This eBook was produced by David Widger
BOOK SIXTH.
INITIAL CHAPTER.
WHEREIN MR. CAXTON IS PROFOUNDLY METAPHYSICAL.
"Life," said my father, in his most dogmatical tone, "is a certain
quantity in time, which may be regarded in two ways,--First, as life
integral; Second, as life fractional. Life integral is that complete
whole expressive of a certain value, large or small, which each man
possesses in himself. Life fractional is that same whole seized upon and
invaded by other people, and subdivided amongst them. They who get a
large slice of it say, 'A very valuable life this!' Those who get but a
small handful say, 'So, so; nothing very great!' Those who get none of
it in the scramble exclaim, 'Good for nothing!'"
"I don't understand a word you are saying," growled Captain Roland.
My father surveyed his brother with compassion: "I will make it all
clear, even to your understanding. When I sit down by myself in my
study, having carefully locked the door on all of you, alone with my
books and thoughts, I am in full possession of my integral life. I am
/totus, teres, atque rotundus/,--a whole human being, equivalent in
value, we will say, for the sake of illustration, to a fixed round sum,
L100 for example. But when I go forth into the common apartment, each of
those to whom I am of any worth whatsoever puts his finger into the bag
that contains me, and takes out of me what he wants. Kitty requires me
to pay a bill; Pisistratus to save him the time and trouble of looking
into a score or two of books; the children to tell them stories, or play
at hide-and-seek; and so on throughout the circle to which I have
incautiously given myself up for plunder and subdivision. The L100 which
I represented in my study is now parcelled out; I am worth L40 or L50 to
Kitty, L20 to Pisistratus, and perhaps 30s. to the children. This is
life fractional. And I cease to be an integral till once more returning
to my study, and again closing the door on all existence but my own.
Meanwhile, it is perfectly clear that to those who, whether I am in the
study or whether I am in the common sitting-room, get nothing at all out
of me, I am not worth a farthing. It must be wholly indifferent to a
native of Kamschatka whether Austin Caxton be or be not razed out of the
great account-book of human beings.
"Hence," continued my father,--"hence it follows that the more fractional
a life be--that is, the greater the number of persons among whom it can
be subdivided--why, the more there are to say, 'A very valuable life
that!' Thus the leader of a political party, a conqueror, a king, an
author, who is amusing hundreds or thousands or millions, has a greater
number of persons whom his worth interests and affects than a Saint
Simeon Stylites could have when he perched himself at the top of a
column; although, regarded each in himself, Saint Simeon, in his grand
mortification of flesh, in the idea that he thereby pleased his Divine
Benefactor, might represent a larger sum of moral value per se than
Bonaparte or Voltaire."
PISISTRATUS.--"Perfectly clear, sir; but I don't see what it has to do
with 'My Novel.'"
MR. CAXTON.--"Everything. Your novel, if it is to be a full and
comprehensive survey of the 'Quicquid agunt homines' (which it ought to
be, considering the length and breadth to which I foresee, from the slow
development of your story, you meditate extending and expanding it), will
embrace the two views of existence,--the integral and the fractional. You
have shown us the former in Leonard, when he is sitting in his mother's
cottage, or resting from his work by the little fount in Riccabocca's
garden. And in harmony with that view of his life, you have surrounded
him with comparative integrals, only subdivided by the tender hands of
their immediate families and neighbours,--your squires and parsons, your
Italian exile and his Jemima. With all these, life is, more or less, the
life natural, and this is always, more or less, the life integral. Then
comes the life artificial, which is always, more or less, the life
fractional. In the life natural, wherein we are swayed but by our own
native impulses and desires, subservient only to the great silent law of
Virtue (which has pervaded the universe since it swung out of chaos), a
man is of worth from what he is in himself,--Newton was as worthy before
the apple fell from the tree as when all Europe applauded the discoverer
of the Principle of Gravity. But in the life artificial we are only of
worth inasmuch as we affect others; and, relative to that life, Newton
rose in value more than a million per cent when down fell the apple from
which ultimately sprang up his discovery. In order to keep civilization
going and spread over the world the light of human intellect, we have
certain desires within us, ever swelling beyond the ease and independence
which belongs to us as integrals. Cold man as Newton might be (he once
took a lady's hand in his own, Kitty, and used her forefinger for his
tobacco-stopper,--great philosopher!), cold as he might be, he was yet
moved into giving his discoveries to the world, and that from motives
very little differing in their quality from the motives that make Dr.
Squills communicate articles to the 'Phrenological Journal' upon the
skulls of Bushmen and wombats. For it is the property of light to
travel. When a man has light in him, forth it must go. But the first
passage of genius from its integral state (in which it has been reposing
on its own wealth) into the fractional is usually through a hard and
vulgar pathway. It leaves behind it the reveries of solitude,--that
self-contemplating rest which may be called the Visionary,--and enters
suddenly into the state that may be called the Positive and Actual.
There it sees the operations of money on the outer life; sees all the
ruder and commoner springs of action; sees ambition without nobleness,
love without romance; is bustled about and ordered and trampled and
cowed,--in short, it passes an apprenticeship with some Richard Avenel,
and does not detect what good and what grandeur, what addition even to
the true poetry of the social universe, fractional existences like
Richard Avenel's bestow; for the pillars that support society are like
those of the Court of the Hebrew Tabernacle,--they are of brass, it is
true, but they are filleted with silver. From such intermediate state
Genius is expelled and driven on its way, and would have been so in this
case had Mrs. Fairfield (who is but the representative of the homely
natural affections, strongest ever in true genius,--for light is warm)
never crushed Mr. Avenel's moss rose on her sisterly bosom. Now, forth
from this passage and defile of transition into the larger world, must
Genius go on, working out its natural destiny amidst things and forms the
most artificial. Passions that move and influence the world are at work
around it. Often lost sight of itself, its very absence is a silent
contrast to the agencies present. Merged and vanished for a while amidst
the Practical World, yet we ourselves feel all the while that it is
there; is at work amidst the workings around it. This practical world
that effaces it rose out of some genius that has gone before; and so each
man of genius, though we never come across him, as his operations proceed
in places remote from our thoroughfares, is yet influencing the practical
world that ignores him, for ever and ever. That is GENIUS! We can't
describe it in books; we can only hint and suggest it by the accessories
which we artfully heap about it. The entrance of a true Probationer into
the terrible ordeal of Practical Life is like that into the miraculous
cavern, by which, legend informs us, Saint Patrick converted Ireland."
