Prisoner of hope thou art; look up and sing,
In hope of promised spring.
Christian Year
In the summer of 1862, Tom May was to go up for his examination at the
College of Physicians, but only a day or two before it he made his
appearance at home, in as much excitement as it was in him to betray.
Hazlitt, the banker's clerk at Whitford, had written to him tidings of
the presentation of the missing cheque for £25, which Bilson had paid
to old Axworthy shortly before the murder, and which Leonard had
mentioned as in the pocket-book containing his receipt for the sum that
had been found upon him. Tom had made a halt at Whitford, and seen the
cheque, which had been backed by the word Axworthy, with an initial
that, like all such signatures of the nephew, might stand either for S.
or F., and the stiff office hand of both the elder and younger Axworthy
was so much alike, that no one could feel certain whose writing it was.
The long concealment, after the prisoner's pointed reference to it,
was, however, so remarkable, that the home conclave regarded the cause
as won; and the father and son hastened triumphantly to the attorneys'
office.
Messrs. Bramshaw and Anderson were greatly struck, and owned that their
own minds were satisfied as to the truth of their client's assertion;
but they demurred as to the possibility of further steps. An action for
forgery, Tom's first hope, he saw to be clearly impossible; Samuel
Axworthy appeared to have signed the cheque in his own name, and he had
every right to it as his uncle's heir; and though the long withholding
of it, as well as his own departure, were both suspicious
circumstances, they were not evidence. Where was there any certainty
that the cheque had ever been in the pocket-book or even if it had, how
did it prove the existence of young Ward's acknowledgment? Might it
not have been in some receptacle of papers hitherto not opened? There
was no sufficient case to carry to the police, after a conviction like
Leonard's, to set them on tracing the cheque either to an unknown
robber, or to Sam Axworthy, its rightful owner.
Mr. Bramshaw likewise dissuaded Dr. May from laying the case before the
Secretary of State, as importunity without due grounds would only tell
against him if any really important discovery should be made: and the
Doctor walked away, with blood boiling at people's coolness to other
folk's tribulations, and greatly annoyed with Tom for having acceded to
the representations of the men of law, and declining all co-operation
in drawing up a representation for the Home Office, on the plea that he
had no time to lose in preparing for his own examination, and must
return to town by the next train, which he did without a syllable of
real converse with any one at home.
The Doctor set to work with his home helpers, assisted by Dr. Spencer;
but the work of composition seemed to make the ground give way under
their feet, and a few adroit remarks from Dr. Spencer finally showed
him and Ethel that they had not yet attained the prop for the lever
that was to move the world. He gave it up, but still he did not quite
forgive Tom for having been so easily convinced, and ready to be
dismissed to his own affairs.
However, Dr. May was gratified by the great credit with which his son
passed his examination, and took his degree; and Sir Matthew Fleet
himself wrote in high terms of his talent, diligence, and steadiness,
volunteering hopes of being able to put him forward in town in his own
line, for which Tom had always had a preference; and adding, that it
was in concurrence with his own recommendation that the young man
wished to pursue his studies at Paris--he had given him introductions
that would enable him to do so to the greatest advantage, and he hoped
his father would consent. The letter was followed up by one from Tom
himself, as usual too reasonable and authoritative to be gainsaid, with
the same representation of advantages to be derived from a course of
the Parisian hospitals.
'Ah, well! he is after old Fleet's own heart,' said Dr. May, between
pride and mortification. 'I should not grudge poor Fleet some one to
take interest in his old age, and I did not look to see him so warm
about anything. He has not forgotten Calton Hill! But the boy must
have done very well! I say, shall we see him Sir Thomas some of these
days, Ethel, and laugh at ourselves for having wanted, to make him go
round in a mill after our old fashion?'
'You were contented to run round in your mill,' said Ethel, fondly,
'and maybe he will too.'
