James Buchanan - "State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan"

Marcus Tullius Cicero - "Treatises on Friendship and Old Age "

Upton Sinclair - "Sylvia's Marriage"

Unkown - "The Journal of Abnormal Psychology vol 10"

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The Trial

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Trial




The sisters heard the storm from the drawing-room, and Gertrude grew
hotly indignant, and wanted Ethel to rush in to the rescue; but
Ethel, though greatly moved, knew that female interposition only
aggravated such matters, and restrained herself and her sister till
she heard Tom stride off. Then creeping in on tiptoe, she found the
boy sitting stunned and confounded by the novelty of the thing.

'What can it be all about, Ethel? I never had such a slanging in my
life?'

'I don't think Tom is quite well. He had a bad headache last night.'

Then I hope--I mean, I think--he must have made it worse! I know
mine aches, as if I had been next door to the great bell;' and he
leant against his sister.

'I am afraid you really were inattentive.'

'No worse than since the heart has gone out of everything. But that
was not all! Ethel, can it really be a disgrace, and desertion, and
all that, if I don't go on with those volunteers, when it makes me
sick to think of touching my rifle?' and his eyes filled with tears.

'It would be a great effort, I know,' said Ethel, smoothing his hair;
'but after all, you volunteered not for pleasure, but because your
country wanted defence.'

'The country? I don't care for it, since it condemned him, when he
was serving it.'

'He would not say that, Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that
you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were
the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I
were ashamed of what he was connected with.'

Aubrey tried to answer her sweet high-spirited smile, but he had been
greatly hurt and distressed, and the late reproach to his manhood
embittered his tears without making it easier to repress them; and
pushing away his chair, he darted up-stairs.

'Poor dear fellow! I've been very hard on him, and only blamed
instead of comforting,' thought Ethel sadly, as she slowly entered
the passage, 'what shall I think of, to make a break for both of
those two?'

'So you have been cockering your infant,' said Tom, meeting her.
'You mean to keep him a baby all his life.'

'Tom, I want to talk to you,' said she.

In expectation of her displeasure, he met it half way, setting his
back against the passage wall, and dogmatically declaring, 'You'll be
the ruin of him if you go on in this way! How is he ever to go
through the world if you are to be always wiping his tears with an
embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and cossetting him up like a blessed
little sucking lamb?'

'Of course he must rough it,' said Ethel, setting her back against
the opposite wall; 'I only want him to be hardened; but after a shock
like this, one cannot go on as if one was a stock or stake. Even a
machine would have its wheels out of order--'

'Well, well, but it is time that should be over.'

'So it is;' and as the sudden thought flashed on her, 'Tom, I want
you to reconsider your journey, that you gave up in the spring, and
take him--'

'I don't want to go anywhere,' he wearily said.

'Only it would be so good for him,' said Ethel earnestly; 'he really
ought to see something taller than the Minster tower, and you are the
only right person to take him, you are so kind to him.'

'For instance?' he said, smiling.

'Accidents will happen in the best regulated families; besides, he
did want shaking up. I dare say he will be the better for it.
There's the dinner-bell.'

To her surprise, she found his arm round her waist, and a kiss on her
brow. 'I thought I should have caught it,' he said; 'you are not
half a fool of a sister after all.'

Aubrey was not in the dining-room; and after having carved, Tom, in
some compunction, was going to look for him, when he made his
appearance in his uniform.

'Oho!' said the Doctor, surprised.

'There's to be a grand parade with the Whitford division,' he
answered; and no more was said.

Not till the eight o'clock twilight of the dripping August evening
did the family reassemble. Ethel had been preparing for a journey
that Mary and Gertrude were to make to Maplewood; and she did not
come down till her father had returned, when following him into the
drawing-room, she heard his exclamation, 'Winter again!'

For the fire was burning, Tom was sitting crumpled over it, with his
feet on the fender, and his elbows on his knees, and Aubrey in his
father's arm-chair, his feet over the side, so fast asleep that
neither entrance nor exclamation roused him; the room was pervaded
with an odour of nutmeg and port wine, and a kettle, a decanter, and
empty tumblers told tales. Now the Doctor was a hardy and abstemious
man, of a water-drinking generation; and his wife's influence had
further tended to make him--indulgent as he was--scornful of whatever
savoured of effeminacy or dissipation, so his look and tone were
sharp, and disregardful of Aubrey's slumbers.

'We got wet through,' said Tom; 'he was done up, had a shivering fit,
and I tried to prevent mischief.'