BLANCHE.--"What is that legend? I never heard of it."
MR. CAXTON.--"My dear, you will find it in a thin folio at the right on
entering my study, written by Thomas Messingham, and called 'Florilegium
Insulae Sanctorum,' etc. The account therein is confirmed by the
relation of an honest soldier, one Louis Ennius, who had actually entered
the cavern. In short, the truth of the legend is undeniable, unless you
mean to say, which I can't for a moment suppose, that Louis Ennius was a
liar. Thus it runs: Saint Patrick, finding that the Irish pagans were
incredulous as to his pathetic assurances of the pains and torments
destined to those who did not expiate their sins in this world, prayed
for a miracle to convince them. His prayer was heard; and a certain
cavern, so small that a man could not stand up therein at his ease, was
suddenly converted into a Purgatory, comprehending tortures sufficient to
convince the most incredulous. One unacquainted with human nature might
conjecture that few would be disposed to venture voluntarily into such a
place; on the contrary, pilgrims came in crowds. Now, all who entered
from vain curiosity or with souls unprepared perished miserably; but
those who entered with deep and earnest faith, conscious of their faults,
and if bold, yet humble, not only came out safe and sound, but purified,
as if from the waters of a second baptism. See Savage and Johnson at
night in Fleet Street,--and who shall doubt the truth of Saint Patrick's
Purgatory!" Therewith my father sighed; closed his Lucian, which had
lain open on the table, and would read none but "good books" for the
rest of the evening.
CHAPTER II.
On their escape from the prison to which Mr. Avenel had condemned them,
Leonard and his mother found their way to a small public-house that lay
at a little distance from the town, and on the outskirts of the high
road. With his arm round his mother's waist, Leonard supported her
steps, and soothed her excitement. In fact, the poor woman's nerves
were greatly shaken, and she felt an uneasy remorse at the injury her
intrusion had inflicted on the young man's worldly prospects. As the
shrewd reader has guessed already, that infamous tinker was the prime
agent of evil in this critical turn in the affairs of his quondam
customer; for, on his return to his haunts around Hazeldean and the
Casino, the tinker had hastened to apprise Mrs. Fairfield of his
interview with Leonard, and, on finding that she was not aware that the
boy was under the roof of his uncle, the pestilent vagabond (perhaps from
spite against Mr. Avenel, or perhaps from that pure love of mischief by
which metaphysical critics explain the character of Iago, and which
certainly formed a main element in the idiosyncrasy of Mr. Sprott) had so
impressed on the widow's mind the haughty demeanour of the uncle, and the
refined costume of the nephew, that Mrs. Fairfield had been seized with a
bitter and insupportable jealousy. There was an intention to rob her of
her boy!--he was to be made too fine for her. His silence was now
accounted for. This sort of jealousy, always more or less a feminine
quality, is often very strong amongst the poor; and it was the more
strong in Mrs. Fairfield, because, lone woman that she was, the boy was
all in all to her. And though she was reconciled to the loss of his
presence, nothing could reconcile her to the thought that his affections
should be weaned from her. Moreover, there were in her mind certain
impressions, of the justice of which the reader may better judge
hereafter, as to the gratitude--more than ordinarily filial--which
Leonard owed to her. In short, she did not like, as she phrased it, "to
be shaken off;" and after a sleepless night she resolved to judge for
herself, much moved thereto by the malicious suggestions to that effect
made by Mr. Sprott, who mightily enjoyed the idea of mortifying the
gentlemen by whom he had been so disrespectfully threatened with the
treadmill. The widow felt angry with Parson Dale and with the
Riccaboccas: she thought they were in the plot against her; she
communicated. therefore, her intentions to none, and off she set,
performing the journey partly on the top of the coach, partly on foot.
No wonder that she was dusty, poor woman!
"And, oh, boy!" said she, half sobbing, "when I got through the lodge-
gates, came on the lawn, and saw all that power o' fine folk, I said to
myself, says I--for I felt fritted--I'll just have a look at him and go
back. But ah, Lenny, when I saw thee, looking so handsome, and when thee
turned and cried 'Mother,' my heart was just ready to leap out o' my
mouth, and so I could not help hugging thee, if I had died for it. And
thou wert so kind, that I forgot all Mr. Sprott had said about Dick's
pride, or thought he had just told a fib about that, as he had wanted me
to believe a fib about thee. Then Dick came up--and I had not seen him
for so many years--and we come o' the same father and mother; and so--and
so--" The widow's sobs here fairly choked her. "Ah," she said, after
giving vent to her passion, and throwing her arms round Leonard's neck,
as they sat in the little sanded parlour of the public-house,--"ah, and
I've brought thee to this. Go back; go back, boy, and never mind me."
With some difficulty Leonard pacified poor Mrs. Fairfield, and got her to
retire to bed; for she was, indeed, thoroughly exhausted. He then
stepped forth into the road; musingly. All the stars were out; and
Youth, in its troubles, instinctively looks up to the stars. Folding his
arms, Leonard gazed on the heavens, and his lips murmured.
From this trance, for so it might be called, he was awakened by a voice
in a decidedly London accent; and, turning hastily round, saw Mr.
Avenel's very gentlemanlike butler.