'No, no, Ethel, I'll not have him persuaded. Easy-going folk, too lazy
for ambition, have no right to prescribe for others. Ambition turned
sour is a very dangerous dose! Much better let it fly off! I mean to
look out of my mill yet, and see Sir Thomas win the stakes. Only I wish
he would come and see us; tell him he shall not hear a word to bother
him about the old practice. People have lived and died at Stoneborough
without a May to help them, and so they will again, I suppose.'
Ethel was very glad to see how her father had made up his mind to what
was perhaps the most real disappointment of his life, but she was
grieved that Tom did not respond to the invitation, and next wrote from
Paris. It was one of his hurried notes, great contrasts to such
elaborate performances as his recent letter. 'Thanks, many thanks to
my father,' he said; 'I knew you would make him see reason, and he
always yields generously. I was too much hurried to come home; could
not afford to miss the trail. I had not time to say before that the
Bank that sent the cheque to Whitford had it from a lodging-house in
town. Landlord had a writ served on S. A.; as he was embarking at
Folkestone, he took out the draft and paid. He knew its import, if
Bramshaw did not. I hope my father was not vexed at my not staying.
There are things I cannot stand, namely, discussions and Gertrude.'
Gertrude was one of the chief cares upon Ethel's mind. She spent many
thoughts upon the child, and even talked her over with Flora.
'What is it, Flora? is it my bad management? She is a good girl, and a
dear girl; but there is such a want of softness about her.'
'There is a want of softness about all the young ladies of the day,'
returned Flora.
'I have heard you say so, but--'
'We have made girls sensible and clear-headed, till they have grown
hard. They have been taught to despise little fears and illusions, and
it is certainly not becoming.'
'We had not fears, we were taught to be sensible.'
'Yes, but it is in the influence of the time! It all tends to make
girls independent.'
'That's very well for the fine folks you meet in your visits, but it
does not account for my Daisy--always at home, under papa's eye--having
turned nineteenth century--What is it, Flora? She is reverent in great
things, but not respectful except to papa, and that would not have been
respect in one of us--only he likes her sauciness.'
'That is it, partly.'
'No, I won't have that said,' exclaimed Ethel. 'Papa is the only
softening influence in the house--the only one that is tender. You see
it is unlucky that Gertrude has so few that she really does love, with
anything either reverend or softening about them. She is always at war
with Charles Cheviot, and he has not fun enough, is too lumbering
altogether, to understand her, or set her down in the right way; and
she domineers over Hector like the rest of us. I did hope the babies
might have found out her heart, but, unluckily, she does not take to
them. She is only bored by the fuss that Mary and Blanche make about
them.
'You know we are all jealous of both Charles Cheviots, elder and
younger.'
'I often question whether I should not have taken her down and made her
ashamed of all the quizzing and teasing at the time of Mary's marriage.
But one cannot be always spoiling bright merry mischief, and I am only
elder sister after all. It is a wonder she is as good to me as she is.'
'She never remembered our mother, poor dear.'
'Ah! that is the real mischief,' said Ethel. 'Mamma would have given
the atmosphere of gentleness and discretion, and so would Margaret. How
often I have been made, by the merest pained look, to know when what I
said was saucy or in bad taste, and I--I can only look forbidding, or
else blurt out a reproof that _will_ not come softly.'
'The youngest _must_ be spoilt,' said Flora, 'that's an ordinance of
nature. It ends when a boy goes to school, and when a girl--'
'When?'
'When she marries--or when she finds out what trouble is,' said Flora.
'Is that all you can hold out to my poor Daisy?'
'Well, it is the way of the world. There is just now a reaction from
sentiment, and it is the less feminine variety. The softness will come
when there is a call for it. Never mind when the foundation is safe.'
'If I could only see that child heartily admiring and looking up! I
don't mean love--there used to be a higher, nobler reverence!'
'Such as you and Norman used to bestow on Shakespeare and Scott,
and--the vision of Cocksmoor.'
'Not only _used_,' said Ethel.