'Hm! said the Doctor, not mollified. 'Cold is always the excuse.
But another time don't teach your brother to make this place like a
fast man's rooms.'

Ethel was amazed at Tom's bearing this so well. With the slightest
possible wrinkle of the skin of his forehead, he took up the decanter
and carried it off to the cellaret.

'How that boy sleeps!' said his father, looking at him.

'He has had such bad nights!' said Ethel. 'Don't be hard on Tom, he
is very good about such things, and would not have done it without
need. He is so careful of Aubrey!'

'Too careful by half,' said the Doctor, smiling placably as his son
returned. 'You are all in a league to spoil that youngster. He
would be better if you would not try your hand on his ailments, but
would knock him about.'

'I never do that without repenting it,' said Tom; then, after a
pause, 'It is not spirit that is wanting, but you would have been
frightened yourself at his state of exhaustion.'

'Of collapse, don't you mean?' said the Doctor, with a little lurking
smile. 'However, it is vexatious enough; he had been gaining ground
all the year, and now he is regularly beaten down again.'

'Suppose I was to take him for a run on the Continent?'

'What, tired of the hospital?'

'A run now and then is duty, not pleasure,' replied Tom, quietly;
while Ethel burnt to avert from him these consequences of his
peculiar preference for appearing selfish.

'So much for railway days! That will be a new doctrine at
Stoneborough. Well, where do you want to go?'

'I don't want to go anywhere.'

Ethel would not have wondered to see him more sullen than he looked
at that moment. It was lamentable that those two never could
understand each other, and that either from Tom's childish faults,
his resemblance to his grandfather, or his habitual reserve, Dr. May
was never free from a certain suspicion of ulterior motives on his
part. She was relieved at the influx of the rest of the party,
including Richard; and Aubrey wakening, was hailed with
congratulations on the soundness of his sleep, whilst she looked at
Tom with a meaning smile as she saw her father quietly feel the boy's
hand and brow. The whole family were always nursing the lad, and
scolding one another for it.

Tom had put himself beside Ethel, under the shade of her urn, and she
perceived that he was ill at ease, probably uncertain whether any
confidences had been bestowed on her or Mary from the other side.
There was no hope that the topic would be avoided, for Richard began
with inquiries for Averil.

'She is working herself to death,' said Mary, sadly; 'but she says it
suits her.'

'And it does,' said the Doctor; 'she is stronger every day. There is
nothing really the matter with her.'

'Contrary blasts keep a ship upright,' said Gertrude, 'and she has
them in abundance. We found her in the midst of six people, all
giving diametrically opposite advice.'

'Dr. Spencer was really helping, and Mr. Wright was there about his
own affairs,' said Ethel, in a tone of repression.

'And Mrs. Ledwich wanted her to settle on the Ohio to assist the
runaway slaves,' continued Gertrude.

'It does not tease her as if she heard it,' said Mary.

'No,' said the Doctor, 'she moves about like one in a dream, and has
no instinct but to obey her brother.'

'Well, I am glad to be going,' said Daisy; 'it will be flat when all
the excitement is over, and we have not the fun of seeing Tom getting
rises out of Ave Ward.'

This time Tom could not repress a sudden jerk, and Ethel silenced her
sister by a hint that such references were not nice when people were
in trouble.

'By the bye,' said Aubrey, 'speaking of going away, what were you
saying while I was asleep? or was it a dream that I was looking
through Tom's microscope at a rifle bullet in the Tyrol?'

'An inspiration from Tom's brew,' said the Doctor.

'Weren't you saying anything?' said Aubrey, eagerly. 'I'm sure there
was something about duty and pleasure. Were you really talking of
it?'

'Tom was, and if it is to put some substance into those long useless
legs, I don't care if you do start off.'

Aubrey flashed into a fresh being. He had just been reading a book
about the Tyrol, and Tom not caring at all where they were to go,
this gave the direction. Aubrey rushed to borrow a continental
Bradshaw from Dr. Spencer, and the plan rapidly took form; with eager
suggestions thrown in by every one, ending with the determination to
start on the next Monday morning.

'That's settled,' said Tom, wearily, when he and Ethel, as often
happened, had lingered behind the rest; 'only, Ethel, there's one
thing. You must keep your eye on the Vintry Mill, and fire off a
letter to me if the fellow shows any disposition to bolt.'

