see what you mean, and like it. It is yourself, and not the conferrer of the benefit, that you want her to care for.’

‘Exactly,’ said Tom. ‘And, Ethel, I must have seen her and judged of my chance before I can be good for anything. I tried to forget it—own it as a lucky escape—a mere passing matter, like Harry’s affairs—but I could not do it. Perhaps I could if things had gone well; but that dear face of misery, that I only stung by my attempts to comfort, would stick fast with me, and to go and see Leonard only brought it more home. It is a horrid bad speculation, and Flora and Cheviot and Blanche will scout it; but, Ethel, you’ll help me through, and my father will not mind, I know.’

‘Papa will feel as I do, Tom—that it has been your great blessing, turn out as it may.’

‘H’m! has it? A blessing on the wrong side of one’s mouth—to go about with a barb one knew one was a fool for, and yet couldn’t forget! Well, I know what you mean, and I believe it was. I would not have had it annihilated, when the first mood was over.’

‘It was that which made it so hard to you to come home, was it not?’

‘Yes; but it was odd enough, however hard it was to think of coming, you always sent me away more at peace, Ethel. I can’t think how you did it, knowing nothing.’

‘I think you came at the right time.’

‘You see, I did think that while Spencer lived, I might follow up the track, and see a little of the world—try if that would put out that face and voice. But it won’t do. If this hadn’t happened, I would have tied myself down, and done my best to get comfort out of you, and the hospital, and these ‘Diseases of Climate’—I suppose one might in time, if things went well with her; but, as it is, I can’t rest till I have seen if they can be got home again. So, Ethel, don’t mind if I go before my father comes home. I can’t stand explanations with him, and I had rather you did not proclaim this. You see the book, and getting Henry home, are really the reasons, and I shan’t molest her again—no—not till she has learnt to know what is irony.’

‘I think if you did talk it over with papa, you would feel the comfort, and know him better.’

‘Well, well, I dare say, but I can’t do it, Ethel. Either he shuts me up at first, with some joke, or—’ and Tom stopped; but Ethel knew what he meant. There was on her father’s side an involuntary absence of perfect trust in this son, and on Tom’s there was a character so sensitive that her father’s playfulness grated, and so reserved that his demonstrative feelings were a still greater trial to one who could not endure outward emotion. ‘Besides,’ added Tom, ‘there is really nothing—nothing to tell. I’m not going to commit myself. I don’t know whether I ever shall. I was mad that day, and I want to satisfy my mind whether I think the same now I am sane, and if I do, I shall have enough to do to make her forget the winter when I made myself such an ass. When I have done that, it may be time to speak to my father. I really am going out about the book. When did you hear last?’

‘That is what makes me anxious. I have not heard for two months, and that is longer than she ever was before without writing, except when Minna was ill.’

‘We shall know if Leonard has heard.’

‘No, she always writes under cover to us.’

The course that the conversation then took did not look much like Tom’s doubt whether his own views would be the same. All the long-repressed discussion of Averil’s merits, her beautiful eyes, her sweet voice, her refinement, her real worth, the wonder that she and Leonard should be so superior to the rest of the family, were freely indulged at last, and Ethel could give far heartier sympathy than if this had come to her three years ago. Averil had been for two years her correspondent, and the patient sweetness and cheerfulness of those letters had given a far higher estimate of her nature than the passing intercourse of the town life had left. The terrible discipline of these years of exile and sorrow had, Ethel could well believe, worked out something very different from the well-intentioned wilful girl whose spirit of partisanship had been so fatal an element of discord. Distance had, in truth, made them acquainted, and won their love to one another.

Tom’s last words, as he drew up under the lime-trees before the door, were, ‘Mind, I am only going about the ‘Diseases of Climate’.’

CHAPTER XXVI

And Bishop Gawain as he rose, Said, ‘Wilton, grieve not for thy woes, Disgrace and trouble; For He who honour best bestows, Can give thee double.’—Marmion

Dr. May had written to Portland, entreating that no communication might be made to Leonard Ward before his arrival; and the good physician’s affection for the prisoner had been so much observed, that no one would have felt it fair to anticipate him. Indeed, he presented himself at the prison gates only two hours after the arrival of the documents, when no one but the governor was aware of their contents.

Leonard was as usual at his business in the schoolmaster’s department; and thither a summons was sent for him, while Dr. May and the governor alone awaited his arrival. Tom’s visit was still very recent; and Leonard entered with anxious eyes, brow drawn together, and compressed lips, as though braced to meet another blow; and the unusual room, the presence of the governor instead of the warder, and Dr. May’s irrepressible emotion, so confirmed the impression, that his face at once assumed a resolute look of painful expectation.

‘My boy,’ said Dr. May, clasping both his hands in his own, ‘you have borne much of ill. Can you bear to hear good news?’

‘Am I to be sent out to Australia already?’ said Leonard—for a shortening of the eight years before his ticket-of-leave was the sole hope that had presented itself.

‘Sent out, yes; out to go wherever you please, Leonard. The right is come round. The truth is out. You are a free man! Do you know what that is? It is a pardon. Your pardon. All that can be done to right you, my boy—but it is as good as a reversal of the sentence.’

The Doctor had spoken this with pauses; going on, as Leonard, instead of answering, stood like one in a dream, and at last said with difficulty, ‘Who did it then?’

‘It was as you always believed.’

‘Has he told?’ said Leonard, drawing his brows together with the effort to understand.

‘No, Leonard. The vengeance he had brought on himself did not give space for repentance; but the pocket-book, with your receipt, was upon him, and your innocence is established.’

‘And let me congratulate you,’ added the governor, shaking hands with him; ‘and add, that all I have known of you has been as complete an exculpation as any discovery can be.’

Leonard’s hand was passive, his cheek had become white, his forehead still knit. ‘Axworthy!’ he said, still as in a trance.

‘Yes. Hurt in a brawl at Paris. He was brought to the Hotel Dieu; and my son Tom was called to see him.’

‘Sam Axworthy! repeated Leonard, putting his hand over his eyes, as if one sensation overpowered everything else; and thus he stood for some seconds, to the perplexity of both.

They showed him the papers: he gazed, but without comprehension; and then putting the bag, provided by Tom, into his hand, they sent him, moving in a sort of mechanical obedience, into the room of one of the officials to change his dress.

Dr. May poured out to the governor and chaplain, who by this time had joined them, the history of Leonard’s generous behaviour at the time of the trial, and listened in return to their account of the growing impression he had created—a belief, almost reluctant, that instead of being their prime specimen, he could only be in their hands by mistake. He was too sincere not to have confessed had he been really guilty; and in the long run, such behaviour as his would have been impossible in one unrepentant. He had been the more believed from the absence of complaint, demonstration, or assertion; and the constant endeavour to avoid notice, coupled with the quiet thorough execution of whatever was set before him with all his might.

This was a theme to occupy the Doctor for a long time; but at last he grew eager for Leonard’s return, and went to hasten him. He started up, still in the convict garb, the bag untouched.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, when his friend’s exclamation had reminded him of what had been desired of him; and in a few minutes he reappeared in the ordinary dress of a gentleman, but the change did not seem to have made him realize his freedom—there was the same submissive manner, the same conventional gesture of respect in reply to the chaplain’s warm congratulation.

‘Come, Leonard, I am always missing the boat, but I don’t want to do so now. We must get home to-night. Have you anything to take with you?’

‘My Bible and Prayer-Book. They are my own, sir;’ as he turned to the governor. ‘May I go to my cell for them?’

Again they tarried long for him, and became afraid that he had fallen into another reverie; but going to fetch him, found that the delay was caused by the farewells of all who had come in his way. The tidings of his full justification had spread, and each official was eager to wish him good speed, and thank him for the aid of his example and support. The schoolmaster, who had of late treated him as a friend, kept close to him, rejoicing in his liberation, but expecting to miss him sorely; and such of the convicts as were within reach, were not without their share in the general exultation. He had never galled them by his superiority; and though Brown, the clerk, had been his only friend, he had done many an act of kindness; and when writing letters for the unlearned, had spoken many a wholesome simple word that had gone home to the heart. His hand was as ready for a parting grasp from a fellow-prisoner as from a warder; and his thought and voice were recalled to leave messages for men out of reach; his eyes moistened at the kindly felicitations; but when he was past the oft-trodden precincts of the inner court and long galleries, the passiveness returned, and he received the last good-byes of the governor and superior officers, as if only half alive to their import. And thus, silent, calm, and grave, his composure like that of a man walking in his sleep, did Leonard Ward pass the arched gateway, enter on the outer world, and end his three and a half years of penal servitude.

‘I’m less like an angel than he is like St. Peter,’ thought Dr. May, as he watched the fixed dreamy gaze, ‘but this is like “yet wist he not that it was true, but thought he saw a vision.” When will he realize liberty, and enjoy it? I shall do him a greater kindness by leaving him to himself.’

And in spite of his impatience, Dr. May refrained from disturbing that open-eyed trance all the way down the long hill, trusting to the crowd in the steamer for rousing him to perceive that he was no longer among russet coats and blue shirts; but he stood motionless, gazing, or at least his face turned, towards the Dorset coast, uttering no word, making no movement, save when summoned by his guide—then obeying as implicitly as though it were his jailor.

So they came to the pier; and so they walked the length of Weymouth, paced the platform, and took their places in the train. Just as they had shot beyond the town, and come into the little wooded valleys beyond, Leonard turned round, and with the first sparkle in his eye, exclaimed, ‘Trees! Oh, noble trees and hedges!’ then turned again to look in enchantment at the passing groups—far from noble, though bright with autumn tints—that alternated with the chalk downs.

Dr. May was pleased at this revival, and entertained at the start and glance of inquiring alarm from an old gentleman in the other corner. Presently, in the darkness of a cutting, again Leonard spoke: ‘Where are you taking me, Dr. May?’

‘Home, of course.’

Whatever the word might imply to the poor lad, he was satisfied, and again became absorbed in the sight of fields, trees, and hedgerows; while Dr. May watched the tokens of secret dismay in their fellow-traveller, who had no doubt understood ‘home’ to mean his private asylum. Indeed, though the steady full dark eyes showed no aberration, there was a strange deep cave between the lid and the eyebrow, which gave a haggard look; the spare, worn, grave features had an expression—not indeed weak, nor wandering, but half bewildered, half absorbed, moreover, in spite of Tom’s minute selection of apparel, it had been too hasty a toilette for the garments to look perfectly natural; and the cropped head was so suspicious, that it was no wonder that at the first station, the old gentleman gathered up his umbrella, with intense courtesy squeezed gingerly to the door, carefully avoiding any stumble over perilous toes, and made his escape—entering another carriage, whence he no doubt signed cautions against the lunatic and his keeper, since no one again invaded their privacy.

Perhaps this incident most fully revealed to the Doctor, how unlike other people his charge was, how much changed from the handsome spirited lad on whom the trouble had fallen; and he looked again and again at the profile turned to the window, as fixed and set as though it had been carved.

‘Ah, patience is an exhausting virtue!’ said he to himself. ‘Verily it is bearing—bearing up under the full weight; and the long bent spring is the slower in rebounding in proportion to its inherent strength. Poor lad, what protracted endurance it has been! There is health and force in his face; no line of sin, nor sickness, nor worldly care, such as it makes one’s heart ache to see aging young faces; yet how utterly unlike the face of one and-twenty! I had rather see it sadder than so strangely settled and sedate! Shall I speak to him again? Not yet: those green hill-sides, those fields and cattle, must refresh him better than my clavers, after his grim stony mount of purgatory. I wish it were a brighter day to greet him, instead of this gray damp fog.’

The said fog prevented any semblance of sunset; but through the gray moonlit haze, Leonard kept his face to the window, pertinaciously clearing openings in the bedewed glass, as though the varying outline of the horizon had a fascination for him. At last, after ten minutes of glaring gas at a junction had by contrast rendered the mist impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same strange rigid somnambulist air.

Dr. May resolved to rouse him.

‘Well, Leonard,’ he said, ‘this has been a very long fever; but we are well through it at last—with the young doctor from Paris to our aid.’

Probably Leonard only heard the voice, not the words, for he passed his hand over his face, and looked up to the Doctor, saying dreamily, ‘Let me see! Is it all true?’ and then, with a grave wistful look, ‘It was not I who did that thing, then?’

‘My dear!’ exclaimed the Doctor, starting forward, and catching hold of his hand, ‘have they brought you to this?’

‘I always meant to ask you, if I ever saw you alone again,’ said Leonard.

‘But you don’t mean that you have imagined it!’

‘Not constantly—not when any one was with me,’ said Leonard, roused by Dr. May’s evident dismay; and drawn on by his face of anxious inquiry. ‘At Milbank, I generally thought I remembered it just as they described it in court, and that it was some miserable ruinous delusion that hindered my confessing; but the odd thing was, that the moment any one opened my door, I forgot all about it, resolutions and all, and was myself again.’

‘Then surely—surely you left that horror with the solitude?’

‘Yes, till lately; but when it did come back, I could not be sure what was recollection of fact, and what of my own fancy;’ and he drew his brows together in painful effort. ‘Did I know who did it, or did I only guess?’

‘You came to a right conclusion, and would not let me act on it.’

‘And I really did write the receipt, and not dream it?’

‘That receipt has been in my hand. It was what has brought you here.’ And now to hearing ears, Dr. May went over the narrative; and Leonard stood up under the little lamp in the roof of the carriage to read the papers.

‘I recollect—I understand,’ he said, presently, and sat down, grave and meditative—no longer dreamy, but going over events, which had at last acquired assurance to his memory from external circumstances. Presently his fingers were clasped together over his face, his head bent, and then he looked up, and said, ‘Do they know it—my sister and brother?’

‘No. We would not write till you were free. You must date the first letter from Stoneborough.’

The thought had brought a bitter pang. ‘One half year sooner—’ and he leant back in his seat, with fingers tightly pressed together, and trembling with emotion.

‘Nay, Leonard; may not the dear child be the first to rejoice in the fulfilment of her own sweet note of comfort? They could not harm the innocent.’

‘Not innocent,’ he said, ‘not innocent of causing all the discord that has ended in their exile, and the dear child’s death.’

‘Then this is what has preyed on you, and changed you so much more of late,’ said Dr. May.

‘When I knew that I was indeed guilty of her death,’ said Leonard, in a calm full conviction of too long standing to be accompanied with agitation, though permanently bowing him down.

‘And you never spoke of this: not to the chaplain?’