'Yes, it is your soft side,' said Flora; 'it is what answers the
purpose of sentiment in people like you. It is what I should have
thought living with you would have put into any girl; but Gertrude has
a satirical side, and she follows the age.'
'I wish you would tell her so--it is what she especially wants not to
do! But the spirit of opposition is not the thing to cause tenderness.'
'No, you must wait for something to bring it out. She is very kind to
my poor little Margaret, and I won't ask how she talks _of_ her.'
'Tenderly; oh yes, that she always would do.'
'There, then, Ethel, if she can talk tenderly of Margaret, there can't
be much amiss at the root.'
'No; and you don't overwhelm the naughty girl with baby talk.'
'Like our happy, proud young mothers,' sighed Flora; and then letting
herself out--'but indeed, Ethel, Margaret is very much improved. She
has really begun to wish to be good. I think she is struggling with
herself.'
'Something to love tenderly, something to reverence highly.' So
meditated Ethel, as she watched her sunny-haired, open-faced Daisy, so
unconquerably gay and joyous that she gave the impression of sunshine
without shade. There are stages of youth that are in themselves
unpleasing, and yet that are nobody's fault, nay, which may have within
them seeds of strength. Tom's satire had fostered Daisy's too
congenial spirit, and he reaped the consequence in the want of repose
and sympathy that were driving him from home, and shutting him up
within himself. Would he ever forgive that flippant saying, which
Ethel had recollected with shame ever since--shame more for herself
than for the child, who probably had forgotten, long ago, her 'shaft at
random sent'?
Then Ethel would wonder whether, after all, her discontent with
Gertrude's speeches was only from feeling older and graver, and perhaps
from a certain resentment at finding how the course of time was wearing
down the sharp edge of compassion towards Leonard.
A little more about Leonard was gathered when the time came of release
for his friend the clerk Brown. This young man had an uncle at Paris,
engaged in one of the many departments connected with steam that carry
Englishmen all over the world, and Leonard obtained permission to write
to Dr. Thomas May, begging him to call upon the uncle, and try if he
could be induced to employ the penitent and reformed nephew under his
own eye. It had been wise in Leonard to write direct, for if the
request had been made through any one at home, Tom would have
considered it as impossible; but he could not resist the entreaty, and
his mission was successful. The uncle was ready to be merciful, and
undertook all the necessary arrangements for, and even the
responsibility of, bringing the ticket-of-leave man to Paris, where he
found him a desk in his office. One of Tom's few detailed epistles was
sent to Ethel after this arrival, when the uncle had told him how the
nephew had spoken of his fellow-prisoner. It was to Leonard Ward that
the young man had owed the inclination to open his heart to religious
instruction, hitherto merely endured as a portion of the general
infliction of the penalty, a supposed engine for dealing with the
superstitious, but entirely beneath his attention. The sight of the
educated face had at first attracted him, but when he observed the
reverential manner in chapel, he thought it mere acting the ''umble
prisoner,' till he observed how unobtrusive, unconscious, and retiring
was every token of devotion, and watched the eyes, brightened or
softened in praise or in prayer, till he owned the genuineness and
guessed the depth of both, then perceived in school how far removed his
unknown comrade was from the mere superstitious boor. This was the
beginning. The rest had been worked out by the instruction and
discipline of the place, enforced by the example, and latterly by the
conversation, of his fellow-prisoner, until he had come forth sincerely
repenting, and with the better hope for the future that his sins had
not been against full light.
He declared himself convinced that Ward far better merited to be at
large than he did, and told of the regard that uniform good conduct was
obtaining at last, though not till after considerable persecution,
almost amounting to personal danger from the worse sort of convicts,
who regarded him as a spy, because he would not connive at the
introduction of forbidden indulgences, and always stood by the
authorities. Once his fearless interposition had saved the life of a
warder, and this had procured him trust, and promotion to a class where
his companions were better conducted, and more susceptible to good
influences, and among them Brown was sure that his ready submission and
constant resolution to do his work were producing an effect. As to his
spirits, Brown had never known him break down but once, and that was
when he had come upon a curious fossil in the stone. Otherwise he was
grave and contented, but never laughed or joked as even some gentlemen
prisoners of more rank and age had been known to do. The music in the
chapel was his greatest pleasure, and he had come to be regarded as an
important element in the singing.