Leonard's first idea was that his uncle had repented, and sent in search
of him. But the butler seemed as much surprised at the rencontre as
himself: that personage, indeed, the fatigues of the day being over, was
accompanying one of Mr. Gunter's waiters to the public-house (at which
the latter had secured his lodging), having discovered an old friend in
the waiter, and proposing to regale himself with a cheerful glass, and-
THAT of course--abuse of his present sitivation.
"Mr. Fairfield!" exclaimed the butler, while the waiter walked discreetly
on.
Leonard looked, and said nothing. The butler began to think that some
apology was due for leaving his plate and his pantry, and that he might
as well secure Leonard's propitiatory influence with his master.
"Please, sir," said he, touching his hat, "I was just a showing Mr. Giles
the way to the Blue Bells, where he puts up for the night. I hope my
master will not be offended. If you are a going back, sir, would you
kindly mention it?"
"I am not going back, Jarvis," answered Leonard, after a pause; "I am
leaving Mr. Avenel's house, to accompany my mother,--rather suddenly. I
should be very much obliged to you if you would bring some things of mine
to me at the Blue Bells. I will give you the list, if you will step with
me to the inn."
Without waiting for a reply, Leonard then turned towards the inn, and
made his humble inventory: item, the clothes he had brought with him from
the Casino; item, the knapsack that had contained them; item, a few
books, ditto; item, Dr. Riccabocca's watch; item, sundry manuscripts, on
which the young student now built all his hopes of fame and fortune.
This list he put into Mr. Jarvis's hand.
"Sir," said the butler, twirling the paper between his finger and thumb,
"you're not a going for long, I hope?" and he looked on the face of the
young man, who had always been "civil spoken to him," with as much
curiosity and as much compassion as so apathetic and princely a personage
could experience in matters affecting a family less aristocratic than he
had hitherto condescended to serve.
"Yes," said Leonard, simply and briefly; "and your master will no doubt
excuse you for rendering me this service." Mr. Jarvis postponed for the
present his glass and chat with the waiter, and went back at once to Mr.
Avenel. That gentleman, still seated in his library, had not been aware
of the butler's absence; and when Mr. Jarvis entered and told him that he
had met Mr. Fairfield, and communicating the commission with which he was
intrusted, asked leave to execute it, Mr. Avenel felt the man's
inquisitive eye was on him, and conceived new wrath against Leonard for a
new humiliation to his pride. It was awkward to give no explanation of
his nephew's departure, still more awkward to explain. After a short
pause, Mr. Avenel said sullenly, "My nephew is going away on business for
some time,--do what he tells you;" and then turned his back, and lighted
his cigar.
"That beast of a boy," said he, soliloquizing, "either means this as an
affront, or an overture: if an affront, he is, indeed, well got rid of;
if an overture, he will soon make a more respectful and proper one.
After all, I can't have too little of relations till I have fairly
secured Mrs. M'Catchley. An Honourable! I wonder if that makes me an
Honourable too? This cursed Debrett contains no practical information on
those points."
The next morning the clothes and the watch with which Mr. Avenel
presented Leonard were returned, with a note meant to express gratitude,
but certainly written with very little knowledge of the world; and so
full of that somewhat over-resentful pride which had in earlier life made
Leonard fly from Hazeldean, and refuse all apology to Randal, that it is
not to be wondered at that Mr. Avenel's last remorseful feelings
evaporated in ire. "I hope he will starve!" said the uncle,
vindictively.
CHAPTER III.
"Listen to me, my dear mother," said Leonard the next morning, as, with
knapsack on his shoulder and Mrs. Fairfield on his arm, he walked along
the high road; "I do assure you from my heart that I do not regret the
loss of favours which I see plainly would have crushed out of me the very
sense of independence. But do not fear for me; I have education and
energy,--I shall do well for myself, trust me.--No, I cannot, it is true,
go back to our cottage; I cannot be a gardener again. Don't ask me,--I
should be discontented, miserable. But I will go up to London! That's
the place to make a fortune and a name: I will make both. Oh, yes, trust
me, I will. You shall soon be proud of your Leonard; and then we will
always live together,--always! Don't cry," "But what can you do in
Lunnon,--such a big place, Lenny?"
"What! Every year does not some lad leave our village, and go and seek
his fortune, taking with him but health and strong hands? I have these,
and I have more: I have brains and thoughts and hopes, that--again I say,
No, no; never fear for me!"
The boy threw back his head proudly; there was something sublime in his
young trust in the future.
"Well. But you will write to Mr. Dale or to me? I will get Mr. Dale or
the good mounseer (now I know they were not agin me) to read your
letters."
"I will, indeed!"
"And, boy, you have nothing in your pockets. We have paid Dick; these,
at least, are my own, after paying the coach fare." And she would thrust
a sovereign and some shillings into Leonard's waistcoat pocket.
After some resistance, he was forced to consent.
"And there's a sixpence with a hole in it. Don't part with that, Lenny;
it will bring thee good luck."
Thus talking, they gained the inn where the three roads met, and from
which a coach went direct to the Casino. And here, without entering the
inn, they sat on the greensward by the hedgerow, waiting the arrival of
the coach--Mrs. Fairfield was much subdued in spirits, and there was
evidently on her mind something uneasy,--some struggle with her
conscience. She not only upbraided herself for her rash visit, but she
kept talking of her dead Mark. And what would he say of her, if he could
see her in heaven?
"It was so selfish in me, Lenny."
"Pooh, pooh! Has not a mother a right to her child?"
"Ay, ay, ay!" cried Mrs. Fairfield. "I do love you as a child,--my own
child. But if I was not your mother, after all, Lenny, and cost you all
this--oh, what would you say of me then?"
"Not my own mother!" said Leonard, laughing as he kissed her. "Well, I
don't know what I should say then differently from what I say now,--that
you, who brought me up and nursed and cherished me, had a right to my
home and my heart, wherever I was."
"Bless thee!" cried Mrs. Fairfield, as she pressed him to her heart.
