Arthur Christopher Benson - "Where No Fear Was: A Book About Fear"

Henry C. Murphy - "The Voyage of Verrazzano"

William Shakespeare - "The Tragedie of King Lear"

John Hargrave - "At Suvla Bay"

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The Trial

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Trial




His companions combined their advice to him so to use it; and in less
than half an hour Ethel went to bid him good night, in the whitest of
beds and cleanest of tiny chambers, where he looked the picture of
sleepy satisfaction, when she opened his window, and admitted the
swell and dash that fascinated his weary senses.

'My child is all right,' said Ethel, returning to Dr. Spencer; 'can
you say the same of yours?'

'He must rest himself into the power of sleeping. I must say it was
a bold experiment; but it will do very well, when he has got over the
journey. He was doing no good at home.'

'I hope he will here.'

'Depend on it he will. And now what are you intending?'

'I am thirsting to see those waves near. Would it be against the
manners and customs of sea-places for me to run down to them so
late?'

'Sea-places have no manners and customs.'

Ethel tossed on her hat with a feeling of delight and freedom. 'Oh,
are you coming, Dr. Spencer? I did not mean to drag you out. You
had rather rest, and smoke.'

'This is rest,' he answered.

The next moment, the ridge of the shingle was passed, and Ethel's
feet were sinking in the depth of pebbles, her cheeks freshened by
the breeze, her lips salted by the spray tossed in by the wind from
the wave crests. At the edge of the water she stood--as all others
stand there--watching the heaving from far away come nearer, nearer,
curl over in its pride of green glassy beauty, fall into foam, and
draw back, making the pebbles crash their accompanying 'frsch.' The
repetition, the peaceful majesty, the blue expanse, the straight
horizon, so impressed her spirit as to rivet her eyes and chain her
lips; and she receded step by step before the tide, unheeding
anything else, not even perceiving her companion's eyes fixed on her,
half curiously, half sadly.

'Well, Ethel,' at last he said.

'I never guessed it!' she said, with a gasp. 'No wonder Harry cannot
bear to be away from it. Must we leave it?' as he moved back.

'Only to smooth ground,' said Dr. Spencer; 'it is too dark to stay
here among the stones and crab-pots.'

The summer twilight was closing in; lights shining in the village
under the cliffs, and looking mysterious on distant points of the
coast; stars were shining forth in the pale blue sky, and the young
moon shedding a silver rippled beam on the water.

'If papa were but here!' said Ethel, wakening from another gaze, and
recollecting that she was not making herself agreeable.

'So you like the expedition?'

'The fit answer to that would be, "It is very pretty," as the Cockney
said to Coleridge at Lodore.'

'So I have converted a Stoneborough fungus!'

'What! to say the sea is glorious? A grand conversion!'

'To find anything superior to Minster Street.'

'Ah, you are but half reclaimed! You are a living instance that
there is no content unless one has begun life as a fungus.'

She was startled by his change of tone. 'True, Ethel. Content might
have been won, if there had been resolution to begin without it.'

'I beg your pardon,' she faltered, 'I ought not to have said it. I
forgot there was such a cause.'

'Cause--you know nothing about it.'

She was silent, distressed, dismayed, fearing that she had spoken
wrongly, and had either mistaken or been misunderstood.

'Tell me, Ethel,' he presently said, 'what can you know of what made
me a wanderer?'

'Only what papa told me.'

'He--he was the last person to know.'

'He told me,' said Ethel, hurrying it out in a fright, 'that you went
away--out of generosity--not to interfere with his happiness.'

Then she felt as if she had done a shocking thing, and waited
anxiously, while Dr. Spencer deliberately made a deep hole in the
shingle with his stick. 'Well,' at last he said, 'I thought that
matter was unknown to all men--above all to Dick!'

'It was only after you were gone, that he put things together and
made it out.'

'Did--she--know?' said Dr. Spencer, with a long breath.

'I cannot tell,' said Ethel.

'And how or why did he tell you?' (rather hurt.)

'It was when first you came. I am sure no one else knows it. But he
told me because he could not help it; he was so sorry for you.'

They walked the whole length of the parade, and had turned before Dr.
Spencer spoke again; and then he said, 'It is strange! My one vision
was of walking on the sea-shore with her; and that just doing so with
you should have brought up the whole as fresh as five-and-thirty
years ago!'

'I wish I was more like her,' said Ethel.

