When Averil wrote their plans to her English friends, she felt the difficulty of pleading for them. She was sensible that at Stoneborough the risking of her property would be regarded as folly on her part, and something worse on that of her brother; and she therefore wrote with every effort to make the whole appear her own voluntary act—though the very effort made her doubly conscious that the sole cause for her passive acquiescence was, that her past self-will in trifles had left her no power to contend for her own opinion in greater matters—the common retribution on an opinionative woman of principle.
Moreover, it was always with an effort that she wrote to Mary May. A rejected offer from a brother is a rock in a correspondence with a sister, and Averil had begun to feel greatly ashamed of the manner of her own response. Acceptance would have been impossible; but irritating as had been Tom May’s behaviour, insulting as had been his explanation, and provoking, his pertinacity, she had begun to feel that the impulse had been too generous and disinterested to deserve such treatment, and that bitterness and ill-temper had made her lose all softness and dignity, so that he must think that his pitying affection had been bestowed on an ungrateful vixen, and be as much disgusted with the interview as she was herself. She did not wish him to love her; but she regretted the form of the antidote, above all, since he was of the few who appreciated Leonard; and the more she heard of Ella’s narrations of his kindness, the more ashamed she grew. Every letter to or from Mary renewed the uncomfortable sense, and she would have dropped the correspondence had it not been her sole medium of communication with her imprisoned brother, since Henry would not permit letters to be posted with the Milbank address.
CHAPTER XX
A little hint to solace woe, A hint, a whisper breathing low, ‘I may not speak of what I know.’—TENNYSON
At the pace at which rapid people walk alone, when they wish to devour both the way and their own sensations, Ethel May was mounting the hill out of the town in the premature heat assumed by May in compliment to Whitsun week, when a prolonged shout made her turn. At first she thought it was her father, but her glass showed her that it was the brother so like him in figure that the London-made coat, and the hair partaking of the sand instead of the salt, were often said to be the chief distinction. Moreover, the dainty steps over the puddles were little like the strides of the Doctor, and left no doubt that it was the one wedding guest who had been despaired of.
‘O, Tom, I am glad you are come!’
‘What a rate you were running away at! I thought you had done with your hurricane pace.’
‘Hurricane because of desperate hurry. I’m afraid I can’t turn back with you.’
‘Where is all the world?’
‘Blanche is helping Mary arrange the Hoxton—I mean her own drawing-room. Hector has brought a dog-cart to drive papa about in; Daisy is gone with Harry and Aubrey to the Grange for some camellias.’
‘And Ethel rushing to Cocksmoor!’
‘I can’t help it, Tom,’ she said, humbly; ‘I wish I could.’
‘What’s this immense pannier you are carrying?’
‘It is quite light. It is twelve of the hats for the children tomorrow. Mary was bent on trimming them all as usual, and I was deluded enough to believe she would, till last evening I found just one and a half done! I did as many as I could at night, till papa heard me rustling about and thumped. Those went early this morning; and these are the rest, which I have just finished.’
‘Was there no one to send?’
‘My dear Tom, is your experience of weddings so slight as to suppose there is an available being in the family the day before?’
‘I’m sure I don’t desire such experience. Why could not they be content without ferreting me down?’
‘I am very glad you have come. It would have been a great mortification if you had stayed away. I never quite believed you would.’
‘I had much rather see the operation I shall miss tomorrow morning. I shall go back by the two o’clock train.’
‘To study their happiness all the way up to town?’
‘Then by the mail—’
‘I won’t torment you to stay; but I think papa will want a talk with you.’
‘The very thing I don’t want. Why can’t he dispose of his property like other people, and give Richard his rights?’
‘You know Richard would only be encumbered.’
‘No such thing; Richard is a reasonable being—he will marry some of these days—get the living after Wilmot, and—’
‘But you know how papa would be grieved to separate the practice from the house.’
‘Because he and his fathers were content to bury themselves in a hole, he expects me to do the same. Why, what should I do? The place is over-doctored already. Every third person is a pet patient sending for him for a gnat-bite, gratis, taking the bread out of Wright’s mouth. No wonder Henry Ward kicked! If I came here, I must practise on the lap-dogs! Here’s my father, stronger than any of us, with fifteen good years’ work in him at the least! He would be wretched at giving up to me a tenth part of his lambs, and that tenth would keep us always in hot water. His old-world practice would not go down with me, and he would think everything murder that was fresher than the year 1830.’
‘I thought he was remarkable for having gone on with the world,’ said Ethel, repressing some indignation.
‘So he has in a way, but always against the grain. He has a tough lot of prejudices; and you may depend upon it, they would be more obstinate against me than any one else, and I should be looked on as an undutiful dog for questioning them, besides getting the whole credit of every case that went wrong.’
‘I think you are unjust,’ said Ethel, flushing with displeasure.
‘I wish I were not, Ethel; but when there is one son in a family who can do nothing that is not taken amiss, it is hard that he should be the one picked out to be pinned down, and, maybe, goaded into doing something to be really sorry for.’
There was truth enough in this to seal Ethel’s lips from replying that it was Tom’s own fault, since his whole nature and constitution were far more the cause than his conduct, and she answered, ‘You might get some appointment for the present, till he really wants you.’
‘To be ordered home just as I am making something of it, and see as many cases in ten years as I could in a month in town. Things are altered since his time, if he could only see it. What was the use of giving me a first-rate education, if he meant to stick me down here?’
‘At least I hope you will think long before you inflict the cruel disappointment of knowing that not one of his five sons will succeed to the old practice.’
‘The throne, you mean, Ethel. Pish!’
The ‘Pish’ was as injurious to her hereditary love for ‘the old practice,’ and for the old town, as to her reverence for her father. One angry ‘Tom!’ burst from her lips, and only the experience that scolding made him worse, restrained her from desiring him to turn back if this was the best he had to say. Indeed she wondered to find him still by her side, holding the gate of the plantation open for her. He peered under her hat as she went through—
‘How hot you look!’ he said, laying hold of the handles of the basket.
‘Thank you; but it is more cumbrous than heavy,’ she said, not letting go; ‘it is not that—’
An elision which answered better than words, to show that his speech, rather than hill or load, had made her cheeks flame; but he only drew the great basket more decisively from her hand, put his stick into the handle, and threw it over his shoulder; and no doubt it was a much greater act of good-nature from him than it would have been from Richard or Harry.
‘This path always reminds me of this very matter,’ he said; ‘I talked it over with Meta here, on the way to lay the foundation-stone at Cocksmoor, till Norman overtook us and monopolized her for good, poor little thing. She was all in the high romantic strain, making a sort of knight hospitaller of my father. I wonder what she is like by this time, and how much of that she has left.’