Very grateful was Dr. May to Tom for having learnt, and still more for
having transmitted, all these details, and Ethel was not the less
touched, because she knew they were to travel beyond Minster Street.
Those words of Mr. Wilmot's seemed to be working out their
accomplishment; and she thought so the more, when in early spring one
of Leonard's severe throat attacks led to his being sent after his
recovery to assist the schoolmaster, instead of returning to the
carpenter's shed; and he was found so valuable in the school that the
master begged to retain his services.
That spring was a grievous one in Indiana. The war, which eighteen
months previously was to have come to an immediate end, was still
raging, and the successes that had once buoyed up the Northern States
with hope had long since been chequered by terrible reverses. On, on,
still fought either side, as though nothing could close the strife but
exhaustion or extinction; and still ardent, still constant, through
bereavement and privation, were either party to their blood-stained
flag. Mordaunt Muller had fallen in one of the terrible battles on the
Rappahannock; and Cora, while, sobbing in Averil's arms, had still
confessed herself thankful that it had been a glorious death for his
country's cause! And even in her fresh grief, she had not endeavoured
to withhold her other brother, when, at the urgent summons of
Government, he too had gone forth to join the army.
Cora was advised to return to her friends at New York, but she declared
her intention of remaining to keep house with Cousin Deborah. Unless
Averil would come with her, nothing should induce her to leave
Massissauga, certainly not while Ella and Averil were alternately laid
low by the spring intermittent fever. Perhaps the fact was that,
besides her strong affection for Averil, she felt that in her ignorance
she had assisted her father in unscrupulously involving them in a
hazardous and unsuccessful speculation, and that she was the more
bound, in justice as well as in love and pity, to do her best for their
assistance. At any rate, Rufus had no sooner left home, than she
insisted on the three sisters coming to relieve her loneliness--in
other words, in removing them from the thin ill-built frame house,
gaping in every seam with the effects of weather, and with damp oozing
up between every board of the floor, the pestiferous river-fog, the
close air of the forest, and the view of the phantom trees, now
decaying and falling one against another.
Cousin Deborah, who had learnt to love and pity the forlorn English
girls, heartily concurred; and Averil consented, knowing that the dry
house and pure air were the best hope of restoring Ella's health.
Averil and Ella quickly improved, grew stronger in the intervals, and
suffered less during the attacks; but Minna, who in their own house had
been less ill, had waited on both, and supplied the endless
deficiencies of the kindly and faithful, but two-fisted Katty; Minna,
whose wise and simple little head had never failed in sensible
counsels, or tender comfort; Minna, whom the rudest and most
self-important far-wester never disobliged, Minna, the peace-maker, the
comfort and blessing--was laid low by fever, and fever that, as the
experienced eyes of Cousin Deborah at once perceived, 'meant mischief.'
Then it was that the real kindliness of heart of the rough people of
the West showed itself. The five wild young ladies, whose successive
domestic services had been such trouble, and whose answer to a summons
from the parlour had been, 'Did yer holler, Avy? I thort I heerd a
scritch,' each, from Cleopatra Betsy to Hetta Mary, were constantly
rushing in to inquire, or to present questionable dainties and nostrums
from their respective 'Mas'; the charwomen, whom Minna had coaxed in
her blandest manner to save trouble to Averil and disgust to Henry,
were officious in volunteers of nursing and sitting up, the black cook
at the hotel sent choice fabrics of jelly and fragrant ice; and even
Henry's rival, who had been so strong against the insolence of a
practitioner showing no testimonials, no sooner came under the
influence of the yearning, entreating, but ever-patient eyes, than his
attendance became assiduous, his interest in the case ardent.