No more was wanting to make him launch into the descriptions, dear to
a daughter's heart, of her mother in her sweet serious bloom of young
womanhood, giving new embellishments to the character already so
closely enshrined in his hearer's heart, the more valuable that the
stream of treasured recollection flowed on in partial oblivion of the
person to whom it was addressed, or, at least, that she was the child
of his rival; for, from the portrait of the quiet bright maiden, he
passed to the sufferings that his own reserved nature had undergone
from his friend's outspoken enthusiasm. The professor's visible
preference for the youth of secure prospects, had not so much
discouraged as stung him; and in a moment of irritation at the
professor's treatment, and the exulting hopes of his unconscious
friend, he had sworn to himself, that the first involuntary token of
regard from the young lady towards one or the other, should decide
him whether to win name and position for her sake, or to carry his
slighted passion to the utmost parts of the earth, and never again
see her face.

'Ethel,' he said, stopping short, 'never threaten Providence--above
all, never keep the threat.'

Ethel scarcely durst speak, in her anxiety to know what cast the die,
though with all Dr. Spencer's charms, she could not but pity the
delusion that could have made him hope to be preferred to her father
--above all, by her mother. Nor could she clearly understand from him
what had dispelled his hopes. Something it was that took place at
the picnic on Arthur's Seat, of which she had previously heard as a
period of untold bliss. That something, still left in vague mystery,
had sealed the fate of the two friends.

'And so,' said Dr. Spencer, 'I took the first foreign appointment
that offered. And my poor father, who had spent his utmost on me,
and had been disappointed in all his sons, was most of all
disappointed in me. I held myself bound to abide by my rash vow;
loathed tame English life without her, and I left him to neglect in
his age.'

'You could not have known or expected!' exclaimed Ethel.

'What right had I to expect anything else? It was only myself that I
thought of. I pacified him by talk of travelling, and extending my
experience, and silenced my conscience by intending to return when
ordinary life should have become tolerable to me--a time that never
has come. At last, in the height of that pestilential season in
India, came a letter, warning me that my brother's widow had got the
mastery over my poor father, and was cruelly abusing it, so that only
my return could deliver him. It was when hundreds were perishing,
and I the only medical man near; when to have left my post would have
been both disgraceful and murderous. Then I was laid low myself; and
while I was conquering the effects of cholera, came tidings that made
it nothing to me whether they or I conquered. This,' and he touched
one of his white curling locks, 'was not done by mere bodily exertion
or ailment.'

'You would have been too late any way,' said Ethel.

'No, not if I had gone immediately. I might have got him out of that
woman's hands, and made his life happy for years. There was the
sting, but the crime had been long before. You know the rest. I had
no health to remain, no heart to come home; and then came vagrancy
indeed. I drifted wherever restlessness or impulse took me, till all
my working years were over, and till the day when the sight of your
father's wedding-ring showed me that I should not break my mad word
by accepting the only welcome that any creature gave me.'

'And, oh! surely you have been comforted by him?'

'Comforted! Cut to the heart would be truer. One moment, I could
only look at him as having borne off my treasure to destroy it; but
then there rose on me his loving, patient, heartbroken humility and
cheerfulness; and I saw such a character, such a course, as showed me
how much better he had deserved her, and filled me with shame at
having ever less esteemed him. And through all, there was the same
dear Dick May, that never, since the day we first met at the pump in
the school court, had I been able to help loving with all my heart--
the only being that was glad to see me again. When he begged me to
stay and watch over your sister, what could I do but remain while she
lived?'

'So he bound you down! Oh, you know how we thank you! no, you can't,
nor what you have been to him, and to all of us, through the worst of
our sad days. And though it was a sacrifice, I do not think it was
bad for you.'

'No, Ethel. When you implored me to give up my Crimean notion, to
spare your father pain, I did feel for once that you at least thought
me of value to some one.'

'I cannot bear you to speak so,' cried Ethel. 'You to talk of having
been of no use!'

'No honest man of principle and education can be utterly useless; but
when, three days ago, I recollected that it was my sixtieth birthday,
I looked back, and saw nothing but desultory broken efforts, and
restless changes. Your father told me, when I thought him unaware of
the meaning of his words, that if I had missed many joys, I had
missed many sorrows; but I had taken the way to make my one sorrow a
greater burden than his many.'

'But you do not grieve for my mother still?' said Ethel, anxiously.
'Even his grief is a grave joy to him now; and one is always told
that such things, as it was with you, are but a very small part of a
man's life.'

