Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sate with Barley, 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 recognised 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, drily.
"Experience is the best schoolmistress," 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 sate 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 generalisation, 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, drily--"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 spent 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,
and 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 humour 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 rebaptise 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.