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The Trial

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Trial




'What is it, my dear? what have you been doing?' said the Doctor,
looking in amazement from the boy to Leonard, who was covered with
blood. 'They told me you had fallen off the Minster tower!'

'Yes I did,' said Dickie; 'I reached after Aunt Daisy's hat, but I
fell on the roof, and I was sliding, sliding down to the wall, but
there was a window, and the glass broke and cut me, but I got my feet
against the bottom of it, and held on by the iron bar, till Leonard
came and took me down;' and he lay back on the pillow, quiet and
exhausted, but bright-eyed and attentive as ever, listening to
Leonard's equally brief version of the adventure.

'Didn't he save my life, grandpapa?' said the boy, at the close.

'Twice over, you may say,' added the surgeon, and his words as to the
nature of the injury manifested that all had depended on the
immediate stoppage of the haemorrhage. With so young a child, delay
from indecision or want of resource would probably have been fatal.

'There would have been no doing anything, if this little man had not
been so good and sensible,' said Leonard, leaning over him.

'And I did not cry. You will tell papa I did not cry,' said Dickie,
eagerly, but only half gratified by such girlish treatment as that
agitated kiss of his grandfather, after being a little bit of a hero;
but then Dickie's wondering eyes really beheld such another kiss
bestowed over his head upon Leonard, and quite thought there were
tears on grandpapa's cheeks. Perhaps old gentlemen could do what was
childish in little boys.

Dickie was to be transported home. He wished to be carried by
Leonard, but the brougham was at the door, and he had to content
himself with being laid on the seat, with his friend to watch over
him, the Doctor pointing out that Leonard was a savage spectacle for
the eyes of Stoneborough, and hurrying home by the short cut. Ethel
met him in extreme alarm. Gertrude's half-restored senses had been
totally scattered by the sight of the crimson traces on the spot of
Leonard's operations, and she had been left to Mary's care; while
Ethel and Aubrey had hastened home, and not finding any one there,
the latter had dashed off to Bankside, whilst Ethel waited, arranging
the little fellow's bed, and trying to trust to Leonard's message,
and not let her mind go back to that fearful day of like waiting,
sixteen years ago, nor on to what she might have to write to Norman
and Meta of the charge they had sent to her. Her father's cheerful
face at first was a pang, and then came the rebound of gladness at
the words. 'He is coming. No fear for him, gallant little man--
thanks for God's mercy, and to that noble fellow, Leonard.'

At the same moment Aubrey burst in--'No one at Wright's--won't be in
no one knows how long! What is to become of us?' And he sank down
on a chair.

'Ay, what would become of any of us, if no one had a better pate than
yours, sir?' said Dr. May. 'You have one single perfection, and you
had better make the most of it--that of knowing how to choose your
friends. There's the carriage.'

After a moment's delay, the cushion was lifted out with the little
wounded cavalier, still like a picture; for, true to his humming-bird
nature, a few scarcely-conscious movements of his hands had done away
with looks of disarray--the rich glossy curls were scarcely
disordered, and no stains of blood had adhered to the upper part of
his small person, whereas Leonard was a ghastly spectacle from head
to foot.

'So, Master Dicky-bird,' said Dr. May, as they rested him a moment on
the hall-table, 'give me that claw of yours. Yes, you'll do very
well, only you must go to bed now; and, mind, whatever you did when
you were in Fairy-land, we don't fly here in Stoneborough--and it
does not answer.'

'I am not to go to bed for being naughty, am I?' said Dickie, his
brave white lip for the first time quivering; 'indeed, I did not know
it was wrong.'

The poor little man's spirits were so exhausted, that the reassurance
on this head absolutely brought the much-dreaded tears into his eyes;
and he could only be carried up gently to his bed, and left to be
undressed by his aunt, so great an aggravation to the troubles of
this small fragment of independence, that it had almost overset his
courtesy and self-command. There was no contenting him till he had
had all traces of the disaster washed from face and hands, and the
other foot; and then, over his tea, though his little clear chirrup
was weak, he must needs give a lucid description of Leonard's
bandaging, in the midst of which came a knock at the door, and a
gasping voice--'I'll be quite quiet--indeed I will! Only just let me
come in and kiss him, and see that he is safe.'

'O, Auntie Daisy, have you got your hat?'

Wan, tear-stained, dishevelled, Gertrude bit her lip to save an
outburst, gave the stipulated kiss, and retreated to Mary, who stood
in the doorway like a dragon.

