stumble over perilous toes, and made his escape—entering another carriage, whence he no doubt signed cautions against the lunatic and his keeper, since no one again invaded their privacy.
Perhaps this incident most fully revealed to the Doctor, how unlike other people his charge was, how much changed from the handsome spirited lad on whom the trouble had fallen; and he looked again and again at the profile turned to the window, as fixed and set as though it had been carved.
‘Ah, patience is an exhausting virtue!’ said he to himself. ‘Verily it is bearing—bearing up under the full weight; and the long bent spring is the slower in rebounding in proportion to its inherent strength. Poor lad, what protracted endurance it has been! There is health and force in his face; no line of sin, nor sickness, nor worldly care, such as it makes one’s heart ache to see aging young faces; yet how utterly unlike the face of one and-twenty! I had rather see it sadder than so strangely settled and sedate! Shall I speak to him again? Not yet: those green hill-sides, those fields and cattle, must refresh him better than my clavers, after his grim stony mount of purgatory. I wish it were a brighter day to greet him, instead of this gray damp fog.’
The said fog prevented any semblance of sunset; but through the gray moonlit haze, Leonard kept his face to the window, pertinaciously clearing openings in the bedewed glass, as though the varying outline of the horizon had a fascination for him. At last, after ten minutes of glaring gas at a junction had by contrast rendered the mist impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same strange rigid somnambulist air.
Dr. May resolved to rouse him.
‘Well, Leonard,’ he said, ‘this has been a very long fever; but we are well through it at last—with the young doctor from Paris to our aid.’
Probably Leonard only heard the voice, not the words, for he passed his hand over his face, and looked up to the Doctor, saying dreamily, ‘Let me see! Is it all true?’ and then, with a grave wistful look, ‘It was not I who did that thing, then?’
‘My dear!’ exclaimed the Doctor, starting forward, and catching hold of his hand, ‘have they brought you to this?’
‘I always meant to ask you, if I ever saw you alone again,’ said Leonard.
‘But you don’t mean that you have imagined it!’
‘Not constantly—not when any one was with me,’ said Leonard, roused by Dr. May’s evident dismay; and drawn on by his face of anxious inquiry. ‘At Milbank, I generally thought I remembered it just as they described it in court, and that it was some miserable ruinous delusion that hindered my confessing; but the odd thing was, that the moment any one opened my door, I forgot all about it, resolutions and all, and was myself again.’
‘Then surely—surely you left that horror with the solitude?’
‘Yes, till lately; but when it did come back, I could not be sure what was recollection of fact, and what of my own fancy;’ and he drew his brows together in painful effort. ‘Did I know who did it, or did I only guess?’
‘You came to a right conclusion, and would not let me act on it.’
‘And I really did write the receipt, and not dream it?’
‘That receipt has been in my hand. It was what has brought you here.’ And now to hearing ears, Dr. May went over the narrative; and Leonard stood up under the little lamp in the roof of the carriage to read the papers.
‘I recollect—I understand,’ he said, presently, and sat down, grave and meditative—no longer dreamy, but going over events, which had at last acquired assurance to his memory from external circumstances. Presently his fingers were clasped together over his face, his head bent, and then he looked up, and said, ‘Do they know it—my sister and brother?’
‘No. We would not write till you were free. You must date the first letter from Stoneborough.’
The thought had brought a bitter pang. ‘One half year sooner—’ and he leant back in his seat, with fingers tightly pressed together, and trembling with emotion.
‘Nay, Leonard; may not the dear child be the first to rejoice in the fulfilment of her own sweet note of comfort? They could not harm the innocent.’
‘Not innocent,’ he said, ‘not innocent of causing all the discord that has ended in their exile, and the dear child’s death.’
‘Then this is what has preyed on you, and changed you so much more of late,’ said Dr. May.
‘When I knew that I was indeed guilty of
‘And you never spoke of this: not to the chaplain?’
‘I never could. It would have implied all the rest that he could not believe. And it would not have changed the fact.’
‘The aspect of it may change, Leonard. You know yourself how many immediate causes combined, of which you cannot accuse yourself—your brother’s wrongheadedness, and all the rest. And,’ added the Doctor, recovering himself, ‘you do see it in other aspects, I know. Think of the spirit set free to be near you—free from the world that has gone so hard with you!’
‘I can’t keep that thought long; I’m not worthy of it.’
Again he was silent; but presently said, as with a sudden thought, ‘You would have told me if there were any news of Ave.’
‘No, there has been no letter since her last inclosure for you,’ and then Dr. May gave the details from the papers on the doings of Henry’s division of the army.
‘Will Henry let me be with them?’ said Leonard, musingly.
‘They will come home, depend upon it. You must wait till you hear.’
Leonard thought a little while, then said, ‘Where did you say I was to go, Dr. May?’
