Perhaps this incident most fully revealed to the Doctor, how unlike other people his charge was, how much changed from the handsome spirited lad on whom the trouble had fallen; and he looked again and again at the profile turned to the window, as fixed and set as though it had been carved.
‘Ah, patience is an exhausting virtue!’ said he to himself. ‘Verily it is bearing—bearing up under the full weight; and the long bent spring is the slower in rebounding in proportion to its inherent strength. Poor lad, what protracted endurance it has been! There is health and force in his face; no line of sin, nor sickness, nor worldly care, such as it makes one’s heart ache to see aging young faces; yet how utterly unlike the face of one and-twenty! I had rather see it sadder than so strangely settled and sedate! Shall I speak to him again? Not yet: those green hill-sides, those fields and cattle, must refresh him better than my clavers, after his grim stony mount of purgatory. I wish it were a brighter day to greet him, instead of this gray damp fog.’
The said fog prevented any semblance of sunset; but through the gray moonlit haze, Leonard kept his face to the window, pertinaciously clearing openings in the bedewed glass, as though the varying outline of the horizon had a fascination for him. At last, after ten minutes of glaring gas at a junction had by contrast rendered the mist impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same strange rigid somnambulist air.
Dr. May resolved to rouse him.
‘Well, Leonard,’ he said, ‘this has been a very long fever; but we are well through it at last—with the young doctor from Paris to our aid.’
Probably Leonard only heard the voice, not the words, for he passed his hand over his face, and looked up to the Doctor, saying dreamily, ‘Let me see! Is it all true?’ and then, with a grave wistful look, ‘It was not I who did that thing, then?’
‘My dear!’ exclaimed the Doctor, starting forward, and catching hold of his hand, ‘have they brought you to this?’
‘I always meant to ask you, if I ever saw you alone again,’ said Leonard.
‘But you don’t mean that you have imagined it!’
‘Not constantly—not when any one was with me,’ said Leonard, roused by Dr. May’s evident dismay; and drawn on by his face of anxious inquiry. ‘At Milbank, I generally thought I remembered it just as they described it in court, and that it was some miserable ruinous delusion that hindered my confessing; but the odd thing was, that the moment any one opened my door, I forgot all about it, resolutions and all, and was myself again.’
‘Then surely—surely you left that horror with the solitude?’
‘Yes, till lately; but when it did come back, I could not be sure what was recollection of fact, and what of my own fancy;’ and he drew his brows together in painful effort. ‘Did I know who did it, or did I only guess?’
‘You came to a right conclusion, and would not let me act on it.’
‘And I really did write the receipt, and not dream it?’
‘That receipt has been in my hand. It was what has brought you here.’ And now to hearing ears, Dr. May went over the narrative; and Leonard stood up under the little lamp in the roof of the carriage to read the papers.
‘I recollect—I understand,’ he said, presently, and sat down, grave and meditative—no longer dreamy, but going over events, which had at last acquired assurance to his memory from external circumstances. Presently his fingers were clasped together over his face, his head bent, and then he looked up, and said, ‘Do they know it—my sister and brother?’
‘No. We would not write till you were free. You must date the first letter from Stoneborough.’
The thought had brought a bitter pang. ‘One half year sooner—’ and he leant back in his seat, with fingers tightly pressed together, and trembling with emotion.
‘Nay, Leonard; may not the dear child be the first to rejoice in the fulfilment of her own sweet note of comfort? They could not harm the innocent.’
‘Not innocent,’ he said, ‘not innocent of causing all the discord that has ended in their exile, and the dear child’s death.’
‘Then this is what has preyed on you, and changed you so much more of late,’ said Dr. May.
‘When I knew that I was indeed guilty of her death,’ said Leonard, in a calm full conviction of too long standing to be accompanied with agitation, though permanently bowing him down.
‘And you never spoke of this: not to the chaplain?’
‘I never could. It would have implied all the rest that he could not believe. And it would not have changed the fact.’
‘The aspect of it may change, Leonard. You know yourself how many immediate causes combined, of which you cannot accuse yourself—your brother’s wrongheadedness, and all the rest. And,’ added the Doctor, recovering himself, ‘you do see it in other aspects, I know. Think of the spirit set free to be near you—free from the world that has gone so hard with you!’
‘I can’t keep that thought long; I’m not worthy of it.’
Again he was silent; but presently said, as with a sudden thought, ‘You would have told me if there were any news of Ave.’
‘No, there has been no letter since her last inclosure for you,’ and then Dr. May gave the details from the papers on the doings of Henry’s division of the army.
‘Will Henry let me be with them?’ said Leonard, musingly.
‘They will come home, depend upon it. You must wait till you hear.’
Leonard thought a little while, then said, ‘Where did you say I was to go, Dr. May?’
‘Where, indeed? Home, Leonard—home. Ethel is waiting for us. To the High Street.’
Leonard looked up again with his bewildered face, then said, ‘I know what you do with me will be right, but—’
‘Had you rather not?’ said the Doctor, startled.
‘Rather!’ and the Doctor, to his exceeding joy, saw the fingers over his eyes moist with the tears they tried to hide; ‘I only meant—’ he added, with an effort, ‘you must think and judge—I can’t think—whether I ought.’
‘If you ask me that,’ said Dr. May, earnestly, ‘all I have to say is, that I don’t know what palace is worthy of you.’
There was not much said after that; and the Doctor fell asleep, waking only at the halts at stations to ask where he was.
At last came ‘Blewer!’ and as the light shone on the clock, Leonard said, ‘A quarter past twelve! It is the very train I went by! Is it a dream?’
Ten minutes more, and ‘Stoneborough’ was the cry. Hastily springing out, shuffling the tickets into the porter’s hand, and grappling Leonard’s arm as if he feared an escape, Dr. May hurried him into the empty streets, and strode on in silence.
The pull at the door-bell was answered instantly by Ethel herself. She held out her hand, and grasped that which Leonard had almost withheld, shrinking as from too sudden a vision; and then she ardently exchanged kisses with her father.
‘Where’s Tom? Gone to bed?’ said Dr. May, stepping into the bright drawing-room.
‘No,’ said Ethel, demurely; ‘he is gone—he is gone to America.’
The Doctor gave a prodigious start, and looked at her again.
‘He went this afternoon.’ she said. ‘There is some matter about the ‘Diseases of Climate’ that he must settle before the book is published; and he thought he could best be spared now. He has left messages that I will give you by and by; but you must both be famished.’
Her looks indicated that all was right, and both turned to welcome the guest, who stood where the first impulse had left him, in the hall, not moving forward, till he was invited in to the fire, and the meal already spread. He then obeyed, and took the place pointed out; while the Doctor nervously expatiated on the cold, damp, and changes of train; and Ethel, in the active bashfulness of hidden agitation, made tea, cut bread, carved chicken, and waited on them with double assiduity, as Leonard, though eating as a man who had fasted since early morning, was passive as a little child, merely accepting what was offered to him, and not even passing his cup till she held out her hand for it.