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The Trial

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Trial




'If you don't like it, I wish you would let me speak to papa.'

'Richard, have you these five years been the safety-valve for my
murmurs without knowing what they amount to?'

'I thought no one complained unless to get a thing remedied.'

'Exactly so. That is man! And experience never shows man that
woman's growls relieve her soul, and that she dreads nothing more
than their being acted on! All I wish is, that this scheme may die a
natural death; but I should be miserable, and deserved to be so, if I
raised a finger to hinder it. What, must you go? Rule Daisy's lines
if she writes to Meta, please.'

'I did so. I have been trying to make her write straighter.'

'Of course you have. I expect I shall find her organ of order grown
to a huge bump when she comes home. Oh! when will our poor remnants
be once more a united family? and when shall I get into Cocksmoor
school again?'

When Dr. May came home, his plan was in full bloom. Henry had
gratefully accepted it, and answered for his brother being able to
travel by the next Monday; and Dr. May wanted Ethel to walk with him
to Bankside, and propose it there--talking it over with the sister,
and making it her own invitation. Ethel saw her fate, and complied,
her father talking eagerly all the way.

'You see, Ethel, it is quite as much for his spirits as his health
that I wish it. He is just the age that our Norman was.'

That was the key to a great deal. Ethel knew that her father had
never admitted any of the many excuses for the neglect of Norman's
suffering for the three months after his mother's death; but though
it thrilled her all over, she was not prepared to believe that any
one, far less any Ward, could be of the same sensitive materials as
Norman. To avoid answering, she went more than half-way, by saying,
'Don't you think I might ask those poor girls to come with him?'

'By no manner of means,' said the Doctor, stopping short. 'It is
just what I want, to get him away from his sister. She minds nothing
else; and if it were not for Mary, I don't know what the little ones
would do; and as to Henry, he is very good and patient; but it is the
way to prevent him from forming domestic tastes to have no mistress
to his house. He will get into mischief, or marry, if she does not
mind what she is about.'

'That must come to an end when Leonard is well, and goes back to
school.'

'And that won't be till after the holidays. No, some break there
must be. When he is gone, Mary can put her into the way of doing
things; she is anxious to do right; and we shall see them do very
well. But this poor boy--you know he has been always living at home,
while the others were away; he was very fond of his mother, and the
first coming out of his room was more than he could bear. I must
have him taken from home till he is well again, and able to turn to
other things.'

And before Ethel's eyes came a vision of poor Mrs. Ward leaning on
her son's arm, on Saturday afternoon walks, each looking fond and
proud of the other. She felt her own hardness of heart, and warmed
to the desire of giving comfort.

Bankside was basking in summer sunshine, with small patches of shade
round its young shrubs and trees, and a baking heat on the little
porch.

The maid believed Miss Ward was in the garden. Mr. Leonard had been
taken out to-day; and the Doctor moving on, they found themselves in
the cool pretty drawing-room, rather overcrowded with furniture and
decoration, fresh and tasteful, but too much of it, and a contrast to
the Mays' mixture of the shabby and the curious, in the room that was
so decidedly for use, and not for show.

What arrested the attention was, however, the very sweetest singing
Ethel had ever heard. The song was low and sad, but so intensely
sweet, that Dr. May held up his hand to silence all sound, and stood
with restrained breath and moistened eyes. Ethel, far less sensitive
to music, was nevertheless touched as she had never before been by
sound; and the more, as she looked through the window and saw in the
shade of a walnut-tree, a sofa, at the foot of which sat Averil Ward
in her deep mourning, her back to the window, so that only her young
figure and the braids of her fair hair were to be seen; and beyond,
something prostrate, covered with wrappers. The sweet notes ended,
Dr. May drew a deep sigh, wiped his spectacles, and went on; Ethel
hung back, not to startle the invalid by the sight of a stranger; but
as Averil rose, she saw him raising himself, with a brightening smile
on his pale face, to hold out his hand to the Doctor. In another
minute Averil had come to her, shaken hands, and seated herself where
she could best command a view of her brother.

'I am glad to see him out of doors,' said Ethel.

'Henry was bent on it; but I think the air and the glare of
everything is too much for him; he is so tired and oppressed.'

'I am sure he must like your, singing,' said Ethel.

'It is almost the only thing that answers,' said Averil, her eyes
wistfully turning to the sofa; 'he can't read, and doesn't like being
read to.'

'It is very difficult to manage a boy's recovery,' said Ethel. 'They
don't know how to be ill.'

'It is not that,' replied the sister, as if she fancied censure
implied, 'but his spirits. Every new room he goes into seems to beat
him down; and he lies and broods. If he could only talk!'

