Two Years Ago Volume Ii Part 43

Tom, anxious to keep Elsley's mind employed on some subject which should not be painful, began chatting about the war and its prospects. Elsley soon caught the cue, and talked with wild energy and pathos, opium-fed, of the coming struggle between despotism and liberty, the arising of Poland and Hungary, and all the grand dreams which then haunted minds like his.

"By Jove!" said Tom, "you are yourself again now. Why don't you put all that into a book!"

"I may perhaps," said Elsley proudly.

"And if it comes to that, why not come to the war, and see it for yourself? A new country--one of the finest in the world. New scenery, new actors,--Why, Constantinople itself is a poem! Yes, there is another 'Revolt of Islam' to be written yet. Why don't you become our war poet? Come and see the fighting; for there'll be plenty of it, let them say what they will. The old bear is not going to drop his dead donkey without a snap and a hug. Come along, and tell people what it's all really like. There will be a dozen c.o.c.kneys writing battle songs, I'll warrant, who never saw a man shot in their lives, not even a hare.

Come and give us the real genuine grit of it,--for if you can't, who can?"

"It is a grand thought! The true war poets, after all, have been warriors themselves. Korner and Alcaeus fought as well as sang, and sang because they fought. Old Homer, too,--who can believe that he had not hewn his way through the very battles which he describes, and seen every wound, every shape of agony? A n.o.ble thought, to go out with that army against the northern Anarch, singing in the van of battle, as Taillefer sang the song of Roland before William's knights, and to die like him, the proto-martyr of the Crusade, with the melody yet upon one's lips!"

And his face blazed up with excitement.

"What a handsome fellow he is, after all, if there were but more of him?" said Tom to himself. "I wonder if he'd fight, though, when the singing-fever was off him."

He took Elsley upstairs into his bed-room, got him washed and shaved: and sent out the woman of the house for mutton chops and stout, and began himself setting out the luncheon table, while Elsley in the room within chanted to himself s.n.a.t.c.hes of poetry.

"The notion has taken: he's composing a war song already, I believe."

It actually was so: but Elsley's brain was weak and wandering; and he was soon silent; and motionless so long, that Tom opened the door and looked in anxiously.

He was sitting on a chair, his hands fallen on his lap, the tears running down his face.

"Well?" asked Tom smilingly, not noticing the tears; "how goes on the opera? I heard through the door the orchestra tuning for the prelude."

Elsley looked up in his face with a puzzled piteous expression.

"Do you know, Thurnall, I fancy at moments that my mind is not what it was. Fancies flit from me as quickly as they come. I had twenty verses five minutes ago, and now I cannot recollect one."

"No wonder," thought Tom to himself. "My clear fellow, recollect all that you have suffered with this neuralgia. Believe me all you want is animal strength. Chops and porter will bring all the verses back, or better ones instead of them."

He tried to make Elsley eat; and Elsley tried himself: but failed. The moment the meat touched his lips he loathed it, and only courtesy prevented his leaving the room to escape the smell. The laudanum had done its work upon his digestion. He tried the porter, and drank a little: then, suddenly stopping, he pulled out a phial, dropped a heavy dose of his poison into the porter, and tossed it off.

"Sold am I?" said Tom to himself. "He must have hidden the bottle as he came out of the room with me. Oh, the cunning of those opium-eaters?

However, it will keep him quiet just now, and to Eaton Square I must go."

"You had better be quiet now, my dear fellow, after your dose; talking will only excite you. Settle yourself on my bed, and I'll be back in an hour."

So he put Elsley on his bed, carefully removing razors and pistols (for he had still his fears of an outburst of pa.s.sion), then locked him in, ran down into the Strand, threw himself into a cab for Eaton Square, and asked for Valencia.

Campbell had been there already; so Tom took care to tell nothing which he had not told, expecting, and rightly, that he would not mention Elsley's having fired at him. Lucia was still all but senseless, too weak even to ask for Elsley; to attempt any meeting between her and her husband would be madness.

"What will you do with the unhappy man, Mr. Thurnall?"

"Keep him under my eye, day and night, till he is either rational again, or--"

"Do you think that he may?--Oh my poor sister!"

"I think that he may yet end very sadly, madam. There is no use concealing the truth from you. All I can promise is, that I will treat him as my own brother."

Valencia held out her fair hand to the young doctor. He stooped, and lifted the tips of her fingers to his lips.

"I am not worthy of such an honour, madam. I shall study to deserve it."

And he bowed himself out, the same st.u.r.dy, self-confident Tom, doing right, he hardly knew why, save that it was all in the way of business.