‘I never could. It would have implied all the rest that he could not believe. And it would not have changed the fact.’

‘The aspect of it may change, Leonard. You know yourself how many immediate causes combined, of which you cannot accuse yourself—your brother’s wrongheadedness, and all the rest. And,’ added the Doctor, recovering himself, ‘you do see it in other aspects, I know. Think of the spirit set free to be near you—free from the world that has gone so hard with you!’

‘I can’t keep that thought long; I’m not worthy of it.’

Again he was silent; but presently said, as with a sudden thought, ‘You would have told me if there were any news of Ave.’

‘No, there has been no letter since her last inclosure for you,’ and then Dr. May gave the details from the papers on the doings of Henry’s division of the army.

‘Will Henry let me be with them?’ said Leonard, musingly.

‘They will come home, depend upon it. You must wait till you hear.’

Leonard thought a little while, then said, ‘Where did you say I was to go, Dr. May?’

‘Where, indeed? Home, Leonard—home. Ethel is waiting for us. To the High Street.’

Leonard looked up again with his bewildered face, then said, ‘I know what you do with me will be right, but—’

‘Had you rather not?’ said the Doctor, startled.

‘Rather!’ and the Doctor, to his exceeding joy, saw the fingers over his eyes moist with the tears they tried to hide; ‘I only meant—’ he added, with an effort, ‘you must think and judge—I can’t think—whether I ought.’

‘If you ask me that,’ said Dr. May, earnestly, ‘all I have to say is, that I don’t know what palace is worthy of you.’

There was not much said after that; and the Doctor fell asleep, waking only at the halts at stations to ask where he was.

At last came ‘Blewer!’ and as the light shone on the clock, Leonard said, ‘A quarter past twelve! It is the very train I went by! Is it a dream?’

Ten minutes more, and ‘Stoneborough’ was the cry. Hastily springing out, shuffling the tickets into the porter’s hand, and grappling Leonard’s arm as if he feared an escape, Dr. May hurried him into the empty streets, and strode on in silence.

The pull at the door-bell was answered instantly by Ethel herself. She held out her hand, and grasped that which Leonard had almost withheld, shrinking as from too sudden a vision; and then she ardently exchanged kisses with her father.

‘Where’s Tom? Gone to bed?’ said Dr. May, stepping into the bright drawing-room.

‘No,’ said Ethel, demurely; ‘he is gone—he is gone to America.’

The Doctor gave a prodigious start, and looked at her again.

‘He went this afternoon.’ she said. ‘There is some matter about the ‘Diseases of Climate’ that he must settle before the book is published; and he thought he could best be spared now. He has left messages that I will give you by and by; but you must both be famished.’

Her looks indicated that all was right, and both turned to welcome the guest, who stood where the first impulse had left him, in the hall, not moving forward, till he was invited in to the fire, and the meal already spread. He then obeyed, and took the place pointed out; while the Doctor nervously expatiated on the cold, damp, and changes of train; and Ethel, in the active bashfulness of hidden agitation, made tea, cut bread, carved chicken, and waited on them with double assiduity, as Leonard, though eating as a man who had fasted since early morning, was passive as a little child, merely accepting what was offered to him, and not even passing his cup till she held out her hand for it.

She did not even dare to look at him; she could not bear that he should see her do so; it was enough to know that he was free—that he was there—that it was over. She did not want to see how it had changed him; and, half to set him at ease, half to work off her own excitement, she talked to her father, and told him of the little events of his absence till the meal was over; and, at half-past one, good nights were exchanged with Leonard, and the Doctor saw him to his room, then returned to his daughter on her own threshold.

‘That’s a thing to have lived for,’ he said.

Ethel locked her hands together, and looked up.

‘And now, how about this other denouement? I might have guessed that the wind sat in that quarter.’

‘But you’re not to guess it, papa. It is really and truly about the ‘Diseases of Climate’.’

‘Swamp fevers, eh! and agues!’

The ‘if you can help it,’ was a great comfort now; Ethel could venture on saying, ‘Of course that has something to do with it; but he really does make the book his object; and please—please don’t give any hint that you suspect anything else.’

‘I suppose you are in his confidence; and I must ask no questions.’

‘I hated not telling you, and letting you tease him; but he trusted me just enough not to make me dare to say a word; though I never was sure there was a word to say. Now do just once own, papa, that Tom is the romantic one after all, to have done as he did in the height of the trouble.’

‘Well in his place so should I,’ said the Doctor, with the perverseness of not satisfying expectations of amazement.

‘You would,’ said Ethel; ‘but Tom! would you have thought it of Tom?’

‘Tom has more in him than shows through his spectacles,’ answered Dr. May. ‘So! That’s the key to his restless fit. Poor fellow! How did it go with him? They have not been carrying it on all this time, surely!’

‘Oh, no, no, papa! She cut him to the heart, poor boy! thought he was laughing at her—told him it had all been irony. He has no notion whether she will ever forgive him.’

‘A very good lesson, Master Doctor Thomas,’ said Dr. May, with a twinkle in his eye; ‘and turn out as it will, it has done him good—tided him over a dangerous time of life. Well, you must tell me all about it tomorrow; I’m too sleepy to know what I’m talking of.’

The sleepiness that always finished off the Doctor’s senses at the right moment, was a great preservative of his freshness and vigour; but Ethel was far from sharing it, and was very glad when the clock sounded a legitimate hour for getting up, and dressing by candle-light, briefly answering Gertrude’s eager questions on the arrival. It was a pouring wet morning, and she forbade Daisy to go to church—indeed, it would have been too bad for herself on any morning but this—any but this, as she repeated, smiling at her own spring of thankfulness, as she fortified herself with a weight of waterproof, and came forth in the darkness of 7.45, on a grim November day.

A few steps before her, pacing on, umbrellaless, was a figure which made her hurry to overtake him.

‘O, Leonard! after your journey, and in this rain!’

He made a gesture of courtesy, but moved as if to follow, not join her. Did he not know whether he were within the pale of humanity?

‘Here is half an umbrella. Won’t you hold it for me?’ she said; and as he followed his instinct of obedience, she put it into his hand, and took his arm, thinking that this familiarity would best restore him to a sense of his regained position; and, moreover, feeling glad and triumphant to be thus leaning, and to have that strong arm to contend with the driving blast that came howling round the corner of Minster Street, and fighting for their shelter. They were both out of breath when they paused to recover in the deep porch of the Minster.

‘Is Dr. May come home?’

‘Yes—and—’

Ethel signed, and Mr. Wilmot held out an earnest hand, with, ‘This is well. I am glad to see you.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Leonard, heartily; ‘and for all—’

‘This is your new beginning of life, Leonard. God bless you in it.’

As Mr. Wilmot passed on, Ethel for the first time ventured to look up into the eyes—and saw their hollow setting, their loss of sparkle, but their added steadfastness and resolution. She could not help repeating the long-treasured lines: ‘And, Leonard,

“—grieve not for thy woes, Disgrace and trouble; For He who honour best bestows, Shall give thee double.”’

‘I’ve never ceased to be glad you read Marmion with me,’ he hastily said, as they turned into church on hearing a clattering of choristers behind them.

Clara might have had such sensations when she bound the spurs on her knight’s heels, yet even she could hardly have had so pure, unselfish, and exquisite a joy as Ethel’s, in receiving the pupil who had been in a far different school from hers.

The gray dawn through the gloom, the depths of shadow in the twilight church, softening and rendering all more solemn and mysterious, were more in accordance than bright and beamy sunshine with her subdued grave thankfulness; and there was something suitable in the fewness of the congregation that had gathered in the Lady Chapel—so few, that there was no room for shyness, either in, or for, him who was again taking his place there, with steady composed demeanour, its stillness concealing so much.

Ethel had reckoned on the verse—’That He might hear the mournings of such as are in captivity, and deliver the children appointed unto death.’ But she had not reckoned on its falling on her ears in the deep full-toned melodious bass, that came in, giving body to the young notes of the choristers—a voice so altered and mellowed since she last had heard it, that it made her look across in doubt, and recognize in the uplifted face, that here indeed the freed captive was at home, and lifted above himself.

When the clause, in the Litany, for all prisoners and captives brought to her the thrill that she had only to look up to see the fulfilment of many and many a prayer for one captive, for once she did not hear the response, only saw the bent head, as though there were thoughts went too deep to find voice. And again, there was the special thanksgiving that Mr. Wilmot could not refrain from introducing for one to whom a great mercy had been vouchsafed. If Ethel had had to swim home, she would not but have been there!

Charles Cheviot addressed them as they came out of church: ‘Good morning—Mr. Ward, I hope to do myself the honour of calling on you—I shall see you again, Ethel.

And off he went over the glazy stones to his own house, Ethel knowing that this cordial salutation and intended call were meant to be honourable amends for his suspicions; but Leonard, unconscious of the import, and scarcely knowing indeed that he was addressed, made his mechanical gesture of respect, and looked up, down, and round, absorbed in the scene. ‘How exactly the same it all looks,’ he said; ‘the cloister gate, and the Swan, and the postman in the very same waterproof cape.’

‘Do you not feel like being just awake?’

‘No; it is more like being a ghost, or somebody else.’

Then the wind drove them on too fast for speech, till as they crossed the High Street, Ethel pointed through the plane-trees to two round black eyes, and a shining black nose, at the dining-room window.

‘My Mab, my poor little Mab!—You have kept her all this time! I was afraid to ask for her. I could not hope it.’

‘I could not get my spoilt child, Gertrude, to bed without taking Mab, that she might see the meeting.’

Perhaps it served Daisy right that the meeting did not answer her expectations. Mab and her master had both grown older; she smelt round him long before she was sure of him, and then their content in one another was less shown by fervent rapture, than by the quiet hand smoothing her silken coat; and, in return, by her wistful eye, nestling gesture, gently waving tail.

And Leonard! How was it with him? It was not easy to tell in his absolute passiveness. He seemed to have neither will nor impulse to speak, move, or act, though whatever was desired of him, he did with the implicit obedience that no one could bear to see. They put books near him, but he did not voluntarily touch one: they asked if he would write to his sister, and he took the pen in his hand, but did not accomplish a commencement. Ethel asked him if he were tired, or had a headache.

‘Thank you, no,’ he said; ‘I’ll write,’ and made a dip in the ink.

‘I did not mean to tease you,’ she said; ‘the mail is not going just yet, and there is no need for haste. I was only afraid something was wrong.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, submissively; ‘I will—when I can think; but it is all too strange. I have not seen a lady, nor a room like this, since July three years.’

After that Ethel let him alone, satisfied that peace was the best means of recovering the exhaustion of his long-suffering.

The difficulty was that this was no house for quiet, especially the day after the master’s return: the door-bell kept on ringing, and each time he looked startled and nervous, though assured that it was only patients. But at twelve o’clock in rushed Mr. Cheviot’s little brother, with a note from Mary, lamenting that it was too wet for herself, but saying that Charles was coming in the afternoon, and that he intended to have a dinner-party of old Stoneborough scholars to welcome Leonard back.

Meanwhile, Martin Cheviot, wanting to see, and not to stare, and to unite cordiality and unconsciousness, made an awkward mixture of all, and did not know how to get away; and before he had accomplished it, Mr. Edward Anderson was announced. He heartily shook hands with Leonard, eagerly welcomed him, and talked volubly, and his last communication was, ‘If it clears, you will see Matilda this afternoon.’

‘I did not know she was here.’

‘Yes; she and Harvey are come to Mrs. Ledwich’s, to stay over Sunday;’ and there was a laugh in the corner of his eye, that convinced Ethel that the torrents of rain would be no protection.

‘Papa,’ said she, darting out to meet her father in the hall, ‘you must take Leonard out in your brougham this afternoon, if you don’t want him driven distracted. If he is in the house, ropes won’t hold Mrs. Harvey Anderson from him!’

So Dr. May invited his guest to share his drive; and the excitement began to seem unreal when the Doctor returned alone.

‘I dropped him at Cocksmoor,’ he said. ‘It was Richard’s notion that he would be quieter there—able to get out, and go to church, without being stared at.’

‘Did he like it?’ asked Gertrude, disappointed.

‘If one told him to chop off his finger, he would do it, and never show whether he liked it. Richard asked him, and he said, “Thank you.” I never could get an opening to show him that we did not want to suppress him; I never saw spirit so quenched.’

Charles Cheviot thought it was a mistake to do what gave the appearance of suppression—he said that it was due to Leonard to welcome him as heartily as possible, and not to encourage false shame, where there was no disgrace; so he set his wife to fill up her cards for his dinner-party, and included in it Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Anderson, for the sake of their warm interest in the liberated prisoner.

‘However, Leonard was out of the scrape,’ as the Doctor expressed it, for he had one of his severe sore throats, and was laid up at Cocksmoor. Richard was dismayed by his passive obedience—a novelty to the gentle eldest, who had all his life been submitting, and now was puzzled by his guest’s unfailing acquiescence without a token of preference or independence: and comically amazed at the implicit fulfilment of his recommendation to keep the throat in bed—a wise suggestion, but one that the whole house of May, in their own persons, would have scouted. Nothing short of the highest authority ever kept them there.

The semblance of illness was perhaps a good starting-point for a return to the ways of the world; and on the day week of his going to Cocksmoor, Ethel found him by the fire, beginning his letters to his brother and sister, and looking brighter and more cheery, but so devoid of voice, that speech could not be expected of him.

She had just looked in again after some parish visiting, when a quick soldierly step was heard, and in walked Aubrey.

‘No; I’m not come to you, Ethel; I’m only come to this fellow;’ and he ardently grasped his hand. ‘I’ve got leave till Monday, and I shall stay here and see nobody else.—What, a sore throat? Couldn’t you get wrapped up enough between the two doctors?’

Leonard’s eyes lighted as he muttered his hoarse ‘Thank you,’ and Ethel lingered for a little desultory talk to her brother, contrasting the changes that the three years had made in the two friends. Aubrey, drilled out of his home scholarly dreaminess by military and practical discipline, had exchanged his native languor for prompt upright alertness of bearing and speech; his eye had grown more steady, his mouth had lost its vague pensive expression, and was rendered sterner by the dark moustache; definite thought, purpose, and action, had moulded his whole countenance and person into hopeful manhood, instead of visionary boyhood. The other face, naturally the most full of fire and resolution, looked strangely different in its serious unsmiling gravity, the deeply worn stamp of patient endurance and utter isolation. There was much of rest and calm, and even of content—but withal a quenched look, as if the lustre of youth and hope had been extinguished, and the soul had been so driven in upon itself, that there was no opening to receive external sympathy—a settled expression, all the stranger on a face with the clear smoothness of early youth. One thing at least was unchanged—the firm friendship and affection—that kept the two constantly casting glances over one another, to assure themselves of the presence before them.

