Then the Doctor tried to talk of Henry and the sisters; but soon saw that Leonard had no power to dwell upon them. The brief answers were given with a stern compression and contraction of face; as if the manhood that had grown on him in these three years was no longer capable of the softening effusion of grief; and Dr. May, with all his tenderness, felt that it must be respected, and turned the conversation.
'I have been calling at the Castle,' he said, 'with Ernescliffe, and the governor showed me a curious thing, a volume of Archbishop Usher, which had been the Duke of Lauderdale's study after he was taken at Worcester. He has made a note in the fly-leaf, "I began this book at Windsor, and finished it during my imprisonment here;" and below are mottoes in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. I can't construe the Hebrew. The Greek is oisteon kai elpisteon (one must bear and hope), the Latin is durate. Will you accept your predecessor's legacy?'
'I think I read about him in an account of the island,' said Leonard, with a moment's awakened intelligence; 'was he not the L. of the Cabal, the persecutor in "Old Mortality?"'
'I am afraid you are right. Prosperity must have been worse for him than adversity.'
'Endure' repeated Leonard, gravely. 'I will think of that, and what he would mean by hope now.'
The Doctor came home much distressed; he had been unable to penetrate the dreary, resolute self-command that covered so much anguish; he had failed in probing or in healing, and feared that the apathy he had witnessed was a sign that the sustaining spring of vigour was failing in the monotonous life. The strong endurance had been a strain that the additional grief was rendering beyond his power; and the crushed resignation, and air of extinguished hope, together with the indications of failing health, filled the Doctor with misgivings.
'It will not last much longer,' he said. 'I do not mean that he is ill; but to hold up in this way takes it out of a man, especially at his age. The first thing that lays hold of him, he will have no strength nor will to resist, and then—Well, I did hope to live to see God show the right.'
CHAPTER XXIV
We twa hae wandered o'er the braes,
And pu'ed the gowans fine;
I've wandered many a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.