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 "tyrans." He looked,
and, to his amaze, recognised 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 sate
at 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 sate, 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 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 church-spire 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!"