Elinor Glyn - "The Point of View"

Alexander Morris - "The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba"

Alexandra Kuprin - "Yama (The Pit)"

Thomas Carlyle - "History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 1x"

The Trial

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Trial




Leonard looked as if this were the most convincing proof of Ethel's
wisdom, and proceeded. 'Well, she is descended from a real King
Charles, that Charles II. brought from France, and gave to Mrs. Jane
Lane; and they have kept up the breed ever since.'

'So that Mab will have the longest pedigree in Stoneborough; and we
must all respect her!' said Ethel, stroking the black head.

'I am only surprised at Leonard's forgetting his place,' said Aubrey.
'Walking before her majesty, indeed!'

'Oh, attendants do come first sometimes.'

'Then it should be backwards! I have a mind to try lying on the
beach to-morrow, looking interesting, to see what will descend upon
me!'

'A great yellow mongrel,' said Ethel, 'as always befalls imitators in
the path of the hero.'

'What? You mean that it was all the work of Leonard's beaux yeux?'

Leonard gave a sort of growl, intimating that Aubrey was exciting his
displeasure; and Ethel was glad to be at home, and break off the
conversation; but in a few minutes Aubrey knocked at her door, and
edging himself in, mysteriously said, 'Such fun! So it was your
beaux yeux, not Leonard's, that made the conquest!'

'I suppose she was touched with what I said of poor Leonard's
circumstances, and the pleasure the creature gave him.'

'That is as prosy as Mary, Ethel. At any rate, the woman told
Leonard yours was the most irresistibly attractive countenance she
ever saw, short of beauty; and that's not the best of it, for he is
absolutely angry.

'No wonder,' laughed Ethel.

'No, but it's about the beauty! He can't conceive a face more
beautiful than yours.'

'Except the gargoyle on the church tower,' said Ethel, gaping into as
complete a model of that worthy as flesh and blood could perpetrate.

'But he means it,' persisted Aubrey, fixing his eyes critically on
his sister's features, but disturbed by the contortions into which
she threw them. 'Now don't, don't. I never saw any fellow with a
hundredth part of your gift for making faces,' he added, between the
unwilling paroxysms of mirth at each fresh grimace; but I want to
judge of you; and--oh! that solemn one is worse than all; it is like
Julius Caesar, if he had ever been photographed!--but really, when
one comes to think about it, you are not so very ugly after all; and
are much better looking than Flora, whom we were taught to believe
in.'

'Poor Flora! You were no judge in her blooming days, before wear and
tear came.'

'And made her like our Scotch grandfather.'

'But Blanche! your own Blanche, Aubrey? She might have extended
Leonard's ideas of beauty.'

'Blanche has a pretty little visage of her own; but it's not so well
worth looking at as yours,' said Aubrey. 'One has seen to the end of
it at once; and it won't light up. Hers is just the May blossom; and
yours the--the--I know--the orchis! I have read of a woman with an
orchidaceous face!'

Teeth, tongue, lips, eyes, and nose were at once made to serve in
hitting off an indescribable likeness to an orchis blossom, which was
rapturously applauded, till Ethel, relaxing the strain and permitting
herself to laugh triumphantly at her own achievement, said, 'There!
I do pride myself on being of a high order of the grotesque.'

'It is not the grotesque that he means.' said Aubrey, 'he is very
cracked indeed. He declares that when you came and sat by him the
day before yesterday, you were perfectly lovely.'

'Oh, then I understand, and it is no matter,' said Ethel.




CHAPTER V



They stwons, they stwons, they stwons, they stwons.
Scouring of the White Horse


'So' (wrote Ethel in her daily letter to her father) 'mine is at
present a maternal mission to Leonard, and it is highly gratifying.
I subscribe to all your praise of him, and repent of my ungracious
murmurs at his society. You had the virtue, and I have the reward
(the usual course of this world), for his revival is a very fresh and
pleasant spectacle, burning hot with enthusiasm. Whatever we do, he
overdoes, till I recollect how Wilkes said he had never been a
Wilkite. Three days ago, a portentous-looking ammonite attracted his
attention; and whereas he started from the notion that earth was
dirt, and stones were stones, the same all over the world, he has
since so far outstripped his instructors, that as I write this he is
drawing a plan of the strata, with the inhabitants dramatically
arranged, Aubrey suggesting tragic scenes and uncomplimentary
likenesses. His talent for drawing shows that Averil's was worth
culture. If our geology alarm Richard, tell him that I think it
safer to get it over young, and to face apparent discrepancies with
revelation, rather than leave them to be discovered afterwards as if
they had been timidly kept out of sight. And whether Hugh Miller's
theory be right or wrong, his grand fervid language leaves the
conviction that undoubting confidence in revelation consists with the
clearest and most scientific mind.'

