The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain Part 44

'I bring you no certainty, Leonard. It is under consideration.'

'Thank you. You have done everything,' returned Leonard, quietly; 'and--' then pausing, he added, 'I know the day now--the day after my birthday.'

'Let us--let us hope,' said the Doctor, greatly agitated.

'Thank you,' again said Leonard; and there was a pause, during which Dr. May anxiously studied the face, which had become as pale and almost as thin as when the lad had been sent off to Coombe, and infinitely older in the calm steadfastness of every feature.

'You do not look well, Leonard.'

'No; I am not quite well; but it matters very little,' he said, with a smile. 'I am well enough to make it hard to believe how soon all sense and motion will be gone out of these fingers!' and he held up his hand, and studied the minutiae of its movements with a strange grave sort of curiosity.

'Don't--don't, Leonard!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'You may be able to bear it, but I cannot.'

'I thought you would not mind, you have so often watched death.'

'Yes; but--' and he covered his face with his hands.

'I wish it did not pain you all so much,' said Leonard, quietly. 'But for that, I can feel it to be better than if I had gone in the fever, when I had no sense to think or repent; or if I had--I hardly knew my own faults.'

'You seem much happier now, my boy.'

'Yes,' said Leonard. 'I am more used to the notion, and Mr. Wilmot has been so kind. Then I am to see Ave to-morrow, if she is well enough.

Henry has promised to bring her, and leave her alone with me; and I do hope--that I shall be able to convince her that it is not so very bad for me--and then she may be able to take comfort. You know she would, if she were nursing me now in my bed at Bankside; so why should she not when she sees that I don't think this any worse, but rather better?'

The Doctor was in no mood to think any comfort possible in thus losing one like Leonard, and he did not commit himself to an untruth. There was a silence again, and Leonard opened his book, and took out his etchings, one which he had already promised the Doctor, another for Aubrey, and at the third the Doctor exclaimed inarticulately with surprise and admiration.

It was a copy of the well-known Cross-bearing Form in the Magdalen College Chapel Altar-piece, drawn in pen and ink on a half-sheet of thick note-paper; but somehow, into the entire Face and Figure there was infused such an expression as now and then comes direct from the soul of the draughtsman--an inspiration entirely independent of manual dexterity, and that copies, however exact, fail to render, nay, which the artist himself fails to renew. The beauty, the meekness, the hidden Majesty of the Countenance, were conveyed in a marvellous manner, and were such as would bring a tear to the eye of the gazer, even had the drawing been there alone to speak for itself.

'This is your doing, Leonard?'

'I have just finished it. It has been one of my greatest comforts--'

'Ah!'

'Doing those lines;' and he pointed to the th.o.r.n.y Crown, 'I seem to get ashamed of thinking this hardness. Only think, Dr. May, from the very first moment the policeman took me in charge, n.o.body has said a rough word to me. I have never felt otherwise than that they meant justice to have its way as far as they knew, but they were all consideration for me. To think of that, and then go over the scoffs and scourgings!'--there was a bright glistening tear in Leonard's eye now--'it seems like child's play to go through such a trial as mine.'

'Yes! you have found the secret of willingness.'

'And,' added the boy, hesitating between the words, but feeling that he must speak them, as the best balm for the sorrow he was causing, 'even my little touch of the shame and scorn of this does make me know better what it must have been, and yet--so thankful when I remember why it was--that I think I could gladly bear a great deal more than this is likely to be.'

'Oh! my boy, I have no fears for you now.'

'Yes, yes--have fears,' cried Leonard, hastily. 'Pray for me! You don't know what it is to wake up at night, and know something is coming nearer and nearer--and then this--before one can remember all that blesses it--or the Night of that Agony--and that He knows what it is--'

'Do we not pray for you?' said Dr. May, fervently, 'in church and at home? and is not this an answer? Am I to take this drawing, Leonard, that speaks so much?'

'If--if you think Miss May--would let me send it to her? Thank you, it will be very kind of her. And please tell her, if it had not been for that time at Coombe, I don't know how I could ever have felt the ground under my feet. If I have one wish that never can be--'

'What wish, my dear, dear boy? Don't be afraid to say. Is it to see her?'

'It was,' said Leonard, 'but I did not mean to say it. I know it cannot be.'

'But, Leonard, she has said that if you wished it, she would come as if you were lying on your bed at home, and with more reverence.'

Large tears of grat.i.tude were swelling in Leonard's eyes, and he pressed the Doctor's hand, but still said, almost inarticulately, 'Ought she?'

'I will bring her, my boy. It will do her good to see how--how her pupil, as they have always called you in joke, Leonard, can be willing to bear the Cross after his Master. She has never let go for a moment the trust that it was well with you.'

