‘You know we are all jealous of both Charles Cheviots, elder and younger.’
‘I often question whether I should not have taken her down and made her ashamed of all the quizzing and teasing at the time of Mary’s marriage. But one cannot be always spoiling bright merry mischief, and I am only elder sister after all. It is a wonder she is as good to me as she is.’
‘She never remembered our mother, poor dear.’
‘Ah! that is the real mischief,’ said Ethel. ‘Mamma would have given the atmosphere of gentleness and discretion, and so would Margaret. How often I have been made, by the merest pained look, to know when what I said was saucy or in bad taste, and I—I can only look forbidding, or else blurt out a reproof that will not come softly.’
‘The youngest must be spoilt,’ said Flora, ‘that’s an ordinance of nature. It ends when a boy goes to school, and when a girl—’
‘When?’
‘When she marries—or when she finds out what trouble is,’ said Flora.
‘Is that all you can hold out to my poor Daisy?’
‘Well, it is the way of the world. There is just now a reaction from sentiment, and it is the less feminine variety. The softness will come when there is a call for it. Never mind when the foundation is safe.’
‘If I could only see that child heartily admiring and looking up! I don’t mean love—there used to be a higher, nobler reverence!’
‘Such as you and Norman used to bestow on Shakespeare and Scott, and—the vision of Cocksmoor.’
‘Not only used,’ said Ethel.
‘Yes, it is your soft side,’ said Flora; ‘it is what answers the purpose of sentiment in people like you. It is what I should have thought living with you would have put into any girl; but Gertrude has a satirical side, and she follows the age.’
‘I wish you would tell her so—it is what she especially wants not to do! But the spirit of opposition is not the thing to cause tenderness.’
‘No, you must wait for something to bring it out. She is very kind to my poor little Margaret, and I won’t ask how she talks of her.’
‘Tenderly; oh yes, that she always would do.’
‘There, then, Ethel, if she can talk tenderly of Margaret, there can’t be much amiss at the root.’
‘No; and you don’t overwhelm the naughty girl with baby talk.’
‘Like our happy, proud young mothers,’ sighed Flora; and then letting herself out—’but indeed, Ethel, Margaret is very much improved. She has really begun to wish to be good. I think she is struggling with herself.’
‘Something to love tenderly, something to reverence highly.’ So meditated Ethel, as she watched her sunny-haired, open-faced Daisy, so unconquerably gay and joyous that she gave the impression of sunshine without shade. There are stages of youth that are in themselves unpleasing, and yet that are nobody’s fault, nay, which may have within them seeds of strength. Tom’s satire had fostered Daisy’s too congenial spirit, and he reaped the consequence in the want of repose and sympathy that were driving him from home, and shutting him up within himself. Would he ever forgive that flippant saying, which Ethel had recollected with shame ever since—shame more for herself than for the child, who probably had forgotten, long ago, her ‘shaft at random sent’?
Then Ethel would wonder whether, after all, her discontent with Gertrude’s speeches was only from feeling older and graver, and perhaps from a certain resentment at finding how the course of time was wearing down the sharp edge of compassion towards Leonard.
A little more about Leonard was gathered when the time came of release for his friend the clerk Brown. This young man had an uncle at Paris, engaged in one of the many departments connected with steam that carry Englishmen all over the world, and Leonard obtained permission to write to Dr. Thomas May, begging him to call upon the uncle, and try if he could be induced to employ the penitent and reformed nephew under his own eye. It had been wise in Leonard to write direct, for if the request had been made through any one at home, Tom would have considered it as impossible; but he could not resist the entreaty, and his mission was successful. The uncle was ready to be merciful, and undertook all the necessary arrangements for, and even the responsibility of, bringing the ticket-of-leave man to Paris, where he found him a desk in his office. One of Tom’s few detailed epistles was sent to Ethel after this arrival, when the uncle had told him how the nephew had spoken of his fellow-prisoner. It was to Leonard Ward that the young man had owed the inclination to open his heart to religious instruction, hitherto merely endured as a portion of the general infliction of the penalty, a supposed engine for dealing with the superstitious, but entirely beneath his attention. The sight of the educated face had at first attracted him, but when he observed the reverential manner in chapel, he thought it mere acting the ”umble prisoner,’ till he observed how unobtrusive, unconscious, and retiring was every token of devotion, and watched the eyes, brightened or softened in praise or in prayer, till he owned the genuineness and guessed the depth of both, then perceived in school how far removed his unknown comrade was from the mere superstitious boor. This was the beginning. The rest had been worked out by the instruction and discipline of the place, enforced by the example, and latterly by the conversation, of his fellow-prisoner, until he had come forth sincerely repenting, and with the better hope for the future that his sins had not been against full light.
He declared himself convinced that Ward far better merited to be at large than he did, and told of the regard that uniform good conduct was obtaining at last, though not till after considerable persecution, almost amounting to personal danger from the worse sort of convicts, who regarded him as a spy, because he would not connive at the introduction of forbidden indulgences, and always stood by the authorities. Once his fearless interposition had saved the life of a warder, and this had procured him trust, and promotion to a class where his companions were better conducted, and more susceptible to good influences, and among them Brown was sure that his ready submission and constant resolution to do his work were producing an effect. As to his spirits, Brown had never known him break down but once, and that was when he had come upon a curious fossil in the stone. Otherwise he was grave and contented, but never laughed or joked as even some gentlemen prisoners of more rank and age had been known to do. The music in the chapel was his greatest pleasure, and he had come to be regarded as an important element in the singing.
Very grateful was Dr. May to Tom for having learnt, and still more for having transmitted, all these details, and Ethel was not the less touched, because she knew they were to travel beyond Minster Street. Those words of Mr. Wilmot’s seemed to be working out their accomplishment; and she thought so the more, when in early spring one of Leonard’s severe throat attacks led to his being sent after his recovery to assist the schoolmaster, instead of returning to the carpenter’s shed; and he was found so valuable in the school that the master begged to retain his services.
That spring was a grievous one in Indiana. The war, which eighteen months previously was to have come to an immediate end, was still raging, and the successes that had once buoyed up the Northern States with hope had long since been chequered by terrible reverses. On, on, still fought either side, as though nothing could close the strife but exhaustion or extinction; and still ardent, still constant, through bereavement and privation, were either party to their blood-stained flag. Mordaunt Muller had fallen in one of the terrible battles on the Rappahannock; and Cora, while, sobbing in Averil’s arms, had still confessed herself thankful that it had been a glorious death for his country’s cause! And even in her fresh grief, she had not endeavoured to withhold her other brother, when, at the urgent summons of Government, he too had gone forth to join the army.