Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sat with Burley, a fashionable cabriolet,
with a very handsome horse, stopped at the door--a loud knock--a quick step
on the stairs, and Randal Leslie entered. Leonard recognized him and
started. Randal glanced at him in surprise, and then, with a tact that
showed he had already learned to profit by London life, after shaking hands
with Burley, approached, and said with some successful attempt at ease,
"Unless I am not mistaken, sir, we have met before. If you remember me, I
hope all boyish quarrels are forgotten?"
Leonard bowed, and his heart was still good enough to be softened.
"Where could you two ever have met?" asked Burley.
"In a village green, and in single combat," answered Randal, smiling; and
he told the story of the Battle of the Stocks with a well-bred jest on
himself. Burley laughed at the story. "But," said he, when this laugh was
over, "my young friend had better have remained guardian of the village
stocks, than come to London in search of such fortune as lies at the bottom
of an inkhorn."
"Ah," said Randal, with the secret contempt which men elaborately
cultivated are apt to feel for those who seek to educate themselves--"ah,
you make literature your calling, sir? At what school did you conceive a
taste for letters?--not very common at our great public schools."
"I am at school now for the first time," answered Leonard, dryly.
"Experience is the best school-mistress," said Burley; "and that was the
maxim of Goethe, who had book-learning enough, in all conscience."
Randal slightly shrugged his shoulders, and, without wasting another
thought on Leonard, peasant-born and self-taught, took his seat, and began
to talk to Burley upon a political question, which made then the war-cry
between the two great Parliamentary parties. It was a subject in which
Burley showed much general knowledge; and Randal, seeming to differ from
him, drew forth alike his information and his argumentative powers. The
conversation lasted more than an hour.
"I can't quite agree with you," said Randal, taking his leave; "but you
must allow me to call again--will the same hour to-morrow suit you?"
"Yes," said Burley.
Away went the young man in his cabriolet. Leonard watched him from the
window.
For five days, consecutively, did Randal call and discuss the question in
all its bearings; and Burley, after the second day got interested in the
matter, looked up his authorities--refreshed his memory and even spent an
hour or two in the Library of the British Museum.
By the fifth day, Burley had really exhausted all that could well be said
on his side of the question.
Leonard, during these colloquies, had sat apart, seemingly absorbed in
reading, and secretly stung by Randal's disregard of his presence. For
indeed that young man, in his superb self-esteem, and in the absorption of
his ambitious projects, scarce felt even curiosity as to Leonard's rise
above his earlier station, and looked on him as a mere journeyman of
Burley's. But the self-taught are keen and quick observers. And Leonard had
remarked that Randal seemed more as one playing a part for some private
purpose, than arguing in earnest; and that when he rose and said, "Mr.
Burley, you have convinced me," it was not with the modesty of a sincere
reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck,
meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener, with Burley's power of
generalization, and the wide surface over which his information extended,
that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly purposeless
man, and said aloud--"True; knowledge is _not_ power."
"Certainly not," said Burley, dryly--"the weakest thing in the world."
"Knowledge is power," muttered Randal Leslie, as, with a smile on his lip,
he drove from the door.
Not many days after this last interview there appeared a short pamphlet;
anonymous, but one which made a great impression on the town. It was on the
subject discussed between Randal and Burley. It was quoted at great length
in the newspapers. And Burley started to his feet one morning, and
exclaimed, "My own thoughts! my very words! Who the devil is this
pamphleteer?" Leonard took the newspaper from Burley's hand. The most
flattering encomiums preceded the extracts, and the extracts were as
stereotypes of Burley's talk.
"Can you doubt the author?" cried Leonard, in deep disgust and ingenuous
scorn. "The young man who came to steal your brains, and turn your
knowledge----"
"Into power," interrupted Burley, with a laugh, but it was a laugh of pain.
"Well, this was very mean; I shall tell him so when he comes."
"He will come no more," said Leonard. Nor did Randal come again. But he
sent Mr. Burley a copy of the pamphlet with a polite note, saying, with
candid but careless acknowledgment, that "he had profited much by Mr.
Burley's hints and remarks."
And now it was in all the papers, that the pamphlet which had made so great
a noise was by a very young man, Mr. Audley Egerton's relation, and high
hopes were expressed of the future career of Mr. Randal Leslie.
Burley still attempted to laugh, and still his pain was visible. Leonard
most cordially despised and hated Randal Leslie, and his heart moved to
Burley with noble but perilous compassion. In his desire to soothe and
comfort the man whom he deemed cheated out of fame, he forgot the caution
he had hitherto imposed on himself, and yielded more and more to the charm
of that wasted intellect. He accompanied Burley now where he went to spend
his evenings, and more and more--though gradually, and with many a recoil
and self-rebuke--there crept over him the cynic's contempt for glory, amid
miserable philosophy of debased content.
Randal had risen into grave repute upon the strength of Burley's knowledge.
But, had Burley written the pamphlet, would the same repute have attended
_him_? Certainly not. Randal Leslie brought to that knowledge qualities all
his own--a style simple, strong, and logical; a certain tone of good
society, and allusions to men and to parties that showed his connection
with a cabinet minister, and proved that he had profited no less by
Egerton's talk than Burley's.
Had Burley written the pamphlet, it would have showed more genius, it would
have had humor and wit, but have been so full of whims and quips, sins
against taste, and defects in earnestness, that it would have failed to
create any serious sensation. Here, then, there was something else besides
knowledge, by which knowledge became power. Knowledge must not smell of the
brandy bottle.
Randal Leslie might be mean in his plagiarism, but he turned the useless
into use. And so far he was original.
But one's admiration, after all, rests where Leonard's rested--with the
poor, shabby, riotous, lawless, big, fallen man.
Burley took himself off to the Brent, and fished again for the one-eyed
perch. Leonard accompanied him. His feelings were indeed different from
what they had been when he had reclined under the old tree, and talked with
Helen of the future. But it was almost pathetic to see how Burley's nature
seemed to alter, as he strayed along the banks of the rivulet, and talked
of his own boyhood. The man then seemed restored to something of the
innocence of the child. He cared, in truth, little for the perch, which
continued intractable, but he enjoyed the air and the sky, the rustling
grass and the murmuring waters. These excursions to the haunts of youth
seemed to rebaptize him, and then his eloquence took a pastoral character,
and Isaac Walton himself would have loved to hear him. But as he got back
into the smoke of the metropolis, and the gas lamps made him forget the
ruddy sunset, and the soft evening star, the gross habits reassumed their
sway; and on he went with his swaggering, reckless step to the orgies in
which his abused intellect flamed forth, and then sank into the socket
quenched and rayless.