Ethel left them together; and her father, who made out that he should save time by going to Cocksmoor Church on Sunday morning, reported that the boys seemed very happy together in their own way; but that Richard reported himself to have been at the sole expense of conversation in the evening—the only time such an event could ever have occurred!

Aubrey returned home late on the Sunday evening; and Leonard set off to walk part of the way with him in the dusk, but ended by coming the whole distance, for the twilight opened their lips in this renewal of old habits.

‘It is all right to be walking together again,’ said Aubrey, warmly; ‘though it is not like those spring days.’

‘I’ve thought of them every Sunday.’

‘And what are you going to do now, old fellow?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I hear Bramshaw is going to offer you to come into his office. Now, don’t do that, Leonard, whatever you do!’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You are to have all your property back, you know, and you could do much better for yourself than that.’

‘I can’t tell till I have heard from my brother.’

‘But, Leonard, promise me now—you’ll not go out and make a Yankee of yourself.’

‘I can’t tell; I shall do what he wishes.’

Aubrey presently found that Leonard seemed to have no capacity to think or speak of the future or the past. He set Aubrey off on his own concerns, and listened with interest, asking questions that showed him perfectly alive to what regarded his friend, but the passive inaction of will and spirits still continued, and made him almost a disappointment.

On Monday morning there was a squabble between the young engineer and the Daisy, who was a profound believer in the scientific object of Tom’s journey, and greatly resented the far too obvious construction thereof.

‘You must read lots of bad novels at Chatham, Aubrey; it is like the fag end of the most trumpery of them all!’

‘You haven’t gone far enough in your mathematics, you see, Daisy. You think one and one—’

‘Make two. So I say.’

‘I’ve gone into the higher branches.’

‘I didn’t think you were so simple and commonplace. It would be so stupid to think he must—just because he could not help making this discovery.’

‘All for want of the higher branches of mathematics! One plus one—equals one.’

‘One minus common sense, plus folly, plus romance, minus anything to do. Your equation is worthy of Mrs. Harvey Anderson. I gave her a good dose of the ‘Diseases of Climate!”

Aubrey was looking at Ethel all the time Gertrude was triumphing; and finally he said, ‘I’ve no absolute faith in disinterested philanthropy to a younger brother—whatever I had before I went to the Tyrol.’

‘What has that to do with it?’ asked Gertrude. ‘Everybody was cut up, and wanted a change—and you more than all. I do believe the possibility of a love affair absolutely drives people mad: and now they must needs saddle it upon poor Tom—just the one of the family who is not so stupid, but has plenty of other things to think about.’

‘So you think it a stupid pastime?’

‘Of course it is. Why, just look. Hasn’t everybody in the family turned stupid, and of no use, as soon at they went and fell in love! Only good old Ethel here has too much sense, and that’s what makes her such a dear old gurgoyle. And Harry—he is twice the fun after he comes home, before he gets his fit of love. And all the story books that begin pleasantly, the instant that love gets in, they are just alike—so stupid! And now, if you haven’t done it yourself, you want to lug poor innocent Tom in for it.’

‘When your time comes, may I be there to see!’

He retreated from her evident designs of clapper-clawing him; and she turned round to Ethel with, ‘Now, isn’t it stupid, Ethel!’

‘Very stupid to think all the zest of life resides in one particular feeling,’ said Ethel; ‘but more stupid to talk of what you know nothing about.’

Aubrey put in his head for a hurried farewell, and, ‘Telegraph to me when Mrs. Thomas May comes home.’

‘If Mrs. Thomas May comes home, I’ll—’

‘Give her that chair cover,’ said Ethel; and her idle needlewoman, having been eight months working one corner of it, went off into fits of laughter, regarding its completion as an equally monstrous feat with an act of cannibalism on the impossible Mrs. Thomas May.

How different were these young things, with their rhodomontade and exuberant animation and spirits, from him in whom all the sparkle and aspiration of life seemed extinguished!

CHAPTER XXVII

A cup was at my lips: it pass’d As passes the wild desert blast!

****

I woke—around me was a gloom And silence of the tomb; But in that awful solitude That little spirit by me stood— But oh, how changed! —Thoughts in Past Years

Under Richard’s kind let-alone system, Leonard was slowly recovering tone. First he took to ruling lines in the Cocksmoor account-books, then he helped in their audit; and with occupation came the sense of the power of voluntary exertion. He went and came freely, and began to take long rambles in the loneliest parts of the heath and plantations, while Richard left him scrupulously to his own devices, and rejoiced to see them more defined and vigorous every day. The next stop was to assist in the night-school where Richard had hitherto toiled single-handed among very rough subjects. The technical training and experience derived from Leonard’s work under the schoolmaster at Portland were invaluable; and though taking the lead was the last thing he would have thought of, he no sooner entered the school than attention and authority were there, and Richard found that what had to him been a vain and patient struggle was becoming both effective and agreeable. Interest in his work was making Leonard cheerful and alert, though still grave, and shrinking from notice—avoiding the town by daylight, and only coming to Dr. May’s in the dark evenings.

On the last Sunday in Advent, Richard was engaged to preach at his original curacy, and that the days before and after it should likewise be spent away from home was insisted on after the manner of the friends of hard-working clergy. He had the less dislike to going that he could leave his school-work to Leonard, who was to be housed at his father’s, and there was soon perceived to have become a much more ordinary member of society than on his first arrival.

One evening, there was a loud peal at the door-bell, and the maid—one of Ethel’s experiments of training—came in.

‘Please, sir, a gentleman has brought a cockatoo and a letter and a little boy from the archdeacon.’

‘Archdeacon!’ cried Dr. May, catching sight of the handwriting on the letter and starting up. ‘Archdeacon Norman—’

‘One of Norman’s stray missionaries and a Maori newly caught; oh, what fun!’ cried Daisy, in ecstasy.

At that moment, through the still open door, walking as if he had lived there all his life, there entered the prettiest little boy that ever was seen—a little knickerbocker boy, with floating rich dark ringlets, like a miniature cavalier coming forth from a picture, with a white cockatoo on his wrist. Not in the least confused, he went straight towards Dr. May and said, ‘Good-morning, grandpapa.’

‘Ha! And who may you be, my elfin prince?’ said the Doctor.

‘I’m Dickie—Richard Rivers May—I’m not an elfin prince,’ said the boy, with a moment’s hurt feeling. ‘Papa sent me.’ By that time the boy was fast in his grandfather’s embrace, and was only enough released to give him space to answer the eager question, ‘Papa—papa here?’

‘Oh no; I came with Mr. Seaford.’

The Doctor hastily turned Dickie over to the two aunts, and hastened forth to the stranger, whose name he well knew as a colonist’s son, a favourite and devoted clerical pupil of Norman’s.

‘Aunt Ethel,’ said little Richard, with instant recognition; ‘mamma said you would be like her, but I don’t think you will.’

‘Nor I, Dickie, but we’ll try. And who’s that!’

‘Yes, what am I to be like?’ asked Gertrude.

‘You’re not Aunt Daisy—Aunt Daisy is a little girl.’

Gertrude made him the lowest of curtseys; for not to be taken for a little girl was the compliment she esteemed above all others. Dickie’s next speech was, ‘And is that Uncle Aubrey?’

‘No, that’s Leonard.’

Dickie shook hands with him very prettily; but then returning upon Ethel, observed, ‘I thought it was Uncle Aubrey, because soldiers always cut their hair so close.’

The other guest was so thoroughly a colonist, and had so little idea of anything but primitive hospitality, that he had had no notion of writing beforehand to announce his coming, and accident had delayed the letters by which Norman and Meta had announced their decision of sending home their eldest boy under his care.

‘Papa had no time to teach me alone,’ said Dickie, who seemed to have been taken into the family councils; ‘and mamma is always busy, and I wasn’t getting any good with some of the boys that come to school to papa.’

‘Indeed, Mr. Dickie!’ said the Doctor, full of suppressed laughter.

‘It is quite true,’ said Mr. Seaford; ‘there are some boys that the archdeacon feels bound to educate, but who are not desirable companions for his son.’

‘It is a great sacrifice,’ remarked the young gentleman.

‘Oh, Dickie, Dickie,’ cried Gertrude, in fits, ‘don’t you be a prig—’

‘Mamma said it,’ defiantly answered Dickie.

‘Only a parrot,’ said Ethel, behind her handkerchief; but Dickie, who heard whatever he was not meant to hear, answered—

‘It is not a parrot, it is a white cockatoo, that the chief of (something unutterable) brought down on his wrist like a hawk to the mission-ship; and that mamma sent as a present to Uncle George.’

‘I prefer the parrot that has fallen to my share,’ observed the Doctor.

It was by this time perched beside him, looking perfectly at ease and thoroughly at home. There was something very amusing in the aspect of the little man; he so completely recalled his mother’s humming-bird title by the perfect look of finished porcelain perfection that even a journey from the Antipodes with only gentleman nursemaids had not destroyed. The ringleted rich brown hair shone like glossy silk, the cheeks were like painting, the trim well-made legs and small hands and feet looked dainty and fairy-like, yet not at all effeminate; hands and face were a healthy brown, and contrasted with the little white collar, the set of which made Ethel exclaim, ‘Just look, Daisy, that’s what I always told you about Meta’s doings. Only I can’t understand it.—Dickie, have the fairies kept you in repair ever since mamma dressed you last?’

‘We haven’t any fairies in New Zealand,’ he replied; ‘and mamma never dressed me since I was a baby!’

‘And what are you now?’ said the Doctor.

‘I am eight years old,’ said this piece of independence, perfectly well mannered, and au fait in all the customs of the tea-table; and when the meal was over, he confidentially said to his aunt, ‘Shall I come and help you wash up? I never break anything.’

Ethel declined this kind offer; but he hung on her hand and asked if he might go and see the schoolroom, where papa and Uncle Harry used to blow soap-bubbles. She lighted a candle, and the little gentleman showed himself minutely acquainted with the whole geography of the house, knew all the rooms and the pictures, and where everything had happened, even to adventures that Ethel had forgotten.

‘It is of no use to say there are no fairies in New Zealand,’ said Dr. May, taking him on his knee, and looking into the blue depths of Norman’s eyes. ‘You have been head-waiter to Queen Mab, and perpetually here when she made you put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’

‘Papa read that to the boys, and they said it was stupid and no use,’ said Dickie; ‘but papa said that the electric telegraph would do it.’

The little cavalier appeared not to know what it was to be at a loss for an answer, and the joint letter from his parents explained that his precocious quickness was one of their causes for sending him home. He was so deft and useful as to be important in the household, and necessarily always living with his father and mother, he took constant part in their conversation, and was far more learned in things than in books. In the place where they were settled, trustworthy boy society was unattainable, and they had felt their little son, in danger of being spoilt and made forward from his very goodness and brightness—wrote Meta, ‘If you find him a forward imp, recollect it is my fault for having depended so much on him.’

His escort was a specimen of the work Norman had done, not actual mission-work, but preparation and inspiriting of those who went forth on the actual task. He was a simple-minded, single-hearted man, one of the first pupils in Norman’s college, and the one who had most fully imbibed his spirit. He had been for some years a clergyman, and latterly had each winter joined the mission voyage among the Melanesian Isles, returning to their homes the lads brought for the summer for education to the mission college in New Zealand, and spending some time at a station upon one or other of the islands. He had come back from the last voyage much out of health, and had been for weeks nursed by Meta, until a long rest having been declared necessary, he had been sent to England as the only place where he would not be tempted to work, and was to visit his only remaining relation, a sister, who had married an officer and was in Ireland. He was burning to go back again, and eagerly explained—sagely corroborated by the testimony of the tiny archdeacon—that his illness was to be laid to the blame of his own imprudence, not to the climate; and he dwelt upon the delights of the yearly voyage among the lovely islands, beautiful beyond imagination, fenced in by coral breakwaters, within which the limpid water displayed exquisite sea-flowers, shells, and fishes of magical gorgeousness of hue; of the brilliant white beach, fringing the glorious vegetation, cocoa-nut, bread-fruit, banana, and banyan, growing on the sloping sides of volcanic rocks; of mysterious red-glowing volcano lights seen far out at sea at night, of glades opening to show high-roofed huts covered with mats: of canoes decorated with the shining white shells resembling a poached egg; of natives clustering round, eager and excited, seldom otherwise than friendly; though in hitherto unvisited places, or in those where the wanton outrages of sandal-wood traders had excited distrust, caution was necessary, and there was peril enough to give the voyage a full character of heroism and adventure. Bows and poisoned arrows were sometimes brought down—and Dickie insisted that they had been used—but in general the mission was recognized, and an eager welcome given; presents of fish-hooks, or of braid and handkerchiefs, established a friendly feeling; and readiness—in which the Hand of the Maker must be recognized—was manifested to intrust lads to the mission for the summer’s training at the college in New Zealand—wild lads, innocent of all clothing, except marvellous adornments of their woolly locks, wigged out sometimes into huge cauliflowers whitened with coral lime, or arranged quarterly red and white, and their noses decorated with rings, which were their nearest approach to a pocket, as they served for the suspension of fish-hooks, or any small article. A radiate arrangement of skewers from the nose, in unwitting imitation of a cat’s whiskers, had even been known. A few days taught dressing and eating in a civilized fashion; and time, example, and the wonderful influence of the head of the mission, trained these naturally intelligent boys into much that was hopeful. Dickie, who had been often at the college, had much to tell of familiarity with the light canoes that some cut out and launched; of the teaching them English games, of their orderly ways in school and in hall; of the prayers in their many tongues, and of the baptism of some, after full probation, and at least one winter’s return to their own isles, as a test of their sincerity and constancy. Much as the May family had already heard of this wonderful work, it came all the closer and nearer now. The isle of Alan Ernescliffe’s burial-place had now many Christians in it. Harry’s friend, the young chief David, was dead; but his people were some of them already teachers and examples, and the whole region was full to overflowing of the harvest, calling out for labourers to gather it in.

Silent as usual, Leonard nevertheless was listening with all his heart, and with parted lips and kindling eyes that gave back somewhat of his former countenance. Suddenly his face struck Mr. Seaford, and turning on him with a smile, he said, ‘You should be with us yourself, you look cut out for mission work.’