* * * * * *

'June 30th.--I consider my boys as returned to their normal
relations. I descended on them as they were sparring like lion-cubs
at play, Leonard desisted in confusion at my beholding such savage
doings, but cool and easy, not having turned a hair; Aubrey, panting,
done up, railing at him as first cousin to Hercules, all as a
delicate boast to me of his friend's recovered strength. Aubrey's
forte is certainly veneration. His first class of human beings is a
large one, though quizzing is his ordinary form of adoration. For
instance, he teases Mab and her devoted slave some degrees more than
the victim can bear, and then relieves his feelings in my room by
asseverations that the friendship with Leonard will be on the May and
Spencer pattern. The sea is the elixir of life to both; Leonard
looks quite himself again, "only more so," and Aubrey has a glow
never seen since his full moon visage waned, and not all tan, though
we are on the high road to be coffee-berries. Aubrey daily
entertains me with heroic tales of diving and floating, till I tell
them they will become enamoured of some "lady of honour who lives in
the sea," grow fishes' tails, and come home no more. And really, as
the time wanes, I feel that such a coast is Elysium--above all, the
boating. The lazy charm, the fresh purity of air, the sights and
sounds, the soft summer wave when one holds one's hand over the tide,
the excitement of sea-weed catching, and the nonsense we all talk,
are so delicious and such new sensations, (except the nonsense, which
loses by your absence, O learned doctor!) that I fully perceive how
pleasures untried cannot even be conceived. But ere the lotos food
has entirely depraved my memory, I give you warning to come and fetch
us home, now that the boys are in full repair. Come yourself, and be
feasted on shrimps and mackerel, and take one sail to the mouth of
the bay. I won't say who shall bring you; it would be fun to have
Daisy, and Mary ought to have a holiday, but then Richard would take
better care of you, and Tom would keep you in the best order. Could
you not all come? only if you don't yourself, I won't promise not to
take up with a merman.'

* * * * * *

'July 4th.--Very well. If this is to make a strong man of Aubrey,
tant mieux, and even home and Cocksmoor yearnings concern me little
in this Castle of Indolence, so don't flatter yourself that I shall
grumble at having had to take our house on again. Let us keep
Leonard; we should both miss him extremely, and Aubrey would lose
half the good without some one to swim, scramble, and fight with.
Indeed, for the poor fellow's own sake, he should stay, for though he
is physically as strong as a young megalosaur, and in the water or on
the rocks all day, I don't think his head is come to application, nor
his health to bearing depression; and I see he dreads the return, so
that he had better stay away till school begins again.'

* * * * * *

'July 7th.--Oh! you weak-minded folks! Now I know why you wanted to
keep me away--that you might yield yourselves a prey to Flora. Paper
and chintz forsooth! All I have to say is this, Miss Mary--as to my
room, touch it if you dare! I leave papa to protect his own study,
but for the rest, think, Mary, what your feelings would be if Harry
were to come home, and not know what room he was in! If I am to
choose between the patterns of chintz, I prefer the sea-weed variety,
as in character with things in general, and with the present
occasion; and as to the carpet, I hope that Flora, touched with our
submission, will not send us anything distressing.'

* * * * * *

'July 17th.--Can you send me any more of the New Zealand letters? I
have copied out the whole provision I brought with me for the blank
book, and by the way have inoculated Leonard with such a missionary
fever as frightens me. To be sure, he is cut out for such work. He
is intended for a clergyman (on grounds of gentility, I fear), and is
too full of physical energy and enterprise to take readily to sober
parochial life. His ardour is a gallant thing, and his home ties not
binding; but it is not fair to take advantage of his present
inflammable state of enthusiasm, and the little we have said has been
taken up so fervently, that I have resolved on caution for the
future. It is foolish to make so much of a boy's eagerness,
especially when circumstances have brought him into an unnatural
dreamy mood; and probably these aspirations will pass away with the
sound of the waves, but they are pretty and endearing while they last
in their force and sincerity.


'"Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,
When thought is speech, and speech is truth;"


'and one's heart beats at the thought of what is possible to creatures
of that age.'

