The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain Part 20

'What!' said Richard, looking up at the sound of his name. All laughed, but were ashamed to explain, and were relieved that their father rang the bell.

'At that unhappy skein still, Mary?' said Mrs. Ernescliffe, as the good nights were pa.s.sing. 'What a horrid state it is in!'

'I shall do it in time,' said Mary, 'when there is nothing to distract my attention. I only hope I shall not hurt it for you.'

'Chuck it into the fire at once; it is not worth the trouble,' said Hector.

Each had a word of advice, but Mary held her purpose, and persevered till all had left the room except Richard, who quietly took the crimson tangle on his wrists, turned and twisted, opened pa.s.sages for the winder, and by the magic of his dexterous hands, had found the clue to the maze, so that all was proceeding well, though slowly, when the study door opened, and Harry's voice was heard in a last good night to his father. Mary's eyes looked wistful, and one misdirection of her winder tightened an obdurate loop once more.

'Run after Harry,' said Richard, taking possession of the ivory. 'Good night; I can always do these things best alone. I had rather--yes, really--good night:' and his kiss had the elder brother's authority of dismissal.

His Maimouna was too glad and grateful for more than a summary 'Thank you,' and flew up-stairs in time to find Harry turning, baffled, from her empty room. 'What, only just done that interminable yarn?' he said.

'Richard is doing it. I could not help letting him, this first evening of you.'

'Good old Richard! he is not a bit altered since I first went to sea, when I was so proud of that,' said Harry, taking up his midshipman's dirk, which formed a trophy on Mary's mantelshelf.

'Are we altered since you went last?' said Mary.

'The younger ones, of course. I was in hopes that Aubrey would have been more like old June, but he'll never be so much of a fellow.'

'He is a very dear good boy,' said Mary, warmly.

'Of course he is,' said Harry, 'but, somehow, he will always have a woman-bred way about him. Can't be helped, of course; but what a pair of swells Tom and Blanche are come out!' and he laughed good-naturedly.

'Is not Blanche a beautiful dear darling?' cried Mary, eagerly. 'It is so nice to have her. They could not come at first because of the infection, and then because of the rifle corps, and now it is delicious to have all at home.'

'Well, Molly, I'm glad it wasn't you that have married. Mind, you mustn't marry till I do.'

And Harry was really glad that Mary's laugh was perfectly 'fancy free,'

as she answered, 'I'm sure I hope not, but I won't promise, because that might be unreasonable, you know.'

'Oh, you prudent, provident Polly! But,' added Harry, recalled to a sense of time by a clock striking eleven, 'I came to bring you something, Mary. You shall have it, if you will give me another.'

Mary recognized, with some difficulty, a Prayer-Book with limp covers that Margaret had given him after his first voyage. Not only was it worn by seven years' use, but it was soiled and stained with dark brownish red, and a straight round hole perforated it from cover to cover.

'Is it too bad to keep?' said Harry. 'Let me just cut out my name in Margaret's hand, and the verse of the 107th Psalm; luckily the ball missed that.'

'The ball?' said Mary, beginning to understand.

'Yes. Every one of those circles that you see cut out there, was in here,' said Harry, laying his hand over his chest, 'before the ball, which I have given to my father.'

'O, Harry!' was all Mary could say, pointing to her own name in a pencil scrawl on the fly-leaf.

'Yes, I set that down because I could not speak to tell what was to be done with it, when we didn't know that that book had really been the saving of my life. That hair's-breadth deviation of the bullet made all the difference.'

Mary was kissing the blood-stained book, and sobbing.

'Why, Mary, what is there to cry for? It is all over now, I tell you.

I am as well as man would wish, and there's no more about it but to thank G.o.d, and try to deserve His goodness.'

'Yes, yes, I know, Harry; but to think how little we knew, or thought, or felt--going on in our own way when you were in such danger and suffering!'

'Wasn't I very glad you were going on in your own way!' said Harry.

'Why, Mary, it was that which did it--it has been always that thought of you at the Minster every day, that kept me to reading the Psalms, and so having the book about me. And did not it do one good to lie and think of the snug room, and my father's spectacles, and all as usual?

