To Dr. May alone was the depth of pain betrayed; but another comforter proved more efficient in cheering the prisoner, namely, Mr. Wilmot, who, learning from the Doctor the depression of their young friend, hastened to endeavour at imparting a new spring of life on this melancholy birthday. Physically, the boy was better, and perhaps the new day had worn off somewhat of the burthen of anticipation, for Mr. Wilmot found him already less downcast, and open to consolation. It might be, too, that the sense that the present was to have been his last day upon earth, had made him more conscious of the relief from the immediate shadow of death, for he expressed his thankfulness far more freely and without the effort of the previous day.
‘And, depend on it,’ said Mr. Wilmot, ‘you are spared because there is something for you to do.’
‘To bear,’ said Leonard.
‘No, to do. Perhaps not immediately; but try to look on whatever you have to bear, not only as carrying the cross, as I think you already feel it—’
‘Or there would be no standing it at all.’
‘True,’ said Mr. Wilmot; ‘and your so feeling it convinces me the more that whatever may follow is likewise to be looked upon as discipline to train you for something beyond. Who knows what work may be in store, for which this fiery trial may be meant to prepare you?’
The head was raised, and the eyes brightened with something like hope in their fixed interrogative glance.
‘Even as things are now, who knows what good may be done by the presence of a man educated, religious, unstained by crime, yet in the same case as those around him? I do not mean by quitting your natural place, but by merely living as you must live. You were willing to have followed your Master in His death. You now have to follow Him by living as one under punishment; and be sure it is for some purpose for others as well as yourself.’
‘If there is any work to be done for Him, it is all right,’ said Leonard, cheerily; and as Mr. Wilmot paused, he added, ‘It would be like working for a friend—if I may dare say so—after the hours when this place has been made happy to me. I should not mind anything if I might only feel it working for Him.’
‘Feel it. Be certain of it. As you have realized the support of that Friend in a way that is hardly granted, save in great troubles, so now realize that every task is for Him. Do not look on the labour as hardship inflicted by mistaken authority—’
‘Oh, I only want to get to that! I have been so long with nothing to do!’
‘And your hearty doing of it, be it what it may, as unto the Lord, can be as acceptable as Dr. May’s labours of love among the poor—as entirely a note in the great concord in Heaven and earth as the work of the ministry itself—as completely in unison. Nay, further, such obedient and hearty work will form you for whatever may yet be awaiting you, and what that may be will show itself in good time, when you are ready for it.
‘The right chord was touched, the spirit of energy was roused, and Leonard was content to be a prisoner of hope, not the restless hope of liberation, but the restful hope that he might yet render faithful service even in his present circumstances.
Not much passed his lips in this interview, but its effect was apparent when Dr. May again saw him, and this time in company with Aubrey. Most urgent had been the boy’s entreaties to be taken to see his friend, and Dr. May had only hesitated because Leonard’s depression had made himself so unhappy that he feared its effect on his susceptible son; whose health had already suffered from the long course of grief and suspense. But it was plain that if Aubrey were to go at all, it must be at once, since the day was fixed for the prisoner’s removal, and the still nearer and dearer claims must not clash with those of the friend. Flora shook her head, and reminded her father that Leonard would not be out of reach in future, and that the meeting now might seriously damage Aubrey’s already uncertain health.
‘I cannot help it, Flora,’ said the Doctor; ‘it may do him some temporary harm, but I had rather see him knocked down for a day or two, than breed him up to be such a poor creature as to sacrifice his friendship to his health.’
And Mrs. Rivers, who knew what the neighbourhood thought of the good Doctor’s infatuation, felt that there was not much use in suggesting how shocked the world would be at his encouragement of the intimacy between the convict and his young son.
People did look surprised when the Doctor asked admission to the cell for his son as well as himself; and truly Aubrey, who in silence had worked himself into an agony of nervous agitation, looked far from fit for anything trying. Dr. May saw that he must not ask to leave the young friends alone together, but in his reverence for the rights of their friendship, he withdrew himself as far as the limits of the cell would allow, turned his back, and endeavoured to read the Thirty-nine Articles in Leonard’s Prayer-Book; but in spite of all his abstraction, he could not avoid a complete consciousness that the two lads sat on the bed, clinging with arms round one another like young children, and that it was Leonard’s that was the upright sustaining figure, his own Aubrey’s the prone and leaning one. And of the low whispering murmurs that reached his would-be deafened ear, the gasping almost sobbing tones were Aubrey’s. The first distinct words that he could not help hearing were, ‘No such thing! There can’t be slavery where one works with a will!’ and again, in reply to something unheard, ‘Yes, one can! Why, how did one do one’s Greek?’—’Very different!’—’How?’—’Oh!’—’Yes; but you are a clever chap, and had her to teach you, but I only liked it because I’d got it to do. Just the same with the desk-work down at the mill; so it may be the same now.’
Then came fragments of what poor Aubrey had expressed more than once at home—that his interest in life, in study, in sport, was all gone with his friend.
‘Come, Aubrey, that’s stuff. You’d have had to go to Cambridge, you know, without me, after I doggedly put myself at that place. There’s just as much for you to do as ever there was.’
‘How you keep on with your do!’ cried Ethel’s spoilt child, with a touch of petulance.
‘Why, what are we come here for—into this world, I mean—but to do!’ returned Leonard; ‘and I take it, if we do it right, it does not much matter what or where it is.’
‘I shan’t have any heart for it!’ sighed Aubrey.
‘Nonsense! Not with all your people at home? and though the voice fell again, the Doctor’s ears distinguished the murmur, ‘Why, just the little things she let drop are the greatest help to me here, and you always have her—’
Then ensued much that was quite inaudible, and at last Leonard said, ‘No, old fellow; as long as you don’t get ashamed of me, thinking about you, and knowing what you are about, will be one of the best pleasures I shall have. And look here, Aubrey, if we only consider it right, you and I will be just as really working together, when you are at your books, and I am making mats, as if we were both at Cambridge side by side! It is quite true, is it not, Dr. May?’ he added, since the Doctor, finding it time to depart, had turned round to close the interview.