'Auntie Daisy has been crying,' said Dickie, turning his eyes back to
Ethel. 'Please tell her I shall be well very soon, and then I'll go
up again and try to get her hat, if I may have a hook and line--I'll
tell you how.'

'My dear Dickie, you had better lie down, and settle it as you go to
sleep,' said Ethel, her flesh creeping at the notion of his going up
again.

'But if I go to sleep now, I shall not know when to say my prayers.'

'Had you not better do so now, Dickie?'

Next came the child's scruple about not kneeling; but at last he was
satisfied, if Aunt Ethel would give him his little book out of the
drawer--that little delicately-illuminated book with the pointed
writing and the twisted cipher, Meta's hand in every touch.
Presently he looked up, and said: 'Aunt Ethel, isn't there a verse
somewhere about giving the angels charge? I want you to find it for
me, for I think they helped me to hold on, and helped Leonard upon
the narrow place. You know they are sure to be flying about the
church.'

Ethel read the ninety-first Psalm to him. He listened all through,
and thanked her; but in a few minutes more he was fast asleep. As
she left the room she met Leonard coming down and held out her hands
to him with a mute intensity of thanks, telling him, in a low voice,
what Dickie had said of the angels' care.

'I am sure it was true,' said Leonard. 'What else could have saved
the brave child from dizziness?'

Down-stairs Leonard's reception from Dr. May was, 'Pretty well for a
nervous man!'

'Anybody can do what comes to hand.'

'I beg your pardon. Some bodies lose their wits, like your friend
Aubrey, who tells me, if he had stood still, he would have fainted
away. As long as nerves can do what comes to hand, they need not be
blamed, even if they play troublesome tricks at other times, as I
suspect they are doing now.'

'Yes; my face is aching a little.'

'Not to say a great deal,' said the Doctor. 'Well, I am not going to
pity you; for I think you can feel to-day that most of us would be
glad to be in your place!'

'I am very glad,' said Leonard.

'You remember that child's parents? No, you have grown so old, that
I am always forgetting what a boy you ought to be; but if you had
ever seen the tenderness of his father, and that sunbeam of a Meta,
you would know all the more how we bless you for what you have spared
them. Leonard, if anything had been needed to do so, you have won to
yourself such a brother in Norman as you have in Aubrey!'

Meantime Ethel was soothing Gertrude, to whom the shock had been in
proportion to the triumphal heights of her careless gaiety. Charles
Cheviot had come in while his wife was restoring her; and he had
plainly said what no one else would have intimated to the spoilt
darling--that the whole accident had been owing to her recklessness,
and that he had always expected some fatal consequences to give her a
lesson!

Gertrude had been fairly cowed by such unwonted treatment; and when
he would only take her home on condition of composure and self-
command, her trembling limbs obliged her to accept his arm, and he
subdued her into meek silence, and repression of all agitation, till
she was safe in her room, when she took a little bit of revenge upon
Mary by crying her heart out, and declaring it was very cruel of
Charles, when she did not mean it.

And Mary, on her side, varied between assurances that Charles did not
mean it, and that he was quite right--the sister now predominating in
her, and now the wife.

'Mean what?' said Ethel, sitting down among them before they were
aware.

'That--that it was all my fault!' burst out Gertrude. 'If it was, I
don't see what concern it is of his!'

'But, Daisy dear, he is your brother!'

'I've got plenty of brothers of my own! I don't count those people-
in-law--'

'She's past reasoning with, Mary,' said Ethel. 'Leave her to me; she
will come to her senses by and by!'

'But indeed, Ethel, you won't be hard on her? I am sure dear Charles
never thought what he said would have been taken in this way.'

'Why did he say it then?' cried Gertrude, firing up.

'My dear Mary, do please go down, before we get into the pitiable
last-word condition!'

That condition was reached already; but in Ethel's own bed-room
Mary's implicit obedience revived, and away she went, carrying off
with her most of what was naughtiness in Gertrude.

'Ethel--Ethel dear!' cried she at once, 'I know you are coming down
on me. I deserve it all, only Charles had no business to say it.
And wasn't it very cruel and unkind when he saw the state I was in?'

'I suppose Charles thought it was the only chance of giving a lesson,
and therefore true kindness. Come, Daisy, is this terrible fit of
pride a proper return for such a mercy as we have had to-day?'

'If I didn't say so to myself a dozen times on the way home!--only
Mary came and made me so intolerably angry, by expecting me to take
it as if it had come from you or papa.'

