‘He could hardly have enjoyed it more,’ murmured Leonard, feeling the restful capacity of happiness in the new possession of the child’s ardent love, and of the kind looks of all around, above all, of the one presence that still gave him his chief sense of sunshine. The boyish and romantic touch of passion had, as Ethel had long seen, been burnt and seared away, and yet there was something left, something that, as on this evening she felt, made his voice softer, his eye more deferential, to her than to any one else. Perhaps she had once been his guiding star; and if in the wild tempests of the night he had learnt instead to direct his course by the “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,” still the star would be prized and distinguished, as the first and most honoured among inferior constellations.
CHAPTER XXIX
Till now the dark was worn, and overhead The lights of sunset and of sunrise mixed.—TENNYSON
At New York, Tom wrote a short letter to announce his safe arrival, and then pushed on by railway into Indiana. Winter had completely set in; and when he at length arrived at Winiamac, he found that a sleigh was a far readier mode of conveyance to Massissauga than the wagons used in summer. His drive, through the white cathedral-like arcades of forest, hung with transparent icicles, and with the deep blue sky above, becoming orange towards the west, was enjoyable; and even Massissauga itself, when its skeleton trees were like their neighbours, embellished by the pure snowy covering, looked less forlorn than when their death contrasted with the exuberant life around. He stopped at the hotel, left his baggage there, and after undergoing a catechism on his personal affairs, was directed to Mr. Muller’s house, and made his way up its hard-trodden path of snow, towards the green door, at which he knocked two or three times before it was opened by a woman, whose hair and freckled skin were tinted nowhere but in Ireland.
He made a step forward out of the cutting blast into the narrow entry, and began to ask, ‘Is Miss Ward here? I mean, can I see Miss Warden?’ when, as if at the sound of his voice, there rang from within the door close by a shriek—one of the hoarse hysterical cries he had heard upon the day of the inquest. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pushed open the door, and beheld a young lady in speechless terror hanging over the stiffened figure on the couch—the eyes wide open, the limbs straight and rigid. He sprang forward, and lifted her into a more favourable posture, hastily asking for simple remedies likely to be at hand, and producing a certain amount of revival for a few moments, though the stiffness was not passing—nor was there evidence of consciousness.
‘Are you Leonard?’ said Cora Muller, under her breath, in this brief interval, gazing into his face with frightened puzzled eyes.
‘No; but I am come to tell her that he is free!’ But the words were cut short by another terrible access, of that most distressing kind that stimulates convulsion; and again the terrified women instinctively rendered obedience to the stranger in the measures he rapidly took, and his words, ‘hysteria—a form of hysteria,’ were forced from him by the necessity of lessening Cora’s intense alarm, so as to enable her to be effective. ‘We must send for Dr. Laidlaw,’ she began in the first breathing moment, and again he looked up and said, ‘I am a physician!’
‘Mr. Tom?’ she asked with the faintest shadow of a smile; he bent his head, and that was their introduction, broken again by another frightful attack; and when quiescence, if not consciousness, was regained, Tom knelt by the sofa, gazing with a sense of heart-rending despair at the wasted features and thin hands, the waxen whiteness of the cheek, and the tokens in which he clearly read long and consuming illness as well as the overthrow of the sudden shock.
‘What is this?’ he asked, looking up to Cora’s beautiful anxious face.
‘Oh, she has been very sick, very sick,’ she answered; ‘it was an attack of pleurisy; but she is getting better at last, though she will not think so, and this news will make all well. Does she hear? Say it again!’
Tom shook his head, afraid of the sound of the name as yet, and scarcely durst even utter the word ‘Ella’ above his breath.
‘She is gone out with Cousin Deborah to an apple bee,’ was the reassuring answer. ‘She wanted change, poor child! Is she getting better?’
Averil was roused by a cough, the sound which tore Tom’s heart by its import, but he drew back out of her sight, and let Cora raise her, and give her drink, in a soothing tender manner, that was evident restoration. ‘Cora dear, is it you?’ she said, faintly; ‘didn’t I hear some one else’s voice? Didn’t they say—?’ and the shiver that crept over her was almost a return of the hysteric fit.
‘We said he was free,’ said Cora, holding her in her arms.
‘Free—yes, I know what that means—free among the dead,’ said Averil, calmly, smoothing Cora’s hair, and looking in her face. ‘Don’t be afraid to let me hear. I shall be there with him and Minna soon. Didn’t somebody come to tell me? Please let him in, I’ll be quiet now.’
And as she made gestures of arranging her hair and dress, Tom guardedly presented himself, saying in a voice that trembled with his endeavour to render it calm, ‘Did you think I should have come if I had nothing better to tell you?’ and as she put out her hand in greeting, he took it in both his own, and met her eyes looking at him wide open, in the first dawning of the hope of an impossible gladness. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the truth is come out—he is cleared—he is at home—at Stoneborongh!’
The hot fingers closed convulsively on his own, then she raised herself, pressed her hands together, and gasped and struggled fearfully for breath. The joy and effort for self-command were more than the enfeebled frame could support, and there was a terrible and prolonged renewal of those agonizing paroxysms, driving away every thought from the other two except of the immediate needs. At last, when the violence of the attack had subsided, and left what was either fainting or stupor, they judged it best to carry her to her bed, and trust that, reviving without the associations of the other room, the agitation would be less likely to return, and that she might sleep under the influence of an anodyne. Poor Tom! it was not the reception he had figured to himself, and after he had laid her down, and left her to Cora and to Katty to be undressed, he returned to the parlour, and stood over the sinking wood-fire in dejection and dreariness of heart—wrung by the sufferings he had witnessed, with the bitter words (too late) echoing in his brain, and with the still more cruel thought—had it been his father or one of his brothers—any one to whose kindness she could trust, the shock had not been so great, and there would have been more sense of soothing and comfort! And then he tried to collect his impressions of her condition, and judge what would serve for her relief, but all his senses seemed to be scattered; dismay, compassion, and sympathy, had driven away all power of forming a conclusion—he was no longer the doctor—he was only the anxious listener for the faintest sound from the room above, but none reached him save the creaking of the floor under Katty’s heavy tread.
The gay tinkle of sleigh-bells was the next noise he heard, and presently the door was opened, and two muffled hooded figures looked into the room, now only lighted by the red embers of the fire.
‘Where’s Cora? where’s Ave?’ said the bright tone of the lesser. ‘It is all dark!’ and she was raising her voice to call, when Tom instinctively uttered a ‘Hush,’ and moved forward; ‘hush, Ella, your sister has been ill.’