Leonard murmured something, blushed up to the ears, and subsided, but the simple, single-hearted Mr. Seaford, his soul all on one object, his experience only in one groove, by no means laid aside the thought, and the moment he was out of Leonard’s presence, eagerly asked who that young man was.

‘Leonard Ward? he is—he is the son of an old friend,’ replied Dr. May, a little perplexed to explain his connection.

‘What is he doing? I never saw any one looking more suited for our work.’

‘Tell him so again,’ said Dr. May; ‘I know no one that would be fitter.’

They were all taken up with the small grandson the next day. He was ready in his fairy-page trimness to go to the early service at the Minster; but he was full of the colonial nil admirari principle, and was quite above being struck by the grand old building, or allowing its superiority—either to papa’s own church or Auckland Cathedral. They took him to present to Mary on their way back from church, when he was the occasion of a great commotion by carrying the precious Master Charlie all across the hall to his mamma, and quietly observing in resentment at the outcry, that of course he always carried little Ethel about when mamma and nurse were busy. After breakfast, when he had finished his investigations of all Dr. May’s domains, and much entertained Gertrude by his knowledge of them, Ethel set him down to write a letter to his father, and her own to Meta being engrossing, she did not look much more after him till Dr. May came in, and said, ‘I want you to sketch off a portrait of her dicky-bird for Meta;’ and he put before her a natural history with a figure of that tiny humming-bird which is endowed with swansdown knickerbockers.

‘By the bye, where is the sprite?’

He was not to be found; and when dinner-time, and much calling and searching, failed to produce him, his grandfather declared that he was gone back to Elf-land; but Leonard recollected certain particular inquiries about the situation of the Grange and of Cocksmoor, and it was concluded that he had anticipated the Doctor’s intentions of taking him and Mr. Seaford there in the afternoon. The notion was confirmed by the cockatoo having likewise disappeared; but there was no great anxiety, since the little New Zealander appeared as capable of taking care of himself as any gentleman in Her Majesty’s dominions; and a note had already been sent to his aunt informing her of his arrival. Still, a summons to the Doctor in an opposite direction was inopportune, the more so as the guest was to remain at Stoneborough only this one day, and had letters and messages for Mr. and Mrs. Rivers, while it was also desirable to see whether the boy had gone to Cocksmoor.

Leonard proposed to become Mr. Seaford’s guide to the Grange, learn whether Dickie were there, and meet the two ladies at Cocksmoor with the tidings, leaving Mr. Seaford and the boy to be picked up by the Doctor on his return. It was his first voluntary offer to go anywhere, though he had more than once been vainly invited to the Grange with Richard.

Much conversation on the mission took place during the walk, and resulted in Mr. Seaford’s asking Leonard if his profession were settled. ‘No,’ he said; and not at all aware that his companion did not know what every other person round him knew, he added, ‘I have been thrown out of everything—I am waiting to hear from my brother.’

‘Then you are not at a University?’

‘Oh no, I was a clerk.’

‘Then if nothing is decided, is it impossible that you should turn your eyes to our work?’

‘Stay,’ said Leonard, standing still; ‘I must ask whether you know all about me. Would it be possible to admit to such work as yours one who, by a terrible mistake, has been under sentence of death and in confinement for three years?’

‘I must think! Let us talk of this another time. Is that the Grange?’ hastily exclaimed the missionary, rather breathlessly. Leonard with perfect composure replied that it was, pointed out the different matters of interest, and, though a little more silent, showed no other change of manner. He was asking the servant at the door if Master May were there, when Mr. Rivers came out and conducted both into the drawing room, where little Dickie was, sure enough. It appeared that, cockatoo on wrist, he had put his pretty face up to the glass of Mrs Rivers’s morning-room, and had asked her, ‘Is this mamma’s room, Aunt Flora? Where’s Margaret?’

Uncle, aunt, and cousin had all been captivated by him, and he was at present looking at the display of all Margaret’s treasures, keenly appreciating the useful and ingenious, but condemning the merely ornamental as only fit for his baby sister. Margaret was wonderfully gracious and childlike; but perhaps she rather oppressed him; for when Leonard explained that he must go on to meet Miss May at Cocksmoor, the little fellow sprang up, declaring that he wanted to go thither; and though told that his grandfather was coming for him, and that the walk was long, he insisted that he was not tired; and Mr. Seaford, finding him not to be dissuaded, broke off his conversation in the midst, and insisted on accompanying him, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Rivers rather amazed at colonial breeding.

The first time Mr. Seaford could accomplish being alone with Dr. May, he mysteriously shut the door, and began, ‘I am afraid Mrs. Rivers thought me very rude; but though no doubt he is quite harmless, I could not let the child or the ladies be alone with him.’

‘With whom?’

‘With your patient.’

‘What patient of mine have you been seeing to-day?’ asked Dr. May, much puzzled.

‘Oh, then you consider him as convalescent, and certainly he does seem rational on every other point; but is this one altogether an hallucination?’

‘I have not made out either the hallucination or the convalescent. I beg your pardon,’ said the courteous Doctor; ‘but I cannot understand whom you have seen.’

‘Then is not that young Ward a patient of yours? He gave me to understand to-day that he has been under confinement for three years—’

‘My poor Leonard!’ exclaimed the Doctor; ‘I wish his hair would grow! This is the second time! And did you really never hear of the Blewer murder, and of Leonard Ward?’

Mr. Seaford had some compound edifice of various murders in his mind, and required full enlightenment. Having heard the whole, he was ardent to repair his mistake, both for Leonard’s own sake, and that of his cause. The young man was indeed looking ill and haggard; but there was something in the steady eyes, hollow though they still were, and in the determined cast of features, that strangely impressed the missionary with a sense of his being moulded for the work; and on the first opportunity a simple straightforward explanation of the error was laid before Leonard, with an entreaty that if he had no duties to bind him at home, he would consider the need of labourers in the great harvest of the Southern Seas.

Leonard made no answer save ‘Thank you’ and that he would think. The grave set features did not light up as they had done unconsciously when listening without personal thought; he only looked considering, and accepted Mr. Seaford’s address in Ireland, promising to write after hearing from his brother.

Next morning, Dr. May gave notice that an old patient was coming to see him, and must be asked to luncheon. Leonard soon after told Ethel that he should not be at home till the evening, and she thought he was going to Cocksmoor, by way of avoiding the stranger. In the twilight, however, Dr. May, going up to the station to see his patient off, was astonished to see Leonard emerge from a second-class carriage.

‘You here! the last person I expected.’

‘I have only been to W–- about my teeth.’

‘What, have you been having tooth-ache?’

‘At times, but I have had two out, so I hope there is an end of it.’

‘And you never mentioned it, you Stoic!’

‘It was only at night.’

‘And how long has this been?’

‘Since I had that cold; but it was no matter.’

‘No matter, except that it kept you looking like Count Ugolino, and me always wondering what was the matter with you. And’—detaining him for a moment under the lights of the station—’this extraction must have been a pretty business, to judge by your looks! What did the dentist do to you?’

‘It is not so much that’ said Leonard, low and sadly; ‘but I began to have a hope, and I see it won’t do.’

‘What do you mean, my dear boy? what have you been doing?’

‘I have been into my old cell again,’ said he, under his breath; and Dr. May, leaning on his arm, felt his nervous tremor.

‘Prisoner of the Bastille, eh, Leonard!’

‘I had long been thinking that I ought to go and call on Mr. Reeve and thank him.’

‘But he does not receive calls there.’

‘No,’ said Leonard, as if the old impulse to confidence had returned; ‘but I have never been so happy since, as I was in that cell, and I wanted to see it again. Not only for that reason,’ he added, ‘but something that Mr. Seaford said brought back a remembrance of what Mr. Wilmot told me when my life was granted—something about the whole being preparation for future work—something that made me feel ready for anything. It had all gone from me—all but the remembrance of the sense of a blessed Presence and support in that condemned cell, and I thought perhaps ten minutes in the same place would bring it back to me.’

‘And did they?’

‘No, indeed. As soon as the door was locked, it all went back to July 1860, and worse. Things that were mercifully kept from me then, mere abject terror of death, and of that kind of death—the disgrace—the crowds—all came on me, and with them, the misery all in one of those nine months; the loathing of those eternal narrow waved white walls, the sense of their closing in, the sickening of their sameness, the longing for a voice, the other horror of thinking myself guilty. The warder said it was ten minutes—I thought it hours! I was quite done for, and could hardly get down-stairs. I knew the spirit was being crushed out of me by the solitary period, and it is plain that I must think of nothing that needs nerve or presence of mind!’ he added, in a tone of quiet dejection.

‘You are hardly in a state to judge of your nerve, after sleepless nights and the loss of your teeth. Besides, there is a difference between the real and imaginary, as you have found; you who, in the terrible time of real anticipation, were a marvel in that very point of physical resolution.’

‘I could keep thoughts out then,’ he said; ‘I was master of myself.’

‘You mean that the solitude unhinged you? Yet I always found you brave and cheerful.’

‘The sight of you made me so. Nay, the very sight or sound of any human being made a difference! And now you all treat me as if I had borne it well, but I did not. It was all that was left me to do, but indeed I did not.’

‘What do you mean by bearing it well?’ said the Doctor, in the tone in which he would have questioned a patient.

‘Living—as—as I thought I should when I made up my mind to life instead of death,’ said Leonard; ‘but all that went away. I let it slip, and instead came everything possible of cowardice, and hatred, and bitterness. I lost my hold of certainty what I had done or what I had not, and the horror, the malice, the rebellion that used to come on me in that frightful light white silent place, were unutterable! I wish you would not have me among you all, when I know there can hardly be a wicked thought that did not surge over me.’

‘To be conquered.’

‘To conquer me,’ he said, in utter lassitude.

‘Stay. Did they ever make you offend wilfully?’

‘There was nothing I could offend in.’

‘Your tasks of work, for instance.’

‘I often had a savage frantic abhorrence of it, but I always brought myself to do it, and it did me good; it would have done more if it had been less mechanical. But it often was only the instinct of not degrading myself like the lowest prisoners.’

‘Well, there was your conduct to the officials.’

‘Oh! one could not help being amenable to them, they were so kind. Besides, these demons never came over me except when I was alone.’

‘And one thing more, Leonard; did these demons, as you well call them, invade your devotions?’

‘Never,’ he answered readily; then recalling himself—’not at the set times I mean, though they often made me think the comfort I had there mere hypocrisy and delusion, and be nearly ready to give over what depended on myself. Chapel was always joy; it brought change and the presence of others, if nothing else; and that would in itself have been enough to banish the hauntings.’

‘And they did not interfere with your own readings?’ said the Doctor, preferring this to the word that he meant.

‘I could not let them,’ said Leonard. ‘There was always refreshment; it was only before and after that all would seem mockery, profanation, or worse still, delusion and superstition—as if my very condition proved that there was none to hear.’

‘The hobgoblin had all but struck the book out of Christian’s hand,’ said Dr. May, pressing his grasp on Leonard’s shuddering arm. ‘You are only telling me that you have been in the valley of the shadow of death; you have not told me that you lost the rod and staff.’

‘No, I must have been helped, or I should not have my senses now.’

And perhaps it was the repressed tremor of voice and frame rather than the actual words that induced the Doctor to reply—’That is the very point, Leonard. It is the temptation to us doctors to ascribe too much to the physical and too little to the moral; and perhaps you would be more convinced by Mr. Wilmot than by me; but I do verily believe that all the anguish you describe could and would have been insanity if grace had not been given you to conquer it. It was a tottering of the mind upon its balance; and, humanly speaking, it was the self-control that enabled you to force yourself to your duties, and find relief in them, which saved you. I should just as soon call David conquered because the “deep waters had come in over his soul.”’

‘You can never know how true those verses are,’ said Leonard, with another shiver.

‘At least I know to what kind of verses they all lead,’ said the Doctor; ‘and I am sure they led you, and that you had more and brighter hours than you now remember.’

‘Yes, it was not all darkness. I believe there were more spaces than I can think of now, when I was very fairly happy, even at Pentonville; and at Portland all did well with me, till last spring, and then the news from Massissauga brought back all the sense of blood-guiltiness, and it was worse than ever.’

‘And that sense was just as morbid as your other horrible doubt, about which you asked me when we were coming home.’

‘I see it was now, but that was the worst time of all—the monotony of school, and the sense of hypocrisy and delusion in teaching—the craving to confess, if only for the sake of the excitement, and the absolute inability to certify myself whether there was any crime to confess—I can’t talk about it. And even chapel was not the same refreshment, when one was always teaching a class in it, as coming in fresh only for the service. Even that was failing me, or I thought it was! No, I do not know how I could have borne it much longer.’

‘No, Leonard, you could not; Tom and I both saw that in your looks, and quite expected to hear of your being ill; but, you see, we are never tried above what we can bear!’

‘No,’ said Leonard, very low, as if he had been much struck; and then he added, after an interval, ‘It is over now, and there’s no need to recollect it except in the way of thanks. The question is what it has left me fit for. You know, Dr. May,’ and his voice trembled, ‘my first and best design in the happy time of Coombe, the very crown of my life, was this very thing—to be a missionary. But for myself, I might be in training now. If I had only conquered my temper, and accepted that kind offer of Mr. Cheviot’s, all this would never have been, and I should have had my youth, my strength, and spirit, my best, to devote. I turned aside because of my obstinacy, against warning, and now how can I offer?—one who has stood at the bar, lived among felons, thought such thoughts—the released convict with a disgraced name! It would just be an insult to the ministry! No, I know how prisoners feel. I can deal with them. Let me go back to what I am trained for. My nerve and spirit have been crushed out; I am fit for nothing else. The worst thing that has remained with me is this nervousness—cowardice is its right name—starting at the sound of a door, or at a fresh face—a pretty notion that I should land among savages!’

Dr. May had begun an answer about the remains of the terrible ordeal that might in itself have been part of Leonard’s training, when they reached the house door.

These nerves, or whatever they were, did indeed seem disposed to have no mercy on their owner; for no sooner had he sat down in the warm drawing-room, than such severe pain attacked his face as surpassed even his powers of concealment. Dr. May declared it was all retribution for his unfriendliness in never seeking sympathy or advice, which might have proved the evil to be neuralgia and saved the teeth, instead of aggravating the evil by their extraction.

‘I suspect he has been living on nothing,’ said Dr. May, when, in a lull of the pain, Leonard had gone to bed.

