The Trial [223]
they helped me to hold on, and helped Leonard upon the narrow place. You know they are sure to be flying about the church.' Ethel read the ninety-first Psalm to him. He listened all through, and thanked her; but in a few minutes more he was fast asleep. As she left the room she met Leonard coming down and held out her hands to him with a mute intensity of thanks, telling him, in a low voice, what Dickie had said of the angels' care. 'I am sure it was true,' said Leonard. 'What else could have saved the brave child from dizziness?' Down-stairs Leonard's reception from Dr. May was, 'Pretty well for a nervous man!' 'Anybody can do what comes to hand.' 'I beg your pardon. Some bodies lose their wits, like your friend Aubrey, who tells me, if he had stood still, he would have fainted away. As long as nerves can do what comes to hand, they need not be blamed, even if they play troublesome tricks at other times, as I suspect they are doing now.' 'Yes; my face is aching a little.' 'Not to say a great deal,' said the Doctor. 'Well, I am not going to pity you; for I think you can feel to-day that most of us would be glad to be in your place!' 'I am very glad,' said Leonard. 'You remember that child's parents? No, you have grown so old, that I am always forgetting what a boy you ought to be; but if you had ever seen the tenderness of his father, and that sunbeam of a Meta, you would know all the more how we bless you for what you have spared them. Leonard, if anything had been needed to do so, you have won to yourself such a brother in Norman as you have in Aubrey!' Meantime Ethel was soothing Gertrude, to whom the shock had been in proportion to the triumphal heights of her careless gaiety. Charles Cheviot had come in while his wife was restoring her; and he had plainly said what no one else would have intimated to the spoilt darling--that the whole accident had been owing to her recklessness, and that he had always expected some fatal consequences to give her a lesson! Gertrude had been fairly cowed by such unwonted treatment; and when he would only take her home on condition of composure and self- command, her trembling limbs obliged her to accept his arm, and he subdued her into meek silence, and repression of all agitation, till she was safe in her room, when she took a little bit of revenge upon Mary by crying her heart out, and declaring it was very cruel of Charles, when she did not mean it. And Mary, on her side, varied between assurances that Charles did not mean it, and that he was quite right--the sister now predominating in her, and now the wife. 'Mean what?' said Ethel, sitting down among them before they were aware. 'That--that it was all my fault!' burst out Gertrude. 'If it was, I don't see what concern it is of his!' 'But, Daisy dear, he is your brother!' 'I've got plenty of brothers of my own! I don't count those people- in-law--' 'She's past reasoning with, Mary,' said Ethel. 'Leave her to me; she will come to her senses by and by!' 'But indeed, Ethel, you won't be hard on her? I am sure dear Charles never thought what he said would have been taken in this way.' 'Why did he say it then?' cried Gertrude, firing up. 'My dear Mary, do please go down, before we get into the pitiable last-word condition!' That condition was reached already; but in Ethel's own bed-room Mary's implicit obedience revived, and away she went, carrying off with her most of what was naughtiness in Gertrude. 'Ethel--Ethel dear!' cried she at once, 'I know you are coming down on me. I deserve it all, only Charles had no business to say it. And wasn't it very cruel and unkind when he saw the state I was in?' 'I suppose Charles thought it was the only chance of giving a lesson, and therefore true kindness. Come, Daisy, is this terrible fit of pride a proper return for such a mercy as we have had to-day?' 'If I didn't say so to myself a dozen times on the way home!--only Mary came and made me so intolerably angry, by expecting me to take it as if it had come from you or papa.' 'Ah, Daisy, that is the evil! If I had done my duty