The Trial [48]
to come after the Christmas holidays; and it would be well if he could even succeed in the summer. Innocent as the Mays were of the harmonium business, Henry included them in the annoyance it gave. It was the work of the curate--and was not Dr. May one in everything with the clergy? had he not been instrumental in building the chapel? was it not the Mays and the clergy who had made Ave inconveniently religious and opinionative, to say nothing of Leonard? The whole town was priest--led and bigoted; and Dr. May was the despot to whom all bowed down. This was an opinion Henry would hardly have originated: it was the shaft of an abler man than he--no other than Harvey Anderson, who had lately become known to the world by a book proving King John to have been the most enlightened and patriotic of English sovereigns, enduring the Interdict on a pure principle of national independence, and devising Magna Charta from his own generous brain--in fact, presenting a magnificent and misunderstood anticipation of the most advanced theories of the nineteenth century. The book had made so much noise in the world, that the author had been induced to quit his college tutorship, and become editor of a popular magazine. He lived in London, but often came down to spend Sunday with his mother, and had begun to be looked on as rather the lion of the place. Henry took in his magazine, and courted his notice, often bringing him into Averil's way that she might hear her heroes treated with irony more effectual than home-made satire; but Ave was staunch. She hated the sight of Mr. Anderson; never cut the leaves of his magazine; and if driven to sing to him, took as little pains as her musical nature would let her do. But the very strength of her dislike gave it an air of prejudice, and it was set down less to principle than to party spirit and May influence. There was another cause for Henry's being soured. He was not of the nature to be filial with Dr. May; and therefore gratitude oppressed, and patronage embittered him. The first months of warm feeling at an end, the old spirit of independence revived, and he avoided consulting the physician as much as possible. More than once his management of a case was not approved by Dr. May; and the strong and hasty language, and the sharp reproofs that ensued, were not taken as the signs of the warm heart and friendly interest, but as the greatest offences--sullenly, but not the less bitterly endured. Moreover, one of the Whitford surgeons had been called in by a few of the out-lying families who had hitherto been patients of the Wards; and worse than all, Mrs. Rivers took her child up to London for three days in November, and it became known--through a chain of tongues-- that it was for the enlargement of tonsils, on which Mr. Ward had operated a year before. 'Old May was playing him false!' was Henry's cry. 'His professions were humbug. He would endure no one who did not submit to his dictation; and he would bring in a stranger to ruin them all!' Little did Henry know of Dr. May's near approach to untruth in denying that he had a house to let to the opposition surgeon--of his attestations to his daughter that young Ward was a skilful operator-- or of his vexation when she professed herself ready to undergo anything for his pleasure, but said that little Margaret's health was another thing. Yet even this might have been forgiven, but for that worst rub of all--Tom May's manners. His politeness was intense--most punctilious and condescending in form--and yet provoking beyond measure to persons who, like Henry and Averil, had not playfulness enough to detect with certainty whether they were being made game of or not, nor whether his smoothly-uttered compliments were not innuendoes. Henry was certain of being despised, and naturally chafed against the prospect of the future connection between the two medical men of the town; and though Tom was gone back to Cambridge, it was the rankling remembrance of his supercilious looks that, more than any present offence or independence of spirit, made the young