"But it weighs here,--it weighs," she said, starting up.
At that instant the coach appeared, and Leonard ran forward to inquire if
there was an outside place. Then there was a short bustle while the
horses were being changed; and Mrs. Fairfield was lifted up to the roof
of the vehicle, so all further private conversation between her and
Leonard ceased. But as the coach whirled away, and she waved her hand to
the boy, who stood on the road-side gazing after her, she still murmured,
"It weighs here,--it weighs!"
CHAPTER IV.
Leonard walked sturdily on in the high road to the Great City. The day
was calm and sunlit, but with a gentle breeze from gray hills at the
distance; and with each mile that he passed, his step seemed to grow more
firm, and his front more elate. Oh, it is such joy in youth to be alone
with one's daydreams! And youth feels so glorious a vigour in the sense
of its own strength, though the world be before and--against it! Removed
from that chilling counting-house, from the imperious will of a patron
and master, all friendless, but all independent, the young adventurer
felt a new being, felt his grand nature as Man. And on the Man rushed
the genius long interdicted and thrust aside,--rushing back, with the
first breath of adversity, to console--no! the Man needed not
consolation,--to kindle, to animate, to rejoice! If there is a being in
the world worthy of our envy, after we have grown wise philosophers of
the fireside, it is not the palled voluptuary, nor the careworn
statesman, nor even the great prince of arts and letters, already crowned
with the laurel, whose leaves are as fit for poison as for garlands; it
is the young child of adventure and hope. Ay, and the emptier his purse,
ten to one but the richer his heart, and the wider the domains which his
fancy enjoys as he goes on with kingly step to the Future.
Not till towards the evening did our adventurer slacken his pace and
think of rest and refreshment. There, then, lay before him on either
side the road those wide patches of uninclosed land which in England
often denote the entrance to a village. Presently one or two neat
cottages came in sight; then a small farmhouse, with its yard and barns.
And some way farther yet, he saw the sign swinging before an inn of some
pretensions,--the sort of inn often found on a long stage between two
great towns commonly called "The Halfway House." But the inn stood back
from the road, having its own separate sward in front, whereon was a
great beech-tree (from which the sign extended) and a rustic arbour; so
that to gain the inn, the coaches that stopped there took a sweep from
the main thoroughfare. Between our pedestrian and the inn there stood,
naked and alone, on the common land, a church; our ancestors never would
have chosen that site for it; therefore it was a modern church,--modern
Gothic; handsome to an eye not versed in the attributes of ecclesiastical
architecture, very barbarous to an eye that was. Somehow or other the
church looked cold and raw and uninviting. It looked a church for show,
--much too big for the scattered hamlet, and void of all the venerable
associations which give their peculiar and unspeakable atmosphere of
piety to the churches in which succeeding generations have knelt and
worshipped. Leonard paused and surveyed the edifice with an unlearned
but poetical gaze; it dissatisfied him. And he was yet pondering why,
when a young girl passed slowly before him, her eyes fixed on the ground,
opened the little gate that led into the churchyard, and vanished. He
did not see the child's face; but there was something in her movements so
utterly listless, forlorn, and sad that his heart was touched. What did
she there? He approached the low wall with a noiseless step, and looked
over it wistfully.
There by a grave, evidently quite recent, with no wooden tomb nor
tombstone like the rest, the little girl had thrown herself, and she was
sobbing loud and passionately. Leonard opened the gate, and approached
her with a soft step. Mingled with her sobs, he heard broken sentences,
wild and vain, as all human sorrowings over graves must be.
"Father! oh, Father, do you not really hear me? I am so lone, so lone!
Take me to you,--take me!" And she buried her face in the deep grass.
"Poor child!" said Leonard, in a half whisper,--"he is not there. Look
above!"
The girl did not heed him; he put his arm round her waist gently; she
made a gesture of impatience and anger, but she would not turn her face,
and she clung to the grave with her hands.
After clear, sunny days the dews fall more heavily; and now, as the sun
set, the herbage was bathed in a vaporous haze,--a dim mist rose around.
The young man seated himself beside her, and tried to draw the child to
his breast. Then she turned eagerly, indignantly, and pushed him aside
with jealous arms. He profaned the grave! He understood her with his
deep poet-heart, and rose. There was a pause. Leonard was the first to
break it.
"Come to your home with me, my child, and we will talk of him by the
way."
"Him! Who are you? You did not know him!" said the girl, still with
anger. "Go away! Why do you disturb me? I do no one harm. Go! go!"
"You do yourself harm, and that will grieve him if he sees you yonder!
Come!"
The child looked at him through her blinding tears, and his face softened
and soothed her.
"Go!" she said, very plaintively, and in subdued accents. "I will but
stay a minute more. I--I have so much to say yet."
Leonard left the churchyard, and waited without; and in a short time the
child came forth, waived him aside as he approached her, and hurried
away. He followed her at a distance, and saw her disappear within the
inn.
CHAPTER V.
"Hip-Hip-Hurrah!" Such was the sound that greeted our young traveller as
he reached the inn door,--a sound joyous in itself, but sadly out of
harmony with the feelings which the child sobbing on the tombless grave
had left at his heart. The sound came from within, and was followed by
thumps and stamps, and the jingle of glasses. A strong odour of tobacco
was wafted to his olfactory sense. He hesitated a moment at the
threshold.
Before him, on benches under the beech-tree and within the arbour, were
grouped sundry athletic forms with "pipes in the liberal air."
The landlady, as she passed across the passage to the taproom, caught
sight of his form at the doorway, and came forward. Leonard still stood
irresolute. He would have gone on his way, but for the child: she had
interested him strongly.
"You seem full, ma'am," said he. "Can I have accommodation for the
night?"
"Why, indeed, sir," said the landlady, civilly, "I can give you a
bedroom, but I don't know where to put you meanwhile. The two parlours
and the tap-room and the kitchen are all choke-full. There has been a
great cattle-fair in the neighbourhood, and I suppose we have as many as
fifty farmers and drovers stopping here."