Henry himself was in the camp, before Vicksburg, with his hands too
full of piteous cases of wounds and fever to attempt the most hurried
visit.
'Sister, dear,' said the soft slow voice, one day when Averil had been
hoping her patient was asleep, 'are you writing to Henry?'
'Yes, my darling. Do you want to say anything?'
'Oh yes! so much;' and the eyes grew bright, and the breath gasping;
'please beg Henry--tell Henry--that I must--I can't bear it any longer
if I don't--'
'You must what, dear child? Henry would let you do anything he could.'
'Oh, then, would he let me speak about dear Leonard?' and the child
grew deadly white when the words were spoken; but her eyes still sought
Averil's face, and grew terrified at the sight of the gush of tears.
'O, Ave, Ave, tell me only--he is not dead!' and as Averil could only
make a sign, 'I do have such dreadful fancies about him, and I think I
could sleep if I only knew what was really true.'
'You shall, dear child, you shall, without waiting to hear from Henry;
I know he would let you.'
And only then did Averil know the full misery that Henry's decision had
inflicted on the gentle little heart, in childish ignorance, imagining
fetters and dungeons, even in her sober waking moods, and a prey to
untold horrors in every dream, exaggerated by feverishness and
ailment--horrors that, for aught she knew, might be veritable, and made
more awful by the treatment of his name as that of one dead.
To hear of him as enjoying the open air and light of day, going to
church, singing their own favourite hymn tunes, and often visited by
Dr. May, was to her almost as great a joy as if she had heard of him at
liberty. And Averil had a more than usually cheerful letter to read to
her, one written in the infirmary during his recovery. His letters to
her were always cheerful, but this one was particularly so, having been
written while exhilarated by the relaxations permitted to
convalescents, and by enjoying an unwonted amount of conversation with
the chaplain and the doctor.
'So glad, so glad,' Minna was heard murmuring to herself again and
again; her rest was calmer than it had been for weeks, and the doctor
found her so much better that he trusted that a favourable change had
begun.
But it was only a gleam of hope. The weary fever held its prey, and
many as were the fluctuations, they always resulted in greater
weakness; and the wandering mind was not always able to keep fast hold
of the new comfort. Sometimes she would piteously clasp her sister's
hand, and entreat, 'Tell me again;' and sometimes the haunting
delirious fancies of chains and bars would drop forth from the tongue
that had lost its self-control; yet even at the worst came the dear old
recurring note, 'God will not let them hurt him, for he has not done
it!' Sometimes, more trying to Averil than all, she would live over
again the happy games with him, or sing their favourite hymns and
chants, or she would be heard pleading, 'O, Henry, don't be cross to
Leonard.'
Cora could not fail to remark the new name that mingled in the
unconscious talk; but she had learnt to respect Averil's reserve, and
she forbore from all questioning, trying even to warn Cousin Deborah,
who, with the experience of an elderly woman, remarked, 'That she had
too much to do to mind what a sick child rambled about. When Cora had
lived to her age, she would know how unaccountably they talked.'
But Averil felt the more impelled to an outpouring by this delicate
forbearance, and the next time she and Cora were sent out together to
breathe the air, while Cousin Deborah watched the patient, she told the
history, and to a sympathizing listener, without a moment's doubt of
Leonard's innocence, nor that American law would have managed matters
better.
'And now, Cora, you know why I told you there were bitterer sorrows
than yours.'
'Ah! Averil, I could have believed you once; but to know that he never
can come again! Now you always have hope.'
'My hope has all but gone,' said Averil. 'There is only one thing left
to look to. If I only can live till he is sent out to a colony, then
nothing shall keep me back from him!'
'And what would I give for even such a hope?'
'We have a better hope, both of us,' murmured Averil.
'It won't seem so long when it is over.'
Well was it for Averil that this fresh link of sympathy was riveted,
for day by day she saw the little patient wasting more hopelessly away,
and the fever only burning lower for want of strength to feed on.
