The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain Part 43

'Don't, don't fight against it,' said Dr. May, affectionately drawing him to his seat on the bed, as, indeed, the violence of the paroxysm made him scarcely able to stand. 'Let it have its way; you will be all the better for it. It ought to be so--it must.'

And in tears himself, the Doctor turned his back, and went as far away as the cell would permit, turning towards the books that lay on a narrow ledge that served for a table. 'How long, O Lord, how long?'

were the words that caught his eye in the open Psalms; and, startled as if at unauthorized prying, he looked up at the dull screened and spiked window above his head, till he knew by the sounds that the worst of the uncontrollable pa.s.sion had spent itself, and then he came back with the towel dipped in water, and cooled the flushed heated face as a sister might have done.

'Oh--thank you--I am ashamed,' gasped the still sobbing boy.

'Ashamed! No; I like you the better for it,' said the Doctor, earnestly. 'There is no need that we should not grieve together in this great affliction, and say out all that is in our hearts.'

'All!' exclaimed Leonard. 'No--no words can say that! Oh! was it for such as this that my poor mother made so much of me--and I got through the fever--and I hoped--and I strove--Why--why should I be cut off--for a disgrace and a misery to all! and again came the heart-broken sobs, though less violently.

'Not to those who look within, and honour you, Leonard.'

'Within! Why, how bad I have been, since _this_ is the reckoning! I deserve it, I know--but--' and his voice again sank in tears.

'Ethel says that your so feeling comforts her the most; to know that you have not the terrible struggle of faith disturbed by injustice.'

'If--I have not,' said Leonard, 'it is her doing. In those happy days when we read Marmion, and could not believe that G.o.d would not always show the right, she showed me how we only see bits and sc.r.a.ps of His Justice here, and it works round in the end! Nay, if I had not done that thing to Henry, I should not be here now! It is right! It is right!' he exclaimed between the heaving sobs that still recurred. 'I do try to keep before me what she said about Job--when it comes burning before me, why should that man be at large, and I here? or when I think how his serpent-eye fell under mine when I tried that one word about the receipt, that would save my life. Oh! that receipt!'

'Better to be here than in his place, after all!'

'I'd rather be a street-sweeper!' bitterly began Leonard.--'Oh, Dr.

May, do let me have that!' he cried, suddenly changing his tone, and holding out his hand, as he perceived in the Doctor's b.u.t.ton-hole a dove-pink, presented at a cottage door by a grateful patient. For a s.p.a.ce he was entirely occupied with gazing into its crimson depths, inhaling the fragrance, and caressingly spreading the cool damask petals against his hot cheeks and eyelids. 'It is so long since I saw anything but walls!' he said.

'Three weeks,' sadly replied the Doctor.

'There was a gleam of suns.h.i.+ne when I got out of the van yesterday. I never knew before what suns.h.i.+ne was. I hope it will be a sunny day when I go out for the last time!'

'My dear boy, I have good hopes of saving you. There's not a creature in Stoneborough, or round it, that is not going to pet.i.tion for you--and at your age--'

Leonard shook his head in dejection. 'It has all gone against me,' he said. 'They all say there's no chance. The chaplain says it is of no use unsettling my mind.'

'The chaplain is an old--' began Dr. May, catching himself up only just in time, and asking, 'How do you get on with him!'

'I can hear him read,' said Leonard, with the look that had been thought sullen.

'But you cannot talk to him?'

'Not while he thinks me guilty.' Then, at a sound of warm sympathy from his friend, he added, 'I suppose it is his duty; but I wish he would keep away. I can't stand his aiming at making me confess, and I don't want to be disrespectful.'

'I see, I see. It cannot be otherwise. But how would it be if Wilmot came to you?'

'Would Mr. May?' said Leonard, with a beseeching look.

'Richard? He would with all his heart; but I think you would find more support and comfort in a man of Mr. Wilmot's age and experience, and that Mr. Reeve would have more trust in him; but it shall be exactly as will be most comforting to you.'

'If Mr. Wilmot would be so good, then' said Leonard, meekly. 'Indeed, I want help to bear it patiently! I don't know how to die; and yet it seemed not near so hard a year ago, when they thought I did not notice, and I heard Ave go away crying, and my mother murmuring, again and again, "Thy will be done!"--the last time I heard her voice. Oh, well that she has not to say it now!'