‘Papa!’ exclaimed Gertrude, ‘don’t you know what Richard’s housekeeping is? Don’t you recollect his taking that widow for a cook because she was such a good woman?’

‘I don’t think it was greatly Richard’s fault,’ said Ethel. ‘I can hardly get Leonard to make a sparrow’s meal here, and most likely his mouth has been too uncomfortable.’

‘Ay, that never seeking sympathy is to me one of the saddest parts of all. He has been so long shut within himself, that he can hardly feel that any one cares for him.’

‘He does so more than at first,’ said Ethel.

‘Much more. I have heard things from him to-night that are a revelation to me. Well, he has come through, and I believe he is recovering it; but the three threads of our being have all had a terrible wrench, and if body and mind come out unscathed, it is the soundness of the spirit that has brought them through.’

A sleepless night and morning of violent pain ensued; but, at least thus much had been gained—that there was no refusal of sympathy, but a grateful acceptance of kindness, so that it almost seemed a recurrence to the Coombe days; and as the pain lessened, the enjoyment of Ethel’s attendance seemed to grow upon Leonard in the gentle languor of relief; and when, as she was going out for the afternoon, she came back to see if he was comfortable in his easy-chair by the drawing-room fire, and put a screen before his face, he looked up and thanked her with a smile—the first she had seen.

When she returned, the winter twilight had closed in, and he was leaning back in the same attitude, but started up, so that she asked if he had been asleep.

‘I don’t know—I have seen her again.’

‘Seen whom?’

‘Minna, my dear little Minna!’

‘Dreamt of her?’

‘I cannot tell,’ he said; ‘I only know she was there; and then rising and standing beside Ethel, he continued—’Miss May, you remember the night of her death?’

‘Easter Eve?’

‘Well,’ continued he, ‘that night I saw her.’

‘I remember,’ said Ethel, ‘that Mr. Wilmot told us you knew at once what he was come to tell you.’

‘It was soon after I was in bed, the lights were out, and I do not think I was asleep, when she was by me—not the plump rosy thing she used to be, but tall and white, her hair short and waving back, her eyes—oh! so sad and wistful, but glad too—and her hands held out—and she said, “Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope. O Leonard, dear, it does not hurt.”’

‘It was the last thing she did say.’

‘Yes, so Ave’s letter said. And observe, one o’clock in Indiana is half-past nine with us. Then her hair—I wrote to ask, for you know it used to be in long curls, but it had been cut short, like what I saw. Surely, surely, it was the dear loving spirit allowed to show itself to me before going quite away to her home!’

‘And you have seen her again?’

‘Just now’—his voice was even lower than before—’since it grew dark, as I sat there. I had left off reading, and had been thinking, when there she was, all white but not wistful now; “Leonard, dear,” she said, “it has not hurt;” and then, “He brought me forth, He brought me forth even to a place of liberty, because He had a favour unto me.”’

‘O, Leonard, it must have made you very happy.’

‘I am very thankful for it,’ he said. Then after a pause, ‘You will not speak of it—you will not tell me to think it the action of my own mind upon itself.’

‘I can only believe it a great blessing come to comfort you and cheer you,’ said Ethel: ‘cheer you as with the robin-note, as papa called it, that sung all through the worst of times! Leonard, I am afraid you will think it unkind of me to have withheld it so long, but papa told me you could not yet bear to hear of Minna. I have her last present for you in charge—the slippers she was working for that eighteenth birthday of yours. She would go on, and we never knew whether she fully understood your danger; it was always “they could not hurt you,” and at last, when they were finished, and I had to make her understand that you could not have them, she only looked up to me and said, “Please keep them, and give them to him when he comes home.” She never doubted, first or last.’

Ethel, who had daily been watching for the moment, took out the parcel from the drawer, with the address in the childish writing, the date in her own.

Large tears came dropping from Leonard’s eyes, as he undid the paper, and looked at the work, then said, ‘Last time I saw that pattern, my mother was working it! Dear child! Yes, Miss May, I am glad you did not give them to me before. I always felt as if my blow had glanced aside and fallen on Minna; but somehow I feel more fully how happy she is!’

‘She was the messenger of comfort throughout to Ave and to Ella,’ said Ethel, ‘and well she may be to you still.’

‘I have dreaded to ask,’ said Leonard; ‘but there was a line in one letter I was shown that made me believe that climate was not the whole cause.’

‘No,’ said Ethel; ‘at least the force to resist it had been lost, as far as we can see. It was a grievous error of your brother’s to think her a child who could forget. She pined to hear of you, and that one constant effort of faith and love was too much, and wasted away the little tender body. But oh, Leonard, how truly she can say that her captivity is over, and that it has not hurt!’

‘It has not hurt,’ musingly repeated Leonard. ‘No, she is beyond the reach of distracting temptations and sorrows; it has only made her brighter to have suffered what it breaks one’s heart to think of. It has not hurt.’

‘Nothing from without does hurt!’ said Ethel, ‘unless one lets it.’

‘Hurt what?’ he asked.

‘The soul,’ returned Ethel. ‘Mind and body may be hurt, and it is not possible to know one’s mind from one’s soul while one is alive, but as long as the will and faith are right, to think the soul can be hurt seems to me like doubting our Protector.’

‘But if the will have been astray?’

‘Then while we repent, we must not doubt our Redeemer.’

Dickie ran in at the moment, calling for Aunt Ethel. She had dropped her muff. Leonard picked it up, and as she took it, he wrung her hand with an earnestness that showed his gratitude.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Tender as woman; manliness and meekness In him were so allied, That those who judged him by his strength or weakness, Knew but a single side.—J. WHITTIER

It promised to be a brilliant Christmas at Stoneborough, though little Dickie regarded the feast coming in winter as a perverse English innovation, and was grand on the superiority of supple jack above holly. Decorations had been gradually making their way into the Minster, and had advanced from being just tolerated to being absolutely delighted in; but Dr. Spencer, with his knack of doing everything, was sorely missed as a head, and Mr. Wilmot insisted that the May forces should come down and work the Minster, on the 23rd, leaving the Eve for the adornment of Cocksmoor, after the return of its incumbent. Mary, always highly efficient in that line, joined them; and Leonard’s handiness and dexterity in the arts relating to carpentry were as quietly useful as little Dickie’s bright readiness in always handing whatever was wanting.

The work was pretty well over, when Aubrey, who had just arrived with leave for a week, came down, and made it desultory. Dickie, whose imagination had been a good deal occupied by his soldier uncle, wanted to study him, and Gertrude was never steady when Aubrey was near. Presently it was discovered that the door to the tower stair was open. The ascent of the tower was a feat performed two or three times in a lifetime at Stoneborough. Harry had once beguiled Ethel and Mary up, but Gertrude had never gone, and was crazy to go, as was likewise Dickie. Moreover, Aubrey and Gertrude insisted that it was only proper that Ethel should pay her respects to her prototype the gurgoyle, they wanted to compare her with him, and ordered her up; in fact their spirits were too high for them to be at ease within the church, and Ethel, maugre her thirty years, partook of the exhilaration enough to delight in an extraordinary enterprise, and as nothing remained but a little sweeping up, they left this to the superintendence of Mary and Mr. Wilmot, and embarked upon the narrow crumbling steps of the spiral stair, that led up within an unnatural thickening of one of the great piers that supported the tower, at the intersection of nave and transepts. After a long period of dust and darkness, and the monotony of always going with the same leg foremost, came a narrow door, leading to the ringers’ region, with all their ropes hanging down. Ethel was thankful when she had got her youngsters past without an essay on them; she doubted if she should have succeeded, but for Leonard’s being an element of soberness. Other little doors ensued, leading out to the various elevations of roof, which were at all sorts of different heights, the chancel lower than the nave, and one transept than the other; besides that the nave had both triforium and clerestory. It was a sort of labyrinth, and they wondered whether any one, except perhaps the plumber’s foreman knew his way among all the doors. Then there was one leading inwards to the eight bells—from whose fascinations Ethel thought Dickie never would be taken away—and still more charming, to the clock, which clanged a tremendous three, as they were in the act of looking at it, causing Leonard to make a great start, and then colour painfully. It was hard to believe, as Daisy said, that the old tower, that looked so short and squat below, could be so very high when you came to go up it; but the glimpses of the country, through the little loop-hole windows, were most inviting. At last, Aubrey, who was foremost, pushed up the trap-door, and emerged; but, as Dickie followed him, exclaimed, ‘Here we are; but you ladies in crinolines will never follow! You’ll stick fast for ever, and Leonard can’t pass, so there you’ll all have to stay.’

‘Aunt Daisy will sail away like a balloon,’ added Dickie, roguishly, looking back at her, and holding on his cap.

But Gertrude vigorously compressed her hoop, and squeezed through, followed by Ethel and Leonard. There was a considerable space, square, leaded and protected by the battlemented parapet, with a deep moulding round, and a gutter resulting in the pipe smoked by Ethel’s likeness, the gurgoyle. Of course the first thing Dickie and Aubrey did was to look for the letters that commemorated the ascent of H. M., E. M., M. M., in 1852; and it was equally needful that R. R. M., if nobody else, should likewise leave a record on the leads. There was an R. M. of 1820, that made it impossible to gainsay him. The view was not grand in itself, but there was a considerable charm in looking down on the rooks in their leafless trees, cawing over their old nests, and in seeing the roofs of the town; far away, too, the gray Welsh hills, and between, the country lying like a map, with rivers traced in light instead of black. Leonard stood still, his face turned towards the greenest of the meadows, and the river where it dashed over the wheel of a mill.

‘Have you seen it again?’ asked Ethel, as she stood by him, and watched his eye.

‘No. I am rather glad to see it first from so far off,’ he answered, ‘I mean to walk over some day.’

‘Ethel,’ called Gertrude, ‘is this your gurgoyle? His profile, as seen from above, isn’t flattering.’

‘O, Daisy, don’t lean over so far.’

‘Quite safe;’ but at that instant a gust of wind caught her hat, she grasped at it, but only saved it from whirling away, and made it fall short. ‘There, Ethel, your image has put on my hat; and henceforth will appear to the wondering city in a black hat and feather!’

‘I’ll get it,’ exclaimed the ever ready Dickie; and in another moment he had mounted the parapet and was reaching for it. Whether it were Gertrude’s shriek, or the natural recoil away from the grasping hand, or that his hold on the side of the adjoining pinnacle was insecure, he lost his balance, and with a sudden cry, vanished from their eyes.

The frightful consternation of that moment none of those four could ever bear to recall; the next, they remembered that he could only fall as far as the roof, but it was Ethel and Leonard alone who durst press to the parapet, and at the same moment a cry came up—

‘Oh, come! I’m holding on, but it cuts! Oh, come!’

Ethel saw, some five-and-twenty feet below, the little boy upon the transept roof, a smooth slope of lead, only broken by a skylight, a bit of churchwarden’s architecture still remaining. The child had gone crashing against the window, and now lay back clinging to its iron frame. Behind him was the entire height within to the church floor, before him a rapid slope, ended by a course of stone, wide enough indeed to walk on, but too narrow to check the impetus from slipping down the inclination above. Ethel’s brain swam; she just perceived that both Aubrey and Leonard had disappeared, and then had barely power to support Gertrude, who reeled against her, giddy with horror. ‘Oh look, look, Ethel,’ she cried; ‘I can’t. Where is he?’

‘There! Yes, hold on, Dickie, they are coming. Look up—not down—hold on!’

A door opened, and out dashed Aubrey! Alas! it was on the nave clerestory; he might as well have been a hundred, miles off. Another door, and Leonard appeared, and on the right level, but with a giddy unguarded ridge on which to pass round the angle of the tower. She saw his head pass safely round, but, even then, the horror was not over. Could he steady himself sufficiently to reach the child, or might not Dickie lose hold too soon? It was too close below for sight, the moulding and gurgoyle impeded her agonized view, but she saw the child’s look of joyful relief, she heard the steady voice, ‘Wait, don’t let go yet. There,’ and after a few more sounds, came up a shout, ‘all right!’ Infinitely relieved, she had to give her whole attention to poor Gertrude, who, overset by the accident, giddy with the attempt to look over, horrified by the danger, confused and distressed by the hair that came wildly flapping about her head and face, and by the puffs of wind at her hoop, had sunk down in the centre of the little leaden square, clinging with all her might to the staff of the weathercock, and feeling as if the whole tower were rocking with her, absolutely seeing the battlements dance. How was she ever to be safely got down the rickety ladder leading to the crumbling stone stair? Ethel knelt by her, twisted up the fluttering hair, bade her shut her eyes and compose her thoughts, and then called over the battlements to Aubrey, who, confused by the shock, continued to emerge at wrong doors and lose himself on the roofs, and was like one in a bad dream, nearly as much dizzied as his sister, to whose help he came the more readily, as the way up was the only one plain before him.

The detention would have been more dreadful to Ethel had she known all that was passing below, and that when the little boy, at Leonard’s sign, lowered himself towards the out-reaching arms of the young man, who was steadying himself against the wall of the tower, it was with a look of great pain, and leaving a trail of blood behind him. When, at length, he stood at the angle, Leonard calmly said, ‘Now go before me, round that corner, in at the door. Hold by the wall, I’ll hold your shoulder.’ The boy implicitly obeyed, the notion of giddiness never seemed to occur to him, and both safely came to the little door, on the threshold of which Leonard sat down, and lifting him on his knee, asked where he was hurt? ‘My leg,’ said Dickie, ‘the glass was running in all the time, and I could not move; but it does not hurt so much now.’

Perhaps not; but a large piece of glass had broken into the slender little calf, and Leonard steadied himself to withdraw it, as, happily, the fragment was large enough to give a hold for his hand. The sensible little fellow, without a word, held up the limb across Leonard’s knee, and threw an arm round his neck, to hold himself still, just saying, ‘Thank you,’ when it was over.

‘Did it hurt much, Dickie?’

‘Not very much,’ he answered; ‘but how it bleeds! Where’s Aunt Ethel?’

‘On the tower. She will come in a moment,’ said Leonard, startled by the exceeding flow of blood, and binding the gash round with his handkerchief. ‘Now, I’ll carry you down.’

The boy did not speak all the weary winding way down the dark stairs; but Leonard heard gasps of oppression, and felt the head lean on his shoulder; moreover, a touch convinced him that the handkerchief was soaking, nay dripping, and when he issued at length into the free air of the church, the face was deadly white. No one was near, and Leonard laid him on a bench. He was still conscious, and looked up with languid eyes. ‘Mayn’t I go home?’ he said, faintly; ‘Aunt Ethel!’