Utterly exhausted and half torpid, there was not life or power enough
left in the child for them to know whether she was aware of her
condition. When they read Prayers, her lips always moved for the
Lord's Prayer and Doxology; and when the clergyman came out from
Winiamac, prayed by her and blessed her, she opened her eyes with a
look of comprehension; and if, according to the custom from the
beginning of her illness, the Psalms and Lessons were not read in her
room, she was uneasy, though she could hardly listen. So came Easter
Eve; and towards evening she was a little revived, and asked Averil
what day it was, then answered, 'I thought it would have been nice to
have died yesterday,'--it was the first time she mentioned death.
Averil told her she was better, but half repented, as the child sank
into torpor again; and Averil, no longer the bewildered girl who had
been so easily led from the death scene, knew the fitful breath and
fluttering pulse, and felt the blank dread stealing over her heart.
Again, however, the child looked up, and murmured, 'You have not read
to-day.' Cora, who had the Bible on her knee, gently obeyed, and read
on, where she was, the morning First Lesson, the same in the American
Church as in our own. Averil, dull with watching and suffering, sat on
dreamily, with the scent of primroses wafted to her, as it were, by the
association of the words, though her power to attend to them was gone.
Before the chapter was over, the doze had overshadowed the little girl
again; and yet, more than once, as the night drew on, they heard her
muttering what seemed like the echo of one of its verses, 'Turn you,
turn you--'
At last, after hours of watching, and more than one vain endeavour of
good Cousin Deborah to lead away the worn but absorbed nurses, the
dread messenger came. Minna turned suddenly in her sister's arms, with
more strength than Averil had thought was left in her, and eagerly
stretched out her arms, while the words so long trembling on her lips
found utterance. 'Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope!
O, Leonard dear! it does not hurt!' But that last word was almost lost
in the gasp--the last gasp. What 'did not hurt' was death without his
sting.
'O, Cora! Was he with her? Is he gone too?' was Averil's cry at the
first moment, as she strained the form of her little comforter for the
last time in her arms.
'And if he is, they are in joy together,' said Cousin Deborah, tenderly
but firmly unloosing Averil's arms, though with the tears running down
her cheeks. 'Take her away, Cora, and both of you sleep. This dear
lamb is in better keeping than yours.'
Heavy, grievous, was the loss, crushing the grief; but it was such as
to be at its softest and sweetest at Easter, amid the Resurrection
joys, and the budding flowers, though Ella's bitterest fit of weeping
was excited by there being no primroses--the primroses that Minna loved
so much; and her first pleasurable thought was to sit down and write to
her dear 'Mr. Tom' to send her some primrose seed, for Minna's grave.
Minna's grave! Alas! Massissauga had but an untidy desolate-looking
region, with a rude snake fence, all unconsecrated! Cora wanted to
choose a shaded corner in her father's ground, where they might daily
tend the child's earthly resting-place; but Averil shrank from this
with horror; and finally, on one of the Easter holidays, the little
wasted form in its coffin was reverently driven by Philetus to
Winiamac, while the sisters and Cora slowly followed, thinking--the one
of the nameless blood-stained graves of a battle-field; the other
whether an equally nameless grave-yard, but one looked on with a
shudder unmixed with exultation, had opened for the other being she
loved best. 'The Resurrection and the Life.--Yes, had not He made His
grave with the wicked, and been numbered with the transgressors!'
Somehow, the present sorrow was more abundant in such comforts as these
than all the pangs which her heart, grown old in sorrow, had yet
endured.
Yet if her soul had bowed itself to meet sorrow more patiently and
peacefully, it was at the expense of the bodily frame. Already
weakened by the intermittent fever, the long strain of nursing had told
on her; and that hysteric affection that had been so distressing at the
time of her brother's trial recurred, and grew on her with every
occasion for self-restraint. The suspense in which she lived--with one
brother in the camp, in daily peril from battle and disease, the other
in his convict prison--wore her down, and made every passing effect of
climate or fatigue seize on her frame like a serious disorder; and the
more she resigned her spirit, the more her body gave way. Yet she was
infinitely happier. The repentance and submission were bearing fruit,
and the ceasing to struggle had brought a strange calm and acceptance
of all that might be sent; nay, her own decay was perhaps the sweetest
solace and healing of the wearied spirit; and as to Ella, she would
trust, and she did trust, that in some way or other all would be well.
