The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain Part 70

After that Ethel let him alone, satisfied that peace was the best means of recovering the exhaustion of his long-suffering.

The difficulty was that this was no house for quiet, especially the day after the master's return: the door-bell kept on ringing, and each time he looked startled and nervous, though a.s.sured that it was only patients. But at twelve o'clock in rushed Mr. Cheviot's little brother, with a note from Mary, lamenting that it was too wet for herself, but saying that Charles was coming in the afternoon, and that he intended to have a dinner-party of old Stoneborough scholars to welcome Leonard back.

Meanwhile, Martin Cheviot, wanting to see, and not to stare, and to unite cordiality and unconsciousness, made an awkward mixture of all, and did not know how to get away; and before he had accomplished it, Mr. Edward Anderson was announced. He heartily shook hands with Leonard, eagerly welcomed him, and talked volubly, and his last communication was, 'If it clears, you will see Matilda this afternoon.'

'I did not know she was here.'

'Yes; she and Harvey are come to Mrs. Ledwich's, to stay over Sunday;'

and there was a laugh in the corner of his eye, that convinced Ethel that the torrents of rain would be no protection.

'Papa,' said she, darting out to meet her father in the hall, 'you must take Leonard out in your brougham this afternoon, if you don't want him driven distracted. If he is in the house, ropes won't hold Mrs. Harvey Anderson from him!'

So Dr. May invited his guest to share his drive; and the excitement began to seem unreal when the Doctor returned alone.

'I dropped him at c.o.c.ksmoor,' he said. 'It was Richard's notion that he would be quieter there--able to get out, and go to church, without being stared at.'

'Did he like it?' asked Gertrude, disappointed.

'If one told him to chop off his finger, he would do it, and never show whether he liked it. Richard asked him, and he said, "Thank you." I never could get an opening to show him that we did not want to suppress him; I never saw spirit so quenched.'

Charles Cheviot thought it was a mistake to do what gave the appearance of suppression--he said that it was due to Leonard to welcome him as heartily as possible, and not to encourage false shame, where there was no disgrace; so he set his wife to fill up her cards for his dinner-party, and included in it Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Anderson, for the sake of their warm interest in the liberated prisoner.

'However, Leonard was out of the sc.r.a.pe,' as the Doctor expressed it, for he had one of his severe sore throats, and was laid up at c.o.c.ksmoor. Richard was dismayed by his pa.s.sive obedience--a novelty to the gentle eldest, who had all his life been submitting, and now was puzzled by his guest's unfailing acquiescence without a token of preference or independence: and comically amazed at the implicit fulfilment of his recommendation to keep the throat in bed--a wise suggestion, but one that the whole house of May, in their own persons, would have scouted. Nothing short of the highest authority ever kept them there.

The semblance of illness was perhaps a good starting-point for a return to the ways of the world; and on the day week of his going to c.o.c.ksmoor, Ethel found him by the fire, beginning his letters to his brother and sister, and looking brighter and more cheery, but so devoid of voice, that speech could not be expected of him.

She had just looked in again after some parish visiting, when a quick soldierly step was heard, and in walked Aubrey.

'No; I'm not come to you, Ethel; I'm only come to this fellow;' and he ardently grasped his hand. 'I've got leave till Monday, and I shall stay here and see n.o.body else.--What, a sore throat? Couldn't you get wrapped up enough between the two doctors?'

Leonard's eyes lighted as he muttered his hoa.r.s.e 'Thank you,' and Ethel lingered for a little desultory talk to her brother, contrasting the changes that the three years had made in the two friends. Aubrey, drilled out of his home scholarly dreaminess by military and practical discipline, had exchanged his native languor for prompt upright alertness of bearing and speech; his eye had grown more steady, his mouth had lost its vague pensive expression, and was rendered sterner by the dark moustache; definite thought, purpose, and action, had moulded his whole countenance and person into hopeful manhood, instead of visionary boyhood. The other face, naturally the most full of fire and resolution, looked strangely different in its serious unsmiling gravity, the deeply worn stamp of patient endurance and utter isolation. There was much of rest and calm, and even of content--but withal a quenched look, as if the l.u.s.tre of youth and hope had been extinguished, and the soul had been so driven in upon itself, that there was no opening to receive external sympathy--a settled expression, all the stranger on a face with the clear smoothness of early youth. One thing at least was unchanged--the firm friendship and affection--that kept the two constantly casting glances over one another, to a.s.sure themselves of the presence before them.