'I am not one of the five hundred men, whom any one of five hundred
women might have equally pleased,' said Dr. Spencer; 'but it is so
far true, that the positive pain and envy wore out, and would not
have interfered with my after life, but for my own folly. No, Ethel;
it was not the loss of her that embittered and threw away my
existence; it was my own rash vow, and its headstrong fulfilment,
which has left me no right to your father's peaceful spirit.'

'How little we guessed!' said Ethel. 'So cheerful and ready as you
always are.'

'I never trouble others, he said abruptly. 'Neither man nor woman
ever heard a word of all this; and you would not have heard it now,
but for that sea; and you have got your mother's voice, and some of
her ways, since you have grown older and more sedate.'

'Oh, I am so glad!' said Ethel, who had been led to view her likeness
to her father as natural, that to her mother as acquired.

Those were the last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning
from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that
the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was
soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over
that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble
and generous in the midst of much that was eccentric and wayward, and
constantly the beat of the waves repeated to her the half-
comprehended words, 'Never threaten Providence.'

After superintending Aubrey's first bath, and duly installing the
vice-M. D. and her charges, Dr. Spencer departed; and Ethel was
launched on an unknown ocean, as pilot to an untried crew. She had
been told to regard Leonard's bashfulness as a rare grace; but it was
very inconvenient to have the boy wretchedly drooping, and owning
nothing amiss, apparently unacquainted with any English words, except
'Thank you' and 'No, thank you.' Indeed, she doubted whether the
shyness were genuine, for stories were afloat of behaviour at
Stoneborough parties which savoured of audacity, and she vainly
consulted Aubrey whether the cause of his discomfiture were her age
or her youth, her tutorship or her plain face. Even Aubrey could not
elicit any like or dislike, wish or complaint; and shrugging up his
shoulders, decided that it was of no use to bother about it; Leonard
would come to his senses in time. He was passive when taken out
walking, submissive when planted on a three-cornered camp-stool that
expanded from a gouty walking-stick, but seemed so inadequately
perched, and made so forlorn a spectacle, that they were forced to
put him indoors out of the glare of sea and sky, and hoping that he
would condescend to the sofa when Ethel was out of sight.

Punctilio broke down the next morning; and in the midst of breakfast,
he was forced to lie down, and allow Ethel to bathe his face with
vinegar and water; while she repented of the 'make-the-best-of-it'
letter of the yesterday, and sent Aubrey out on a secret commission
of inquiry about medical men, in case of need. Aubrey was perfectly
well, and in such a state of desultory enjoyment and sea-side active
idleness, that he was quite off her mind, only enlivening her morning
of nursing by his exits and entrances, to tell of fresh discoveries,
or incidents wonderful to the inland mind.

After dinner, which had driven Leonard to lie on his bed, Aubrey
persuaded his sister to come to see his greatest prize; a quaint old
local naturalist, a seafaring man, with a cottage crammed with pans
of live wonders of the deep in water, and shelves of extinct ones,
'done up in stane pies,' not a creature, by sea or land, that had
haunted Coombe for a few million of ages, seemed to have escaped him.
Such sea-side sojourns as the present, are the prime moments for
coquetries with the lighter branches of natural science, and the
brother and sister had agreed to avail themselves of the geological
facilities of their position, the fascinations of Hugh Miller's
autobiography having entirely gained them during Aubrey's
convalescence. Ethel tore herself away from the discussion of
localities with the old man, who was guide as well as philosopher,
boatman as well as naturalist, and returned to her patient, whom she
found less feverish, though sadly low and languid.

'I wish I knew what to do for you,' she said, sitting down by him.
'What would your sister do for you?'

'Nothing,' he wearily said, 'I mean, a great deal too much.' The
tone so recalled Norman's dejected hopelessness, that she could not
help tenderly laying her cold hands on the hot brow, and saying,
'Yes, I know how little one can do as a sister--and the mockery it is
to think that one place can ever be taken!'

The brown eyes looked at her with moist earnestness that she could
hardly bear, but closed with a look of relief and soothing, as she
held her hand on his forehead. Presently, however, he said, 'Don't
let me keep you in.'

'I have been out, thank you. I am so glad to try to do anything for
you.'

'Thank you. What o'clock is it, please? Ah, then I ought to take
that draught! I forgot it in the morning.'

He permitted her to fetch it and pour it out, but as she recognized a
powerful tonic, she exclaimed, 'Is this what you are taking? May it
not make you feverish?'