* * * * * *

'July 21st.--You, who taught us to love our Walter Scott next to our
"Christian Year," and who gave us half-crowns for rehearsing him when
other children were learning the Robin's Petition, what think you of
this poor boy Leonard knowing few of the novels and none of the
poems? No wonder the taste of the day is grovelling lower and lower,
when people do not begin with the pure high air of his world! To
take up one of his works after any of our present school of fiction
is like getting up a mountain side after a feverish drawing-room or
an offensive street. If it were possible to know the right moment
for a book to be really tasted--not thrust aside because crammed
down--no, it would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should
only do double mischief. We are not sent into the world to mould
people, but to let them mould themselves; and the internal elasticity
will soon unmake all the shapes that just now seem to form under my
fingers like clay.

'At any rate, the introduction of such a congenial spirit to Sir
Walter was a real treat; Leonard has the very nature to be fired by
him, and Aubrey being excessively scandalized at his ignorance,
routed a cheap "Marmion" out of the little bookshop, and we beguiled
a wet afternoon with it; Aubrey snatching it from me at all the
critical passages, for fear I should not do them justice, and
thundering out the battle, which stirred the other boy like a trumpet
sound. Indeed, Leonard got Mab into a corner, and had a very bad
cold in the head when De Wilton was re-knighted; and when "the hand
of Douglas was his own," he jumped up and shouted out, "Well done,
old fellow!" Then he took it to himself and read it all over again,
introductions and all, and has raved ever since. I wish you could
see Aubrey singing out some profane couplet of "midnight and not a
nose," or some more horrible original parody, and then dodging
apparently in the extremity of terror, just as Leonard furiously
charges him.

'But you would have been struck with their discussions over it. Last
night, at tea, they began upon the woeful result of the Wager of
Battle, which seemed to oppress them as if it had really happened.
Did I believe in it? Was I of the Lady Abbess's opinion, that


'"Perchance some form was unobserved,
Perchance in prayer or faith he swerved"?


'This from Aubrey, while Leonard rejoined that even if De Wilton had
so done, it was still injustice that he should be so cruelly ruined,
and Marmion's baseness succeed. It would be like a king wilfully
giving wrong judgment because the right side failed in some
respectful observance. He was sure such a thing could never be. Did
I ever know of a real case where Heaven did not show the right? It
was confusing and alarming, for both those boys sat staring at me as
if I could answer them; and those wonderful searching eyes of
Leonard's were fixed, as if his whole acquiescence in the dealings of
Providence were going to depend on the reply, that could but be
unsatisfactory. I could only try plunging deep. I said it was Job's
difficulty, and it was a new light to Leonard that Job was about
anything but patience. He has been reading the Book all this Sunday
evening; and is not De Wilton a curious introduction to it? But
Aubrey knew that I meant the bewilderment of having yet to discover
that Divine Justice is longer-sighted than human justice, and he
cited the perplexities of high-minded heathen. Thence we came to the
Christian certainty that "to do well and suffer for it is
thankworthy;" and that though no mortal man can be so innocent as to
feel any infliction wholly unmerited and disproportioned, yet human
injustice at its worst may be working for the sufferer an exceeding
weight of glory, or preparing him for some high commission below.
Was not Ralph de Wilton far nobler and purer as the poor palmer, than
as Henry the Eighth's courtier! And if you could but have heard our
sequel, arranging his orthodoxy, his Scripture reading, and his
guardianship of distressed monks and nuns, you would have thought he
had travelled to some purpose, only he would certainly have been
burnt by one party, and beheaded by the other. On the whole, I think
Leonard was a little comforted, and I cannot help hoping that the
first apparently cruel wrong that comes before him may be the less
terrible shock to his faith from his having been set to think out the
question by "but half a robber and but half a knight."'