'I know that so well!' said Ethel. But to Averil the May troubles
were of old date, involved in the mists of childhood. And Ethel
seeing that her words were not taken as sympathy, continued, 'Do not
the little girls amuse him?'

'Oh no! they are too much for him; and I am obliged to keep them in
the nursery. Poor little things! I don't know what we should do if
your sister Mary were not so kind.'

'Mary is very glad,' began Ethel, confusedly. Then rushing into her
subject: 'Next week, I am to take Aubrey to the seaside; and we
thought if Leonard would join us, the change might be good for him.'

'Thank you,' Averil answered, playing with her heavy jet watch-guard.
'You are very good; but I am sure he could not move so soon.'

'Ave,' called Leonard at that moment; and Ethel, perceiving that she
likewise was to advance, came forth in time to hear, 'O, Ave! I am to
go to the sea next week, with Aubrey May and his sister. Won't it--'

Then becoming aware of the visitor, he stopped short, threw his feet
off the sofa, and stood up to receive her.

'I can't let you come if you do like that,' she said, shaking his
long thin hand; and he let himself down again, not, however, resuming
his recumbent posture, and giving a slight but effective frown to
silence his sister's entreaties that he would do so. He sat, leaning
back as though exceedingly feeble, scarcely speaking, but his eyes
eloquent with eagerness. And very fine eyes they were! Ethel
remembered her own weariness, some twelve or fourteen years back, of
the raptures of her baby-loving sisters about those eyes; and now in
the absence of the florid colouring of health, she was the more
struck by the beauty of the deep liquid brown, of the blue tinge of
the white, and of the lustrous light that resided in them, but far
more by their power of expression, sometimes so soft and melancholy,
at other moments earnest, pleading, and almost flashing with
eagerness. It was a good mouth too, perhaps a little inclined to
sternness of mould about the jaw and chin; but that might have been
partly from the absence of all softening roundness, aging the
countenance for the time, just as illness had shrunk the usually
sturdy figure.

'Has Ethel told you of our plan?' asked Dr. May of the sister.

'Yes,' she hesitated, in evident confusion and distress. 'You are
all very kind, but we must see what Henry says.'

'I have spoken to Henry! He answers for our patching Leonard up for
next week; and I have great faith in Dr. Neptune.'

Leonard's looks were as bright as Averil's were disturbed.

'Thank you, thank you very much! but can he possibly be well enough
for the journey?'

Leonard's eyes said 'I shall.'

'A week will do great things,' said Dr. May, 'and it is a very easy
journey--only four hours' railway, and a ten miles' drive.'

Averil's face was full of consternation; and Leonard leant forward
with hope dancing in his eyes.

'You know the place,' continued Dr. May, 'Coombe Hole. Quite fresh,
and unhackneyed. It is just where Devon and Dorset meet. I am not
sure in which county; but there's a fine beach, and beautiful
country. The Riverses found it out, and have been there every
autumn; besides sending their poor little girl and her governess down
when London gets too hot. Flora has written to the woman of the
lodgings she always has, and will lend them the maid she sends with
little Margaret; so they will be in clover.'

'Is it not a very long way!' said Averil, thinking how long those ten
yards of lawn had seemed.

'Not as things go,' said Dr. May. 'You want Dr. Spencer to reproach
you with being a Stoneborough fungus. There are places in Wales
nearer by the map, but without railway privilege; and as to a great
gay place, they would all be sick of it.'

'Do you feel equal to it? as if you should like it, Leonard?' asked
his sister, in a trembling would-be grateful voice.

'Of all things,' was the answer.

Ethel thought the poor girl had suffered constraint enough, and that
it was time to release the boy from his polite durance, so she rose
to take leave, and again Leonard pulled himself upright to shake
hands.

'Indeed,' said Ethel, when Averil had followed them into the drawing-
room, 'I am sorry for you. It would go very hard with me to make
Aubrey over to any one! but if you do trust him with me, I must come
and hear all you wish me to do for him.'

'I cannot think that he will be able or glad to go when it comes to
the point,' said Averil, with a shaken tone.

Dr. May was nearer than she thought, and spoke peremptorily. 'Take
care what you are about! You are not to worry him with discussions.
If he can go, he will; if not, he will stay at home; but pros and
cons are prohibited. Do you hear, Averil!'

'Yes; very well.'

'Papa you really are very cruel to that poor girl,' were Ethel's
first words outside.

'Am I? I wouldn't be for worlds, Ethel. But somehow she always puts
me in a rage. I wish I knew she was not worrying her brother at this
moment!'