'Ah, Daisy, that is the evil! If I had done my duty by you all, this
would not have been!'

'Now, Ethel, when you want to be worse, and more cutting than
anything, you go and tell me my faults are yours! For pity's sake,
don't come to that!'

'But I must, Daisy, for it is true. Oh, if you had only been a
naughty little girl!'

'What--and had it out then?' said Daisy, who was lying across the
bed, and put her golden head caressingly on Ethel's knee. 'If I had
plagued you then, you would have broken me in out of self-defence.'

'Something like it,' said Ethel. 'But you know, Daisy, the little
last treasure that mamma left did always seem something we could not
make enough of, and it didn't make you fractious or tiresome--at
least not to us--till we thought you could not be spoilt. And then I
didn't see the little faults so soon as I ought; and I'm only an
elder sister, after all, without any authority.'

'No, you're not to say that, Ethel, I mind your authority, and always
will. You are never a bother.'

'Ah, that's it, Daisy! If I had only been a bother, you might never
have got ahead of yourself.'

'Then you really think, like Charles Cheviot, that it was my doing,
Ethel?'

'What do you think yourself?'

Great tears gathered in the corners of the blue eyes. Was it weak in
Ethel not to bear the sight?

'My poor Daisy,' she said, 'yours is not all the burden! I ought not
to have taken up such a giddy company, or else I should have kept the
boy under my hand. But he is so discreet and independent, that it is
more like having a gentleman staying in the house, than a child under
one's charge; and one forgets how little he is; and I was as much off
my balance with spirits as you. It was the flightiness of us all;
and we have only to be thankful, and to be sobered for another time.
I am afraid the pride about being reproved is really the worse
fault.'

'And what do you want me to do?--to go and tell papa all about it?
I mean to do that, of course; it is the only way to get comforted.'

'Of course it is; but--'

'You horrid creature, Ethel! I'll never say you aren't a bother
again. You really do want me to go and tell Charles Cheviot that he
was quite right, and Mary that I'm ready to be trampled on by all my
brothers-in-law in a row! Well, there won't be any more. You'll
never give me one--that's one comfort!' said Gertrude, wriggling
herself up, and flinging an arm round Ethel's neck. 'As long as you
don't do that, I'll do anything for you.'

'Not for me.'

'Well, you know that, you old thing! only you might take it as a
personal compliment. I really will do it; for, of course, one could
not keep one's Christmas otherwise!' It was rather too business-
like; but elders are often surprised to find what was a hard
achievement in their time a matter of course to their pupils--almost
lightly passed over.

Dickie slept till morning, when he was found very pale, but lively
and good-humoured as ever. Mr. Wright, coming up to see him, found
the hurt going on well, and told Ethel, that if she could keep him in
bed and undisturbed for the day, it would be better and safer; but
that if he became restless and fretful, there would be no great risk
in taking him to a sofa. Restless and fretful! Mr. Wright little
knew the discretion, or the happy power of accommodation to
circumstances, that had descended to Meta's firstborn.

He was quite resigned as soon as the explanation had been made--
perhaps, indeed, there was an instinctive sense, that to be dressed
and moved would be fatiguing; but he had plenty of smiles and
animation for his visitors, and, when propped up in bed, was full of
devices for occupation. Moreover he acquired a slave; he made a
regular appropriation of Leonard, whom he quickly perceived to be the
most likely person to assist in his great design of constructing a
model of the clock in the Minster tower, for the edification of his
little brother Harry. Leonard worked away at the table by the bed-
side with interest nearly equal to the child's; and when wire and
cardboard were wanting, he put aside all his dislike to facing the
Stoneborough streets and tradesmen in open day, and, at Dickie's
request, sallied forth in quest of the materials. And when the
bookseller made inquiries after the boy, Leonard, in the fulness of
his heart, replied freely and in detail--nay, he was so happy in the
little man's well-doing, that he was by no means disconcerted even by
a full encounter of Mrs. Harvey Anderson in the street, but answered
all her inquiries, in entire oblivion of all but the general
rejoicing in little Dickie's wonderful escape.

'Well,' said Aubrey to his sisters, after a visit to his nephew's
room, 'Dickie has the best right to him, certainly, to-day. It is an
absolute appropriation! They were talking away with all their might
when I came up, but came to a stop when I went in, and Master Dick
sent me to the right-about.'

