The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain Part 62

returned Flora.

'I have heard you say so, but--'

'We have made girls sensible and clear-headed, till they have grown hard. They have been taught to despise little fears and illusions, and it is certainly not becoming.'

'We had not fears, we were taught to be sensible.'

'Yes, but it is in the influence of the time! It all tends to make girls independent.'

'That's very well for the fine folks you meet in your visits, but it does not account for my Daisy--always at home, under papa's eye--having turned nineteenth century--What is it, Flora? She is reverent in great things, but not respectful except to papa, and that would not have been respect in one of us--only he likes her sauciness.'

'That is it, partly.'

'No, I won't have that said,' exclaimed Ethel. 'Papa is the only softening influence in the house--the only one that is tender. You see it is unlucky that Gertrude has so few that she really does love, with anything either reverend or softening about them. She is always at war with Charles Cheviot, and he has not fun enough, is too lumbering altogether, to understand her, or set her down in the right way; and she domineers over Hector like the rest of us. I did hope the babies might have found out her heart, but, unluckily, she does not take to them. She is only bored by the fuss that Mary and Blanche make about them.

'You know we are all jealous of both Charles Cheviots, elder and younger.'

'I often question whether I should not have taken her down and made her ashamed of all the quizzing and teasing at the time of Mary's marriage.

But one cannot be always spoiling bright merry mischief, and I am only elder sister after all. It is a wonder she is as good to me as she is.'

'She never remembered our mother, poor dear.'

'Ah! that is the real mischief,' said Ethel. 'Mamma would have given the atmosphere of gentleness and discretion, and so would Margaret. How often I have been made, by the merest pained look, to know when what I said was saucy or in bad taste, and I--I can only look forbidding, or else blurt out a reproof that _will_ not come softly.'

'The youngest _must_ be spoilt,' said Flora, 'that's an ordinance of nature. It ends when a boy goes to school, and when a girl--'

'When?'

'When she marries--or when she finds out what trouble is,' said Flora.

'Is that all you can hold out to my poor Daisy?'

'Well, it is the way of the world. There is just now a reaction from sentiment, and it is the less feminine variety. The softness will come when there is a call for it. Never mind when the foundation is safe.'

'If I could only see that child heartily admiring and looking up! I don't mean love--there used to be a higher, n.o.bler reverence!'

'Such as you and Norman used to bestow on Shakespeare and Scott, and--the vision of c.o.c.ksmoor.'

'Not only _used_,' said Ethel.

'Yes, it is your soft side,' said Flora; 'it is what answers the purpose of sentiment in people like you. It is what I should have thought living with you would have put into any girl; but Gertrude has a satirical side, and she follows the age.'

'I wish you would tell her so--it is what she especially wants not to do! But the spirit of opposition is not the thing to cause tenderness.'

'No, you must wait for something to bring it out. She is very kind to my poor little Margaret, and I won't ask how she talks _of_ her.'

'Tenderly; oh yes, that she always would do.'

'There, then, Ethel, if she can talk tenderly of Margaret, there can't be much amiss at the root.'

'No; and you don't overwhelm the naughty girl with baby talk.'

'Like our happy, proud young mothers,' sighed Flora; and then letting herself out--'but indeed, Ethel, Margaret is very much improved. She has really begun to wish to be good. I think she is struggling with herself.'

'Something to love tenderly, something to reverence highly.' So meditated Ethel, as she watched her sunny-haired, open-faced Daisy, so unconquerably gay and joyous that she gave the impression of suns.h.i.+ne without shade. There are stages of youth that are in themselves unpleasing, and yet that are n.o.body's fault, nay, which may have within them seeds of strength. Tom's satire had fostered Daisy's too congenial spirit, and he reaped the consequence in the want of repose and sympathy that were driving him from home, and shutting him up within himself. Would he ever forgive that flippant saying, which Ethel had recollected with shame ever since--shame more for herself than for the child, who probably had forgotten, long ago, her 'shaft at random sent'?

Then Ethel would wonder whether, after all, her discontent with Gertrude's speeches was only from feeling older and graver, and perhaps from a certain resentment at finding how the course of time was wearing down the sharp edge of compa.s.sion towards Leonard.