No, Averil was on the staircase, struggling, choking with the first
tears she had shed. All this fortnight of unceasing vigilance and
exertion, her eyes had been dry, for want of time to realize, for
want of time to weep, and now she was ashamed that hurt feeling
rather than grief had opened the fountain. She could not believe
that it was not a cruel act of kindness, to carry one so weak as
Leonard away from home to the care of a stranger. She apprehended
all manner of ill consequences; and then nursing him, and regarding
his progress as her own work, had been the sedative to her grief,
which would come on her 'like an armed man,' in the dreariness of his
absence. Above all, she felt herself ill requited by his manifest
eagerness to leave her who had nursed him so devotedly--her, his own
sister--for the stiff, plain Miss May whom he hardly knew. The blow
from the favourite companion brother, so passionately watched and
tended, seemed to knock her down; and Dr. May, with medical
harshness, forbidding her the one last hope of persuading him out of
the wild fancy, filled up the measure.

Oh, those tears! How they would swell up at each throb of the
wounded heart, at each dismal foreboding of the desponding spirit.
But she had no time for them! Leonard must not be left alone, with
no one to cover him up with his wrappers.

The tears were strangled, the eyes indignantly dried. She ran out at
the garden door. The sofa was empty! Had Henry come home and helped
him in? She hurried on to the window; Leonard was alone in the
drawing-room, resting breathlessly on an ottoman within the window.

'Dear Leonard! Why didn't you wait for me!'

'I thought I'd try what I could do. You see I am much stronger than
we thought.' And he smiled cheerfully, as he helped himself by the
furniture to another sofa. 'I say, Ave, do just give me the map--the
one in Bradshaw will do. I want to find this place.'

'I don't think there is a Bradshaw,' said Averil, reluctantly.

'Oh yes, there is--behind the candlestick, on the study chimney-
piece.'

'Very well--' There were more tears to be gulped down--and perhaps
they kept her from finding the book.

'Where's the Bradshaw?'

'I didn't see it.'

'I tell you I know it was there. The left-hand candlestick, close to
the letter-weight. I'll get it myself.'

He was heaving himself up, when Averil prevented him by hastening to
a more real search, which speedily produced the book.

Eagerly Leonard unfolded the map, making her steady it for his
shaking hand, and tracing the black toothed lines.

'There's Bridport--ten miles from there. Can you see the name, Ave?'

'No, it is not marked.'

'Never mind. I see where it is; and I can see it is a capital place;
just in that little jag, with famous bathing. I wonder if they will
stay long enough for me to learn to swim?'

'You are a good way from that as yet,' said poor Averil, her heart
sinking lower and lower.

'Oh, I shall be well at once when I get away from here!'

'I hope so.'

'Why, Ave!' he cried, now first struck with her tone, 'don't you know
I shall?'

'I don't know,' she said, from the soreness of her heart; 'but I
can't tell how to trust you with strangers.'

'Strangers! You ungrateful child!' exclaimed Leonard, indignantly.
'Why, what have they been doing for you all this time?'

'I am sure Miss May, at least, never came near us till to-day.'

'I'm very glad of it! I'm sick of everything and everybody I have
seen!'

Everybody! That was the climax! Averil just held her tongue; but
she rushed to her own room, and wept bitterly and angrily. Sick of
her after all her devotion! Leonard, the being she loved best in the
world!

And Leonard, distressed and hurt at the reception of his natural
expression of the weariness of seven weeks' sickness and sorrow, felt
above all the want of his mother's ever-ready sympathy and soothing,
and as if the whole world, here, there, and everywhere, would be an
equally dreary waste. His moment of bright anticipation passed into
heavy despondency, and turning his head from the light, he dropped
asleep with a tear on his cheek.

When he awoke it was at the sound of movements in the room, slow and
cautious, out of regard to his slumbers--and voices, likewise low--at
least one was low, the other that whisper of the inaudibility of
which Averil could not be disabused. He lay looking for a few
moments through his eyelashes, before exerting himself to move.
Averil, her face still showing signs of recent tears, sat in a low
chair, a book in her lap, talking to her brother Henry.

Henry was of less robust frame than Leonard promised to be, and
though on a smaller scale, was more symmetrically made, and had more
regular features than either his brother or sister, but his eyes were
merely quick lively black beads, without anything of the clear depths
possessed by the others. His hair too was jet black, whereas theirs
was a pale nut brown; and his whiskers, long and curling, so nearly
met under his chin, as to betray a strong desire that the hirsute
movement should extend to the medical profession. Always point-
device in apparel, the dust on his boot did not prevent its perfect
make from being apparent; and the entire sit of his black suit would
have enabled a cursory glance to decide that it never came out of the
same shop as Dr. May's.

