Part 63 (1/2)

But Averil felt the more impelled to an outpouring by this delicate forbearance, and the next time she and Cora were sent out together to breathe the air, while Cousin Deborah watched the patient, she told the history, and to a sympathizing listener, without a moment's doubt of Leonard's innocence, nor that American law would have managed matters better.

'And now, Cora, you know why I told you there were bitterer sorrows than yours.'

'Ah! Averil, I could have believed you once; but to know that he never can come again! Now you always have hope.'

'My hope has all but gone,' said Averil. 'There is only one thing left to look to. If I only can live till he is sent out to a colony, then nothing shall keep me back from him!'

'And what would I give for even such a hope?'

'We have a better hope, both of us,' murmured Averil.

'It won't seem so long when it is over.'

Well was it for Averil that this fresh link of sympathy was riveted, for day by day she saw the little patient wasting more hopelessly away, and the fever only burning lower for want of strength to feed on.

Utterly exhausted and half torpid, there was not life or power enough left in the child for them to know whether she was aware of her condition. When they read Prayers, her lips always moved for the Lord's Prayer and Doxology; and when the clergyman came out from Winiamac, prayed by her and blessed her, she opened her eyes with a look of comprehension; and if, according to the custom from the beginning of her illness, the Psalms and Lessons were not read in her room, she was uneasy, though she could hardly listen. So came Easter Eve; and towards evening she was a little revived, and asked Averil what day it was, then answered, 'I thought it would have been nice to have died yesterday,'--it was the first time she mentioned death.

Averil told her she was better, but half repented, as the child sank into torpor again; and Averil, no longer the bewildered girl who had been so easily led from the death scene, knew the fitful breath and fluttering pulse, and felt the blank dread stealing over her heart.

Again, however, the child looked up, and murmured, 'You have not read to-day.' Cora, who had the Bible on her knee, gently obeyed, and read on, where she was, the morning First Lesson, the same in the American Church as in our own. Averil, dull with watching and suffering, sat on dreamily, with the scent of primroses wafted to her, as it were, by the a.s.sociation of the words, though her power to attend to them was gone.

Before the chapter was over, the doze had overshadowed the little girl again; and yet, more than once, as the night drew on, they heard her muttering what seemed like the echo of one of its verses, 'Turn you, turn you--'

At last, after hours of watching, and more than one vain endeavour of good Cousin Deborah to lead away the worn but absorbed nurses, the dread messenger came. Minna turned suddenly in her sister's arms, with more strength than Averil had thought was left in her, and eagerly stretched out her arms, while the words so long trembling on her lips found utterance. 'Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope!

O, Leonard dear! it does not hurt!' But that last word was almost lost in the gasp--the last gasp. What 'did not hurt' was death without his sting.

'O, Cora! Was he with her? Is he gone too?' was Averil's cry at the first moment, as she strained the form of her little comforter for the last time in her arms.

'And if he is, they are in joy together,' said Cousin Deborah, tenderly but firmly unloosing Averil's arms, though with the tears running down her cheeks. 'Take her away, Cora, and both of you sleep. This dear lamb is in better keeping than yours.'

Heavy, grievous, was the loss, crus.h.i.+ng the grief; but it was such as to be at its softest and sweetest at Easter, amid the Resurrection joys, and the budding flowers, though Ella's bitterest fit of weeping was excited by there being no primroses--the primroses that Minna loved so much; and her first pleasurable thought was to sit down and write to her dear 'Mr. Tom' to send her some primrose seed, for Minna's grave.

Minna's grave! Alas! Ma.s.sissauga had but an untidy desolate-looking region, with a rude snake fence, all unconsecrated! Cora wanted to choose a shaded corner in her father's ground, where they might daily tend the child's earthly resting-place; but Averil shrank from this with horror; and finally, on one of the Easter holidays, the little wasted form in its coffin was reverently driven by Philetus to Winiamac, while the sisters and Cora slowly followed, thinking--the one of the nameless blood-stained graves of a battle-field; the other whether an equally nameless grave-yard, but one looked on with a shudder unmixed with exultation, had opened for the other being she loved best. 'The Resurrection and the Life.--Yes, had not He made His grave with the wicked, and been numbered with the transgressors!'

Somehow, the present sorrow was more abundant in such comforts as these than all the pangs which her heart, grown old in sorrow, had yet endured.

Yet if her soul had bowed itself to meet sorrow more patiently and peacefully, it was at the expense of the bodily frame. Already weakened by the intermittent fever, the long strain of nursing had told on her; and that hysteric affection that had been so distressing at the time of her brother's trial recurred, and grew on her with every occasion for self-restraint. The suspense in which she lived--with one brother in the camp, in daily peril from battle and disease, the other in his convict prison--wore her down, and made every pa.s.sing effect of climate or fatigue seize on her frame like a serious disorder; and the more she resigned her spirit, the more her body gave way. Yet she was infinitely happier. The repentance and submission were bearing fruit, and the ceasing to struggle had brought a strange calm and acceptance of all that might be sent; nay, her own decay was perhaps the sweetest solace and healing of the wearied spirit; and as to Ella, she would trust, and she did trust, that in some way or other all would be well.

She felt as if even Leonard's death could be accepted thankfully as the captive's release. But that sorrow was spared her.

The account of Leonard came from Mr. Wilmot, who had carried him the tidings. The prisoner had calmly met him with the words, 'I know what you are come to tell me;' and he heard all in perfect calmness and resignation, saying little, but accepting all that the clergyman said, exactly as could most be desired.

From the chaplain, likewise, Mr. Wilmot learnt that Leonard, though still only in the second stage of his penalty, stood morally in a very different position, and was relied on as a valuable a.s.sistant in all that was good, more effective among his fellow-prisoners than was possible to any one not in the same situation with themselves, and fully accepting that position when in contact either with convicts or officials. 'He has never referred to what brought him here,' said the chaplain, 'nor would I press him to do so; but his whole tone is of repentance, and acceptance of the penalty, without, like most of them, regarding it as expiation. It is this that renders his example so valuable among the men.'

After such a report as this, it was disappointing, on Dr. May's next visit to Portland, at two months' end, to find Leonard drooping and downcast. The Doctor was dismayed at his pale, dejected, stooping appearance, and the silence and indifference with which he met their ordinary topics of conversation, till the Doctor began anxiously--

'You are not well?'

'Quite well, thank you.'