A little more about Leonard was gathered when the time came of release for his friend the clerk Brown. This young man had an uncle at Paris, engaged in one of the many departments connected with steam that carry Englishmen all over the world, and Leonard obtained permission to write to Dr. Thomas May, begging him to call upon the uncle, and try if he could be induced to employ the penitent and reformed nephew under his own eye. It had been wise in Leonard to write direct, for if the request had been made through any one at home, Tom would have considered it as impossible; but he could not resist the entreaty, and his mission was successful. The uncle was ready to be merciful, and undertook all the necessary arrangements for, and even the responsibility of, bringing the ticket-of-leave man to Paris, where he found him a desk in his office. One of Tom's few detailed epistles was sent to Ethel after this arrival, when the uncle had told him how the nephew had spoken of his fellow-prisoner. It was to Leonard Ward that the young man had owed the inclination to open his heart to religious instruction, hitherto merely endured as a portion of the general infliction of the penalty, a supposed engine for dealing with the superst.i.tious, but entirely beneath his attention. The sight of the educated face had at first attracted him, but when he observed the reverential manner in chapel, he thought it mere acting the ''umble prisoner,' till he observed how un.o.btrusive, unconscious, and retiring was every token of devotion, and watched the eyes, brightened or softened in praise or in prayer, till he owned the genuineness and guessed the depth of both, then perceived in school how far removed his unknown comrade was from the mere superst.i.tious boor. This was the beginning. The rest had been worked out by the instruction and discipline of the place, enforced by the example, and latterly by the conversation, of his fellow-prisoner, until he had come forth sincerely repenting, and with the better hope for the future that his sins had not been against full light.

He declared himself convinced that Ward far better merited to be at large than he did, and told of the regard that uniform good conduct was obtaining at last, though not till after considerable persecution, almost amounting to personal danger from the worse sort of convicts, who regarded him as a spy, because he would not connive at the introduction of forbidden indulgences, and always stood by the authorities. Once his fearless interposition had saved the life of a warder, and this had procured him trust, and promotion to a cla.s.s where his companions were better conducted, and more susceptible to good influences, and among them Brown was sure that his ready submission and constant resolution to do his work were producing an effect. As to his spirits, Brown had never known him break down but once, and that was when he had come upon a curious fossil in the stone. Otherwise he was grave and contented, but never laughed or joked as even some gentlemen prisoners of more rank and age had been known to do. The music in the chapel was his greatest pleasure, and he had come to be regarded as an important element in the singing.

Very grateful was Dr. May to Tom for having learnt, and still more for having transmitted, all these details, and Ethel was not the less touched, because she knew they were to travel beyond Minster Street.

Those words of Mr. Wilmot's seemed to be working out their accomplishment; and she thought so the more, when in early spring one of Leonard's severe throat attacks led to his being sent after his recovery to a.s.sist the schoolmaster, instead of returning to the carpenter's shed; and he was found so valuable in the school that the master begged to retain his services.

That spring was a grievous one in Indiana. The war, which eighteen months previously was to have come to an immediate end, was still raging, and the successes that had once buoyed up the Northern States with hope had long since been chequered by terrible reverses. On, on, still fought either side, as though nothing could close the strife but exhaustion or extinction; and still ardent, still constant, through bereavement and privation, were either party to their blood-stained flag. Mordaunt Muller had fallen in one of the terrible battles on the Rappahannock; and Cora, while, sobbing in Averil's arms, had still confessed herself thankful that it had been a glorious death for his country's cause! And even in her fresh grief, she had not endeavoured to withhold her other brother, when, at the urgent summons of Government, he too had gone forth to join the army.

Cora was advised to return to her friends at New York, but she declared her intention of remaining to keep house with Cousin Deborah. Unless Averil would come with her, nothing should induce her to leave Ma.s.sissauga, certainly not while Ella and Averil were alternately laid low by the spring intermittent fever. Perhaps the fact was that, besides her strong affection for Averil, she felt that in her ignorance she had a.s.sisted her father in unscrupulously involving them in a hazardous and unsuccessful speculation, and that she was the more bound, in justice as well as in love and pity, to do her best for their a.s.sistance. At any rate, Rufus had no sooner left home, than she insisted on the three sisters coming to relieve her loneliness--in other words, in removing them from the thin ill-built frame house, gaping in every seam with the effects of weather, and with damp oozing up between every board of the floor, the pestiferous river-fog, the close air of the forest, and the view of the phantom trees, now decaying and falling one against another.

Cousin Deborah, who had learnt to love and pity the forlorn English girls, heartily concurred; and Averil consented, knowing that the dry house and pure air were the best hope of restoring Ella's health.