* * * * * *

'August 1st.--Yesterday afternoon we three were in our private
geological treasury, Leonard making a spread-eagle of himself in an
impossible place on the cliff side, trying to disinter what hope,
springing eternal in the human breast, pronounced to be the paddle of
a saurian; Aubrey, climbing as high as he durst, directing operations
and making discoveries; I, upon a ledge half-way up, guarding Mab and
poking in the debris, when one of the bridal pairs, with whom the
place is infested, was seen questing about as if disposed to invade
our premises. Aubrey, reconnoitring in high dudgeon, sarcastically
observed that all red-haired men are so much alike, that he should
have said yonder was Hec--. The rest ended in a view halloo from
above and below, and three bounds to the beach, whereon I levelled my
glass, and perceived that in very deed it was Mr. and Mrs.
Ernescliffe who were hopping over the shingle. Descending, I was
swung off the last rock in a huge embrace, and Hector's fiery
moustache was scrubbing both my cheeks before my feet touched the
ground, and Blanche with both arms round my waist. They were ready
to devour us alive in their famine for a Stoneborough face; and as
Flora and Mary are keeping home uninhabitable, found themselves
obliged to rush away from Maplewood in the middle of their county
welcomes for a little snatch of us, and to join us in vituperating
the new furniture. If Mary could only hear Hector talk of a new sofa
that he can't put his boots upon--he says it is bad enough at
Maplewood, but that he did hope to be still comfortable at home.
They have to get back to dine out to-morrow, but meantime the fun is
more fast and furious than ever, and as soon as the tide serves, we
are to fulfil our long-cherished desire of boating round to Lyme. I
won't answer for the quantity of discretion added to our freight, but
at least there is six feet more of valour, and Mrs. Blanche for my
chaperon. Bonnie Blanche is little changed by her four months'
matrimony, and only looks prettier and more stylish, but she is
painfully meek and younger-sisterish, asking my leave instead of her
husband's, and distressed at her smartness in her pretty shady hat
and undyed silk, because I was in trim for lias-grubbing. Her
appearance ought to be an example to all the brides in the place with
skirts in the water, and nothing on to keep off eyes, sun, or wind
from their faces. I give Flora infinite credit for it. Blanche and
Aubrey walk arm in arm in unceasing talk, and that good fellow,
Hector, has included Leonard in the general fraternity. They are
highly complimentary, saying they should have taken Aubrey for Harry,
he is so much stouter and rosier, and that Leonard is hugely grown.
Here come these three boys shouting that the boat is ready; I really
think Hector is more boyish and noisy than ever.


"Five precious souls, and all agog
To dash through thick or thin."


I'll take the best care of them in my power. Good-bye.'

* * * * * *

'August 2nd.--Safe back, without adventure, only a great deal of
enjoyment, for which I am doubly thankful, as I almost fancied we
were fey, one of the many presentiments that come to nothing, but
perhaps do us rather good than harm for all that. I hope I did not
show it in my letter, and communicate it to you. Even when safe
landed, I could not but think of the Cobb and Louisa Musgrove, as I
suppose every one does. We slept at the inn; drove with the
Ernescliffes to the station this morning, and came back to this place
an hour ago, after having been steeped in pleasure. I shall send the
description of Lyme to Daisy to-morrow, having no time for it now, as
I want an answer from you about our going to Maplewood. The "married
babies" are bent upon it, and Hector tries to demonstrate that it is
the shortest way home, to which I can't agree; but as it may save
another journey, and it will be nice to see them in their glory, I
told them that if you could spare us, we would go from the 29th to
the 4th of September. This will bring Leonard home four days before
the end of the holidays, for he has been most warmly invited, Hector
adopting him into the brotherhood of papa's pets. I am glad he is
not left out; and Mary had better prove to Averil that he will be
much happier for having no time at home before the half year begins.
He still shrinks from the very name being brought before him. Let me
know, if you please, whether this arrangement will suit, as I am to
write to Blanche. Dear little woman, I hope Hector won't make a
spoilt child of her, they are so very young, and their means seem so
unlimited to them both, Hector wanting to make her and us presents of
whatever we admired, and when she civilly praised Mab, vehemently
declaring that she should have just such another if money could
purchase, or if not, he would find a way. "Thank you, Hector dear, I
had rather not," placidly responds Blanche, making his vehemence fall
so flat, and Leonard's almost exulting alarm glide into such semi-
mortification, that I could have laughed, though I remain in hopes
that her "rather not" may always be as prudent, for I believe it is
the only limit to Hector's gifts.'

