Leonard went out the next day with his precious MSS. He had read
sufficient of modern literature to know the names of the principal
London publishers; and to these he took his way with a bold step,
though a beating heart.
That day he was out longer than the last; and when he returned, and
came into the little room, Helen uttered a cry, for she scarcely
recognised him. There was on his face so deep, so concentrated a
despondency. He sat down listlessly, and did not kiss her this time,
as she stole towards him. He felt so humbled. He was a king deposed.
_He_ take charge of another life! He!
She coaxed him at last into communicating his day's chronicle. The
reader beforehand knows too well what it must be, to need detailed
repetition. Most of the publishers had absolutely refused to look at
his MSS.; one or two had good-naturedly glanced over and returned them
at once, with a civil word or two of flat rejection. One publisher
alone--himself a man of letters, and who in youth had gone through the
same bitter process of dis-illusion that now awaited the village
genius--volunteered some kindly though stern explanation and counsel
to the unhappy boy. This gentleman read a portion of Leonard's
principal poem with attention, and even with frank admiration. He
could appreciate the rare promise that it manifested. He sympathized
with the boy's history, and even with his hopes; and then he said, in
bidding him farewell--
"If I publish this poem for you, speaking as a trader, I shall be a
considerable loser. Did I publish all that I admire, out of sympathy
with the author, I should be a ruined man. But suppose that, impressed
as I really am with the evidence of no common poetic gifts in this
MS., I publish it, not as a trader, but a lover of literature, I shall
in reality, I fear, render you a great disservice, and perhaps unfit
your whole life for the exertions on which you must rely for
independence."
"How, sir?" cried Leonard--"Not that I would ask you to injure
yourself for me," he added with proud tears in his eyes.
"How, my young friend? I will explain. There is enough talent in these
verses to induce very flattering reviews in some of the literary
journals. You will read these, find yourself proclaimed a poet, will
cry 'I am on the road to fame.' You will come to me, 'And my poem, how
does it sell?' I shall point to some groaning shelf, and say, 'not
twenty copies!' The journals may praise, but the public will not buy
it. 'But you will have got a name,' you say. Yes, a name as a poet
just sufficiently known to make every man in practical business
disinclined to give fair trial to your talents in a single department
of positive life;--none like to employ poets;--a name that will not
put a penny in your purse--worse still, that will operate as a barrier
against every escape into the ways whereby men get to fortune. But,
having once tasted praise, you will continue to sigh for it: you will
perhaps never again get a publisher to bring forth a poem, but you
will hanker round the purlieus of the muses, scribble for periodicals,
fall at last into a bookseller's drudge. Profits will be so precarious
and uncertain, that to avoid debt may be impossible; then, you who now
seem so ingenuous and so proud, will sink deeper still into the
literary mendicant--begging, borrowing--"
"Never--never--never!" cried Leonard, veiling his face with his hands.
"Such would have been my career," continued the publisher. "But I
luckily had a rich relative, a trader, whose calling I despised as a
boy, who kindly forgave my folly, bound me as an apprentice, and here
I am; and now I can afford to write books as well as sell them.
"Young man, you must have respectable relations--go by their advice
and counsel; cling fast to some positive calling. Be any thing in this
city rather than poet by profession."
"And how, sir, have there ever been poets? Had _they_ other callings?"
"Read their biography, and then envy them!"
Leonard was silent a moment; but, lifting his head, answered loud and
quickly,--"I _have_ read their biography. True, their lot
poverty--perhaps hunger. Sir, I envy them!"
"Poverty and hunger are small evils," answered the bookseller, with a
grave kind smile. "There are worse,--debt and degradation,
and--despair."
"No, sir, no--you exaggerate; these last are not the lot of all
poets."
"Right, for most of our greatest poets had some private means of their
own. And for others, why, all who have put into a lottery have not
drawn blanks. But who could advise another man to set his whole hope
of fortune on the chance of a prize in a lottery? And such a lottery!"
groaned the publisher, glancing towards sheets and reams of dead
authors lying like lead upon his shelves.
