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The Trial

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Trial



A Web Page for Miss Yonge may be found at www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm.





THE TRIAL

or

MORE LINKS OF THE DAISY CHAIN




CHAPTER I



Quand on veut dessecher un marais, on ne fait pas voter les
grenouilles. --Mme. EMILE. DE GIRADIN


'Richard? That's right! Here's a tea-cup waiting for you,' as the
almost thirty-year-old Incumbent of Cocksmoor, still looking like a
young deacon, entered the room with his quiet step, and silent
greeting to its four inmates.

'Thank you, Ethel. Is papa gone out?'

'I have not seen him since dinner-time. You said he was gone out
with Dr. Spencer, Aubrey?'

'Yes, I heard Dr. Spencer's voice--"I say, Dick"--like three notes of
consternation,' said Aubrey; 'and off they went. I fancy there's
some illness about in the Lower Pond Buildings, that Dr. Spencer has
been raging so long to get drained.'

'The knell has been ringing for a little child there,' added Mary;
'scarlatina, I believe--'

'But, Richard,' burst forth the merry voice of the youngest, 'you
must see our letters from Edinburgh.'

'You have heard, then? It was the very thing I came to ask.'

'Oh yes! there were five notes in one cover,' said Gertrude. 'Papa
says they are to be laid up in the family archives, and labelled "The
Infants' Honeymoon."'

'Papa is very happy with his own share,' said Ethel. 'It was signed,
"Still his own White Flower," and it had two Calton Hill real daisies
in it. I don't know when I have seen him more pleased.'

'And Hector's letter--I can say that by heart,' continued Gertrude.
'"My dear Father, This is only to say that she is the darlint, and
for the pleasure of subscribing myself--Your loving SON,"--the son as
big as all the rest put together.'

'I tell Blanche that he only took her for the pleasure of being my
father's son,' said Aubrey, in his low lazy voice.

'Well,' said Mary, 'even to the last, I do believe he had as soon
drive papa out as walk with Blanche. Flora was quite scandalized at
it.'

'I should not imagine that George had often driven my father out,'
said Aubrey, again looking lazily up from balancing his spoon.

Ethel laughed; and even Richard smiled; then recovering herself, she
said, 'Poor Hector, he never could call himself son to any one
before.'

'He has not been much otherwise here,' said Richard.

'No,' said Ethel; 'it is the peculiar hardship of our weddings to
break us up by pairs, and carry off two instead of one. Did you ever
see me with so shabby a row of tea-cups? When shall I have them come
in riding double again?'

The recent wedding was the third in the family; the first after a
five years' respite. It ensued upon an attachment that had grown up
with the young people, so that they had been entirely one with each
other; and there had been little of formal demand either of the
maiden's affection or her father's consent; but both had been implied
from the first. The bridegroom was barely of age, the bride not
seventeen, and Dr. May had owned it was very shocking, and told
Richard to say nothing about it! Hector had coaxed and pleaded,
pathetically talked of his great empty house at Maplewood, and
declared that till he might take Blanche away, he would not leave
Stoneborough; he would bring down all sorts of gossip on his
courtship, he would worry Ethel, and take care she finished nobody's
education. What did Blanche want with more education? She knew
enough for him. Couldn't Ethel be satisfied with Aubrey and
Gertrude? or he dared say she might have Mary too, if she was
insatiable. If Dr. May was so unnatural as to forbid him to hang
about the house, why, he would take rooms at the Swan. In fact, as
Dr. May observed, he treated him to a modern red-haired Scotch
version of 'Make me a willow cabin at your gate;' and as he heartily
loved Hector and entirely trusted him, and Blanche's pretty head was
a wise and prudent one, what was the use of keeping the poor lad
unsettled?

So Mrs. Rivers, the eldest sister and the member's wife, had come to
arrange matters and help Ethel, and a very brilliant wedding it had
been. Blanche was too entirely at home with Hector for flutterings
or agitations, and was too peacefully happy for grief at the
separation, which completed the destiny that she had always seen
before her. She was a picture of a bride; and when she and Hector
hung round the Doctor, insisting that Edinburgh should be the first
place they should visit, and calling forth minute directions for
their pilgrimage to the scenes of his youth, promising to come home
and tell him all, no wonder he felt himself rather gaining a child
than losing one. He was very bright and happy; and no one but Ethel
understood how all the time there was a sensation that the present
was but a strange dreamy parody of that marriage which had been the
theme of earlier hopes.