The truth was, that Dickie, who, with eyes and ears all alive, had
gathered up some fragments of Leonard's history, had taken this
opportunity of catechizing him upon it in a manner that it was
impossible to elude, and which the child's pretty tact carried off,
as it did many things which would not have been tolerated if done
rudely and abruptly. Step by step, in the way of question and
remark, he led Leonard to tell him all that had happened; and when
once fairly embarked in the reminiscence, there was in it a kind of
peace and pleasure. The fresh, loving, wondering sympathy of the
little boy was unspeakably comforting; and besides, the bringing the
facts in their simple form to the grasp of the childish mind,
restored their proportion, which their terrible consequences had a
good deal disturbed. They seemed to pass from the present to the
historical, and to assume the balance that they took in the child's
mind, coming newly upon them. It was like bathing in a clear limpid
stream, that washed away the remains of morbid oppression.

'I wish mamma was here,' said the little friend, at last.

'Do you want her? Are you missing her, my dear?'

'I miss her always,' said Dickie. 'But it was not that--only mamma
always makes everybody so happy; and she would be so fond of you,
because you have had so much trouble.'

'But, Dickie, don't you think I am happy to be with your grandfather
and aunt, and hoping to see my own sisters very soon--your aunt, who
taught me what bore me through it all?'

'Aunt Ethel?' cried Dickie, considering. 'I like Aunt Ethel very
much; but then she is not like mamma!'

There could be no doubt that Leonard was much better and happier
after this adventure. Reluctantly, Dickie let him go back to
Cocksmoor, where his services in church-decking and in singing had
been too much depended on to be dispensed with; but he was to come
back with Richard for the family assembly on Christmas evening.

Moreover, Gertrude, who was quite herself again, having made her
peace with the Cheviots, and endured the reception of her apologies,
seized on him to lay plots for a Christmas-tree, for the delectation
of Dickie on his sofa, and likewise of Margaret Rivers, and of the
elite of the Cocksmoor schools. He gave in to it heartily, and on
the appointed day worked with great spirit at the arrangements in the
dining-room, where Gertrude, favoured by the captive state of the
little boy, conducted her preparations, relegating the family meals
to the schoolroom.

This tree was made the occasion for furnishing Leonard with all the
little appliances of personal property that had been swept away from
him; and, after all, he was the most delighted of the party. The
small Charlie Cheviot had to be carried off shrieking; Margaret
Rivers was critical; even Cocksmoor was experienced in Christmas-
trees; and Dickie, when placed in the best situation, and asked if
such trees grew in New Zealand, made answer that he helped mamma to
make one every year for the Maori children. It was very kind in Aunt
Daisy, he added, with unfailing courtesy; but he was too zealous for
his colony to be dazzled--too utilitarian to be much gratified by any
of his gifts, excepting a knife of perilous excellence, which Aubrey,
in contempt of Stoneborough productions, had sacrificed from his own
pocket at the last moment.

Leonard and Dickie together were in a state of great delight at the
little packets handed to the former; studs, purse, pencil-case,
writing materials; from Hector Ernescliffe, a watch, with the
entreaty that his gifts might not be regarded as unlucky; from Ethel,
a photographic book, with the cartes of his own family, whose old
negatives had been hunted up for the purpose; also a recent one of
Dr. May with his grandson on his knee, the duplicate of which was
gone to New Zealand, with the Doctor's inscription, 'The modern
Cyropaedia, Astyages confounded.' There was Richard, very good,
young and pretty; there was Ethel, exactly like the Doctor, 'only
more so;' there was Gertrude, like nobody, not even herself, and her
brothers much in the same predicament, there was the latest of Mr.
Rivers's many likenesses, with the cockatoo on his wrist, and there
was the least truculent and witchlike of the numerous attempts on
Flora; there was Mrs. Cheviot, broad-faced and smiling over her son,
and Mr. and Mrs. Ernescliffe, pinioning the limbs of their offspring,
as in preparation for a family holocaust; there was Dickie's mamma,
unspoilable in her loveliness even by photography, and his papa grown
very bald and archidiaconal; there was Ethel's great achievement of
influence, Dr. Spencer, beautiful in his white hair; there were the
vicar and the late and present head-masters. The pleasure excited by
all these gifts far exceeded the anticipations of their donors, it
seemed as if they had fallen on the very moment when they would
convey a sense of home, welcome, and restoration. He did not say
much, but looked up with liquid lustrous eyes, and earnest 'thank
you's,' and caressingly handled and examined the treasures over and
over again, as they lay round him on Dickie's couch. 'I suppose,'
said the child to him, 'it is like Job, when all his friends came to
see him, and every one gave him a piece of money.'