"As to that, ma'am, I can sit in the bedroom you are kind enough to give
me; and if it does not cause you much trouble to let me have some tea
there, I should be glad; but I can wait your leisure. Do not put
yourself out of the way for me."
The landlady was touched by a consideration she was not much habituated
to receive from her bluff customers. "You speak very handsome, sir, and
we will do our best to serve you, if you will excuse all faults. This
way, sir." Leonard lowered his knapsack, stepped into the passage, with
some difficulty forced his way through a knot of sturdy giants in top-
boots or leathern gaiters, who were swarining in and out the tap-room,
and followed his hostess upstairs to a little bedroom at the top of the
house.
"It is small, sir, and high," said the hostess, apologetically. "But
there be four gentlemen farmers that have come a great distance, and all
the first floor is engaged; you will be more out of the noise here."
"Nothing can suit me better. But, stay,--pardon me;" and Leonard,
glancing at the garb of the hostess, observed she was not in mourning.
"A little girl whom I saw in the churchyard yonder, weeping very
bitterly--is she a relation of yours? Poor child! she seems to have
deeper feelings than are common at her age."
"Ah, sir," said the landlady, putting the corner of her apron to her
eyes, "it is a very sad story. I don't know what to do. Her father was
taken ill on his way to Lunnon, and stopped here, and has been buried
four days. And the poor little girl seems to have no relations--and
where is she to go? Laryer Jones says we must pass her to Marybone
parish, where her father lived last; and what's to become of her then?
My heart bleeds to think on it."
Here there rose such an uproar from below, that it was evident some
quarrel had broken out; and the hostess, recalled to her duties, hastened
to carry thither her propitiatory influences.
Leonard seated himself pensively by the little lattice. Here was some
one more alone in the world than he; and she, poor orphan, had no stout
man's heart to grapple with fate, and no golden manuscripts that were to
be as the "Open-Sesame" to the treasures of Aladdin. By and by, the
hostess brought him up a tray with tea and other refreshments, and
Leonard resumed his inquiries. "No relatives?" said he; "surely the
child must have some kinsfolk in London? Did her father leave no
directions, or was he in possession of his faculties?"
"Yes, sir; he was quite reasonable like to the last. And I asked him if
he had not anything on his mind, and he said, 'I have.' And I said,
'Your little girl, sir?' And he answered me, 'Yes, ma'am;' and laying
his head on his pillow, he wept very quietly. I could not say more
myself, for it set me off to see him cry so meekly; but my husband is
harder nor I, and he said, 'Cheer up, Mr. Digby; had not you better write
to your friends?'
"'Friends!' said the gentleman, in such a voice! 'Friends I have but
one, and I am going to Him! I cannot take her there!' Then he seemed
suddenly to recollect himself, and called for his clothes, and rummaged
in the pockets as if looking for some address, and could not find it. He
seemed a forgetful kind of gentleman, and his hands were what I call
helpless hands, sir! And then he gasped out, 'Stop, stop! I never had
the address. Write to Lord Les--', something like Lord Lester, but we
could not make out the name. Indeed he did not finish it, for there was
a rush of blood to his lips; and though he seemed sensible when he
recovered (and knew us and his little girl too, till he went off
smiling), he never spoke word more."
"Poor man," said Leonard, wiping his eyes. "But his little girl surely
remembers the name that he did not finish?"
"No. She says he must have meant a gentleman whom they had met in the
Park not long ago, who was very kind to her father, and was Lord
something; but she don't remember the name, for she never saw him before
or since, and her father talked very little about any one lately, but
thought he should find some kind friends at Screwstown, and travelled
down there with her from Lunnon. But she supposes he was disappointed,
for he went out, came back, and merely told her to put up the things, as
they must go back to Lunnon. And on his way there he--died. Hush,
what's that? I hope she did not overhear us. No, we were talking low.
She has the next room to your'n, sir. I thought I heard her sobbing.
Hush!"
"In the next room? I hear nothing. Well, with your leave, I will speak
to her before I quit you. And had her father no money with him?"
"Yes, a few sovereigns, sir; they paid for his funeral, and there is a
little left still,--enough to take her to town; for my husband said, says
he, 'Hannah, the widow gave her mite, and we must not take the orphan's;'
and my husband is a hard man, too, sir--bless him!"
"Let me take your hand, ma'am. God reward you both." "La, sir! why,
even Dr. Dosewell said, rather grumpily though, 'Never mind my bill; but
don't call me up at six o'clock in the morning again, without knowing a
little more about people.' And I never afore knew Dr. Dosewell go
without his bill being paid. He said it was a trick o' the other doctor
to spite him."
"What other doctor?"
"Oh, a very good gentleman, who got out with Mr. Digby when he was taken
ill, and stayed till the next morning; and our doctor says his name is
Morgan, and he lives in Lunnou, and is a homy--something."
"Homicide," suggested Leonard, ignorantly.
"Ah, homicide; something like that, only a deal longer and worse. But he
left some of the tiniest little balls you ever see, sir, to give the
child; but, bless you, they did her no good,--how should they?"
"Tiny balls, oh--homoeopathist--I understand. And the doctor was kind to
her; perhaps he may help her. Have you written to him?"
"But we don't know his address, and Lunnon is a vast place, sir."
"I am going to London and will find it out."
"Ah, sir, you seem very kind; and sin' she must go to Lunnon (for what
can we do with her here?--she's too genteel for service), I wish she was
going with you."
"With me!" said Leonard, startled,--"with me! Well, why not?"