The wedding had taken place shortly after Easter; and immediately
after, the Rivers family had departed for London, and Tom May had
returned to Cambridge, leaving the home party at the minimum of four,
since, Cocksmoor Parsonage being complete, Richard had become only a
daily visitor instead of a constant inhabitant.

There he sat, occupying his never idle hands with a net that he kept
for such moments, whilst Ethel sat behind her urn, now giving out its
last sighs, profiting by the leisure to read the county newspaper,
while she continually filled up her cup with tea or milk as occasion
served, indifferent to the increasing pallor of the liquid.

Mary, a 'fine young woman,' as George Rivers called her, of blooming
face and sweet open expression, had begun, at Gertrude's entreaty, a
game of French billiards. Gertrude had still her childish sunny face
and bright hair, and even at the trying age of twelve was pleasing,
chiefly owing to the caressing freedom of manner belonging to an
unspoilable pet. Her request to Aubrey to join the sport had been
answered with a half petulant shake of the head, and he flung himself
into his father's chair, his long legs hanging over one arm--an
attitude that those who had ever been under Mrs. May's discipline
thought impossible in the drawing-room; but Aubrey was a rival pet,
and with the family characteristics of aquiline features, dark gray
eyes, and beautiful teeth, had an air of fragility and easy languor
that showed his exercise of the immunities of ill-health. He had
been Ethel's pupil till Tom's last year at Eton, when he was sent
thither, and had taken a good place; but his brother's vigilant and
tender care could not save him from an attack on the chest, that
settled his public-school education for ever, to his severe
mortification, just when Tom's shower of honours was displaying to
him the sweets of emulation and success. Ethel regained her pupil,
and put forth her utmost powers for his benefit, causing Tom to
examine him at each vacation, with adjurations to let her know the
instant he discovered that her task of tuition was getting beyond
her. In truth, Tom fraternally held her cheap, and would have
enjoyed a triumph over her scholarship; but to this he had not
attained, and in spite of his desire to keep his brother in a
salutary state of humiliation, candour wrung from him the admission
that, even in verses, Aubrey did as well as other fellows of his
standing.

Conceit was not Aubrey's fault. His father was more guarded than in
the case of his elder sons, and the home atmosphere was not such as
to give the boy a sense of superiority, especially when diligently
kept down by his brother. Even the half year at Eton had not
produced superciliousness, though it had given Eton polish to the
home-bred manners; it had made sisters valuable, and awakened a
desire for masculine companionship. He did not rebel against his
sister's rule; she was nearly a mother to him, and had always been
the most active president of his studies and pursuits; and he was
perfectly obedient and dutiful to her, only asserting his equality,
in imitation of Harry and Tom, by a little of the good-humoured
raillery and teasing that treated Ethel as the family butt, while she
was really the family authority.

'All gone, Ethel,' he said, with a lazy smile, as Ethel mechanically,
with her eyes on the newspaper, tried all her vessels round, and
found cream-jug, milk-jug, tea-pot, and urn exhausted; 'will you have
in the river next?'

'What a shame!' said Ethel, awakening and laughing. 'Those are the
tea-maker's snares.'

'Do send it away then,' said Aubrey, 'the urn oppresses the
atmosphere.'

'Very well, I'll make a fresh brew when papa comes home, and perhaps
you'll have some then. You did not half finish to-night.'

Aubrey yawned; and after some speculation about their father's
absence, Gertrude went to bed; and Aubrey, calling himself tired,
stood up, stretched every limb portentously, and said he should go
off too. Ethel looked at him anxiously, felt his hand, and asked if
he were sure he had not a cold coming on. 'You are always thinking
of colds,' was all the satisfaction she received.

'What has he been doing?' said Richard.

'That is what I was thinking. He was about all yesterday afternoon
with Leonard Ward, and perhaps may have done something imprudent in
the damp. I never know what to do. I can't bear him to be a coddle;
yet he is always catching cold if I let him alone. The question is,
whether it is worse for him to run risks, or to be thinking of
himself.'

'He need not be doing that,' said Richard; 'he may be thinking of
your wishes and papa's.'

'Very pretty of him and you, Ritchie; but he is not three parts of a
boy or man who thinks of his womankind's wishes when there is
anything spirited before him.'

'Well, I suppose one may do one's duty without being three parts of a
boy,' said Richard, gravely.

'I know it is true that some of the most saintly characters have been
the more spiritual because their animal frame was less vigorous; but
still it does not content me.'

