A louder hum of approbation, accompanied by some clapping of hands, followed the order for Vibert’s release. But to Vibert that release brought no joyful sense of freedom, and the favourable verdict no feeling of exultation. The youth was humiliated—even to the dust. He had only escaped condemnation as a felon, by being convicted of acting as a fool. He had been the easy dupe, the senseless tool of a designing villain. His emblem was the gaudy fly hiding the hook of the angler! Under such circumstances the congratulations of the so-called friends who now pressed around him were to Vibert but as a stinging insult. His one wish was to escape all notice, to fly from his fellow-creatures, and to hide his head where no one should know of his folly and the disgrace to which it had brought him. Many hands were held out to the late prisoner, words were spoken which were meant to be kind; but Vibert would not notice the hands, nor listen to the words. He bent down his head till his long hair almost hid his cheeks, which were glowing with shame. Vibert pushed his way through the crowd, scarcely able to draw a full breath till he had reached the street, rushed into his uncle’s carriage, in which Emmie was anxiously waiting, and pulled down the blinds to shut himself out from the sight of mankind.
CHAPTER XXX.
TREMBLING IN THE BALANCE.
Another and a yet sharper trial was further to humble and sober the once gay and thoughtless Vibert. If ever a gush of warm gratitude had arisen in his heart, it was drawn forth by the generous effort made in his behalf by his elder brother. Bruce, when in a state of exhaustion and suffering which rendered him fit only for the silence and repose of a sick-chamber, had taken a long journey in winter, and had then encountered the fatigue and excitement of giving evidence in a police-court, acting as one who felt that he had no leisure to be ill, that it was a time for action and not for repose. Bruce had been as a rider forcing his horse to a leap almost beyond its strength; the brave steed just clearing the stone wall, and falling on the opposite side, crushing its rider beneath its weight. An effort had been made, successfully made; but reaction was certain to follow, and in the case of Bruce Trevor terrible was that reaction. Ere nightfall straw was laid down before one of the houses in Grosvenor Square to deaden the sound of passing wheels, and the most skilful physician in London was counting the quick throbs in the pulse of a patient in a high delirious fever.
Emmie had never before watched by a sick-bed; she had been far too young at the time of her mother’s last illness to have had anything to do with nursing. All those who best knew Emmie, with her delicate nerves and timid character, declared that she was utterly unfit to nurse in a case that required both strength and courage; for Bruce’s ravings were often those of a maniac. He had sometimes to be held down in his bed by main force. But the painful lessons of the last few days had not been taught to Emmie in vain. The timid nervous girl had learned to go to the Fount of Strength, and the firmness and faith which she thence received astonished her father and Vibert. When her younger brother would quit the sick-room, unable to endure the harrowing sight of Bruce struggling like a demoniac, Emmie remained at her painful post. The sound of his sister’s voice, the gentle touch of her hand, would sometimes soothe the poor sufferer when nothing else had the slightest effect.
“How can you bear to see him thus?” exclaimed Vibert once to his pale but tearless sister, after one of Bruce’s most distressing paroxysms of brain-fever.
“I try to trust and not be afraid,” the poor girl faintly replied. “I try to trust him to God, to my—his Heavenly Father. I repeat to myself, God is love. He can—oh! He will make all things, even this most fearful anguish, work together for good to those who trust Him!”
But for the ravings of fever, when the mind of Bruce had lost all power of self-control, never would mortal but himself have known the extent of the sufferings which he had endured whilst in the power of the forgers, and during the hours of torture when he had remained pinioned and gagged. In the police-court Bruce had described with calm brevity the events of that trying night and morning. But when reason had fled from the sufferer, what images of horror those events had branded on his mind was apparent to all who approached him. The dreadful scenes through which Bruce had passed were, in the delirium of fever, acted over and over again: now he was struggling with fearful violence to unloose a murderer’s grasp on his throat, calling for help in tones so piercing that they thrilled to the hearts of those watching beside him, and even reached the ears of passengers in the street. Then the sufferer seemed to be listening, gasping and trembling as he listened, to sounds which none but himself could hear. Bruce would mutter words about the pool—the deep, black, icy-cold pool—and clutch the bed-clothes, as if to save himself from being dragged down to a watery grave. At another time the fever-stricken youth would imagine himself as being again bound in the house of Jael, would writhe and struggle to free himself from imaginary cords that cut into his flesh as he struggled; and anon would convulsively start, as if again he heard the thunderbolt strike the dwelling close to his head.