Leonard clutched his MSS. to his heart, and hurried away.
"Yes," he muttered, as Helen clung to him and tried to console--"yes,
you were right: London is very vast, very strong, and very cruel;" and
his head sank lower and lower yet upon his bosom.
The door was flung widely open, and in, unannounced, walked Dr Morgan.
The child turned to him, and at the sight of his face she remembered
her father; and the tears that, for Leonard's sake, she had been
trying to suppress, found way.
The good Doctor soon gained all the confidence of these two young
hearts. And, after listening to Leonard's story of his paradise lost
in a day, he patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, you will call
on me on Monday, and we will see. Meanwhile, borrow these of me,"--and
he tried to slip three sovereigns into the boy's hand. Leonard was
indignant. The bookseller's warning flashed on him. Mendicancy! Oh no,
he had not yet come to that! He was almost rude and savage in his
rejection; and the Doctor did not like him the less for it.
"You are an obstinate mule," said the homoeopathist, reluctantly
putting up his sovereigns. "Will you work at something practical and
prosy, and let the poetry rest awhile?"
"Yes," said Leonard doggedly, "I will work."
"Very well, then. I know an honest bookseller, and he shall give you
some employment; and meanwhile, at all events, you will be among
books, and that will be some comfort."
Leonard's eyes brightened--"A great comfort, sir." He pressed the hand
he had before put aside to his grateful heart.
"But," resumed the Doctor seriously, "you really feel a strong
predisposition to make verses?"
"I did, sir."
"Very bad symptom indeed, and must be stopped before a relapse! Here,
I have cured three prophets and ten poets with this novel specific."
While thus speaking, he had got out his book and a globule. "_Agaricus
muscarius_ dissolved in a tumbler of distilled water--tea-spoonful
whenever the fit comes on. Sir, it would have cured Milton himself."
"And now for you, my child," turning to Helen--"I have found a lady
who will be very kind to you. Not a menial situation. She wants some
one to read to her and tend on her--she is old and has no children.
She wants a companion, and prefers a girl of your age to one older.
Will this suit you?"
Leonard walked away.
Helen got close to the Doctor's ear, and whispered, "No, I cannot
leave _him_ now--he is so sad."
"Cott!" grunted the Doctor, "you two must have been reading _Paul and
Virginia_. If I could but stay in England, I would try what _ignatia_
would do in this case--interesting experiment! Listen to me--little
girl; and go out of the room, you, sir."
Leonard, averting his face, obeyed. Helen made an involuntary step
after him--the Doctor detained and drew her on his knee.
"What is your Christian name?--I forget."
"Helen."
"Helen, listen. In a year or two you will be a young woman, and it
would be very wrong then to live alone with that young man. Meanwhile,
you have no right to cripple all his energies. He must not have you
leaning on his right arm--you would weigh it down. I am going away,
and when I am gone there will be no one to help you, if you reject the
friend I offer you. Do as I tell you, for a little girl so peculiarly
susceptible (a thorough _pulsatilla_ constitution) cannot be
obstinate and egotistical."
"Let me see him cared for and happy, sir," said she firmly, "and I
will go where you wish."
"He shall be so; and to-morrow, while he is out, I will come and fetch
you. Nothing so painful as leave-taking--shakes the nervous system,
and is a mere waste of the animal economy."
Helen sobbed aloud; then, writhing from the Doctor, she exclaimed,
"But he may know where I am? We may see each other sometimes? Ah, sir,
it was at my father's grave that we first met, and I think Heaven sent
him to me. Do not part us for ever."
"I should have a heart of stone if I did," cried the Doctor
vehemently, "and Miss Starke shall let him come and visit you once a
week. I'll give her something to make her. She is naturally
indifferent to others. I will alter her whole constitution, and melt
her into sympathy--with _rhododendron_ and _arsenic_!"