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 plans. 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 "tyrans." 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 her
work, straining her eyes by the open window--with tender and deep
compassion. 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 favorite
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 labor 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. "Any thing, any thing 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 labor, 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
seems 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 passed them by unheedingly. Night deepened
over the river, but the reflection of the lamplights 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 deathlike 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 reverie, 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 participate 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!"