'Well that her son can say it!'

'I want to be able to say it,' said the boy, fervently; 'but this seems so hard--life is so sweet.' Then, after a minute's thought: 'Dr. May, that morning, when I awoke, and asked you for them--papa and mamma--you knelt down and said the Lord's Prayer. Won't you now?'

And when those words had been said, and they both stood up again, Leonard added: 'It always seems to mean more and more! But oh, Dr.

May! that forgiving--I can't ask any one but you if--' and he paused.

'If you forgive, my poor boy! Nay, are not your very silence and forbearance signs of practical forgiveness? Besides, I have always observed that you have never used one of the epithets that I can't think of him without.'

'Some feelings are too strong for common words of abuse,' said Leonard, almost smiling; 'but I hope I may be helped to put away what is wrong.--Oh, must you go?'

'I fear I must, my dear; I have a patient to see again, on my way back, and one that will be the worse for waiting.'

'Henry has not been able to practise. I want to ask one thing, Dr.

May, before you go. Could not you persuade them, since home is poisoned to them, at any rate to go at once? It would be better for my sisters than being here--when--and they would only remember that last Sunday at home.'

'Do you shrink from another meeting with Averil?'

His face was forced into calmness. 'I will do without it, if it would hurt her.'

'It may for the time, but to be withheld would give her a worse heart-ache through life.'

'Oh, thank you!' cried Leonard, his face lighting up; 'it is something still to hope for.'

'Nay, I've not given you up yet,' said the Doctor, trying for a cheerful smile. 'I've got a prescription that will bring you through yet--London advice, you know. I've great faith in the consulting surgeon at the Home Office.'

By the help of that smile and augury, the Doctor got away, terribly beaten down, but living on his fragment of hope; though obliged to perceive that every one who merely saw the newspaper report in black and white, without coming into personal contact with the prisoner, could not understand how the slightest question of the justice of the verdict could arise. Even Mr. Wilmot was so convinced by the papers, that the Doctor almost repented of the mission to which he had invited him, and would, if he could, have revoked what had been said. But the vicar of Stoneborough, painful as was the duty, felt his post to be by the side of his unhappy young paris.h.i.+oner, equally whether the gaol chaplain or Dr. May were right, and if he had to bring him to confession, or to strengthen him to 'endure grief, suffering wrongfully.'

And after the first interview, no more doubts on that score were expressed; but the vicar's tone of pitying reverence in speaking of the prisoner was like that of his friends in the High Street.

Tom May spared neither time nor pains in beating up for signatures for the pet.i.tion, but he had a more defined hope, namely, that of detecting something that might throw the suspicion into the right quarter. The least contradiction of the evidence might raise a doubt that would save Leonard's life, and bring the true criminal in peril of the fate he so richly deserved. The Vintry Mill was the lion of the neighbourhood, and the crowds of visitors had been a reason for its new master's vacating it, and going into lodgings in Whitford; so that Tom, when he found it convenient to forget his contempt of the gazers and curiosity hunters who thronged there, and to march off on a secret expedition of investigation, found no obstacle in his way, and at the cost of a fee to Mrs. Giles, who was making a fortune, was free to roam and search wherever he pleased. Even his careful examination of the cotton blind, and his sc.r.a.ping of the window-sill with a knife, were not remarked; for had not the great chair been hacked into fragmentary relics, and the loose paper of the walls of Leonard's room been made mincemeat of, as memorials of 'the murderer, Ward'?

One long white hair picked out of a mat below the window, and these sc.r.a.pings of the window-sill, Tom carried off, and also the sc.r.a.pings of the top bar of a stile between the mill and the Three Goblets. That evening, all were submitted to the microscope. Dr. May was waked from a doze by a very deferential 'I beg your pardon, sir,' and a sudden tweak, which abstracted a silver thread from his head; and Mab showed somewhat greater displeasure at a similar act of plunder upon her white chemisette. But the spying was followed by a sigh; and, in dumb show, Ethel was made to perceive that the Vintry hair had more affinity with the canine than the human. As to the sc.r.a.pings of the window, nothing but vegetable fibre could there be detected; but on the stile, there was undoubtedly a mark containing human blood-disks; Tom proved that both by comparison with his books, and by p.r.i.c.king his own finger, and kept Ethel to see it after every one else was gone up to bed. But as one person's blood was like another's, who could tell whether some one with a cut finger had not been through the stile? Tom shook his head, there was not yet enough on which to commit himself. 'But I'll have him!--I'll have him yet!' said he. 'I'll never rest while that villain walks the earth unpunished!'