'No doubt it does,' he said, lying down again; 'it was only Henry--'

'What! did not my father know of it?'

'Of course he does not, as it seems to be poison.'

'Not exactly that,' said Ethel; 'but I was surprised, for it was
talked of for Aubrey; but they said it wanted watching.'

'Just like Henry,' observed Leonard.

'Well,' said Ethel, repressing her indignation, 'I am glad, at least,
to find a possible cause for your bad night. We shall see you
refreshed to-morrow, and not wishing yourself at home.'

'Don't think that I wish that. Home is gone for ever.'

'Home may be gone higher--up to the real Home,' said Ethel, blushing
with the effort at the hint, and coming down to earthlier
consolations, 'but even the fragments will grow into home again here,
and you will feel very differently.'

Leonard did not answer; but after a pause said, 'Miss May, is not it
a horrid pity girls should go to school?'

'I am no judge, Leonard.'

'You see,' said the boy, 'after the little girls were born, my mother
had no time for Ave, and sent her to Brighton, and there she begged
to stay on one half after another, learning all sorts of things; but
only coming home for short holidays, like company, for us to wonder
at her and show her about, thinking herself ever so much in advance
of my poor mother, and now she knows just nothing at all of her!'

'You cannot tell, Leonard, and I am sure she has been devoted to
you.'

'If she had stayed at home like you, she might have known how to let
one alone. Oh, you can't think what peace it was yesterday!'

'Was it peace? I feared it was desertion.'

'It is much better to be by oneself, than always worried. To have
them always at me to get up my spirits when the house is miserable--'

'Ah,' said Ethel, 'I remember your mother rejoicing that she had not
to send you from home, and saying you were always so kind and gentle
to her.'

'Did she!' cried the boy, eagerly. 'Oh, but she forgot--' and he hid
his face, the features working with anguish.

'So pleased and proud she used to look, walking with you on Saturday
afternoons.'

'Those Saturdays! They were the only walks she ever would take; but
she would always come with me.'

More followed in the same strain, and Ethel began to gather more
distinct impressions of the Ward family. She saw that her present
charge was warm and sound-hearted, and that the strength of his
affections had been chiefly absorbed by the homely housewifely
mother, comparatively little esteemed by the modernized brother and
sister. Of the loss of his father he seemed to think less; it
seemed, indeed, rather to reconcile him to that of his mother, by the
grief it spared her; and it confirmed Ethel's notion, that Mr. Ward,
a busy and dull man, paid no great attention to his children between
the plaything period and that of full development. The mother was
the home; and Averil, though Leonard showed both love for and pride
in her, had hitherto been a poor substitute, while as to Henry, there
was something in each mention of him which gave Ethel an undefined
dread of the future of the young household, and a doubt of the result
of her father's kind schemes of patronage.

At any rate, this conversation had the happy effect of banishing
constraint, and satisfying Ethel that the let-alone system was
kindness, not neglect. She was at ease in discussing fossils, though
he contributed no word, and she let him sleep or wake as he best
liked; whilst Aubrey read to her the 'Cruise of the Betsey.'

Henry's prescription was sent to invigorate the fishes, when its
cessation was found to be followed by the recovery of sleep and
appetite, and in the cool of the evening, by a disposition to stroll
on the beach, and lie under the lee of a rock upon a railway rug,
which Ethel had substituted for the 'three-legged delusion.'

There he was left, while his companions went fossil-hunting, and
stayed so long as to excite their compunction, and quicken their
steps when they at length detached themselves from the enticing blue
lias.

'What has he got there?' cried Aubrey. 'Hillo, old fellow! have you
fallen a prey to a black cat?'

'Cat!' returned Leonard, indignantly; 'don't you see it is the
jolliest little dog in the world?'

'You call that a dog?' said the other boy with redoubled contempt;
'it is just big enough for little Margaret's Noah's Ark!'

'It really is a beauty!' said Ethel. 'I have known one of Flora's
guests bring a bigger one in her muff.'

'It is the most sensible little brute,' added Leonard. 'See; beg, my
man, beg!'

And the beauteous little black-coated King Charles erected itself on
its hind legs, displaying its rich ruddy tan waistcoat and sleeves,
and beseeching with its black diamond eyes for the biscuit, dropped
and caught in mid-air. It was the first time Leonard had looked
bright.

'So you expect us to sanction your private dog stealing?' said
Aubrey.

