The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain Part 28

'When he reproached me with the cost of my maintenance, and threatened me with the mill if I lost the scholars.h.i.+p, which he knew I could not get, I said I would abide by those words. I do abide by them.'

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

'Miss May, if I lived with you and the Doctor, I could have such aims.

Henry has taken care to make them sacrilege for me. I shall never be fit now, and there's an end of it.'

'You might--'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Nightshade! Why, pray?'

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

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

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

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

'In any state of life where G.o.d has placed him; but how when it is his own self-will?'

'There are times when one must judge for one's self.'

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

'But--Miss May--though I cannot take your advice--' he hesitated, 'this is not giving me up?'

'Never, while you let me esteem you.'

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

'My father thinks,' said Ethel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI

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

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

May.

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

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

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

Aubrey was the greatest present difficulty. Long before their illness the boys had been the resource of each other's leisure, and Coombe had made their intimacy a friends.h.i.+p of the warmest nature. Aubrey was at an age peculiarly dependent on equal companions.h.i.+p, and in the absence of his brothers, the loss of his daily intercourse with Leonard took away all the zest of life. Even the volunteer practice lost its charm without the rival with whom he chiefly contended, yet whose success against others was hotter to him than his own; his other occupations all wanted partners.h.i.+p, and for the first time in his life he showed weariness and contempt of his sisters' society and pursuits. He rushed off on Sunday evenings for a walk with Leonard; and though Dr. May did not interfere, the daughters saw that the abstinence was an effort of prudence, and were proportionately disturbed when one day at dinner, in his father's absence, Aubrey, who had been overlooking his fis.h.i.+ng-flies with some reviving interest, refused all his sisters'

proposals for the afternoon, and when they represented that it was not a good fis.h.i.+ng-day, owned that it was not, but that he was going over to consult Leonard Ward about some gray hackles.

'But you mustn't, Aubrey,' cried Gertrude, aghast.

Aubrey made her a low mocking bow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aubrey muttered something about his father having said nothing to him; and Ethel succeeded in preventing Daisy from resenting this answer.

She herself hoped to catch him in private, but he easily contrived to baffle this attempt, and was soon marching out of Stoneborough in a state of rampant independence, manhood, and resolute friends.h.i.+p, which nevertheless chose the way where he was least likely to encounter a little brown brougham.

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

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