Averil and Ella quickly improved, grew stronger in the intervals, and suffered less during the attacks; but Minna, who in their own house had been less ill, had waited on both, and supplied the endless deficiencies of the kindly and faithful, but two-fisted Katty; Minna, whose wise and simple little head had never failed in sensible counsels, or tender comfort; Minna, whom the rudest and most self-important far-wester never disobliged, Minna, the peace-maker, the comfort and blessing--was laid low by fever, and fever that, as the experienced eyes of Cousin Deborah at once perceived, 'meant mischief.'

Then it was that the real kindliness of heart of the rough people of the West showed itself. The five wild young ladies, whose successive domestic services had been such trouble, and whose answer to a summons from the parlour had been, 'Did yer holler, Avy? I thort I heerd a scritch,' each, from Cleopatra Betsy to Hetta Mary, were constantly rus.h.i.+ng in to inquire, or to present questionable dainties and nostrums from their respective 'Mas'; the charwomen, whom Minna had coaxed in her blandest manner to save trouble to Averil and disgust to Henry, were officious in volunteers of nursing and sitting up, the black cook at the hotel sent choice fabrics of jelly and fragrant ice; and even Henry's rival, who had been so strong against the insolence of a pract.i.tioner showing no testimonials, no sooner came under the influence of the yearning, entreating, but ever-patient eyes, than his attendance became a.s.siduous, his interest in the case ardent.

Henry himself was in the camp, before Vicksburg, with his hands too full of piteous cases of wounds and fever to attempt the most hurried visit.

'Sister, dear,' said the soft slow voice, one day when Averil had been hoping her patient was asleep, 'are you writing to Henry?'

'Yes, my darling. Do you want to say anything?'

'Oh yes! so much;' and the eyes grew bright, and the breath gasping; 'please beg Henry--tell Henry--that I must--I can't bear it any longer if I don't--'

'You must what, dear child? Henry would let you do anything he could.'

'Oh, then, would he let me speak about dear Leonard?' and the child grew deadly white when the words were spoken; but her eyes still sought Averil's face, and grew terrified at the sight of the gush of tears.

'O, Ave, Ave, tell me only--he is not dead!' and as Averil could only make a sign, 'I do have such dreadful fancies about him, and I think I could sleep if I only knew what was really true.'

'You shall, dear child, you shall, without waiting to hear from Henry; I know he would let you.'

And only then did Averil know the full misery that Henry's decision had inflicted on the gentle little heart, in childish ignorance, imagining fetters and dungeons, even in her sober waking moods, and a prey to untold horrors in every dream, exaggerated by feverishness and ailment--horrors that, for aught she knew, might be veritable, and made more awful by the treatment of his name as that of one dead.

To hear of him as enjoying the open air and light of day, going to church, singing their own favourite hymn tunes, and often visited by Dr. May, was to her almost as great a joy as if she had heard of him at liberty. And Averil had a more than usually cheerful letter to read to her, one written in the infirmary during his recovery. His letters to her were always cheerful, but this one was particularly so, having been written while exhilarated by the relaxations permitted to convalescents, and by enjoying an unwonted amount of conversation with the chaplain and the doctor.

'So glad, so glad,' Minna was heard murmuring to herself again and again; her rest was calmer than it had been for weeks, and the doctor found her so much better that he trusted that a favourable change had begun.

But it was only a gleam of hope. The weary fever held its prey, and many as were the fluctuations, they always resulted in greater weakness; and the wandering mind was not always able to keep fast hold of the new comfort. Sometimes she would piteously clasp her sister's hand, and entreat, 'Tell me again;' and sometimes the haunting delirious fancies of chains and bars would drop forth from the tongue that had lost its self-control; yet even at the worst came the dear old recurring note, 'G.o.d will not let them hurt him, for he has not done it!' Sometimes, more trying to Averil than all, she would live over again the happy games with him, or sing their favourite hymns and chants, or she would be heard pleading, 'O, Henry, don't be cross to Leonard.'

Cora could not fail to remark the new name that mingled in the unconscious talk; but she had learnt to respect Averil's reserve, and she forbore from all questioning, trying even to warn Cousin Deborah, who, with the experience of an elderly woman, remarked, 'That she had too much to do to mind what a sick child rambled about. When Cora had lived to her age, she would know how unaccountably they talked.'