My Novel Part 76

Helen in vain and with tears entreated her to take no step in reply to the advertis.e.m.e.nt. Mrs. Smedley felt that it was an affair of duty, and was obdurate, and shortly afterwards put on her bonnet and left the house. Helen conjectured that she was on her way to Miss Starke's, and her whole soul was bent on flight. Leonard had gone to the office of the "Beehive" with his ma.n.u.scripts; but she packed up all their joint effects, and just as she had done so, he returned. She communicated the news of the advertis.e.m.e.nt, and said she should be so miserable if compelled to go back to Miss Starke's, and implored him so pathetically to save her from such sorrow, that he at once a.s.sented to her proposal of flight. Luckily, little was owing to the landlady,--that little was left with the maid-servant; and, profiting by Mrs. Smedley's absence, they escaped without scene or conflict. Their effects were taken by Leonard to a stand of hackney vehicles, and then left at a coach-office while they went in search of lodgings. It was wise to choose an entirely new and remote district; and before night they were settled in an attic in Lambeth.

CHAPTER XIII.

As the reader will expect, no trace of Burley could Leonard find: the humourist had ceased to communicate with the "Beehive." But Leonard grieved for Burley's sake; and, indeed, he missed the intercourse of the large, wrong mind. But he settled down by degrees to the simple, loving society of his child companion, and in that presence grew more tranquil.

The hours in the daytime that he did not pa.s.s at work, he spent as before, picking up knowledge at book-stalls; and at dusk he and Helen would stroll out,--sometimes striving to escape from the long suburb into fresh rural air; more often wandering to and fro the bridge that led to glorious Westminster--London's cla.s.sic land--and watching the vague lamps reflected on the river. This haunt suited the musing, melancholy boy. He would stand long and with wistful silence by the bal.u.s.trade, seating Helen thereon, that she too might look along the dark mournful waters, which, dark though they be, still have their charm of mysterious repose.

As the river flowed between the world of roofs, and the roar of human pa.s.sions on either side, so in those two hearts flowed Thought--and all they knew of London was its shadow.

CHAPTER XIV.

There appeared in the "Beehive" certain very truculent political papers,--papers very like the tracts in the tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the "Beehive" than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the "Beehive" and all its papers and plant. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard, unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not new to his ear was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations against "tyrants." He looked, and, to his amaze, recognized in the orator Mr. Sprott the Tinker.

The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr. Sprott prudently vanished. Leonard learned, then, what had befallen, and again saw himself without employment and the means of bread.

Slowly he walked back. "O knowledge, knowledge!--powerless, indeed!" he murmured.

As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead wall, "Wanted, a few smart young men for India."

A crimp accosted him. "You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have stout limbs of your own." Leonard moved on.

"It has come back then to this,--brute physical force after all! O Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a machine again!" He entered his attic noiselessly, and gazed upon Helen as she sat at work, straining her eyes by the open window--with tender and deep compa.s.sion. She had not heard him enter, nor was she aware of his presence. Patient and still she sat, and the small fingers plied busily. He gazed, and saw that her cheek was pale and hollow, and the hands looked so thin! His heart was deeply touched, and at that moment he had not one memory of the baffled Poet, one thought that proclaimed the Egotist.

He approached her gently, laid his hand on her shoulder, "Helen, put on your shawl and bonnet, and walk out,--I have much to say."

In a few moments she was ready, and they took their way to their favourite haunt upon the bridge. Pausing in one of the recesses, or nooks, Leonard then began, "Helen, we must part!"

"Part?--Oh, brother!"

"Listen. All work that depends on mind is over for me, nothing remains but the labour of thews and sinews. I cannot go back to my village and say to all, 'My hopes were self-conceit, and my intellect a delusion!' I cannot. Neither in this sordid city can I turn menial or porter. I might be born to that drudgery, but my mind has, it may be unhappily, raised me above my birth. What, then, shall I do? I know not yet,--serve as a soldier, or push my way to some wilderness afar, as an emigrant, perhaps. But whatever my choice, I must henceforth be alone; I have a home no more. But there is a home for you, Helen, a very humble one (for you too, so well born), but very safe,--the roof of--of--my peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and--and--"

Helen clung to him trembling, and sobbed out, "Anything, anything you will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard. I do, indeed, make money,--you do not know how much, but enough for us both till better times come to you. Do not let us part."

"And I--a man, and born to labour--to be maintained by the work of an infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me."

She drew back as she looked on his flushed brow, bowed her head submissively, and murmured, "Pardon."

"Ah," said Helen, after a pause, "if now we could but find my poor father's friend! I never so much cared for it before."

"Yes, he would surely provide for you."

"For me!" repeated Helen, in a tone of soft, deep reproach, and she turned away her head to conceal her tears.

"You are sure you would remember him, if we met him by chance?"

"Oh, yes. He was so different from all we see in this terrible city, and his eyes were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog, whom he called Nero--I could not forget that."