Meantime, Harvey Anderson did yeoman's service by a really powerful article in a leading paper, written from the very heart of an able man, who had been strongly affected himself, and was well practised in feeling in pen and ink. Every word rang home to the soul, and all the more because there was no defence nor declamation against the justice of the verdict, which was acknowledged to be unavoidable; it was merely a pathetic delineation of a terrible mystery, with a little meditative philosophy upon it, the moral of which was, that nothing is more delusive than fact, more untrue than truth. However, it was copied everywhere, and had the great effect of making it the cue of more than half the press to mourn over, rather than condemn, 'the unfortunate young gentleman.'

Mrs. Pugh showed every one the article, and confided to most that she had absolutely ventured to suggest two or three of the sentences. But a great deal might be borne from Mrs. Pugh, in consideration of her indefatigable exertions with the ladies' pet.i.tion, and it was a decided success. The last census had rated Market Stoneborough at 7561 inhabitants, and Mrs. Pugh's pet.i.tion bore no less than 3024 female names, in which she fairly beat that of the mayor; but then she had been less scrupulous as to the age at which people should be asked to sign; as long as the name could be written at all, she was not particular whose it was.

Dr. May made his patients agree to accept as his subst.i.tute Dr. Spencer or Mr. Wright, to whom Henry Ward intended to resign practice and house. He himself was to go to London for a couple of nights with George Rivers, who was exceedingly gratified at having the charge of him all to himself, and considered that the united influence of member and mayor must prevail. Dr. Spencer, on the contrary, probably by way of warning, represented Mr. Mayor as ruining everything by his headlong way of setting about it, declaring that he would abuse everybody all round, and a.s.sure the Home Secretary, that, as sure as his name was d.i.c.k May, it was quite impossible the boy could have hurt a fly; though a strict sense of truth would lead him to add the next moment, that he was terribly pa.s.sionate, and had nearly demolished his brother.

Dr. May talked of his caution and good behaviour, which, maybe, were somewhat increased by this caricature, but he ended by very hearty wishes that these were the times of Jeanie Deans; if the pardon depended on our own good Queen, he should not doubt of it a moment.

Why, was not the boy just the age of her own son?

And verily there was no one in the whole world whom poor Averil envied like Jeanie Deans.

So member and mayor went to London together, and intense were the prayers that speeded them and followed them. The case was laid before the Home Secretary, the pet.i.tions presented, and Dr. May said all that man might say on ground where he felt as if over-partisans.h.i.+p might be perilous. The matter was to have due consideration: nothing more definite or hopeful could be obtained; but there could be no doubt that this meant a real and calm re-weighing of the evidence, with a consideration of all the circ.u.mstances. It was something for the Doctor that a second dispa.s.sionate study should be given to the case, but his heart sank as he thought of that cold, hard statement of evidence, without the counter testimony of the honest, tearless eyes and simple good faith of the voice and tone.

And when he entered the railway carriage on his road home, the newspaper that George Rivers attentively pressed upon him bore the information that Wednesday, the 21st, would be the day, according to usage, for the execution of the condemned criminal, Leonard Axworthy Ward. If it had been for the execution of Richard May, the Doctor could hardly have given a deeper groan.

He left the train at the county town. He had so arranged, that he might see the prisoner on his way home; but he had hardly the heart to go, except that he knew he was expected, and no disappointment that he could help must add to the pangs of these last days.

Leonard was alone, but was not, as before, sitting unemployed; he carefully laid down his etching work ere he came forward to meet his friend; and there was not the bowed and broken look about him, but a fixed calmness and resolution, as he claimed the fatherly embrace and blessing with which the Doctor now always met him.