'No, the higher the power, the better, of course, should the service
be. I was only putting you in mind that there is compensation. But
I must be off. I am sorry I cannot wait for papa. Let me know what
is the matter to-morrow, and how Aubrey is.'

Richard went; and the sisters took up their employments--Ethel
writing to the New Zealand sister-in-law her history of the wedding,
Mary copying parts of a New Zealand letter for her brother, the
lieutenant in command of a gun-boat on the Chinese coast. Those
letters, whether from Norman May or his wife, were very delightful,
they were so full of a cheerful tone of trustful exertion and
resolution, though there had been perhaps more than the natural
amount of disappointments. Norman's powers were not thought of the
description calculated for regular mission work, and some of the
chief aspirations of the young couple had had to be relinquished at
the voice of authority without a trial. They had received the charge
of persons as much in need of them as unreclaimed savages, but to
whom there was less apparent glory in ministering. A widespread
district of very colonial colonists, and the charge of a college for
their uncultivated sons, was quite as troublesome as the most ardent
self-devotion could desire; and the hardships and disagreeables,
though severe, made no figure in history--nay, it required ingenuity
to gather their existence from Meta's bright letters, although, from
Mrs. Arnott's accounts, it was clear that the wife took a quadruple
share. Mrs. Rivers had been heard to say that Norman need not have
gone so far, and sacrificed so much, to obtain an under-bred English
congregation; and even the Doctor had sighed once or twice at having
relinquished his favourite son to what was dull and distasteful; but
Ethel could trust that this unmurmuring acceptance of the less
striking career, might be another step in the discipline of her
brother's ardent and ambitious nature. It is a great thing to
sacrifice, but a greater to consent not to sacrifice in one's own
way.

Ethel sat up for her father, and Mary would not go to bed and leave
her, so the two sisters waited till they heard the latch-key. Ethel
ran out, but her father was already on the stairs, and waved her
back.

'Here is some tea. Are you not coming, papa?--it is all here.'

'Thank you, I'll just go and take off this coat;' and he passed on to
his room.

'I don't like that,' said Ethel, returning to the drawing-room, where
Mary was boiling up the kettle, and kneeling down to make some toast.

'Why, what's the matter?'

'I have never known him go and change his coat but when some
infectious thing has been about. Besides, he did not wait to let me
help him off with it.'

In a few seconds the Doctor came down in his dressing-gown, and let
himself be put into his easy-chair; his two daughters waiting on him
with fond assiduity, their eyes questioning his fagged weary face,
but reading there fatigue and concern that made them--rather awe-
struck--bide their time till it should suit him to speak. Mary was
afraid he would wait till she was gone; dear old Mary, who at twenty-
two never dreamt of regarding herself as on the same footing with her
three years' senior, and had her toast been browner, would have
relieved them of her presence at once. However, her father spoke
after his first long draught of tea.

'Well! How true it is that judgments are upon us while we are
marrying and giving in marriage!'

'What is it, papa? Not the scarlatina?'

'Scarlatina, indeed!' he said contemptuously. 'Scarlet fever in the
most aggravated form. Two deaths in one house, and I am much
mistaken if there will not be another before morning.'

'Who, papa?' asked Mary.

'Those wretched Martins, in Lower Pond Buildings, are the worst. No
wonder, living in voluntary filth; but it is all over the street--
will be all over the town unless there's some special mercy on the
place.'

'But how has it grown so bad,' said Ethel, 'without our having even
heard of it!'

'Why--partly I take shame to myself--this business of Hector and
Blanche kept Spencer and me away last dispensary day; and partly it
was that young coxcomb, Henry Ward, thought it not worth while to
trouble me about a simple epidemic. Simple epidemic indeed!'
repeated Dr. May, changing his tone from ironical mimicry to hot
indignation. 'I hope he will be gratified with its simplicity! I
wonder how long he would have gone on if it had not laid hold on
him.'

'You don't mean that he has it?'

'I do. It will give him a practical lesson in simple epidemics.'

'And Henry Ward has it!' repeated Mary, looking so much dismayed that
her father laughed, saying--

'What, Mary thinks when it comes to fevers being so audacious as to
lay hold of the doctors, it is time that they should be put a stop
to.'

'He seems to have petted it and made much of it,' said Ethel; 'so no
wonder! What could have possessed him?'

'Just this, Ethel; and it is only human nature after all. This young
lad comes down, as Master Tom will do some day, full of his lectures
and his hospitals, and is nettled and displeased to find his father
content to have Spencer or me called in the instant anything serious
is the matter.'