* * * * * *

'29th, 8 A. M.--Farewell to the Coombe of Coombes. I write while
waiting for the fly, and shall post this at Weymouth, where we are to
be met. We have been so happy here, that I could be sentimental, if
Leonard were not tete-a-tete with me, and on the verge of that
predicament. "Never so happy in his life," quoth he, "and never will
be again--wonders when he shall gee this white cliff again." But,
happily, in tumbles Aubrey with the big claw of a crab, which he
insists on Leonard's wearing next his heart as a souvenir of Mrs.
Gisborne; he is requited with an attempt to pinch his nose therewith,
and--
2.30. P. M. Weymouth.--The result was the upset of my ink, whereof
you see the remains; and our last moments were spent in reparations
and apologies. My two squires are in different plight from what they
were ten weeks ago, racing up hills that it then half killed them to
come down, and lingering wistfully on the top for last glimpses of
our bay. I am overwhelmed with their courtesies, and though each is
lugging about twenty pounds weight of stones, and Mab besides in
Leonard's pocket, I am seldom allowed to carry my own travelling bag.
Hector has been walking us about while his horses are resting after
their twenty miles, but we think the parade and pier soon seen, and
are tantalized by having no time for Portland Island, only contenting
ourselves with an inspection of shop fossils, which in company with
Hector is a sort of land of the "Three Wishes," or worse; for on my
chancing to praise a beautiful lump of Purbeck stone, stuck as full
of paludinae as a pudding with plums, but as big as my head and much
heavier, he brought out his purse at once; and when I told him he
must either enchant it on to my nose, or give me a negro slave as a
means of transport, Leonard so earnestly volunteered to be the
bearer, that I was thankful for my old rule against collecting
curiosities that I do not find and carry myself.
'August 30th. Maplewood.--I wonder whether these good children can be
happier, unless it may be when they receive you! How much they do
make of us! and what a goodly sight at their own table they are!
They are capable in themselves of making any place charming, though
the man must have been enterprising who sat down five-and-twenty
years ago to reclaim this park from irreclaimable down. I asked
where were the maples? and where was the wood? and was shown five
stunted ones in a cage to defend them from the sheep, the only things
that thrive here, except little white snails, with purple lines round
their shells. "There now, isn't it awfully bleak?" says Hector, with
a certain comical exultation. "How was a man ever to live here
without her?" And the best of it is, that Blanche thinks it
beautiful--delicious free air, open space, view over five counties,
&c. Inside, one traces Flora's presiding genius, Hector would never
have made the concern so perfect without her help; and Blanche is no
child in her own house, but is older and more at home than Hector, so
that one would take her for the heiress, making him welcome and at
ease. Not that it is like the Grange, Blanche is furious if I remark
any little unconscious imitation or similarity--"As if we could be
like Flora and George indeed!" Nor will they. If Blanche rules, it
will be unawares to herself. And where Hector is, there will always
be a genial house, overflowing with good-humour and good-nature. He
has actually kept the 1st of September clear of shooting parties that
he may take these two boys out, and give them a thorough day's sport
in his turnip-fields. "License? Nonsense, he thought of that
before, and now Aubrey may get some shooting out of George Rivers."
After such good-nature my mouth is shut, though, ay di me, all the
world and his wife are coming here on Monday evening, and unless I
borrow of Blanche, Mrs. Ernescliffe's sister will "look like ane
scrub."'

* * * * * *

'September 2nd.--Train at Stoneborough, 6.30. That's the best news I
have to give. Oh, it has been a weary while to be out of sight of
you all, though it has been pleasant enough, and the finale is
perfectly brilliant. Blanche, as lady of the house, is a sight to
make a sister proud; she looks as if she were born to nothing else,
and is a model of prettiness and elegance. Hector kept coming up to
me at every opportunity to admire her. "Now, old Ethel, look at her?
Doesn't she look like a picture? I chose that gown, you know;" then
again after dinner, "Well, old Ethel, didn't it go off well? Did you
ever see anything like her? There, just watch her among the old
ladies. I can't think where she learnt it all, can you?" And it
certainly was too perfect to have been learnt. It was not the
oppression that poor dear Flora gives one by doing everything so
well, as if she had perfectly balanced what was due to herself and
everybody else; it was just Blanche, simple and ready, pleasing
herself by doing what people liked, and seeing what they did like.
It was particularly pretty to see how careful both she and Hector
were not to put Leonard aside--indeed, they make more of him than of
Aubrey, who is quite able to find his own level. Even his tender
feelings as to Mab are respected, and Blanche always takes care to
invite her to a safe seat on a fat scarlet cushion on the sofa (Mrs.
Ledwich's wedding present), when the footmen with the tea might be in
danger of demolishing her. Leonard, and his fine eyes, and his dog,
were rather in fashion yesterday evening. Blanche put out his Coombe
sketches for a company trap, and people talked to him about them, and
he was set to sing with Blanche, and then with some of the young
ladies. He seemed to enjoy it, and his nice, modest, gentlemanlike
manner told. The party was not at all amiss in itself. I had a very
nice clerical neighbour, and it is a very different thing to see and
hear Hector at the bottom of the table from having poor dear George
there. But oh! only one dinner more before we see our own table
again, and Tom at the bottom of it. Hurrah! I trust this is the
last letter you will have for many a day, from

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