When they used to lay me on the deck of the Dexter at night, because I could not breathe below, I used to watch old Orion, who was my great friend in the Loyalty Isles, and wish the heathen name had not stuck to the old fellow, he always seemed so like the Christian warrior, climbing up with his shield before him and his. A home like this is a shield to a man in more ways than one, Mary. Hollo, was that the street door?'

'Yes; Ritchie going home. Fancy his being at the silk all this time! I am so sorry!'

Maugre her sorrow, there were few happier maidens in England than Mary May, even though her service was distracted by the claims of three slave-owners at once, bound as she was, to Ethel, by habitual fidelity, to Harry, by eager adoration, to Blanche, by willing submission.

Luckily, their requisitions (for the most part unconscious) seldom clashed, or, if they did, the two elders gave way, and the bride a.s.serted her supremacy in the plenitude of her youthful importance and prosperity.

Thus she carried off Mary in her barouche to support her in the return of bridal calls, while the others were organizing a walk to visit Flora and the rifle target. Gertrude's enthusiasm was not equal to walking with a weapon that might be loaded, nor to being ordered out to admire the practice, so she accompanied the sisters; Tom was reading hard; and Ethel found herself, Aubrey, and the sailor, the only ones ready to start.

This was a decided treat, for Aubrey and she were so nearly one, that it was almost a tete-a-tete with Harry, though it was not his way to enter by daylight, and without strong impulse, on what regarded himself, and there were no such confidences as those to Mary on the previous night; but in talking over home details, it was easier to speak without Tom's ironical ears and caustic tongue.

Among other details, the story of the summer that Ethel and Aubrey had spent at Coombe was narrated, and Aubrey indulged himself by describing what he called Ethel's conquest.

'It is more a conquest of Norman's, and of Melanesia,' said Ethel. 'If it were not nonsense to build upon people's generous visions at seventeen, I should sometimes hope a spark had been lit that would shine some day in your islands, Harry.'

Going up that hill was not the place for Etheldred May to talk of the futility of youthful aspirations, but it did not so strike either of the brothers, to whom c.o.c.ksmoor had long been a familiar fact. Harry laughed to hear the old Ethel so like herself; and Aubrey said, 'By the bye, what did you do, the day you walked him to c.o.c.ksmoor? he was fuller of those islands than ever after it.'

'I did not mean it,' said Ethel; 'but the first day of the holidays I came on him disconsolate in the street, with nothing to do, and very sore about Henry's refusal to let him volunteer; he walked on with me till we found ourselves close to c.o.c.ksmoor, and I found he had never seen the church, and would like to stay for evening service, so I put him into the parsonage while I was busy, and told him to take a book.'

'I know,' said Aubrey; 'the liveliest literature you can get in Richard's parlour are the Missionary Reports.'

'Exactly so; and he got quite saturated with them; and when we walked home, I was so thankful that the rifle grievance should be a little displaced, that I led him on to talk and build castles rather more than according to my resolutions.'

'Hollo, Ethel!' said Harry.

'Yes, I think spontaneous castles are admirable, but I mistrust all timber from other people's woods.'

'But isn't this a horrid shame of Henry?' said Aubrey. 'Such a little prig as he is, to take the place of such a fellow as Leonard, a capital shot already.'

'I wish Henry had been magnanimous,' said Ethel.

'I'd as soon talk of a magnanimous weasel, from what I recollect,' said Harry.

'And he is worse now, Harry,' continued Aubrey. 'So spruce and silky out of doors, and such a regular old tyrannical bachelor indoors. He is jealous of Leonard, any one can see, and that's the reason he won't give him his due.'

'You observe,' said Ethel, 'that this boy thinks the youngest brother's due is always to come first.'

'So it is, in this family,' said Harry. 'No one comes so last as old Ritchie.'

'But of course,' said Aubrey, rather taken aback, 'if I were not youngest, I should have to knock under to some one.'

Ethel and Harry both laughed heartily; one congratulating him on not having carried the principle into the c.o.c.kpit, the other adding, 'Don't indoctrinate Leonard with it; there is enough already to breed bitterness between those brothers! Leonard ought to be kept in mind that Henry has so much to hara.s.s him, that his temper should be borne patiently with.'

'He!'