'O, Henry!' were the words that he first heard distinctly.

'It will be much better for every one--himself and you included.'

'Yes, if--'

'If--nonsense. I tell you he will be quite well enough. See how
well I am now, how fast I got on as soon as I took to tonics.--Ha,
Leonard, old fellow! what, awake? What do you say to this plan of
old May's?'

'It is very kind of him; and I should be very glad if I am well
enough; but next week is very soon,' said Leonard, waking in the
depression in which he had gone to sleep.

'Oh, next week! That is as good as next year in a matter like this,
as May agreed with me, here, let us have your pulse. You have let
him get low, Averil. A basin of good soup will put more heart into
you, and you will feel ready for anything.'

'I have got on to-day, said Leonard, briskly raising himself, as
though the cheerful voice had been cordial in itself.

'Of course you have, now that you have something to look forward to;
and you will be in excellent hands; the very thing I wanted for you,
though I could not see how to manage it. I am going to dress. I
shall tell them to send in dinner; and if I am not down, I shall be
in the nursery. You won't come in to dinner, Leonard?'

'No, said Leonard, with a shudder.

'I shall send you in some gravy soup, that you may thank me for. Ave
never would order anything but boiled chickens for you, and forgets
that other people ever want to eat. There will be a chance of making
a housekeeper of her now.'

How selfish, thought Averil, to want to get rid of poor Leonard, that
I may attend to his dinners. Yet Henry had spoken in perfect good-
humour.

Henry came down with a little sister in each hand. They were his
especial darlings; and with a touch of fatherly fondness, he tried to
compensate to them for their sequestration from the drawing-room, the
consequence of Averil not having established her authority enough to
keep their spirits from growing too riotous for Leonard's weakness.
Indeed, their chatter was Henry's sole enlivenment, for Averil was
constantly making excursions to ask what her patient would eat, and
watch its success; and but for his pleasure in the little girls
popping about him, he would have had a meal as dull as it was
unsettled. As soon as the strawberries were eaten, he walked out
through the window with them clinging to him, and Averil returned to
her post.

'Some music, Ave,' said Leonard, with an instinctive dread of her
conversation.

She knew her voice was past singing, and began one of her most
renowned instrumental pieces, which she could play as mechanically as
a musical-box.

'Not that jingling airified thing!' cried Leonard, 'I want something
quiet and refreshing. There's an evening hymn that the Mays have.'

'The Mays know nothing of music,' said Averil.

'Stay, this is it:' and he whistled a few bars.

'That old thing! Of course I know that. We had it every Sunday at
Brighton.'

She began it, but her eyes were full of tears, partly because she
hated herself for the irritation she had betrayed. She was a sound,
good, honest-hearted girl; but among all the good things she had
learned at Brighton, had not been numbered the art of ruling her own
spirit.




CHAPTER IV



Griefs hidden in the mind like treasures,
Will turn with time to solemn pleasures.


On the Monday morning, the two convalescents shook hands in the
waiting-room at the station, surveying each other rather curiously;
while Ethel, trying to conquer her trepidation, gave manifold
promises to Averil of care and correspondence.

Dr. Spencer acted escort, being far more serviceable on the railway
than his untravelled friend, whose lame arm, heedless head, and
aptitude for missing trains and mistaking luggage, made him a charge
rather than an assistant. He was always happiest among his patients
at home; and the world was still ill enough to employ him so fully,
that Ethel hoped to be less missed than usual. Indeed, she believed
that her absence would be good in teaching him Mary's full-grown
worth, and Mary would be in the full glory of notability in the
purification of the house.

The change was likewise for Dr. Spencer's good. He had almost broken
down in the height of the labour, and still looked older and thinner
for it; and after one night at Coombe, he was going to refresh
himself by one of his discursive tours.

He was in high spirits, and the pink of courtesy; extremely flattered
by the charge of Ethel, and making her the ostensible object of his
attention, to the relief of the boys, who were glad to be spared the
sense of prominent invalidism. The change was delightful to them.
Aubrey was full of life and talk, and sat gazing from the window, as
if the line from Stoneborough to Whitford presented a succession of
novelties.

'What's that old place on the river there, with crow-stepped gables
and steep roofs, like a Flemish picture?'

'Don't you know?' said Leonard, 'it is the Vintry mill, where my
relative lives, that wants to make a dusty miller of me.'

'No fear of that, old fellow,' said Aubrey, regarding him in some
dismay, 'you've got better things to grind at.'