'But you are a physician, papa,' said Mary.

'No matter for that, to Mr. Henry I'm an old fogie, and depend upon
it, if it were only the giving a dose of salts, he would like to have
the case to himself. These poor creatures were parish patients, and
I don't mean that his treatment was amiss. Spencer is right, it was
an atmosphere where there was no saving anyone, but if he had not
been so delighted with his own way, and I had known what was going
on, I'd have got the Guardians and the Town Council and routed out
the place. Seventeen cases, and most of them the worst form!'

'But what was Mr. Ward about?

'"Says I to myself, here's a lesson for me;
This man's but a picture of what I shall be,"

'when Master Tom gets the upper hand of me,' returned Dr. May. 'Poor
Ward, who has run to me in all his difficulties these thirty years,
didn't like it at all; but Mr. Henry was so confident with his simple
epidemic, and had got him in such order, that he durst not speak.'

'And what brought it to light at last?'

'Everything at once. First the clerics go to see about the family
where the infant died, and report to Spencer; he comes after me, and
we start to reconnoitre. Then I am called in to see Shearman's
daughter--a very ugly case that--and coming out I meet poor Ward
himself, wanting me to see Henry, and there's the other boy sickening
too. Then I went down and saw all those cases in the Lower Ponds,
and have been running about the town ever since to try what can be
done, hunting up nurses, whom I can't get, stirring dishes of skim
milk, trying to get the funerals over to-morrow morning by daybreak.
I declare I have hardly a leg to stand on.'

'Where was Dr. Spencer?'

'I've nearly quarrelled with Spencer. Oh! he is in high feather! he
will have it that the fever rose up bodily, like Kuhleborn, out of
that unhappy drain he is always worrying about, when it is a regular
case of scarlet fever, brought in by a girl at home from service; but
he will have it that his theory is proved. Then I meant him to keep
clear of it. He has always been liable to malaria and all that sort
of thing, and has not strength for an illness. I told him to mind
the ordinary practice for me; and what do I find him doing the next
thing, but operating upon one of the worst throats he could find! I
told him he was as bad as young Ward; I hate his irregular practice.
I'll tell you what,' he said, vindictively, as if gratified to have
what must obey him, 'you shall all go off to Cocksmoor to-morrow
morning at seven o'clock.'

'You forget that we two have had it,' said Mary.

'Which of you?'

'All down to Blanche.'

'Never mind for that. I shall have enough to do without a sick house
at home. You can perform quarantine with Richard, and then go to
Flora, if she will have you. Well, what are you dawdling about? Go
and pack up.'

'Papa,' said Ethel, who had been abstracted through all the latter
part of the conversation, 'if you please, we had better not settle my
going till to-morrow morning.'

'Come, Ethel, you have too much sense for panics. Don't take
nonsense into your head. The children can't have been in the way of
it.'

'Stay, papa,' said Ethel, her serious face arresting the momentary
impatience of fatigue and anxiety, 'I am afraid Aubrey was a good
while choosing fishing-tackle at Shearman's yesterday with Leonard
Ward; and it may be nothing, but he did seem heavy and out of order
to-night; I wish you would look at him as you go up.'

Dr. May stood still for a few moments, then gave one long gasp, made
a few inquiries, and went up to Aubrey's room. The boy was fast
asleep; but there was that about him which softened the weary
sharpness of his father's manner, and caused him to desire Ethel to
look from the window whence she could see whether the lights were out
in Dr. Spencer's house. Yes, they were.

'Never mind. It will make no real odds, and he has had enough on his
hands to-day. The boy will sleep quietly enough to-night, so let us
all go to bed.'

'I think I can get a mattress into his room without waking him, if
you will help me, Mary,' said Ethel.

'Nonsense,' said her father, decidedly. 'Mary is not to go near him
before she takes Gertrude to Cocksmoor; and you, go to your own bed
and get a night's rest while you can.'

'You won't stay up, papa.'

'I--why, it is all I can do not to fall asleep on my feet. Good
night, children.'

'He does not trust himself to think or to fear,' said Ethel. 'Too
much depends on him to let himself be unstrung.'

'But, Ethel, you will not leave, dear Aubrey.'

'I shall keep his door open and mine; but papa is right, and it will
not do to waste one's strength. In case I should not see you before
you go--'

'Oh, but, Ethel, I shall come back! Don't, pray don't tell me to
stay away. Richard will have to keep away for Daisy's sake, and you
can't do all alone--nurse Aubrey and attend to papa. Say that I may
come back.'