'If I can possibly find out--'

'Keep your eyes open; and then Hazlitt has promised to let me know if
that cheque of Bilson's is cashed. If I am away, telegraph, and
meantime set my father on the scent. It may not hang that dog
himself, but it may save Leonard.'

'Oh, if it would come!'

'And meantime--silence, you know--'

'Very well;' then lingering, 'Tom, I am sure you did the right thing
by Aubrey, and so was papa afterwards.'

His brow darkened for a moment, but shaking it off he said, 'I'll do
my best for your cosset lamb, and bring him back in condition.'

'Thank you; I had rather trust him with you than any one.'

'And how is it that no one proposes a lark for you, old Ethel?' said
Tom, holding her so as to study her face. 'You look awfully elderly
and ragged.'

'Oh, I'm going to be left alone with the Doctor, and that will be the
greatest holiday I ever had.'

'I suppose it is to you,' said Tom, with a deep heavy sigh, perhaps
glad to have some ostensible cause for sighing.

'Dear Tom, when you are living here, and working with him--'

'Ah--h!' he said almost with disgust, 'don't talk of slavery to me
before my time. How I hate it, and everything else! Good night!'

'Poor Tom!' thought Ethel. 'I wish papa knew him better and would
not goad him. Will Averil ever wake to see what she has done, and
feel for him? Though I don't know why I should wish two people to be
unhappy instead of one, and there is weight enough already. O,
Leonard, I wonder if your one bitter affliction will shield you from
the others that may be as trying, and more tempting!'




CHAPTER XVIII



All bright hopes and hues of day
Have faded into twilight gray.--Christian Year


'No fear of Aubrey's failing,' said Tom; 'he has a better foundation
than nine-tenths of the lads that go up, and he is working like a
man.'

'He always did work heartily,' said Ethel, 'and with pleasure in his
work.'

'Ay, like a woman.'

'Like a scholar.'

'A scholar is a kind of woman. A man, when he's a boy, only works
because he can't help it, and afterwards for what he can get by it.'

'For what he can do with it would have a worthier sound.'

'Sound or sense, it is all the same.'

'Scaffolding granted, what is the building?'

Tom apparently thought it would be working like a woman to give
himself the trouble of answering; and Ethel went on in her own mind,
'For the work's own sake--for what can be got by it--for what can be
done with it--because it can't be helped--are--these all the springs
of labour here? Then how is work done in that solitary cell? Is it
because it can't be helped, or is it 'as the Lord's freeman'? And
when he can hear of Aubrey's change, will he take it as out of his
love, or grieve for having been the cause?'

For the change had been working in Aubrey ever since Leonard had
altered his career. The boy was at a sentimental age, and had the
susceptibility inseparable from home breeding; his desire to become a
clergyman had been closely connected with the bright visions of the
happy days at Coombe, and had begun to wane with the first thwarting
of Leonard's plans; and when the terrible catastrophe of the one
friend's life occurred, the other became alienated from all that they
had hoped to share together. Nor could even Dr. May's household be
so wholly exempt from the spirit of the age, that Aubrey was not
aware of the strivings and trials of faith at the University. He saw
what Harvey Anderson was, and knew what was passing in the world; and
while free from all doubts, shrank boyishly from the investigations
that he fancied might excite them. Or perhaps these fears of
possible scruples were merely his self-justification for gratifying
his reluctance.

At any rate, he came home from his two months' tour, brown, robust,
with revived spirits, but bent on standing an examination for the
academy at Woolwich. He had written about it several times before
his return, and his letters were, as his father said, 'so appallingly
sensible that perhaps he would change his mind.' But it was not
changed when he came home; and Ethel, though sorely disappointed, was
convinced by her own sense as well as by Richard's prudence, that
interference was dangerous. No one in Israel was to go forth to the
wars of the Lord save those who 'willingly offered themselves;' and
though grieved that her own young knight should be one of the many
champions unwilling to come forth in the Church's cause, she
remembered the ordeal to Norman's faith, and felt that the exertion
of her influence was too great a responsibility.

'You don't like this,' said Tom, after a pause. 'It is not my doing,
you know.'

'No, I did not suppose it was,' said Ethel. 'You would not withhold
any one in these days of exceeding want of able clergymen.'

'I told him it would be a grief at home,' added Tom, 'but when a lad
gets into that desperate mood, he always may be a worse grief if you
thwart him; and I give you credit, Ethel, you have not pulled the
curb.'

'Richard told me not.'

'Richard represents the common sense of the family when I am not at
home.'