‘Let me try to stop this bleeding first,’ said Leonard. ‘My dear little man, if you will only be quiet, I think I can.’

Leonard took the handkerchief from his throat, and wound it to its tightest just above the hurt, Dickie remonstrating for a moment with, ‘That’s not the place. It is too tight.’

‘It will cut off the blood from coming,’ said Leonard; and in the same understanding way, the child submitted, feebly asking, ‘Shall I bleed to death? Mamma will be so sorry!’

‘I trust—I hope not,’ said Leonard; he durst utter no encouragement, for the life-blood continued to pour forth unchecked, and the next murmur was, ‘I’m so sick. I can’t say my prayers. Papa! Mamma!’ Already, however, Leonard had torn down a holly bough, and twisted off (he would have given worlds for a knife) a short stout stick, which he thrust into one of the folds of the ligature, and pulled it much tighter, so that his answer was, ‘Thank God, Dickie, that will do! the bleeding has stopped. You must not mind if it hurts for a little while.’

An ejaculation of ‘Poor little dear,’ here made him aware of the presence of the sexton’s wife; but in reply to her offer to carry him in to Mrs. Cheviot’s, Dickie faintly answered, ‘Please let me go home;’ and Leonard, ‘Yes, I will take him home. Tell Miss May it is a cut from the glass, I am taking him to have it dressed, and will bring him home. Now, my dear little patient fellow, can you put your arms round my neck?’

Sensible, according to both meanings of the word, Dickie clasped his friend’s neck, and laid his head on his shoulder, not speaking again till he found Leonard was not turning towards the High Street, when he said, ‘That is not the way home.’

‘No, Dickie, but we must get your leg bound up directly, and the hospital is the only place where we can be sure of finding any one to do it. I will take you home directly afterwards.’

‘Thank you,’ said the courteous little gentleman; and in a few minutes more Leonard had rung the bell, and begged the house surgeon would come at once to Dr. May’s grandson. A few drops of stimulant much revived Dickie, and he showed perfect trust and composure, only holding Leonard’s hands, and now and then begging to know what they were doing, while he was turned over on his face for the dressing of the wound, bearing all without a sound, except an occasional sobbing gasp, accompanied by a squeeze of Leonard’s finger. Just as this business had been completed, the surgeon exclaimed, ‘There’s Dr. May’s step,’ and Dickie at once sat up, as his grandfather hurried in, nearly as pale as the boy himself. ‘O, grandpapa, never mind, it is almost well now; and has Aunt Daisy got her hat?’

‘What is it, my dear? what have you been doing?’ said the Doctor, looking in amazement from the boy to Leonard, who was covered with blood. ‘They told me you had fallen off the Minster tower!’

‘Yes I did,’ said Dickie; ‘I reached after Aunt Daisy’s hat, but I fell on the roof, and I was sliding, sliding down to the wall, but there was a window, and the glass broke and cut me, but I got my feet against the bottom of it, and held on by the iron bar, till Leonard came and took me down;’ and he lay back on the pillow, quiet and exhausted, but bright-eyed and attentive as ever, listening to Leonard’s equally brief version of the adventure.

‘Didn’t he save my life, grandpapa?’ said the boy, at the close.

‘Twice over, you may say,’ added the surgeon, and his words as to the nature of the injury manifested that all had depended on the immediate stoppage of the haemorrhage. With so young a child, delay from indecision or want of resource would probably have been fatal.

‘There would have been no doing anything, if this little man had not been so good and sensible,’ said Leonard, leaning over him.

‘And I did not cry. You will tell papa I did not cry,’ said Dickie, eagerly, but only half gratified by such girlish treatment as that agitated kiss of his grandfather, after being a little bit of a hero; but then Dickie’s wondering eyes really beheld such another kiss bestowed over his head upon Leonard, and quite thought there were tears on grandpapa’s cheeks. Perhaps old gentlemen could do what was childish in little boys.

Dickie was to be transported home. He wished to be carried by Leonard, but the brougham was at the door, and he had to content himself with being laid on the seat, with his friend to watch over him, the Doctor pointing out that Leonard was a savage spectacle for the eyes of Stoneborough, and hurrying home by the short cut. Ethel met him in extreme alarm. Gertrude’s half-restored senses had been totally scattered by the sight of the crimson traces on the spot of Leonard’s operations, and she had been left to Mary’s care; while Ethel and Aubrey had hastened home, and not finding any one there, the latter had dashed off to Bankside, whilst Ethel waited, arranging the little fellow’s bed, and trying to trust to Leonard’s message, and not let her mind go back to that fearful day of like waiting, sixteen years ago, nor on to what she might have to write to Norman and Meta of the charge they had sent to her. Her father’s cheerful face at first was a pang, and then came the rebound of gladness at the words. ‘He is coming. No fear for him, gallant little man—thanks for God’s mercy, and to that noble fellow, Leonard.’

At the same moment Aubrey burst in—’No one at Wright’s—won’t be in no one knows how long! What is to become of us?’ And he sank down on a chair.

‘Ay, what would become of any of us, if no one had a better pate than yours, sir?’ said Dr. May. ‘You have one single perfection, and you had better make the most of it—that of knowing how to choose your friends. There’s the carriage.’

After a moment’s delay, the cushion was lifted out with the little wounded cavalier, still like a picture; for, true to his humming-bird nature, a few scarcely-conscious movements of his hands had done away with looks of disarray—the rich glossy curls were scarcely disordered, and no stains of blood had adhered to the upper part of his small person, whereas Leonard was a ghastly spectacle from head to foot.

‘So, Master Dicky-bird,’ said Dr. May, as they rested him a moment on the hall-table, ‘give me that claw of yours. Yes, you’ll do very well, only you must go to bed now; and, mind, whatever you did when you were in Fairy-land, we don’t fly here in Stoneborough—and it does not answer.’

‘I am not to go to bed for being naughty, am I?’ said Dickie, his brave white lip for the first time quivering; ‘indeed, I did not know it was wrong.’

The poor little man’s spirits were so exhausted, that the reassurance on this head absolutely brought the much-dreaded tears into his eyes; and he could only be carried up gently to his bed, and left to be undressed by his aunt, so great an aggravation to the troubles of this small fragment of independence, that it had almost overset his courtesy and self-command. There was no contenting him till he had had all traces of the disaster washed from face and hands, and the other foot; and then, over his tea, though his little clear chirrup was weak, he must needs give a lucid description of Leonard’s bandaging, in the midst of which came a knock at the door, and a gasping voice—’I’ll be quite quiet—indeed I will! Only just let me come in and kiss him, and see that he is safe.’

‘O, Auntie Daisy, have you got your hat?’

Wan, tear-stained, dishevelled, Gertrude bit her lip to save an outburst, gave the stipulated kiss, and retreated to Mary, who stood in the doorway like a dragon.

‘Auntie Daisy has been crying,’ said Dickie, turning his eyes back to Ethel. ‘Please tell her I shall be well very soon, and then I’ll go up again and try to get her hat, if I may have a hook and line—I’ll tell you how.’

‘My dear Dickie, you had better lie down, and settle it as you go to sleep,’ said Ethel, her flesh creeping at the notion of his going up again.

‘But if I go to sleep now, I shall not know when to say my prayers.’

‘Had you not better do so now, Dickie?’

Next came the child’s scruple about not kneeling; but at last he was satisfied, if Aunt Ethel would give him his little book out of the drawer—that little delicately-illuminated book with the pointed writing and the twisted cipher, Meta’s hand in every touch. Presently he looked up, and said: ‘Aunt Ethel, isn’t there a verse somewhere about giving the angels charge? I want you to find it for me, for I think they helped me to hold on, and helped Leonard upon the narrow place. You know they are sure to be flying about the church.’

Ethel read the ninety-first Psalm to him. He listened all through, and thanked her; but in a few minutes more he was fast asleep. As she left the room she met Leonard coming down and held out her hands to him with a mute intensity of thanks, telling him, in a low voice, what Dickie had said of the angels’ care.

‘I am sure it was true,’ said Leonard. ‘What else could have saved the brave child from dizziness?’

Down-stairs Leonard’s reception from Dr. May was, ‘Pretty well for a nervous man!’

‘Anybody can do what comes to hand.’

‘I beg your pardon. Some bodies lose their wits, like your friend Aubrey, who tells me, if he had stood still, he would have fainted away. As long as nerves can do what comes to hand, they need not be blamed, even if they play troublesome tricks at other times, as I suspect they are doing now.’

‘Yes; my face is aching a little.’

‘Not to say a great deal,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, I am not going to pity you; for I think you can feel to-day that most of us would be glad to be in your place!’

‘I am very glad,’ said Leonard.

‘You remember that child’s parents? No, you have grown so old, that I am always forgetting what a boy you ought to be; but if you had ever seen the tenderness of his father, and that sunbeam of a Meta, you would know all the more how we bless you for what you have spared them. Leonard, if anything had been needed to do so, you have won to yourself such a brother in Norman as you have in Aubrey!’

Meantime Ethel was soothing Gertrude, to whom the shock had been in proportion to the triumphal heights of her careless gaiety. Charles Cheviot had come in while his wife was restoring her; and he had plainly said what no one else would have intimated to the spoilt darling—that the whole accident had been owing to her recklessness, and that he had always expected some fatal consequences to give her a lesson!

Gertrude had been fairly cowed by such unwonted treatment; and when he would only take her home on condition of composure and self-command, her trembling limbs obliged her to accept his arm, and he subdued her into meek silence, and repression of all agitation, till she was safe in her room, when she took a little bit of revenge upon Mary by crying her heart out, and declaring it was very cruel of Charles, when she did not mean it.

And Mary, on her side, varied between assurances that Charles did not mean it, and that he was quite right—the sister now predominating in her, and now the wife.

‘Mean what?’ said Ethel, sitting down among them before they were aware.

‘That—that it was all my fault!’ burst out Gertrude. ‘If it was, I don’t see what concern it is of his!’

‘But, Daisy dear, he is your brother!’

‘I’ve got plenty of brothers of my own! I don’t count those people-in-law—’

‘She’s past reasoning with, Mary,’ said Ethel. ‘Leave her to me; she will come to her senses by and by!’

‘But indeed, Ethel, you won’t be hard on her? I am sure dear Charles never thought what he said would have been taken in this way.’

‘Why did he say it then?’ cried Gertrude, firing up.

‘My dear Mary, do please go down, before we get into the pitiable last-word condition!’

That condition was reached already; but in Ethel’s own bedroom Mary’s implicit obedience revived, and away she went, carrying off with her most of what was naughtiness in Gertrude.

‘Ethel—Ethel dear!’ cried she at once, ‘I know you are coming down on me. I deserve it all, only Charles had no business to say it. And wasn’t it very cruel and unkind when he saw the state I was in?’

‘I suppose Charles thought it was the only chance of giving a lesson, and therefore true kindness. Come, Daisy, is this terrible fit of pride a proper return for such a mercy as we have had to-day?’

‘If I didn’t say so to myself a dozen times on the way home!—only Mary came and made me so intolerably angry, by expecting me to take it as if it had come from you or papa.’

‘Ah, Daisy, that is the evil! If I had done my duty by you all, this would not have been!’

‘Now, Ethel, when you want to be worse, and more cutting than anything, you go and tell me my faults are yours! For pity’s sake, don’t come to that!’

‘But I must, Daisy, for it is true. Oh, if you had only been a naughty little girl!’

‘What—and had it out then?’ said Daisy, who was lying across the bed, and put her golden head caressingly on Ethel’s knee. ‘If I had plagued you then, you would have broken me in out of self-defence.’

‘Something like it,’ said Ethel. ‘But you know, Daisy, the little last treasure that mamma left did always seem something we could not make enough of, and it didn’t make you fractious or tiresome—at least not to us—till we thought you could not be spoilt. And then I didn’t see the little faults so soon as I ought; and I’m only an elder sister, after all, without any authority.’

‘No, you’re not to say that, Ethel, I mind your authority, and always will. You are never a bother.’

‘Ah, that’s it, Daisy! If I had only been a bother, you might never have got ahead of yourself.’

‘Then you really think, like Charles Cheviot, that it was my doing, Ethel?’

‘What do you think yourself?’

Great tears gathered in the corners of the blue eyes. Was it weak in Ethel not to bear the sight?

‘My poor Daisy,’ she said, ‘yours is not all the burden! I ought not to have taken up such a giddy company, or else I should have kept the boy under my hand. But he is so discreet and independent, that it is more like having a gentleman staying in the house, than a child under one’s charge; and one forgets how little he is; and I was as much off my balance with spirits as you. It was the flightiness of us all; and we have only to be thankful, and to be sobered for another time. I am afraid the pride about being reproved is really the worse fault.’

‘And what do you want me to do?—to go and tell papa all about it? I mean to do that, of course; it is the only way to get comforted.’

‘Of course it is; but—’

‘You horrid creature, Ethel! I’ll never say you aren’t a bother again. You really do want me to go and tell Charles Cheviot that he was quite right, and Mary that I’m ready to be trampled on by all my brothers-in-law in a row! Well, there won’t be any more. You’ll never give me one—that’s one comfort!’ said Gertrude, wriggling herself up, and flinging an arm round Ethel’s neck. ‘As long as you don’t do that, I’ll do anything for you.’

‘Not for me.’

‘Well, you know that, you old thing! only you might take it as a personal compliment. I really will do it; for, of course, one could not keep one’s Christmas otherwise!’ It was rather too business-like; but elders are often surprised to find what was a hard achievement in their time a matter of course to their pupils—almost lightly passed over.

Dickie slept till morning, when he was found very pale, but lively and good-humoured as ever. Mr. Wright, coming up to see him, found the hurt going on well, and told Ethel, that if she could keep him in bed and undisturbed for the day, it would be better and safer; but that if he became restless and fretful, there would be no great risk in taking him to a sofa. Restless and fretful! Mr. Wright little knew the discretion, or the happy power of accommodation to circumstances, that had descended to Meta’s firstborn.