"But his dog may not be always with him."

"But the bright clear eyes are! Ah, now you look up to heaven, and yours seem to dream like his."

Leonard did not answer, for his thoughts were indeed less on earth than struggling to pierce into that remote and mysterious heaven.

Both were silent long; the crowd pa.s.sed them by unheedingly. Night deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamp-lights on its waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the darkness of the strong current; and the craft that lay eastward on the tide, with sail-less spectral masts and black dismal hulks, looked death-like in their stillness.

Leonard looked down, and the thought of Chatterton's grim suicide came back to his soul; and a pale, scornful face, with luminous haunting eyes, seemed to look up from the stream, and murmur from livid lips, "Struggle no more against the tides on the surface,--all is calm and rest within the deep."

Starting in terror from the gloom of his revery, the boy began to talk fast to Helen, and tried to soothe her with descriptions of the lowly home which he had offered.

He spoke of the light cares which she would partic.i.p.ate with his mother (for by that name he still called the widow), and dwelt, with an eloquence that the contrast round him made sincere and strong, on the happy rural life, the shadowy woodlands, the rippling cornfields, the solemn, lone churchspire soaring from the tranquil landscape.

Flatteringly he painted the flowery terraces of the Italian exile, and the playful fountain that, even as he spoke, was flinging up its spray to the stars, through serene air untroubled by the smoke of cities, and untainted by the sinful sighs of men. He promised her the love and protection of natures akin to the happy scene: the simple, affectionate mother, the gentle pastor, the exile wise and kind, Violante, with dark eyes full of the mystic thoughts that solitude calls from childhood,--Violante should be her companion.

"And, oh!" cried Helen, "if life be thus happy there, return with me, return! return!"

"Alas!" murmured the boy, "if the hammer once strike the spark from the anvil, the spark must fly upward; it cannot fall back to earth until light has left it. Upward still, Helen,--let me go upward still!"

CHAPTER XV.

The next morning Helen was very ill,--so ill that, shortly after rising, she was forced to creep back to bed. Her frame s.h.i.+vered, her eyes were heavy, her hand burned like fire. Fever had set in. Perhaps she might have caught cold on the bridge, perhaps her emotions had proved too much for her frame. Leonard, in great alarm, called in the nearest apothecary. The apothecary looked grave, and said there was danger. And danger soon declared itself,--Helen became delirious. For several days she lay in this state, be tween life and death. Leonard then felt that all the sorrows of earth are light, compared with the fear of losing what we love. How valueless the envied laurel seemed beside the dying rose!

Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed and tending than to medical skill, she recovered sense at last. Immediate peril was over; but she was very weak and reduced, her ultimate recovery doubtful, convalescence, at best, likely to be very slow.

But when she learned how long she had been thus ill, she looked anxiously at Leonard's face as he bent over her, and faltered forth, "Give me my work; I am strong enough for that now,--it would amuse me."

Leonard burst into tears.

Alas! he had no work himself; all their joint money had melted away. The apothecary was not like good Dr. Morgan; the medicines were to be paid for, and the rent. Two days before, Leonard had p.a.w.ned Riccabocca's watch; and when the last s.h.i.+lling thus raised was gone, how should he support Helen? Nevertheless he conquered his tears, and a.s.sured her that he had employment; and that so earnestly that she believed him, and sank into soft sleep. He listened to her breathing, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He turned into his own neighbouring garret, and leaning his face on his hands, collected all his thoughts.

He must be a beggar at last. He must write to Mr. Dale for money,--Mr.

Dale, too, who knew the secret of his birth. He would rather have begged of a stranger; it seemed to add a new dishonour to his mother's memory for the child to beg of one who was acquainted with her shame. Had he himself been the only one to want and to starve, he would have sunk inch by inch into the grave of famine, before he would have so subdued his pride. But Helen, there on that bed,--Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries!

Beg he must. And when he so resolved, had you but seen the proud, bitter soul he conquered, you would have said, "This, which he thinks is degradation,--this is heroism." Oh, strange human heart! no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves.

Of whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, "Would that I were a man!

"--he could not endure the thought that she should pity him and despise.

The Avenels! No,--thrice No. He drew towards him hastily ink and paper, and wrote rapid lines that were wrung from him as from the bleeding strings of life.

But the hour for the post had pa.s.sed, the letter must wait till the next day; and three days at least would elapse before he could receive an answer. He left the letter on the table, and, stifling as for air, went forth. He crossed the bridge, he pa.s.sed on mechanically, and was borne along by a crowd pressing towards the doors of parliament. A debate that excited popular interest was fixed for that evening, and many bystanders collected in the street to see the members pa.s.s to and fro, or hear what speakers had yet risen to take part in the debate, or try to get orders for the gallery.

He halted amidst these loiterers, with no interest, indeed, in common with them, but looking over their heads abstractedly towards the tall Funeral Abbey,--imperial Golgotha of Poets and Chiefs and Kings.