Ethel believed that papa had advised otherwise.
‘Advised! It should have been enforced! If he is fool enough to alter his name, and throw up all his certificates what is to become of him? He will get no practice in any civilized place, and will have to betake himself to some pestilential swamp, will slave his sisters to death, spend their money, and destroy them with ague. How can you sit still and look on, Ethel?’
‘But what could I do?’
‘Stir up my father to interfere.’
‘I thought you always warned us against interfering with Henry Ward.’
He treated this speech as maliciously designed to enrage him. ‘Ethel!’ he stammered, ‘in a case like this—where the welfare—the very life—of one—of your dearest friend—of Mary’s, I mean—I did think you would have been above—’
‘But, Tom, I would do my utmost, and so would papa, if it were possible to do anything; but it is quite in vain. Henry is resolved against remaining under British rule, and America seems to be the only field for him.’
‘Much you know or care!’ cried Tom. ‘Well, if no one else will, I must!’
With which words he departed, leaving his sister surprised at his solicitude, and dubious of the efficacy of his remonstrance, though she knew by experience that Tom was very different in a great matter from what he was in a small one.
Tom betook himself to Bankside, and the first person he encountered there was his little friend Ella, who ran up to him at once.
‘Oh, Mr. Tom, we are going to America! Shall you be sorry?’
‘Very sorry,’ said Tom, as the little hand was confidingly thrust into his.
‘I should not mind it, if you were coming too, Mr. Tom!’
‘What, to play at French billiards?’
‘No, indeed! To find objects for the microscope. I shall save all the objects I meet, and send them home in a letter.’
‘An alligator or two, or a branch of the Mississippi,’ said Tom, in a young man’s absent way of half-answering a pet child; but the reply so struck Ella’s fancy, that, springing through the open French window, she cried, ‘Oh, Ave, Ave, here is Mr. Tom saying I am to send him a branch of the Mississippi in a letter, as an object for his microscope!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Tom, shocked at Averil’s nervous start, and still more shocked at her appearance. She looked like one shattered by long and severe illness; her eyes were restless and distressed, her hair thrust back as if it oppressed her temples, her manner startled and over-wrought, her hand hot and unsteady—her whole air that of one totally unequal to the task before her. He apologized for having taken her by surprise, and asked for her brother. She answered, that he was busy at Mr. Bramshaw’s, and she did not know when he would come in. But still Tom lingered; he could not bear to leave her to exertions beyond her strength. ‘You are tiring yourself,’ he said; ‘can I do nothing to help you?’
‘No, no, thank you; I am only looking over things. Minna is helping me, and I am making an inventory.’
‘Then you must let me be of use to you. You must be as quiet as possible. You need rest.’
‘I can’t rest; I’m better busy!’ she said hastily, with quick, aimless, bustling movements.
But Tom had his father’s tone, as he gently arrested the trembling hand that was pulling open a drawer, and with his father’s sweet, convincing smile, said, ‘What’s that for?’ then drew up a large arm-chair, placed her in it, and, taking pen and list, began to write—sometimes at her suggestion, sometimes at his own—giving business-like and efficient aid.
The work was so grave and regular, that Ella soon found the room tedious, and crept out, calling Minna to aid in some of their own personal matters.
Slowly enumerating the articles they came to the piano. Averil went up to it, leant fondly against it, and softly touched the keys. ‘My own,’ she said, ‘bought for a surprise to me when I came home from school! And oh, how he loved it!’
‘Every one had reason to love it,’ said Tom, in a low voice; but she did not heed or hear.
‘I cannot—cannot part with it! When I sit here, I can almost feel him leaning over me! You must go—I will pay your expenses myself! I wonder if we should have such rough roads as would hurt you,’ she added, caressingly toying with the notes, and bringing soft replies from them, as if she were conversing with a living thing.
‘Ah!’ said Tom, coming nearer, ‘you will, I hope, take care to what your brother’s impetuosity might expose either this, or yourself.’
‘We shall all fare alike,’ she said, carelessly.
‘But how?’ said Tom.
‘Henry will take care of that.’
‘Do you know, Miss Ward, I came down here with the purpose of setting some matters before your brother that might dissuade him from making the United States his home. You have justly more influence than I. Will you object to hear them from me?’
Ave could not imagine why Tom May, of all people in the world, should thrust himself into the discussion of her plans; but she could only submit to listen, or more truly to lean back with wandering thoughts and mechanical signs of assent, as he urged his numerous objections. Finally, she uttered a meek ‘Thank you,’ in the trust that it was over.
‘And will you try to make your brother consider these things?’
Poor Ave could not have stood an examination on ‘these things,’ and feeling inadequate to undertake the subject, merely said something of ‘very kind, but she feared it would be of no use.’
‘I assure you, if you would persuade him to talk it over with me, that I could show him that he would involve you all in what would be most distasteful.’
‘Thank you, but his mind is made up. No other course is open.’
‘Could he not, at least, go and see what he thinks of it, before taking you and your sisters?’
‘Impossible!’ said Averil. ‘We must all keep together; we have no one else.’
‘No, indeed, you must not say that,’ cried Tom, with a fire that startled Averil in the midst of her languid, dreary indifference.
‘I did not mean,’ she said, ‘to be ungrateful for the kindness of your family—the Doctor and dear Mary, above all; but you must know-‘
‘I know,’ he interrupted, ‘that I cannot see you exiling yourself with your brother, because you think you have no one else to turn to—you, who are so infinitely dear—’
‘This is no time for satire,’ she said, drawing aside with offence, but still wearily, and as if she had not given attention enough to understand him.
‘You mistake me,’ he exclaimed; ‘I mean that no words can tell how strong the feeling is that—that—No, I never knew its force till now; but, Averil, I cannot part with you—you who are all the world to me.’
Lifting her heavy eyelids for a moment, she looked bewildered, and then, moving towards the door, said, ‘I don’t know whether this is jest or earnest—any way, it is equally unsuitable.’
‘What do you see in me,’ cried Tom, throwing himself before her, ‘that you should suppose me capable of jesting on such a subject, at such a moment?’
‘I never saw anything but supercilious irony,’ she answered, in the same dreamy, indifferent way, as if hardly aware what she was saying, and still moving on.
‘I cannot let you go thus. You must hear me,’ he cried, and he wheeled round an easy-chair, with a gesture of entreaty; which she obeyed, partly because she was hardly alive to understand his drift, partly because she could scarcely stand; and there she sat, in the same drowsy resignation with which she had listened to his former expostulation.
Calm collected Tom was almost beside himself. ‘Averil! Averil!’ he cried, as he sat down opposite and bent as close to her as possible, ‘if I could only make you listen or believe me! What shall I say? It is only the honest truth that you are the dearest thing in the whole world to me! The very things that have given you most offence arose from my struggles with my own feelings. I tried to crush what would have its way in spite of me, and now you see its force.’ He saw greater life and comprehension in her eye as he spoke, but the look was not encouraging; and he continued: ‘How can I make you understand! Oh! if I had but more time!—but—but it was only the misery of those moments that showed me why it was that I was always irresistibly drawn to you, and yet made instinctive efforts to break the spell; and now you will not understand.’