"I am sure she comes of good blood, sir. You would have known her father
was quite the gentleman, only to see him die, sir. He went off so kind
and civil like, as if he was ashamed to give so much trouble,--quite a
gentleman, if ever there was one. And so are you, sir, I'm sure," said
the land lady, courtesying; "I know what gentlefolk be. I've been a
housekeeper in the first of families in this very shire, sir, though I
can't say I've served in Lunnon; and so, as gentlefolks know each other,
I 've no doubt you could find out her relations. Dear, dear! Coming,
coming!"
Here there were loud cries for the hostess, and she hurried away. The
farmers and drovers were beginning to depart, and their bills were to be
made out and paid. Leonard saw his hostess no more that night. The last
Hip-hip-hurrah was heard,--some toast, perhaps to the health of the
county members,--and the chamber of woe beside Leonard's rattled with the
shout. By and by, silence gradually succeeded the various dissonant
sounds below. The carts and gigs rolled away; the clatter of hoofs on
the road ceased; there was then a dumb dull sound as of locking-up, and
low, humming voices below, and footsteps mounting the stairs to bed, with
now and then a drunken hiccough or maudlin laugh, as some conquered
votary of Bacchus was fairly carried up to his domicile.
All, then, at last was silent, just as the clock from the church sounded
the stroke of eleven.
Leonard, meanwhile, had been looking over his manuscripts. There was
first a project for an improvement on the steam-engine,--a project that
had long lain in his mind, begun with the first knowledge of mechanics
that he had gleaned from his purchases of the tinker. He put that aside
now,--it required too great an effort of the reasoning faculty to
re-examine.
He glanced less hastily over a collection of essays on various subjects,
--some that he thought indifferent, some that he thought good. He then
lingered over a collection of verses written in his best hand with loving
care,--verses first inspired by his perusal of Nora's melancholy
memorials. These verses were as a diary of his heart and his fancy,--
those deep, unwitnessed struggles which the boyhood of all more
thoughtful natures has passed in its bright yet murky storm of the cloud
and the lightning-flash, though but few boys pause to record the crisis
from which slowly emerges Man. And these first desultory grapplings with
the fugitive airy images that flit through the dim chambers of the brain
had become with each effort more sustained and vigorous, till the
phantoms were spelled, the flying ones arrested, the Immaterial seized,
and clothed with Form. Gazing on his last effort, Leonard felt that
there at length spoke forth the poet. It was a work which though as yet
but half completed, came from a strong hand; not that shadow trembling on
unsteady waters, which is but the pale reflex and imitation of some
bright mind, sphered out of reach and afar, but an original substance,--
a life, a thing of the Creative Faculty,--breathing back already the
breath it had received. This work had paused during Leonard's residence
with Mr. Avenel, or had only now and then, in stealth, and at night,
received a rare touch. Now, as with a fresh eye he reperused it, and
with that strange, innocent admiration, not of self--for a man's work is
not, alas! himself,--it is the beautified and idealized essence,
extracted he knows not how from his own human elements of clay;
admiration known but to poets,--their purest delight, often their sole
reward. And then with a warmer and more earthly beat of his full heart,
he rushed in fancy to the Great City, where all rivers of fame meet, but
not to be merged and lost, sallying forth again, individualized and
separate, to flow through that one vast Thought of God which we call
THE WORLD.
He put up his papers; and opened his window, as was his ordinary custom,
before he retired to rest,--for he had many odd habits; and he loved to
look out into the night when he prayed. His soul seemed to escape from
the body--to mount on the air, to gain more rapid access to the far
Throne in the Infinite--when his breath went forth among the winds, and
his eyes rested fixed on the stars of heaven.
So the boy prayed silently; and after his prayer he was about,
lingeringly, to close the lattice, when he heard distinctly sobs close at
hand. He paused, and held his breath, then looked gently out; the
casement next his own was also open. Someone was also at watch by that
casement,--perhaps also praying. He listened yet more intently, and
caught, soft and low, the words, "Father, Father, do you hear me now?"
CHAPTER VI.
Leonard opened his door and stole towards that of the room adjoining; for
his first natural impulse had been to enter and console. But when his
touch was on the handle, he drew back. Child though the mourner was, her
sorrows were rendered yet more sacred from intrusion by her sex.
Something, he knew not what, in his young ignorance, withheld him from
the threshold. To have crossed it then would have seemed to him
profanation. So he returned, and for hours yet he occasionally heard the
sobs, till they died away, and childhood wept itself to sleep.
But the next morning, when he heard his neighbour astir, he knocked
gently at her door: there was no answer. He entered softly, and saw her
seated very listlessly in the centre of the room,--as if it had no
familiar nook or corner as the rooms of home have, her hands drooping on
her lap, and her eyes gazing desolately on the floor. Then he approached
and spoke to her.
Helen was very subdued, and very silent. Her tears seemed dried up;
and it was long before she gave sign or token that she heeded him. At
length, however, he gradually succeeded in rousing her interest; and the
first symptom of his success was in the quiver of her lip, and the
overflow of her downcast eyes.