Tom was going the next day to his course of study at the London
hospitals, and this--the late afternoon--was the first time that he
and his sister had been alone together. He had been for some little
time having these short jerks of conversation, beginning and breaking
off rather absently. At last he said, 'Do those people ever write?'

'Prisoners, do you mean? Not for three months.'

'No--exiles.'

'Mary has heard twice.'

He held out Mary's little leathern writing-case to her.

'O, Tom!'

'It is only Mary.'

Ethel accepted the plea, aware that there could be no treason between
herself and Mary, and moreover that the letters had been read by all
the family. She turned the key, looked them out, and standing by the
window to catch the light, began to read--

'You need not be afraid, kind Mary,' wrote Averil, on the first days
of her voyage; 'I am quite well, as well as a thing can be whose
heart is dried up. I am hardened past all feeling, and seem to be
made of India-rubber. Even my colour has returned--how I hate to see
it, and to hear people say my roses will surprise the delicate
Americans. Fancy, in a shop in London I met an old school-fellow,
who was delighted to see me, talked like old times, and insisted on
knowing where we were staying. I used to be very fond of her, but it
was as if I had been dead and was afraid she would find out I was a
ghost, yet I talked quite indifferently, and never faltered in my
excuses. When we embarked, it was no use to know it was the last of
England, where _he_ and you and home and life were left. How I
envied the poor girl, who was crying as if her heart would break!'

On those very words, broke the announcement of Mr. Cheviot. Tom
coolly held out his hand for the letters, so much as a matter of
course, that Ethel complied with his gesture, and he composedly
pocketed them, while she felt desperately guilty. Mary's own
entrance would have excited no compunction, Ethel would have said
that Tom wanted to hear of the voyage; but in the present case, she
could only blush, conscious that the guest recognized her sister's
property, and was wondering what business she had with it, and she
was unwilling to explain, not only on Tom's account, but because she
knew that Mr. Cheviot greatly disapproved of petitioning against the
remission of capital sentences, and thought her father under a
delusion.

After Tom's departure the next day, she found the letters in her
work-basket, and restored them to Mary, laughing over Mr. Cheviot's
evident resentment at the detection of her doings.

'I think it looked rather funny,' said Mary.

'I beg your pardon,' said Ethel, much astonished; 'but I thought, as
every one else had seen them--'

'Tom always laughed at poor Ave.'

'He is very different now; but indeed, Mary, I am sorry, since you
did not like it.'

'Oh!' cried Mary, discomfited by Ethel's apology, 'indeed I did not
mean that, I wish I had not said anything. You know you are welcome
to do what you please with all I have. Only,' she recurred, 'you
can't wonder that Mr. Cheviot thought it funny.'

'If he had any call to think at all,' said Ethel, who was one of
those who thought that Charles Cheviot had put a liberal
interpretation on Dr. May's welcome to Stoneborough. He had arrived
after the summer holidays as second master of the school, and at
Christmas was to succeed Dr. Hoxton, who had been absolutely
frightened from his chair by the commissions of inquiry that had
beset the Whichcote foundation; and in compensation was at present
perched on the highest niche sacred to conservative martyrdom in Dr.
May's loyal heart.

Charles Cheviot was a very superior man, who had great influence with
young boys, and was admirably fitted to bring about the much required
reformation in the school. He came frequently to discuss his
intentions with Dr. May, and his conversation was well worth being
listened to; but even the Doctor found three evenings in a week a
large allowance for good sense and good behaviour--the evenings
treated as inviolable even by old friends like Dr. Spencer and Mr.
Wilmot, the fast waning evenings of Aubrey's home life.

The rest were reduced to silence, chess, books, and mischief, except
when a treat of facetious small talk was got up for their benefit.
Any attempt of the ladies to join in the conversation was replied to
with a condescending levity that reduced Ethel to her girlhood's
awkward sense of forwardness and presumption; Mary was less
disconcerted, because her remarks were never so aspiring, and Harry's
wristbands sufficed her; but the never-daunted Daisy rebelled openly,
related the day's events to her papa, fearless of any presence, and
when she had grown tired of the guest's regular formula of expecting
to meet Richard, she told him that the adult school always kept
Richard away in the winter evenings; 'But if you want to see him, he
is always to be found at Cocksmoor, and he would be very glad of
help.'

'Did he express any such wish?' said Mr. Cheviot, looking rather
puzzled.

'Oh dear, no; only I thought you had so much time on your hands.'

'Oh no--oh no!' exclaimed Mary, in great confusion, 'Gertrude did not
mean--I am sure I don't know what she was thinking of.'