And now arose the puzzle, what to do with Elsley? He had set his heart on going down to Whitbury the next day. He had been in England nearly six months, and had not yet seen his father; his heart yearned, too, after the old place, and Mark Armsworth, and many an old friend, whom he might never see again. "However, that fellow I must see to, come what will: business first and pleasure afterwards. If I make him all right-- if I even get him out of the world decently, I get the Scoutbush interest on my side--though I believe I have it already. Still, it's as well to lay people under as heavy an obligation as possible. I wish Miss Valencia had asked me whether Elsley wanted any money: it's expensive keeping him myself. However, poor thing, she has other matters to think of: and I dare say, never knew the pleasures of an empty purse. Here we are! Three-and-sixpence--eh, cabman? I suppose you think I was born Sat.u.r.day night? There's three s.h.i.+llings. Now, don't chaff me, my excellent friend, or you will find you have met your match, and a leetle more!"

And Tom hurried into his rooms, and found Elsley still sleeping.

He set to work, packing and arranging, for with him every moment found its business: and presently heard his patient call faintly from the next room.

"Thurnall!" said he; "I have been a long journey. I have been to Whitbury once more, and followed my father about his garden, and sat upon my mother's knee. And she taught me one text, and no more. Over and over again she said it, as she looked down at me with still sad eyes, the same text which she spoke the day I left her for London. I never saw her again. 'By this, my son, be admonished; of making of books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear G.o.d and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.'.... Yes, I will go down to Whitbury, and he a little child once more. I will take poor lodgings, and crawl out day by day, down the old lanes, along the old river-banks, where I fed my soul with fair and mad dreams, and reconsider it all from the beginning;--and then die. No one need know me; and if they do, they need not be ashamed of me, I trust--ashamed that a poet has risen up among them, to speak words which have been heard across the globe. At least, they need never know my shame--never know that I have broken the heart of an angel, who gave herself to me, body and soul--attempted the life of a man whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose--never know that I have killed my own child!--that a blacker brand than Cain's is on my brow!--Never know--Oh, my G.o.d, what care I? Let them know all, as long as I can have done with shams and affectations, dreams, and vain ambitions, and he just my own self once more, for one day, and then die!"

And he burst into convulsive weeping.

"No, Tom, do not comfort me! I ought to die, and I shall die. I cannot face her again; let her forget me, and find a husband who will--and be a father to the children whom I neglected! Oh, my darlings, my darlings!

If I could but see you once again: but no! you too would ask me where I had been so long. You too would ask me--your innocent faces at least would--why I had killed your little brother!--Let me weep it out, Thurnall; let me face it all! This very misery is a comfort, for it will kill me all the sooner."

"If you really mean to go to Whitbury, my poor dear fellow," said Tom at last, "I will start with you to-morrow morning. For I too must go; I must see my father."

"You will really?" asked Elsley, who began to cling to him like a child.

"I will indeed. Believe me, you are right; you will find friends there, and admirers too. I know one."

"You do?" asked he, looking up.

"Mary Armsworth, the banker's daughter."

"What! That purse-proud, vulgar man?"

"Don't be afraid of him. A truer and more delicate heart don't beat. No one has more cause to say so than I. He will receive you with open arms, and need be told no more than is necessary; while, as his friend, you may defy gossip, and do just what you like."

Tom slipped out that afternoon, paid Elsley's pittance of rent at his old lodgings; bought him a few necessary articles, and lent him, without saying anything, a few more. Elsley sat all day as one in a dream, moaning to himself at intervals, and following Tom vacantly with his eyes, as he moved about the room. Excitement, misery, and opium were fast wearing out body and mind, and Tom put him to bed that evening, as he would have put a child.

Tom walked out into the Strand to smoke in the fresh air, and think, in spite of himself, of that fair saint from whom he was so perversely flying. Gay girls slithered past him, looked round at him, but in vain; those two great sad eyes hung in his fancy, and he could see nothing else. Ah--if she had but given him back his money--why, what a fool he would have made of himself! Better as it was. He was meant to be a vagabond and an adventurer to the last; and perhaps to find at last the luck which had flitted away before him.

He pa.s.sed one of the theatre doors; there was a group outside, more noisy and more earnest than such groups are wont to be; and ere he could pa.s.s through them, a shout from within rattled the doors with its mighty pulse, and seemed to shake the very walls. Another; and another!--What was it? Fire?

No. It was the news of Alma.

And the group surged to and fro outside, and talked, and questioned, and rejoiced; and smart gents forgot their vulgar pleasures, and looked for a moment as if they too could have fought--had fought--at Alma; and sinful girls forgot their shame, and looked more beautiful than they had done for many a day, as, beneath the flaring gas-light, their faces glowed for a while with n.o.ble enthusiasm, and woman's sacred pity, while they questioned Tom, taking him for an officer, as to whether he thought there were many killed.

"I am no officer: but I have been in many a battle, and I know the Russians well, and have seen how they fight; and there is many a brave man killed, and many a one more will be."

"Oh, does it hurt them much?" asked one poor thing.

"Not often," quoth Tom.

"Thank G.o.d, thank G.o.d!" and she turned suddenly away, and with the impulsive nature of her cla.s.s, burst into violent sobbing and weeping.

Poor thing! perhaps among the men who fought and fell that day was he to whom she owed the curse of her young life; and after him her lonely heart went forth once more, faithful even in the lowest pit.