By little and little he wormed himself into her confidence; and she told
him in broken whispers her simple story. But what moved him the most
was, that beyond her sense of loneliness she did not seem to feel her own
unprotected state. She mourned the object she had nursed and heeded and
cherished, for she had been rather the protectress than the protected to
the helpless dead. He could not gain from her any more satisfactory
information than the landlady had already imparted, as to her friends and
prospects; but she permitted him passively to look among the effects her
father had left, save only that, if his hand touched something that
seemed to her associations especially holy, she waved him back, or drew
it quickly away. There were many bills receipted in the name of Captain
Digby, old yellow faded music-scores for the flute, extracts of Parts
from Prompt Books, gay parts of lively comedies, in which heroes have so
noble a contempt for money,--fit heroes for a Sheridan and a Farquhar;
close by these were several pawnbroker's tickets; and, not arrayed
smoothly, but crumpled up, as if with an indignant nervous clutch of the
helpless hands, some two or three letters. He asked Helen's permission
to glance at these, for they might afford a clew to friends. Helen gave
the permission by a silent bend of the head. The letters, however, were
but short and freezing answers from what appeared to be distant
connections or former friends, or persons to whom the deceased had
applied for some situation. They were all very disheartening in their
tone. Leonard next endeavoured to refresh Helen's memory as to the name
of the nobleman which had been last on her father's lips; but there he
failed wholly. For it may be remembered that Lord L'Estrange, when he
pressed his loan on Mr. Digby, and subsequently told that gentleman to
address him at Mr. Egerton's, had, from a natural delicacy, sent the
child on, that she might not witness the charity bestowed on the father;
and Helen said truly that Mr. Digby had sunk latterly into an habitual
silence on all his affairs. She might have heard her father mention the
name, but she had not treasured it up; all she could say was, that she
should know the stranger again if she met him, and his dog too. Seeing
that the child had grown calm, Leonard was then going to leave the room,
in order to confer with the hostess, when she rose suddenly, though
noiselessly, and put her little hand in his, as if to detain him. She
did not say a word; the action said all,--said, "Do not desert me." And
Leonard's heart rushed to his lips, and he answered to the action, as he
bent down, and kissed her cheek, "Orphan, will you go with me? We have
one Father yet to both of us, and He will guide us on earth. I am
fatherless like you." She raised her eyes to his, looked at him long,
and then leaned her head confidingly on his strong young shoulder.
CHAPTER VII.
At noon that same day the young man and the child were on their road to
London. The host had at first a little demurred at trusting Helen to so
young a companion; but Leonard, in his happy ignorance, had talked so
sanguinely of finding out this lord, or some adequate protectors for the
child; and in so grand a strain, though with all sincerity, had spoken of
his own great prospects in the metropolis (he did not say what they
were!) that had he been the craftiest impostor he could not more have
taken in the rustic host. And while the landlady still cherished the
illusive fancy that all gentlefolks must know each other in London, as
they did in a county, the landlord believed, at least, that a young man
so respectably dressed, although but a foot-traveller, who talked in so
confident a tone, and who was so willing to undertake what might be
rather a burdensome charge, unless he saw how to rid himself of it, would
be sure to have friends older and wiser than himself, who would judge
what could best be done for the orphan.
And what was the host to do with her? Better this volunteered escort, at
least, than vaguely passing her on from parish to parish, and leaving her
friendless at last in the streets of London. Helen, too, smiled for the
first time on being asked her wishes, and again put her hand in
Leonard's. In short, so it was settled.
The little girl made up a bundle of the things she most prized or needed.
Leonard did not feel the additional load, as he slung it to his knapsack;
the rest of the luggage was to be sent to London as soon as Leonard wrote
(which he promised to do soon) and gave an address.
Helen paid her last visit to the churchyard; and she joined her companion
as he stood on the road, without the solemn precincts. And now they had
gone on some hours; and when he asked her if she were tired, she still
answered "No." But Leonard was merciful, and made their day's journey
short; and it took them some days to reach London. By the long lonely
way they grew so intimate, at the end of the second day, they called each
other brother and sister; and Leonard, to his delight, found that as her
grief, with the bodily movement and the change of scene, subsided from
its first intenseness and its insensibility to other impressions, she
developed a quickness of comprehension far beyond her years. Poor child!
that had been forced upon her by Necessity. And she understood him in
his spiritual consolations, half poetical, half religious; and she
listened to his own tale, and the story of his self-education and
solitary struggles,--those, too, she understood. But when he burst out
with his enthusiasm, his glorious hopes, his confidence in the fate
before them, then she would shake her head very quietly and very sadly.
Did she comprehend them! Alas! perhaps too well. She knew more as to
real life than he did. Leonard was at first their joint treasurer; but
before the second day was over, Helen seemed to discover that he was too
lavish; and she told him so, with a prudent grave look, putting her hand
on his arm as he was about to enter an inn to dine; and the gravity would
have been comic, but that the eyes through their moisture were so meek
and grateful. She felt he was about to incur that ruinous extravagance
on her account. Somehow or other, the purse found its way into her
keeping, and then she looked proud and in her natural element.
Ah! what happy meals under her care were provided; so much more enjoyable
than in dull, sanded inn-parlours, swarming with flies, and reeking with
stale tobacco. She would leave him at the entrance of a village, bound
forward, and cater, and return with a little basket and a pretty blue
jug--which she had bought on the road,--the last filled with new milk;
the first with new bread, and some special dainty in radishes or water-
tresses. And she had such a talent for finding out the prettiest spot
whereon to halt and dine: sometimes in the heart of a wood,--so still,
it was like a forest in fairy tales, the hare stealing through the
alleys, or the squirrel peeping at them from the boughs; sometimes by a
little brawling stream, with the fishes seen under the clear wave, and
shooting round the crumbs thrown to them. They made an Arcadia of the
dull road up to their dread Thermopylae, the war against the million that
waited them on the other side of their pass through Tempo.
"Shall we be as happy when we are great?" said Leonard, in his grand
simplicity.
Helen sighed, and the wise little head was shaken.
CHAPTER VIII.
At last they came within easy reach of London; but Leonard had resolved
not to enter the metropolis fatigued and exhausted, as a wanderer needing
refuge, but fresh and elate, as a conqueror coming in triumph to take
possession of the capital. Therefore they halted early in the evening of
the day preceding this imperial entry, about six miles from the
metropolis, in the neighbourhood of Ealing (for by that route lay their
way). They were not tired on arriving at their inn. The weather was
singularly lovely, with that combination of softness and brilliancy which
is only known to the rare true summer days of England; all below so
green, above so blue,--days of which we have about six in the year, and
recall vaguely when we read of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, of Damsel and
Knight in Spenser's golden Summer Song, or of Jacques, dropped under the
oak-tree, watching the deer amidst the dells of Ardennes. So, after a
little pause at their inn, they strolled forth, not for travel but
pleasure, towards the cool of sunset, passing by the grounds that once
belonged to the Duke of Kent, and catching a glimpse of the shrubs and
lawns of that beautiful domain through the lodge-gates; then they crossed
into some fields, and came to a little rivulet called the Brent. Helen
had been more sad that day than on any during their journey,--perhaps
because, on approaching London, the memory of her father became more
vivid; perhaps from her precocious knowledge of life, and her foreboding
of what was to befall them, children that they both were. But Leonard
was selfish that day; he could not be influenced by his companion's
sorrow; he was so full of his own sense of being, and he already caught
from the atmosphere the fever that belongs to anxious capitals.