Ethel left them together; and her father, who made out that he should save time by going to c.o.c.ksmoor Church on Sunday morning, reported that the boys seemed very happy together in their own way; but that Richard reported himself to have been at the sole expense of conversation in the evening--the only time such an event could ever have occurred!

Aubrey returned home late on the Sunday evening; and Leonard set off to walk part of the way with him in the dusk, but ended by coming the whole distance, for the twilight opened their lips in this renewal of old habits.

'It is all right to be walking together again,' said Aubrey, warmly; 'though it is not like those spring days.'

'I've thought of them every Sunday.'

'And what are you going to do now, old fellow?'

'I don't know.'

'I hear Bramshaw is going to offer you to come into his office. Now, don't do that, Leonard, whatever you do!'

'I don't know.'

'You are to have all your property back, you know, and you could do much better for yourself than that.'

'I can't tell till I have heard from my brother.'

'But, Leonard, promise me now--you'll not go out and make a Yankee of yourself.'

'I can't tell; I shall do what he wishes.'

Aubrey presently found that Leonard seemed to have no capacity to think or speak of the future or the past. He set Aubrey off on his own concerns, and listened with interest, asking questions that showed him perfectly alive to what regarded his friend, but the pa.s.sive inaction of will and spirits still continued, and made him almost a disappointment.

On Monday morning there was a squabble between the young engineer and the Daisy, who was a profound believer in the scientific object of Tom's journey, and greatly resented the far too obvious construction thereof.

'You must read lots of bad novels at Chatham, Aubrey; it is like the f.a.g end of the most trumpery of them all!'

'You haven't gone far enough in your mathematics, you see, Daisy. You think one and one--'

'Make two. So I say.'

'I've gone into the higher branches.'

'I didn't think you were so simple and commonplace. It would be so stupid to think he must--just because he could not help making this discovery.'

'All for want of the higher branches of mathematics! One plus one--equals one.'

'One minus common sense, plus folly, plus romance, minus anything to do. Your equation is worthy of Mrs. Harvey Anderson. I gave her a good dose of the 'Diseases of Climate!''

Aubrey was looking at Ethel all the time Gertrude was triumphing; and finally he said, 'I've no absolute faith in disinterested philanthropy to a younger brother--whatever I had before I went to the Tyrol.'

'What has that to do with it?' asked Gertrude. 'Everybody was cut up, and wanted a change--and you more than all. I do believe the possibility of a love affair absolutely drives people mad: and now they must needs saddle it upon poor Tom--just the one of the family who is not so stupid, but has plenty of other things to think about.'

'So you think it a stupid pastime?'

'Of course it is. Why, just look. Hasn't everybody in the family turned stupid, and of no use, as soon at they went and fell in love!

Only good old Ethel here has too much sense, and that's what makes her such a dear old gurgoyle. And Harry--he is twice the fun after he comes home, before he gets his fit of love. And all the story books that begin pleasantly, the instant that love gets in, they are just alike--so stupid! And now, if you haven't done it yourself, you want to lug poor innocent Tom in for it.'

'When your time comes, may I be there to see!'

He retreated from her evident designs of clapper-clawing him; and she turned round to Ethel with, 'Now, isn't it stupid, Ethel!'

'Very stupid to think all the zest of life resides in one particular feeling,' said Ethel; 'but more stupid to talk of what you know nothing about.'

Aubrey put in his head for a hurried farewell, and, 'Telegraph to me when Mrs. Thomas May comes home.'

'If Mrs. Thomas May comes home, I'll--'

'Give her that chair cover,' said Ethel; and her idle needlewoman, having been eight months working one corner of it, went off into fits of laughter, regarding its completion as an equally monstrous feat with an act of cannibalism on the impossible Mrs. Thomas May.

How different were these young things, with their rhodomontade and exuberant animation and spirits, from him in whom all the sparkle and aspiration of life seemed extinguished!