She felt as if even Leonard's death could be accepted thankfully as the
captive's release. But that sorrow was spared her.
The account of Leonard came from Mr. Wilmot, who had carried him the
tidings. The prisoner had calmly met him with the words, 'I know what
you are come to tell me;' and he heard all in perfect calmness and
resignation, saying little, but accepting all that the clergyman said,
exactly as could most be desired.
From the chaplain, likewise, Mr. Wilmot learnt that Leonard, though
still only in the second stage of his penalty, stood morally in a very
different position, and was relied on as a valuable assistant in all
that was good, more effective among his fellow-prisoners than was
possible to any one not in the same situation with themselves, and
fully accepting that position when in contact either with convicts or
officials. 'He has never referred to what brought him here,' said the
chaplain, 'nor would I press him to do so; but his whole tone is of
repentance, and acceptance of the penalty, without, like most of them,
regarding it as expiation. It is this that renders his example so
valuable among the men.'
After such a report as this, it was disappointing, on Dr. May's next
visit to Portland, at two months' end, to find Leonard drooping and
downcast. The Doctor was dismayed at his pale, dejected, stooping
appearance, and the silence and indifference with which he met their
ordinary topics of conversation, till the Doctor began anxiously--
'You are not well?'
'Quite well, thank you.'
'You are looking out of condition. Do you sleep?'
'Some part of the night.'
'You want more exercise. You should apply to go back to the
carpenter's shop--or shall I speak to the governor?'
'No, thank you. I believe they want me in school.'
'And you prefer school work?'
'I don't know, but it helps the master.'
'Do you think you make any progress with the men? We heard you were
very effective with them.'
'I don't see that much can be done any way, certainly not by me.'
Then the Doctor tried to talk of Henry and the sisters; but soon saw
that Leonard had no power to dwell upon them. The brief answers were
given with a stern compression and contraction of face; as if the
manhood that had grown on him in these three years was no longer
capable of the softening effusion of grief; and Dr. May, with all his
tenderness, felt that it must be respected, and turned the conversation.
'I have been calling at the Castle,' he said, 'with Ernescliffe, and
the governor showed me a curious thing, a volume of Archbishop Usher,
which had been the Duke of Lauderdale's study after he was taken at
Worcester. He has made a note in the fly-leaf, "I began this book at
Windsor, and finished it during my imprisonment here;" and below are
mottoes in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. I can't construe the Hebrew. The
Greek is oisteon kai elpisteon (one must bear and hope), the Latin is
durate. Will you accept your predecessor's legacy?'
'I think I read about him in an account of the island,' said Leonard,
with a moment's awakened intelligence; 'was he not the L. of the Cabal,
the persecutor in "Old Mortality?"'
'I am afraid you are right. Prosperity must have been worse for him
than adversity.'
'Endure' repeated Leonard, gravely. 'I will think of that, and what he
would mean by hope now.'
The Doctor came home much distressed; he had been unable to penetrate
the dreary, resolute self-command that covered so much anguish; he had
failed in probing or in healing, and feared that the apathy he had
witnessed was a sign that the sustaining spring of vigour was failing
in the monotonous life. The strong endurance had been a strain that
the additional grief was rendering beyond his power; and the crushed
resignation, and air of extinguished hope, together with the
indications of failing health, filled the Doctor with misgivings.
'It will not last much longer,' he said. 'I do not mean that he is
ill; but to hold up in this way takes it out of a man, especially at
his age. The first thing that lays hold of him, he will have no
strength nor will to resist, and then--Well, I did hope to live to see
God show the right.'