'I have been watching for his mistress to come back,' said Leonard;
'but she must have passed an hour ago, and she does not deserve to
have him, for she never looked back for him; and he had run up to me,
frisking and making much of me, as if he had found an old friend.'

'Perhaps it will run home when we move.'

No such thing; it trotted close at Leonard's heels, and entered the
house with them. Barbara was consulted, and on Leonard's deposition
that the dog's mistress was in deep mourning, opined that she could
be no other than the widow of an officer, who during his lingering
illness had been often laid upon the beach, and had there played with
his little dogs. This one, evidently very young, had probably, in
the confusion of its puppy memory, taken the invalid for its lost
master.

'Stupid little thing,' said Aubrey; 'just like an undersized lady's
toy.'

'It knows its friends. These little things have twice the sense of
overgrown dogs as big and as stupid as jackasses.'

A retort from Leonard was welcome in Ethel's ears, and she quite
developed his conversational powers, in an argument on the sagacity
of all canine varieties. It was too late to send the little animal
home; and he fondled and played with it till bed-time, when he lodged
it in his own room; and the attachment was so strong, that it was
with a deep sigh, that at breakfast he accepted Aubrey's offer of
conveying it home.

'There she is! he exclaimed in the midst, gazing from the window.

'And see the perfection of the animal!' added Aubrey, pointing to a
broad-backed waddling caricature of the little black fairy.

'Restitution must be made, little as she deserves you, you little
jewel,' said Leonard, picking up the object of his admiration. 'I'll
take you out.'

'No, no; I am not so infectious,' said Ethel, tying on her hat; 'I
had better do it.'

And after Leonard's parting embrace to his favourite, she received
it; and quickly overtaking the pensive steps of the lady, arrested
her progress with, 'I beg your pardon, but I think this is your dog.'

'Poor little Mab! as the dog struggled to get to her, and danced
gladly round her. 'I missed her last night, and was coming to look
for her.'

'She joined one of our party,' said Ethel; 'and he was not strong
enough to follow you. Indeed, he has had scarlet fever, so perhaps
it was better not. But he has taken great care of the little dog,
and hopes it is not the worse.'

'Thank you. I wish poor Mab may always meet such kind friends,' said
the lady, sadly.

'She secured her welcome,' said Ethel. 'We were very grateful to
her, for it was the first thing that has seemed to interest him since
his illness; and he has just lost both his parents.'

'Ah! Thank you.'

Ethel wondered at herself for having been so communicative; but the
sweet sad face and look of interest had drawn her words out; and on
her return she made such a touching history of the adventure, that
Leonard listened earnestly, and Aubrey looked subdued.

When they went out Leonard refused to spread his rug in that only bed
of pulverized shingle; and Ethel respected his avoidance of it as
delicacy to her whose husband had no doubt often occupied that spot.

'He is a thorough gentleman,' said she, as she walked away with
Aubrey.

'He might be an Eton fellow,' was the significant reply.

'I wonder what made him so!' said Ethel, musingly.

'Looking at Tom,' returned Aubrey, not in jest.

'Even with that advantage, I don't quite see where he learnt that
refined consideration.'

'Pshaw, Ethel! The light of nature would show that to any one but a
stupex.'

Ethel was not sorry that such were Aubrey's views of courtesy, but
all thought of that subject was soon lost in the pursuit of
ammonites.

'I wonder what Leonard will have picked up now?' they speculated, as
they turned homewards with their weighty baskets, but what was their
amazement, when Leonard waved his hand, pointing to the little black
dog again at his feet!

'She is mine!' he exclaimed, 'my own! Mrs. Gisborne has given her to
me; and she is to be the happiest little mite going!'

'Given!'

'Yes. She came as soon as you were gone, and sat by me, and talked
for an hour, but she goes to-morrow to live with an old hag of an
aunt.'

'Really, you seem to have been on confidential terms.'

'I mean that she must be a nuisance, because she doesn't like dogs;
so that Mrs. Gisborne can only take the old one, which she could
never part with. So she wanted to give Mab to some one who would be
kind to her; and she has come to the right shop; hasn't she, my
little queen?'

'I thought she almost wished it this morning,' said Ethel, 'when she
heard how you and Mab had taken to each other: but it is a very
choice present; the creature looks to me to be of a very fine sort.'

'Now, Miss May, how could you know that?'

'Why, by her own deportment! Don't you know the aristocratic look
that all high-bred animals have--even bantams?'

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