Well, Mary, I think you might,' said Ethel, after a moment's thought.
'If it were only Aubrey, I could manage for him; but I am more
anxious about papa.'

'You don't think he is going to have it?'

'Oh no, no,' said Ethel, 'he is what he calls himself, a seasoned
vessel; but he will be terribly overworked, and unhappy, and he must
not come home and find no one to talk to or to look cheerful. So,
Mary, unless he gives any fresh orders, or Richard thinks it will
only make things worse, I shall be very glad of you.'

Mary had never clung to her so gratefully, nor felt so much honoured.
'Do you think he will have it badly?' she asked timidly.

'I don't think at all about it,' said Ethel, something in her
father's manner. 'If we are to get through all this, Mary, it must
not be by riding out on perhapses. Now let us put Daisy's things
together, for she must have as little communication with home as
possible.'

Ethel silently and rapidly moved about, dreading to give an interval
for tremblings of heart. Five years of family prosperity had passed,
and there had been that insensible feeling of peace and immunity from
care which is strange to look back upon when one hour has drifted
from smooth water to turbid currents. There was a sort of awe in
seeing the mysterious gates of sorrow again unclosed; yet, darling of
her own as Aubrey was, Ethel's first thoughts and fears were
primarily for her father. Grief and alarm seemed chiefly to touch
her through him, and she found herself praying above all that he
might be shielded from suffering, and might be spared a renewal of
the pangs that had before wrung his heart.

By early morning every one was astir; and Gertrude, bewildered and
distressed, yet rather enjoying the fun of staying with Richard, was
walking off with Mary.

Soon after, Dr. Spencer was standing by the bedside of his old
patient, Aubrey, who had been always left to his management.

'Ah, I see,' he said, with a certain tone of satisfaction, 'for once
there will be a case properly treated. Now, Ethel, you and I will
show what intelligent nursing can do.'

'I believe you are delighted,' growled Aubrey.

'So should you be, at the valuable precedent you will afford.'

'I've no notion of being experimented on to prove your theory,' said
Aubrey, still ready for lazy mischief.

For be it known that the roving-tempered Dr. Spencer had been on fire
to volunteer to the Crimean hospitals, and had unwillingly sacrificed
the project, not to Dr. May's conviction that it would be fatal in
his present state of health, but to Ethel's private entreaty that he
would not add to her father's distress in the freshness of Margaret's
death, and the parting with Norman. He had never ceased to mourn
over the lost opportunity, and to cast up to his friend the
discoveries he might have made; while Dr. May declared that if by any
strange chance he had come back at all, he would have been so rabid
on improved nursing and sanatory measures, that there would have been
no living with him.

It must be owned that Dr. May was not very sensible to what his
friend called Stoneborough stinks. The place was fairly healthy, and
his 'town councillor's conservatism,' and hatred of change, as well
as the amusement of skirmishing, had always made him the champion of
things as they were; and in the present emergency the battle whether
the enemy had travelled by infection, or was the product of the Pond
Buildings' miasma, was the favourite enlivenment of the disagreeing
doctors, in their brief intervals of repose in the stern conflict
which they were waging with the fever--a conflict in which they had
soon to strive by themselves, for the disease not only seized on
young Ward, but on his father; and till medical assistance was sent
from London, they had the whole town on their hands, and for nearly a
week lived without a night's rest.

The care of the sick was a still greater difficulty. Though Aubrey
was never in danger, and Dr. Spencer's promise of the effects of
'intelligent nursing' was fully realized, Ethel and Mary were so
occupied by him, that it was a fearful thing to guess how it must
fare with those households where the greater number were laid low,
and in want of all the comforts that could do little.

The clergy worked to the utmost; and a letter of Mr. Wilmot's
obtained the assistance of two ladies from a nursing sisterhood, who
not only worked incredible wonders with their own hands among the
poor, but made efficient nurses of rough girls and stupid old women.
Dr. May, who had at first, in his distrust of innovation, been averse
to the importation--as likely to have no effect but putting nonsense
into girls' heads, and worrying the sick poor--was so entirely
conquered, that he took off his hat to them across the street,
importuned them to drink tea with his daughters, and never came home
without dilating on their merits for the few minutes that intervened
between his satisfying himself about Aubrey and dropping asleep in
his chair. The only counter demonstration he reserved to himself was
that he always called them 'Miss What-d'ye-call-her,' and 'Those gems
of women,' instead of Sister Katherine and Sister Frances.

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