He was quite resigned as soon as the explanation had been made—perhaps, indeed, there was an instinctive sense, that to be dressed and moved would be fatiguing; but he had plenty of smiles and animation for his visitors, and, when propped up in bed, was full of devices for occupation. Moreover he acquired a slave; he made a regular appropriation of Leonard, whom he quickly perceived to be the most likely person to assist in his great design of constructing a model of the clock in the Minster tower, for the edification of his little brother Harry. Leonard worked away at the table by the bedside with interest nearly equal to the child’s; and when wire and cardboard were wanting, he put aside all his dislike to facing the Stoneborough streets and tradesmen in open day, and, at Dickie’s request, sallied forth in quest of the materials. And when the bookseller made inquiries after the boy, Leonard, in the fulness of his heart, replied freely and in detail—nay, he was so happy in the little man’s well-doing, that he was by no means disconcerted even by a full encounter of Mrs. Harvey Anderson in the street, but answered all her inquiries, in entire oblivion of all but the general rejoicing in little Dickie’s wonderful escape.

‘Well,’ said Aubrey to his sisters, after a visit to his nephew’s room, ‘Dickie has the best right to him, certainly, to-day. It is an absolute appropriation! They were talking away with all their might when I came up, but came to a stop when I went in, and Master Dick sent me to the right-about.’

The truth was, that Dickie, who, with eyes and ears all alive, had gathered up some fragments of Leonard’s history, had taken this opportunity of catechizing him upon it in a manner that it was impossible to elude, and which the child’s pretty tact carried off, as it did many things which would not have been tolerated if done rudely and abruptly. Step by step, in the way of question and remark, he led Leonard to tell him all that had happened; and when once fairly embarked in the reminiscence, there was in it a kind of peace and pleasure. The fresh, loving, wondering sympathy of the little boy was unspeakably comforting; and besides, the bringing the facts in their simple form to the grasp of the childish mind, restored their proportion, which their terrible consequences had a good deal disturbed. They seemed to pass from the present to the historical, and to assume the balance that they took in the child’s mind, coming newly upon them. It was like bathing in a clear limpid stream, that washed away the remains of morbid oppression.

‘I wish mamma was here,’ said the little friend, at last.

‘Do you want her? Are you missing her, my dear?’

‘I miss her always,’ said Dickie. ‘But it was not that—only mamma always makes everybody so happy; and she would be so fond of you, because you have had so much trouble.’

‘But, Dickie, don’t you think I am happy to be with your grandfather and aunt, and hoping to see my own sisters very soon—your aunt, who taught me what bore me through it all?’

‘Aunt Ethel?’ cried Dickie, considering. ‘I like Aunt Ethel very much; but then she is not like mamma!’

There could be no doubt that Leonard was much better and happier after this adventure. Reluctantly, Dickie let him go back to Cocksmoor, where his services in church-decking and in singing had been too much depended on to be dispensed with; but he was to come back with Richard for the family assembly on Christmas evening.

Moreover, Gertrude, who was quite herself again, having made her peace with the Cheviots, and endured the reception of her apologies, seized on him to lay plots for a Christmas-tree, for the delectation of Dickie on his sofa, and likewise of Margaret Rivers, and of the elite of the Cocksmoor schools. He gave in to it heartily, and on the appointed day worked with great spirit at the arrangements in the dining-room, where Gertrude, favoured by the captive state of the little boy, conducted her preparations, relegating the family meals to the schoolroom.

This tree was made the occasion for furnishing Leonard with all the little appliances of personal property that had been swept away from him; and, after all, he was the most delighted of the party. The small Charlie Cheviot had to be carried off shrieking; Margaret Rivers was critical; even Cocksmoor was experienced in Christmas-trees; and Dickie, when placed in the best situation, and asked if such trees grew in New Zealand, made answer that he helped mamma to make one every year for the Maori children. It was very kind in Aunt Daisy, he added, with unfailing courtesy; but he was too zealous for his colony to be dazzled—too utilitarian to be much gratified by any of his gifts, excepting a knife of perilous excellence, which Aubrey, in contempt of Stoneborough productions, had sacrificed from his own pocket at the last moment.

Leonard and Dickie together were in a state of great delight at the little packets handed to the former; studs, purse, pencil-case, writing materials; from Hector Ernescliffe, a watch, with the entreaty that his gifts might not be regarded as unlucky; from Ethel, a photographic book, with the cartes of his own family, whose old negatives had been hunted up for the purpose; also a recent one of Dr. May with his grandson on his knee, the duplicate of which was gone to New Zealand, with the Doctor’s inscription, ‘The modern Cyropaedia, Astyages confounded.’ There was Richard, very good, young and pretty; there was Ethel, exactly like the Doctor, ‘only more so;’ there was Gertrude, like nobody, not even herself, and her brothers much in the same predicament, there was the latest of Mr. Rivers’s many likenesses, with the cockatoo on his wrist, and there was the least truculent and witchlike of the numerous attempts on Flora; there was Mrs. Cheviot, broad-faced and smiling over her son, and Mr. and Mrs. Ernescliffe, pinioning the limbs of their offspring, as in preparation for a family holocaust; there was Dickie’s mamma, unspoilable in her loveliness even by photography, and his papa grown very bald and archidiaconal; there was Ethel’s great achievement of influence, Dr. Spencer, beautiful in his white hair; there were the vicar and the late and present headmasters. The pleasure excited by all these gifts far exceeded the anticipations of their donors, it seemed as if they had fallen on the very moment when they would convey a sense of home, welcome, and restoration. He did not say much, but looked up with liquid lustrous eyes, and earnest ‘thank you’s,’ and caressingly handled and examined the treasures over and over again, as they lay round him on Dickie’s couch. ‘I suppose,’ said the child to him, ‘it is like Job, when all his friends came to see him, and every one gave him a piece of money.’

‘He could hardly have enjoyed it more,’ murmured Leonard, feeling the restful capacity of happiness in the new possession of the child’s ardent love, and of the kind looks of all around, above all, of the one presence that still gave him his chief sense of sunshine. The boyish and romantic touch of passion had, as Ethel had long seen, been burnt and seared away, and yet there was something left, something that, as on this evening she felt, made his voice softer, his eye more deferential, to her than to any one else. Perhaps she had once been his guiding star; and if in the wild tempests of the night he had learnt instead to direct his course by the “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,” still the star would be prized and distinguished, as the first and most honoured among inferior constellations.

CHAPTER XXIX

Till now the dark was worn, and overhead The lights of sunset and of sunrise mixed.—TENNYSON

At New York, Tom wrote a short letter to announce his safe arrival, and then pushed on by railway into Indiana. Winter had completely set in; and when he at length arrived at Winiamac, he found that a sleigh was a far readier mode of conveyance to Massissauga than the wagons used in summer. His drive, through the white cathedral-like arcades of forest, hung with transparent icicles, and with the deep blue sky above, becoming orange towards the west, was enjoyable; and even Massissauga itself, when its skeleton trees were like their neighbours, embellished by the pure snowy covering, looked less forlorn than when their death contrasted with the exuberant life around. He stopped at the hotel, left his baggage there, and after undergoing a catechism on his personal affairs, was directed to Mr. Muller’s house, and made his way up its hard-trodden path of snow, towards the green door, at which he knocked two or three times before it was opened by a woman, whose hair and freckled skin were tinted nowhere but in Ireland.

He made a step forward out of the cutting blast into the narrow entry, and began to ask, ‘Is Miss Ward here? I mean, can I see Miss Warden?’ when, as if at the sound of his voice, there rang from within the door close by a shriek—one of the hoarse hysterical cries he had heard upon the day of the inquest. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pushed open the door, and beheld a young lady in speechless terror hanging over the stiffened figure on the couch—the eyes wide open, the limbs straight and rigid. He sprang forward, and lifted her into a more favourable posture, hastily asking for simple remedies likely to be at hand, and producing a certain amount of revival for a few moments, though the stiffness was not passing—nor was there evidence of consciousness.

‘Are you Leonard?’ said Cora Muller, under her breath, in this brief interval, gazing into his face with frightened puzzled eyes.

‘No; but I am come to tell her that he is free!’ But the words were cut short by another terrible access, of that most distressing kind that stimulates convulsion; and again the terrified women instinctively rendered obedience to the stranger in the measures he rapidly took, and his words, ‘hysteria—a form of hysteria,’ were forced from him by the necessity of lessening Cora’s intense alarm, so as to enable her to be effective. ‘We must send for Dr. Laidlaw,’ she began in the first breathing moment, and again he looked up and said, ‘I am a physician!’

‘Mr. Tom?’ she asked with the faintest shadow of a smile; he bent his head, and that was their introduction, broken again by another frightful attack; and when quiescence, if not consciousness, was regained, Tom knelt by the sofa, gazing with a sense of heart-rending despair at the wasted features and thin hands, the waxen whiteness of the cheek, and the tokens in which he clearly read long and consuming illness as well as the overthrow of the sudden shock.

‘What is this?’ he asked, looking up to Cora’s beautiful anxious face.

‘Oh, she has been very sick, very sick,’ she answered; ‘it was an attack of pleurisy; but she is getting better at last, though she will not think so, and this news will make all well. Does she hear? Say it again!’

Tom shook his head, afraid of the sound of the name as yet, and scarcely durst even utter the word ‘Ella’ above his breath.

‘She is gone out with Cousin Deborah to an apple bee,’ was the reassuring answer. ‘She wanted change, poor child! Is she getting better?’

Averil was roused by a cough, the sound which tore Tom’s heart by its import, but he drew back out of her sight, and let Cora raise her, and give her drink, in a soothing tender manner, that was evident restoration. ‘Cora dear, is it you?’ she said, faintly; ‘didn’t I hear some one else’s voice? Didn’t they say—?’ and the shiver that crept over her was almost a return of the hysteric fit.

‘We said he was free,’ said Cora, holding her in her arms.

‘Free—yes, I know what that means—free among the dead,’ said Averil, calmly, smoothing Cora’s hair, and looking in her face. ‘Don’t be afraid to let me hear. I shall be there with him and Minna soon. Didn’t somebody come to tell me? Please let him in, I’ll be quiet now.’

And as she made gestures of arranging her hair and dress, Tom guardedly presented himself, saying in a voice that trembled with his endeavour to render it calm, ‘Did you think I should have come if I had nothing better to tell you?’ and as she put out her hand in greeting, he took it in both his own, and met her eyes looking at him wide open, in the first dawning of the hope of an impossible gladness. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the truth is come out—he is cleared—he is at home—at Stoneborongh!’

The hot fingers closed convulsively on his own, then she raised herself, pressed her hands together, and gasped and struggled fearfully for breath. The joy and effort for self-command were more than the enfeebled frame could support, and there was a terrible and prolonged renewal of those agonizing paroxysms, driving away every thought from the other two except of the immediate needs. At last, when the violence of the attack had subsided, and left what was either fainting or stupor, they judged it best to carry her to her bed, and trust that, reviving without the associations of the other room, the agitation would be less likely to return, and that she might sleep under the influence of an anodyne. Poor Tom! it was not the reception he had figured to himself, and after he had laid her down, and left her to Cora and to Katty to be undressed, he returned to the parlour, and stood over the sinking wood-fire in dejection and dreariness of heart—wrung by the sufferings he had witnessed, with the bitter words (too late) echoing in his brain, and with the still more cruel thought—had it been his father or one of his brothers—any one to whose kindness she could trust, the shock had not been so great, and there would have been more sense of soothing and comfort! And then he tried to collect his impressions of her condition, and judge what would serve for her relief, but all his senses seemed to be scattered; dismay, compassion, and sympathy, had driven away all power of forming a conclusion—he was no longer the doctor—he was only the anxious listener for the faintest sound from the room above, but none reached him save the creaking of the floor under Katty’s heavy tread.

The gay tinkle of sleigh-bells was the next noise he heard, and presently the door was opened, and two muffled hooded figures looked into the room, now only lighted by the red embers of the fire.

‘Where’s Cora? where’s Ave?’ said the bright tone of the lesser. ‘It is all dark!’ and she was raising her voice to call, when Tom instinctively uttered a ‘Hush,’ and moved forward; ‘hush, Ella, your sister has been ill.’

The little muffled figure started at the first sound of his voice, but as he stepped nearer recoiled for a second, then with a low cry, almost a sob of recognition, exclaimed, ‘Mr. Tom! Oh, Mr. Tom! I knew you would come! Cousin Deborah, it’s Mr. Tom!’ and she flew into his arms, and clung with an ecstasy of joy, unknowing the why or how, but with a sense that light had shone, and that her troubles were over. She asked no questions, she only leant against him with, ‘Mr. Tom! Mr. Tom!’ under her breath.

‘But what is it, stranger? Do tell! Where are the girls? What’s this about Avy’s being sick? Do you know the stranger, Ella?’

‘It’s Mr. Tom,’ she cried, holding his arm round her neck, looking up in a rapturous restfulness.

‘I brought Miss Ward-en some good news that I fear has been too much for her,’ said he; ‘I am—only waiting to—hear how she is.’

By way of answer, Deborah opened another door which threw more light on the scene from the cooking stove in the kitchen, and at the same moment Cora with a candle came down the stairs.

‘O, Dr. May,’ she said, ‘you have been too long left alone in the dark. I think she is asleep now. You will stay. We will have tea directly.’

Tom faltered something about the hotel, and began to look at Cousin Deborah, and to consider the proprieties of life; but Cousin Deborah, Cora, and Ella began declaring with one voice that he must remain for the evening meal, and a bustle of cheerful preparation commenced, while Ella still hung on his hand.

‘But, Ella, you’ve never asked my good news.’

‘Oh dear! I was too glad! Are we going home then?’

‘Yes, I trust so, I hope so, my dear; for Leonard’s innocence has come to light, and he is free.’

‘Then Henry won’t mind—and we may be called by our proper name again—and Ave will be well,’ cried the child, as the ideas came more fully on her comprehension. ‘O, Cora! O, Cousin Deborah, do you hear? Does Ave know? May I run up and tell Ave?’

This of course was checked, but next Ella impetuously tore off her wraps for the convenience of spinning up and down wildly about the kitchen and parlour. Leonard himself did not seem to have great part in her joy; Henry’s policy had really nearly rooted out the thought of him personally, and there was a veil of confusion over the painful period of his trial, which at the time she had only partially comprehended. But she did understand that his liberation would be the term of exile; and though his name was to her connected with a mysterious shudder that made her shrink from uttering or hearing details, she had a security that Mr. Tom would set all right, and she loved him so heartily, that his presence was sunshine enough for her.

