Nothing, perhaps, could have severed Leonard from Burley but Helen's
return to his care. It was impossible for him, even had there been
another room in the house vacant, (which there was not,) to install
this noisy riotous son of the Muse by Bacchus, talking at random,
and smelling of spirits, in the same dwelling with an innocent,
delicate, timid, female child. And Leonard could not leave her alone
all the twenty-four hours. She restored a home to him, and imposed
its duties. He therefore told Mr Burley that in future he should
write and study in his own room, and hinted with many a blush, and
as delicately as he could, that it seemed to him that whatever he
obtained from his pen ought to be halved with Burley, to whose
interest he owed the employment, and from whose books or whose
knowledge he took what helped to maintain it; but that the other
half, if his, he could no longer afford to spend upon feasts or
libations. He had another to provide for.
Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's
earning, with much grandeur, but spoke very fretfully of Leonard's
sober appropriation of the other half; and, though a good-natured
warm-hearted man, felt extremely indignant against the sudden
interposition of poor Helen. However, Leonard was firm; and then
Burley grew sullen, and so they parted. But the rent was still to
be paid. How? Leonard for the first time thought of the pawnbroker.
He had clothes to spare, and Riccabocca's watch. No; that last he
shrank from applying to such base uses.
He went home at noon, and met Helen at the street door. She too had
been out, and her soft cheek was rosy red with unwonted exercise and
the sense of joy. She had still preserved the few gold pieces which
Leonard had taken back to her on his first visit to Miss Starke's.
She had now gone out and bought wools and implements for work; and
meanwhile she had paid the rent.
Leonard did not object to the work, but he blushed deeply when he
knew about the rent, and was very angry. He payed back to her that
night what she had advanced; and Helen wept silently at his pride,
and wept more when she saw the next day a woeful hiatus in his
wardrobe.
But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen
sate by his side, working too; so that next day, and the next,
slipped peacefully away, and in the evening of the second he
asked her to walk out in the fields. She sprang up joyously at
the invitation, when bang went the door, and in reeled John
Burley--drunk:--And so drunk!