'Oh! Dr. May, it was the one thing--and when I had gone against all her wishes. It is so good of her! It is the one thing--' and there was no doubt from his face that he was indeed happy.

And Dr. May went home that day softened and almost cheered, well-nigh as though he had had a promise of Leonard's life, and convinced that in the region to which the spirits of Ethel and her pupil could mount, resignation would silence the wailings of grief and sorrow; the things invisible were more than a remedy for the things visible.

That Ethel should see Leonard before the last, he was quite resolved; and Ethel, finding that so it was, left the _when_ in his hands, knowing the concession to be so great, that it must be met by grateful patience on her own side, treasuring the drawing meanwhile with feelings beyond speech. Dr. May did not wish the meeting to take place till he was really sure that all hope was at an end; he knew it would be a strong measure, and though he did not greatly care for the world in general, he did not want to offend Flora unnecessarily; in matters of propriety she was a little bit of a conscience to him, and though he would brave her or any one else when a thing was right, especially if it were to give one last moment of joy to Leonard, she was not to be set at naught till the utmost extremity.

And for one day, the sight of Averil would be enough. She had struggled into something sufficiently like recovery to be able to maintain her fitness for the exertion; and Henry had recognized that the unsatisfied pining was so preying on her as to hurt her more than the meeting and parting could do, since, little as he could understand how it was, he perceived that Leonard could be depended on for support and comfort. With him, indeed, Leonard had ever shown himself cheerful and resolute, speaking of anything rather than of himself and never grieving him with the sight of those failings of flesh and heart that would break forth where there was more congenial sympathy, yet where they were not a reproach.

So Averil, with many a promise to be 'good,' and strongly impressed with warnings that the chance of another meeting depended on the effects of this one, was laid back in the carriage, leaving poor little Minna to Mary's consolation. Minna was longing to go too, but Henry had forbidden it, and not even an appeal to Dr. May had prevailed; so she was taken home by Mary, and with a child's touching patience, was helped through the weary hours, giving wandering though gentle attention to Ella's eager display of the curiosities of the place, and explanations of the curious games and puzzles taught by 'Mr. Tom.'

Ethel, watching the sweet wistful face, and hearing the subdued voice, felt a reverence towards the child, as though somewhat of the shadow of her brother's cross had fallen on her.

The elder brother and sister meanwhile arrived at the building now only too familiar to one of them, and, under her thick veil, unconscious of the pitying looks of the officials, Averil was led, leaning on Henry's arm, along the whitewashed pa.s.sages, with their slate floors, and up the iron stairs, the clear, hard, light coldness chilling her heart with a sense of the stern, relentless, inevitable grasp in which the victim was held. The narrow iron door flew open at the touch of the turnkey; a hand was on her arm, but all swam round with her, and she only knew it was the well-known voice; she did not follow the words between her brothers and the turnkey about the time she was to be left there, but she gave a start and shudder when the door sprung fast again behind her, and at the same instant she felt herself upheld by an arm round her waist.

'Take off your bonnet, Ave; let me see you,' he said, himself undoing the strings, and removing it, then bending his face to hers for a long, almost insatiable kiss, as they stood strained in one intense embrace, all in perfect silence on the sister's part.

'I have been making ready for you,' he said at length, partly releasing her; 'you are to sit here;' and he deposited her, still perfectly pa.s.sive in his hands, upon his bed, her back against the wall. 'Put up your feet! There!' And having settled her to his satisfaction, he knelt down on the floor, one arm round her waist, one hand in hers, looking earnestly up into her face, with his soul in his eyes, her other hand resting on his shoulder.

'How are the little ones, Ave?'

'Very well. Minna so longed to come.'

'Better not,' said Leonard; 'she is so little, and these white walls might distress her fancy. They will remember our singing on the last Sunday evening instead. Do you remember, Ave, how they begged to stay on and on till it grew so dark that we could not see a word or a note, and went on from memory?' and he very softly hummed the restful cadence, dying away into

'Till in the ocean of Thy love We lose ourselves in Heaven above.'

'How can you bear to think of those dear happy days!'

'Because you will be glad of them by and by, said Leonard; 'and I am very glad of them now, though they might have been so much better, if only we had known.'

'They were the only happy days of all my life!'

'I hope not--I trust not, dearest. You may and ought to have much better and happier days to come.'

She shook her head, with a look of inexpressible anguish, almost of reproach.

'Indeed I mean it, Ave,' he said; 'I have thought it over many times, and I see that the discomfort and evil of our home was in the spirit of pride and rebellion that I helped you to nurse. It was like a wedge, driving us farther and farther apart; and now that it is gone, and you will close up again, when you are kind and yielding to Henry--what a happy peaceful home you may make out in the prairie land!'

'As if we could ever--'