'He could hardly have enjoyed it more,' murmured Leonard, feeling the
restful capacity of happiness in the new possession of the child's
ardent love, and of the kind looks of all around, above all, of the
one presence that still gave him his chief sense of sunshine. The
boyish and romantic touch of passion had, as Ethel had long seen,
been burnt and seared away, and yet there was something left,
something that, as on this evening she felt, made his voice softer,
his eye more deferential, to her than to any one else. Perhaps she
had once been his guiding star; and if in the wild tempests of the
night he had learnt instead to direct his course by the "Brightest
and best of the sons of the morning," still the star would be prized
and distinguished, as the first and most honoured among inferior
constellations.




CHAPTER XXIX



Till now the dark was worn, and overhead
The lights of sunset and of sunrise mixed.--TENNYSON


At New York, Tom wrote a short letter to announce his safe arrival,
and then pushed on by railway into Indiana. Winter had completely
set in; and when he at length arrived at Winiamac, he found that a
sleigh was a far readier mode of conveyance to Massissauga than the
wagons used in summer. His drive, through the white cathedral-like
arcades of forest, hung with transparent icicles, and with the deep
blue sky above, becoming orange towards the west, was enjoyable; and
even Massissauga itself, when its skeleton trees were like their
neighbours, embellished by the pure snowy covering, looked less
forlorn than when their death contrasted with the exuberant life
around. He stopped at the hotel, left his baggage there, and after
undergoing a catechism on his personal affairs, was directed to Mr.
Muller's house, and made his way up its hard-trodden path of snow,
towards the green door, at which he knocked two or three times before
it was opened by a woman, whose hair and freckled skin were tinted
nowhere but in Ireland.

He made a step forward out of the cutting blast into the narrow
entry, and began to ask, 'Is Miss Ward here? I mean, can I see Miss
Warden?' when, as if at the sound of his voice, there rang from
within the door close by a shriek--one of the hoarse hysterical cries
he had heard upon the day of the inquest. Without a moment's
hesitation, he pushed open the door, and beheld a young lady in
speechless terror hanging over the stiffened figure on the couch--the
eyes wide open, the limbs straight and rigid. He sprang forward, and
lifted her into a more favourable posture, hastily asking for simple
remedies likely to be at hand, and producing a certain amount of
revival for a few moments, though the stiffness was not passing--nor
was there evidence of consciousness.

'Are you Leonard?' said Cora Muller, under her breath, in this brief
interval, gazing into his face with frightened puzzled eyes.

'No; but I am come to tell her that he is free!' But the words were
cut short by another terrible access, of that most distressing kind
that stimulates convulsion; and again the terrified women
instinctively rendered obedience to the stranger in the measures he
rapidly took, and his words, 'hysteria--a form of hysteria,' were
forced from him by the necessity of lessening Cora's intense alarm,
so as to enable her to be effective. 'We must send for Dr. Laidlaw,'
she began in the first breathing moment, and again he looked up and
said, 'I am a physician!'

'Mr. Tom?' she asked with the faintest shadow of a smile; he bent his
head, and that was their introduction, broken again by another
frightful attack; and when quiescence, if not consciousness, was
regained, Tom knelt by the sofa, gazing with a sense of heart-rending
despair at the wasted features and thin hands, the waxen whiteness of
the cheek, and the tokens in which he clearly read long and consuming
illness as well as the overthrow of the sudden shock.

'What is this?' he asked, looking up to Cora's beautiful anxious
face.

'Oh, she has been very sick, very sick,' she answered; 'it was an
attack of pleurisy; but she is getting better at last, though she
will not think so, and this news will make all well. Does she hear?
Say it again!'

Tom shook his head, afraid of the sound of the name as yet, and
scarcely durst even utter the word 'Ella' above his breath.

'She is gone out with Cousin Deborah to an apple bee,' was the
reassuring answer. 'She wanted change, poor child! Is she getting
better?'

Averil was roused by a cough, the sound which tore Tom's heart by its
import, but he drew back out of her sight, and let Cora raise her,
and give her drink, in a soothing tender manner, that was evident
restoration. 'Cora dear, is it you?' she said, faintly; 'didn't I
hear some one else's voice? Didn't they say--?' and the shiver that
crept over her was almost a return of the hysteric fit.

'We said he was free,' said Cora, holding her in her arms.

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