Dr. May made his patients agree to accept as his substitute 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 assure the Home Secretary, that, as sure as his name was Dick 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 passionate, 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 petitions presented, and Dr. May said all that man might say on ground where he felt as if over-partisanship 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 circumstances. It was something for the Doctor that a second dispassionate 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.
‘I bring you no certainty, Leonard. It is under consideration.’
‘Thank you. You have done everything,’ returned Leonard, quietly; ‘and—’ then pausing, he added, ‘I know the day now—the day after my birthday.’
‘Let us—let us hope,’ said the Doctor, greatly agitated.
‘Thank you,’ again said Leonard; and there was a pause, during which Dr. May anxiously studied the face, which had become as pale and almost as thin as when the lad had been sent off to Coombe, and infinitely older in the calm steadfastness of every feature.
‘You do not look well, Leonard.’
‘No; I am not quite well; but it matters very little,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I am well enough to make it hard to believe how soon all sense and motion will be gone out of these fingers!’ and he held up his hand, and studied the minutiae of its movements with a strange grave sort of curiosity.
‘Don’t—don’t, Leonard!’ exclaimed the Doctor. ‘You may be able to bear it, but I cannot.’
‘I thought you would not mind, you have so often watched death.’
‘Yes; but—’ and he covered his face with his hands.
‘I wish it did not pain you all so much,’ said Leonard, quietly. ‘But for that, I can feel it to be better than if I had gone in the fever, when I had no sense to think or repent; or if I had—I hardly knew my own faults.’
‘You seem much happier now, my boy.’
‘Yes,’ said Leonard. ‘I am more used to the notion, and Mr. Wilmot has been so kind. Then I am to see Ave tomorrow, if she is well enough. Henry has promised to bring her, and leave her alone with me; and I do hope—that I shall be able to convince her that it is not so very bad for me—and then she may be able to take comfort. You know she would, if she were nursing me now in my bed at Bankside; so why should she not when she sees that I don’t think this any worse, but rather better?’
The Doctor was in no mood to think any comfort possible in thus losing one like Leonard, and he did not commit himself to an untruth. There was a silence again, and Leonard opened his book, and took out his etchings, one which he had already promised the Doctor, another for Aubrey, and at the third the Doctor exclaimed inarticulately with surprise and admiration.
It was a copy of the well-known Cross-bearing Form in the Magdalen College Chapel Altar-piece, drawn in pen and ink on a half-sheet of thick note-paper; but somehow, into the entire Face and Figure there was infused such an expression as now and then comes direct from the soul of the draughtsman—an inspiration entirely independent of manual dexterity, and that copies, however exact, fail to render, nay, which the artist himself fails to renew. The beauty, the meekness, the hidden Majesty of the Countenance, were conveyed in a marvellous manner, and were such as would bring a tear to the eye of the gazer, even had the drawing been there alone to speak for itself.
‘This is your doing, Leonard?’
‘I have just finished it. It has been one of my greatest comforts—’
‘Ah!’
‘Doing those lines;’ and he pointed to the thorny Crown, ‘I seem to get ashamed of thinking this hardness. Only think, Dr. May, from the very first moment the policeman took me in charge, nobody has said a rough word to me. I have never felt otherwise than that they meant justice to have its way as far as they knew, but they were all consideration for me. To think of that, and then go over the scoffs and scourgings!’—there was a bright glistening tear in Leonard’s eye now—’it seems like child’s play to go through such a trial as mine.’
‘Yes! you have found the secret of willingness.’
‘And,’ added the boy, hesitating between the words, but feeling that he must speak them, as the best balm for the sorrow he was causing, ‘even my little touch of the shame and scorn of this does make me know better what it must have been, and yet—so thankful when I remember why it was—that I think I could gladly bear a great deal more than this is likely to be.’
‘Oh! my boy, I have no fears for you now.’
‘Yes, yes—have fears,’ cried Leonard, hastily. ‘Pray for me! You don’t know what it is to wake up at night, and know something is coming nearer and nearer—and then this—before one can remember all that blesses it—or the Night of that Agony—and that He knows what it is—’
‘Do we not pray for you?’ said Dr. May, fervently, ‘in church and at home? and is not this an answer? Am I to take this drawing, Leonard, that speaks so much?’