'Ay, even if I don't get the Randall next time, I shall be sure of it
another.'

'You'll have it next.'

'I don't know; here is a quarter clean gone, and the other fellows
will have got before me.'

'Oh, but most of them have had a spell of fever!'

'Yes, but they have not had it so thoroughly,' said Leonard. 'My
memory is not properly come back yet; and your father says I must not
try it too soon.'

'That's always his way,' said Aubrey. 'He would not let Ethel so
much as pack up my little Homer.'

Leonard's quick, furtive glance at Ethel was as if he suspected her
of having been barely prevented from torturing him.

'Oh, it was not her doing,' said Aubrey, 'it was I! I thought Tom
would find me gone back; and, you know, we must keep up together,
Leonard, and be entered at St. John's at the same time.'

For Aubrey devoutly believed in Tom's college at Cambridge, which had
recovered all Dr. May's allegiance.

The extra brightness was not of long duration. It was a very hot
day, such as exactly suited the salamander nature of Dr. Spencer; but
the carriage became like an oven. Aubrey curled himself up in a
corner and went to sleep, but Leonard's look of oppressed resignation
grieved Ethel, and the blue blinds made him look so livid, that she
was always fancying him fainting, and then his shyness was dreadful--
it was impossible to elicit from him anything but 'No, thank you.'

He did nearly faint when they left the train; and while Aubrey was
eagerly devouring the produce of the refreshment room, had to lie on
a bench under Dr. Spencer's charge, for Ethel's approach only brought
on a dangerous spasm of politeness. How she should get on with him
for a month, passed her imagination.

There was a fresher breeze when they drove out of the station, up a
Dorset ridge of hill, steep, high, terraced and bleak; but it was
slow climbing up, and every one was baked and wearied before the
summit was gained, and the descent commenced. Even then, Ethel,
sitting backwards, could only see height develop above height, all
green, and scattered with sheep, or here and there an unfenced
turnip-field, the road stretching behind like a long white ribbon,
and now and then descending between steep chalk cuttings in slopes,
down which the carriage slowly scrooped on its drag, leaving a broad
blue-flecked trail. Dr. Spencer was asleep, hat off, and the wind
lifting his snowy locks, and she wished the others were; but Aubrey
lamented on the heat and the length, and Leonard leant back in his
corner, past lamentation.

Down, down! The cuttings were becoming precipitous cliffs, the drag
made dismal groans; Aubrey, after a great slip forward, looking
injured, anchored himself, with his feet against the seat, by Ethel;
and Dr. Spencer was effectually wakened by an involuntary forward
plunge of his opposite neighbour. 'Can this be safe?' quoth Ethel;
'should not some of us get out?'

'Much you know of hills, you level landers!' was the answer; and just
then they were met and passed by four horses dragging up a stage
coach, after the fashion of a fly on a window-pane--a stage coach!
delightful to the old-world eyes of Dr. Spencer, recalling a faint
memory to Ethel, and presenting a perfect novelty to Aubrey.

Then came a sudden turn upon flat ground, and a short cry of wonder
broke from Aubrey. Ethel was sensible of a strange salt weedy smell,
new to her nostrils, but only saw the white-plastered, gray-roofed
houses through which they were driving; but, with another turn, the
buildings were only on one side--on the other there was a wondrous
sense of openness, vastness, freshness--something level, gray, but
dazzling; and before she could look again, the horses stopped, and
close to her, under the beetling, weather-stained white cliff, was a
low fence, and within it a verandah and a door, where stood Flora's
maid, Barbara, in all her respectability.

Much wit had been expended by Aubrey on being left to the tender
mercy of cruel Barbara Allen, in whom Ethel herself anticipated a
tyrant; but at the moment she was invaluable. Every room was ready
and inviting, and nothing but the low staircase between Leonard and
the white bed, which was the only place fit for him; while for the
rest, the table was speedily covered with tea and chickens;
Abbotstoke eggs, inscribed with yesterday's date; and red mail-clad
prawns, to prove to touch and taste that this was truly sea-side.
The other senses knew it well: the open window let in the
indescribable salt, fresh odour, and the entire view from it was
shore and sea, there seemed nothing to hinder the tide from coming up
the ridge of shingle, and rushing straight into the cottage; and the
ear was constantly struck by the regular roll and dash of the waves.
Aubrey, though with the appetite of recovery and sea-air combined,
could not help pausing to listen, and, when his meal was over, leant
back in his chair, listened again, and gave a sigh of content. 'It
is one constant hush, hushaby,' he said; 'it would make one sleep
pleasantly.'

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