The Doctor was in no mood to think any comfort possible in thus losing one like Leonard, and he did not commit himself to an untruth. There was a silence again, and Leonard opened his book, and took out his etchings, one which he had already promised the Doctor, another for Aubrey, and at the third the Doctor exclaimed inarticulately with surprise and admiration.
It was a copy of the well-known Cross-bearing Form in the Magdalen College Chapel Altar-piece, drawn in pen and ink on a half-sheet of thick note-paper; but somehow, into the entire Face and Figure there was infused such an expression as now and then comes direct from the soul of the draughtsman—an inspiration entirely independent of manual dexterity, and that copies, however exact, fail to render, nay, which the artist himself fails to renew. The beauty, the meekness, the hidden Majesty of the Countenance, were conveyed in a marvellous manner, and were such as would bring a tear to the eye of the gazer, even had the drawing been there alone to speak for itself.
'This is your doing, Leonard?'
'I have just finished it. It has been one of my greatest comforts—'
'Ah!'
'Doing those lines;' and he pointed to the thorny Crown, 'I seem to get ashamed of thinking this hardness. Only think, Dr. May, from the very first moment the policeman took me in charge, nobody has said a rough word to me. I have never felt otherwise than that they meant justice to have its way as far as they knew, but they were all consideration for me. To think of that, and then go over the scoffs and scourgings!'—there was a bright glistening tear in Leonard's eye now—'it seems like child's play to go through such a trial as mine.'
'Yes! you have found the secret of willingness.'
'And,' added the boy, hesitating between the words, but feeling that he must speak them, as the best balm for the sorrow he was causing, 'even my little touch of the shame and scorn of this does make me know better what it must have been, and yet—so thankful when I remember why it was—that I think I could gladly bear a great deal more than this is likely to be.'
'Oh! my boy, I have no fears for you now.'
'Yes, yes—have fears,' cried Leonard, hastily. 'Pray for me! You don't know what it is to wake up at night, and know something is coming nearer and nearer—and then this—before one can remember all that blesses it—or the Night of that Agony—and that He knows what it is—'