A little discomfited at the trouble he was causing, Tom was obliged to wait while not only Cousin Deborah, but Cora busied herself in the kitchen, and Ella in her restless joy came backwards and forwards to report their preparations, and at times to tarry a short space by his side, and tell of the recent troubles. Ave had been very ill, she said, very ill indeed about a month ago, and Henry had come home to see her, but had been obliged to go away to the siege of Charleston when she was better. They had all been ill ever since they came there, but now Mr. Tom was come, should not they all go home to dear Stoneborough, away from this miserable place? If they could only take Cora with them!

It was still a childish tongue; but Ella had outgrown all her plump roundness, and was so tall and pale that Tom would hardly have known her. Her welcome was relief and comfort, and she almost inspired her own belief that now all would be well. His English ideas were rather set at rest by finding that Mrs. Deborah was to preside at the tea-table, and that he was not to be almost tete-a-tete with Miss Muller. Deborah having concluded her hospitable cares, catechized him to her full content, and satisfied herself on the mystery of the Wardens’ life.

And now what brought himself out? She guessed he could not find an opening in the old country. Tom smiled, explained his opening at home, and mentioned his charge of his late friend’s book.

‘So you are come out about the book, and just come a few hundred miles out of the way to bring this bit of news, that you could have telegraphed,’ said the Yankee dame, looking at him with her keen eyes. ‘Well, if you were coming, it was a pity you were not sooner. She has pined away ever since she came here; and to such a worn-down condition as hers, poor child, I doubt joy’s kinder more upsetting than trouble, when one is used to it. There; I’ll fix the things, and go up and sit with Avy. She’ll be less likely to work herself into a flight again if she sees me than one of you.’

So Tom—less embarrassed now—found himself sitting by the fire, with Ella roasting her favourite nuts for him, and Miss Muller opposite. He was taken by surprise by her beautiful face, elegant figure, and ladylike manner, and far more by her evidently earnest affection for Averil.

She told him that ever since the fatal turn of little Minna’s illness, Averil had been subject to distressing attacks of gasping and rigidity, often passing into faintness; and though at the moment of emotion she often showed composure and self-command, yet that nature always thus revenged herself. Suspense—letters from home or from Henry—even verses, or times connected with the past, would almost certainly bring on the affection; and the heat of the summer had relaxed her frame, so as to render it even more unable to resist. There had been hope in the bracing of winter, but the first frosts had brought a chill, and a terrible attack of pleurisy, so dangerous that her brother had been summoned; she had struggled through, however, and recovered to a certain point, but there had stopped short, often suffering pain in the side, and never without panting breath and recurring cough. This had been a slightly better day, and she had been lying on the sofa, counting the days to Leonard’s next letter, when the well-known voice fell on her ears, and the one strong effort to control herself had resulted in the frightful spasms, which had been worse than any Cora had yet witnessed.

‘But she will get well, and we shall go home,’ said Ella, looking up wistfully into Tom’s mournful face.

‘And I shall lose you,’ said Cora; ‘but indeed I have long seen it was the only thing. If I had only known, she never should have come here.’

‘No, indeed, I feel that you would have led her to nothing that was not for her good and comfort.’

‘Ah! but I did not know,’ said Cora; ‘I had not been here—and I only thought of my own pleasure in having her. But if there is any way of freeing her from this unfortunate speculation without a dead loss, I will make father tell me.’

This—from Cora’s pretty mouth—though only honest and prudent, rather jarred upon Tom in the midst of his present fears; and he began to prepare for his departure to the inn, after having sent up Ella to ask for her sister, and hearing that she still slept soundly under the influence of the opiate.

When Averil awoke it was already morning, and Cora was standing by her bed, with her eyes smiling with congratulation, like veronicas on a sunny day.

‘Cora, is it true?’ she said, looking up.

Cora bent down and kissed her, and whispered, ‘I wish you joy, my dear.’

‘Then it is,’ she said; ‘it is not all a dream?’

‘No dream, dearest.’

‘Who said it?’ she asked. ‘O, Cora, that could not be true!’ and the colour rose in her cheek.

‘That! yes, Averil, if you mean that we had a visitor last evening. I took him for Leonard, do you know! Only I thought his eyes and hair did not quite answer the description.’

‘He is a very gentlemanlike person. Did you not think so?’ said Averil.

‘Ah! Ave, I’ve heard a great deal. Don’t you think you had better tell me some more?’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed Averil; ‘you are not to think of folly,’ as coughing cut her short.

‘I’ll not think of any more than I can help, except what you tell me.’

‘Never think at all, Cora. Oh! what has brought him here? I don’t know how I can dare to see him again; and yet he is not gone, is he?’

‘Oh no, he is only at the inn. He is coming back again.’

‘I must be up. Let me get up,’ said Averil, raising herself, but pausing from weakness and breathlessness.

And when they had forced some food upon her, she carried out her resolution, though twice absolutely fainting in the course of dressing; and at length crept softly, leaning on Cora’s arm, into the parlour. Though Tom was waiting there, he neither spoke nor came forward till she was safely placed upon the sofa, and then gathering breath, she sought him with her eager eyes, shining, large, lustrous, and wistful, as they looked out of the white thin face, where the once glowing colour had dwindled to two burning carnation spots. It was so piteous a change that as he took her hand he was silent, from sheer inability to speak calmly.

‘You have come to tell me,’ she said. ‘I am afraid I could not thank you last night.’ How different that soft pleading languid voice from the old half defiant tone!

‘I did not know you had been so unwell,’ he forced himself to say, ‘or I would not have come so suddenly.’

‘I am grown so silly’ she said, trying to smile. ‘I hardly even understood last night;’ and the voice died away in the intense desire to hear.

‘I—I was coming on business, and I thought you would not turn from the good tidings, though I was the bearer,’ he said, in a broken, agitated, apologetic way.

‘Only let me hear it again,’ she said. ‘Did you say he was free?’

‘Yes, free as you are, or I. At home. My father was gone to fetch him.’

She put her hands over her face, and looked up with the sweetest smile he had ever seen, and whispered, ‘Now I can sing my Nunc dimittis.’

He could not at once speak; and before he had done more than make one deprecatory gesture, she asked, ‘You have seen him?’

‘Not since this—not since September.’

‘I know. You have been very good; and he is at home—ah! not home—but Dr. May’s. Was he well? Was he very glad?’

‘I have not seen him; I have not heard; you will hear soon. I came at once with the tidings.’

‘Thank you;’ and she clasped her hands together. ‘Have you seen Henry? does he know?’

‘Could I? Had not you the first right?’

‘Leonard! Oh, dear Leonard!’ She lay back for a few moments, panting under the gust of exceeding joy; while he was silent, and tried not to seem to observe her with his anxious eyes. Then she recovered a little and said, ‘The truth come out! Did you say so? What was the truth?’

‘He paused a moment, afraid of the shock, and remembering that the suspicion had been all unknown to her. She recalled probabilities, and said,

‘Was it from a confession? Is it known who—who was the real unhappy person?’

‘Yes. Had you no suspicion?’

‘No—none,’ said Averil, shuddering, ‘unless it was some robber. Who was it?’

‘You had never thought of the other nephew?’

‘You don’t mean Samuel Axworthy! Oh! no. Why the last thing Leonard bade me, was always to pray for him.’

‘Ah!’ said Tom, with bent head, and colouring cheeks; ‘but who are those for whom such as Leonard would feel bound to pray?’

There was a moment’s silence, and then she said, ‘His enemy! Is that what you mean? But then he would have known it was he.’

‘He was entirely convinced that so it must have been, but there was no proof, and an unsupported accusation would only have made his own case worse.’

‘And has he confessed? has he been touched and cleared Leonard at last?’

‘No; he had no space granted him. It was the receipt in your brother’s writing that was found upon him.’

‘The receipt? Yes, Leonard always said the receipt would clear him! But oh, how dreadful! He must have had it all the time. How could he be so cruel! Oh! I never felt before that such wickedness could be;’ and she lay, looking appalled and overpowered.

‘Think of your brother knowing it all, and bidding—and giving you that injunction—’ said Tom, feeling the necessity of overcoming evil with good.

‘Oh! if I had known it, I could not—I could not have been like Leonard! And where—what has become of him?’ she asked, breathlessly. ‘You speak as if he was dead.’

‘Yes. He was killed in a fray at a gaming-house!’

There was a long silence, first of awe, then of thankfulness plainly beaming in her upraised eyes and transparent countenance, which Tom watched, filled with sensations, mournful but not wholly wretched. Shattered as she was, sinking away from her new-found happiness, it was a precious privilege to be holding to her the longed—for draught of joy.

‘Tell me about it, please,’ she presently said. ‘Where—how did the receipt come to light? Were the police told to watch for it? I want to know whom I have to thank.’

His heart beat high, but there was a spirit within him that could not brook any attempt to recall the promise he had pursued her with, the promise that he would not rest till he had proved her brother’s innocence. He dreaded her even guessing any allusion to it, or fancying he had brought the proffered price in his hand; and when he began with, ‘Can you bear to hear of the most shocking scene I ever witnessed?’ he gave no hint of his true motive in residing at Paris, of the clue that Bilson’s draft had given him in thither pursuing Axworthy, nor of his severe struggle in relinquishing the quest. He threw over all the completest accidental air, and scarcely made it evident that it was he who had recognized the writing, and all that turned on it. Averil listened to the narration, was silent for some space, then having gone over it in her own mind, looked up and said—

‘Then all this came of your being at that hospital;’ and a burning blush spread over the pale cheek, and made Tom shrink, start, and feel guilty of having touched the chord of obligation, connected with that obtrusive pledge of his. Above all, however, to repress emotion was his prime object; and he calmly answered, ‘It was a good Providence that brought any one there who knew the circumstances.’

She was silent; and he was about to rise and relieve her from the sense of his presuming on her gratitude, when a cough, accompanied with a pressure of her hand on her side, betrayed an access of suffering, that drew him on to his other purpose of endeavouring to learn her condition, and to do what he could for her relief. His manner, curiously like his father’s, and all the home associations connected with it, easily drew from her what he wanted to ascertain, and she perfectly understood its purport, and was calm and even bright.

‘I was glad to be better when Henry went away,’ she said; ‘he had so much to do, and we thought I was getting well then. You must not frighten him and hurry him here, if you please,’ she said, earnestly, ‘for he must not be wasting his time here, and you think it will last a month or two, don’t you?’

‘I want to persuade Henry to bring you all home, and enter into partnership with Mr. Wright,’ said Tom. ‘The voyage would—might—it would be the best thing for you.’

‘Could I ever be well enough again? Oh, don’t tell me to think about it! The one thing I asked for before I die has been given me, and now I know he is free, I will—will not set my mind on anything else.’

There was a look so near heaven on her face, as she spoke, that Tom durst not say any more of home, or earthly schemes; but, quiet, grave, and awe-stricken, left her to the repose she needed, and betook himself to the other room, where Ella, of course, flew on him, having been hardly detained by Cora from breaking in before. His object was to go to see the medical man who had been attending Averil; and Cora assuring him the horse had nothing to do in the frost, and telling him the times of the day when he would be most likely to find Dr. Laidlaw, he set forth.

Averil meantime lay on her sofa calmly happy, and thankful, the worn and wearied spirit full of rest and gladness unspeakable, in the fulness of gratitude for the answered prayer that she might know her brother free before her death. If she had ever doubted of her own state, she had read full confirmation in her physician’s saddened eyes, and the absence of all hopeful auguries, except the single hint that she might survive a voyage to England; and that she wished unsaid. Life, for the last five years, had been mournful work; there had been one year of blind self-will, discord, and bitterness, then a crushing stroke, and the rest exhausted submission and hopeless bending to sorrow after sorrow, with self-reproach running through all. Wearied out, she was glad to lay down the burthen, and accept the evening gleam as sunset radiance, without energy to believe it as the dawn of a brighter day. She shrank from being made even to wish to see Leonard. If once she began to think it possible, it would be a hard sacrifice to give it up; and on one point her resolution was fixed, that she would not be made a cause for bringing him to share their wretchedness in America. Life and things of life were over with her, and she would only be thankful for the softening blessings that came at its close, without stirring up vain longings for more. That kindness of Tom May, for instance, how soothing it was after her long self-reproach for her petulant and cutting unjust reply to his generous affection—generous above all at such a moment!

And after all, it was he—it was he and no other who had cleared Leonard—he had fulfilled the pledge he had given when he did not know what he was talking of. How she hated the blush that the sudden remembrance had called up on her face! It was quite plain that he had been disgusted by her unkind, undignified, improper tone of rejection; and though out of humanity he had brought her the tidings, he would not let her approach to thanking him, she was ashamed that he should have traced an allusion, the most distant, to the scene he had, doubtless, loathed in remembrance. He would, no doubt, go away to-day or tomorrow, and then these foolish thoughts would subside, and she should be left alone with Cora and her thankfulness, to think again of the great change before her!

But Tom was not gone. Indeed Averil was much more ill before the next morning, partly from hysteria, the reaction of the morning’s excitement, and partly from an aggravation of the more serious pulmonary affection. It was a temporary matter, and one that made his remaining the merest act of common humanity, since he had found Dr. Laidlaw a very third-rate specimen, and her brother was too far off to have arrived in time to be of use. The fresh science and skill of the young physician were indeed of the highest value, and under his care Averil rallied after a few days of prostration and suffering, during which she had watched and observed a good deal, and especially the good understanding between her doctor and Cora Muller. When Cousin Deborah was sitting with her, they always seemed to be talking in the drawing-room; nay, there were reports of his joining in the fabrication of some of the delicacies that were triumphantly brought to her room; and Ella was in a state of impatient pique at being slighted by ‘Mr. Tom,’ who, she complained, was always fighting with Cora about their politics; and Cora herself used to bring what Dr. May had said, as the choicest entertainment to her sick friend; while to herself he was merely the physician, kind and gentle to the utmost degree; but keeping his distance so scrupulously, that the pang awoke that he absolutely disliked her, and only attended her from common compassion; and, it might be, found consolation in being thus brought in contact with Cora. Oh, if it were only possible to own her wrongs, and ask his pardon without a compromise of maidenliness! Perhaps—perhaps she might, when she was still nearer death, and when she was supposed to know how it was between him and Cora. Dear Cora, it would be a beautiful reward for them both, and they would take care of Ella. Cora would be happier than ever yet among the Mays—and—Oh! why, why was there so much unkind selfish jealousy left, that instead of being glad, the notion left her so very miserable? Why did the prospect of such happiness for her self-devoted friend and nurse make her feel full of bitterness, and hardly able to bear it patiently, when she heard her speak the name of Dr. May?