And at the first opportunity, Mary, for once in her life,
administered to Gertrude a richly-deserved reproof for sauciness and
contempt of improving conversation; but the consequence was a fancy
of the idle younglings to make Mary accountable for the 'infesting of
their evenings,' and as she was always ready to afford sport to the
household, they thus obtained a happy outlet for their drollery and
discontent, and the imputation was the more comical from his apparent
indifference and her serene composure; until one evening when, as the
bell rung, and mutterings passed between Aubrey and Gertrude, of 'Day
set,' and 'Cheviot's mountains lone,' the head of the family, for the
first time, showed cognizance of the joke, and wearily taking down
his slippered feet from their repose, said, 'Lone! yes, there's the
rub! I shall have to fix days of reception if Mary will insist on
being so attractive.'

Mary, with an instinct that she was blamed, began to be very sorry,
but broke off amid peals of merriment, and blushes that were less
easily extinguished; and which caused Ethel to tell each of the young
ones privately, that their sport was becoming boy and frog work, and
she would have no more of it. The Daisy was inclined to be restive;
but Ethel told her that many people thought this kind of fun could
never be safe or delicate. 'I have always said that it might be
quite harmless, if people knew where to stop--now show me that I am
right.'

And to Aubrey she put the question, whether he would like to
encourage Daisy in being a nineteenth-century young lady without
reticence?

However, as Mary heard no more of their mischievous wit, Ethel was
quite willing to let them impute to herself a delusion that the
schoolmaster was smitten with Mary, and to laugh with them in private
over all the ridiculous things they chose to say.

At last Flora insisted on Ethel's coming with her to make a distant
call, and, as soon as they were in the carriage, said, 'It was not
only for the sake of Mrs. Copeland, though it is highly necessary you
should go, but it is the only way of ever speaking to you, and I want
to know what all this is about Mary?'

'The children have not been talking their nonsense to you!'

'No one ever talks nonsense to me--intentionally, I mean--not even
you, Ethel; I wish you did. But I hear it is all over the town.
George has been congratulated, and so have I, and one does not like
contradicting only to eat it up again.'

'You always did hear everything before it was true, Flora.'

'Then is it going to be true?'

'O, Flora, can it be possible?' said Ethel, with a startled,
astonished look.

'Possible! Highly obvious and proper, as it seems to me. The only
doubt in my mind was whether it were not too obvious to happen.'

'He is always coming in,' said Ethel, 'but I never thought it was
really for that mischief! The children only laugh about it as the
most preposterous thing they can think of, for he never speaks to a
woman if he can help it.'

'That may not prevent him from wanting a good wife.'

'Wanting a wife--ay, as he would want a housekeeper, just because he
has got to the proper position for it; but is he to go and get our
bonny Mary in that way, just for an appendage to the mastership?'

'Well done, old Ethel! I'm glad to see you so like yourself. I
remember when we thought Mrs. Hoxton's position very sublime.'

'I never thought of positions!'

'Never! I know that very well; and I am not thinking of it now,
except as an adjunct to a very worthy man, whom Mary will admire to
the depths of her honest heart, and who will make her very happy.'

'Yes, I suppose if she once begins to like him, that he will,' said
Ethel, slowly; 'but I can't bring myself to swallow it yet. She has
never given in to his being a bore, but I thought that was her
universal benevolence; and he says less to her than to any one.'

'Depend upon it, he thinks he is proceeding selon les regles.'

'Then he ought to be flogged! Has he any business to think of my
Mary, without falling red-hot in love with her? Why, Hector was
regularly crazy that last half-year; and dear old Polly is worth ever
so much more than Blanche.'

'I must say you have fulfilled my desire of hearing you talk
nonsense, Ethel. Mary would never think of those transports.'

'She deserves them all the more.'

'Well, she is the party most concerned, though she will be a cruel
loss to all of us.'

'She will not go far, if--'

'Yes, but she will be the worse loss. You simple Ethel, you don't
think that Charles Cheviot will let her be the dear family fag we
have always made of her?'

'Oh no--that always was wrong.'

'And living close by, she will not come on a visit, all festal, to
resume home habits. No, you must make up your mind, Ethel--_if,_ as
you say, _if_--he will be a man for monopolies, and he will resent
anything that he thinks management from you. I suspect it is a real
sign of the love that you deny, that he has ventured on the sister of
a clever woman, living close by, and a good deal looked up to.'

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