"Sit here, sister," said he, imperiously, throwing himself under the
shade of a pollard-tree that overhung the winding brook, "sit here and
talk."
He flung off his hat, tossed back his rich curls, and sprinkled his brow
from the stream that eddied round the roots of the tree that bulged out,
bald and gnarled, from the bank and delved into the waves below. Helen
quietly obeyed him, and nestled close to his side.
"And so this London is really very vast,--VERY?" he repeated
inquisitively.
"Very," answered Helen, as, abstractedly, she plucked the cowslips near
her, and let them fall into the running waters. "See how the flowers are
carried down the stream! They are lost now. London is to us what the
river is to the flowers, very vast, very strong;" and she added, after a
pause, "very cruel!"
"Cruel! Ah, it has been so to you; but now--now I will take care of
you!" he smiled triumphantly; and his smile was beautiful both in its
pride and its kindness. It is astonishing how Leonard had altered since
he had left his uncle's. He was both younger and older; for the sense of
genius, when it snaps its shackles, makes us both older and wiser as to
the world it soars to, younger and blinder as to the world it springs
from.
"And it is not a very handsome city, either, you say?"
"Very ugly indeed," said Helen, with some fervour; "at least all I have
seen of it."
"But there must be parts that are prettier than others? You say there
are parks: why should not we lodge near them and look upon the green
trees?"
"That would be nice," said Helen, almost joyously; "but--" and here the
head was shaken--"there are no lodgings for us except in courts and
alleys."
"Why?"
"Why?" echoed Helen, with a smile, and she held up the purse.
"Pooh! always that horrid purse; as if, too, we were not going to fill
it! Did not I tell you the story of Fortunio? Well, at all events, we
will go first to the neighbourhood where you last lived, and learn there
all we can; and then the day after to-morrow I will see this Dr. Morgan,
and find out the lord."
The tears started to Helen's soft eyes. "You want to get rid of me soon,
brother."
"I! Ah, I feel so happy to have you with me it seems to me as if I had
pined for you all my life, and you had come at last; for I never had
brother nor sister nor any one to love, that was not older than myself,
except--"
"Except the young lady you told me of," said Helen, turning away her
face; for children are very jealous.
"Yes, I loved her, love her still. But that was different," said
Leonard. "I could never have talked to her as to you: to you I open my
whole heart; you are my little Muse, Helen: I confess to you my wild
whims and fancies as frankly as if I were writing poetry." As he said
this, a step was heard, and a shadow fell over the stream. A belated
angler appeared on the margin, drawing his line impatiently across the
water, as if to worry some dozing fish into a bite before it finally
settled itself for the night. Absorbed in his occupation, the angler did
not observe the young persons on the sward under the tree, and he halted
there, close upon them.
"Curse that perch!" said he, aloud.
"Take care, sir," cried Leonard; for the man, in stepping back, nearly
trod upon Helen.
The angler turned. "What 's the matter? Hist! you have frightened my
perch. Keep still, can't you?"
Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He
remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler.
"It is the most extraordinary perch, that!" muttered the stranger,
soliloquizing. "It has the devil's own luck. It must have been born
with a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never catch
it,--never! Ha! no, only a weed. I give it up." With this, he
indignantly jerked his rod from the water and began to disjoint it.
While leisurely engaged in this occupation, he turned to Leonard.
"Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?"
"No," answered Leonard. "I never saw it before."
ANGLER, (solemnly).--"Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give
way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been
the Delilah of my existence."
LEONARD (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical).--"The
Delilah! sir, the Delilah!"
ANGLER.--"The Delilah. Young man, listen, and be warned by example.
When I was about your age, I first came to this stream to fish. Sir, on
that fatal day, about three p.m., I hooked up a fish,--such a big one, it
must have weighed a pound and a half. Sir, it was that length; "and the
angler put finger to wrist. "And just when I had got it nearly ashore,
by the very place where you are sitting, on that shelving bank, young
man, the line broke, and the perch twisted himself among those roots,
and--cacodaemon that he was--ran off, hook and all. Well, that fish
haunted me; never before had I seen such a fish. Minnows I had caught in
the Thames and elsewhere, also gudgeons, and occasionally a dace. But a
fish like that--a PERCH, all his fins up, like the sails of a man-of-war
--a monster perch,--a whale of a perch! No, never till then had I known
what leviathans lie hid within the deeps. I could not sleep till I
had returned; and again, sir,--I caught that perch. And this time I
pulled him fairly out of the water. He escaped; and how did he escape?
Sir, he left his eye behind him on the hook. Years, long years, have
passed since then; but never shall I forget the agony of that moment."
LEONARD.--"To the perch, sir?"
ANGLER.--"Perch! agony to him! He enjoyed it. Agony to me! I gazed on
that eye, and the eye looked as sly and as wicked as if it were laughing
in my face. Well, sir, I had heard that there is no better bait for a
perch than a perch's eye. I adjusted that eye on the hook, and dropped
in the line gently. The water was unusually clear; in two minutes
I saw that perch return. He approached the hook; he recognized his eye,
frisked his tail, made a plunge, and, as I live, carried off the eye,
safe and sound; and I saw him digesting it by the side of that water-
lily. The mocking fiend! Seven times since that day, in the course of a
varied and eventful life, have I caught that perch, and seven times has
that perch escaped."
LEONARD (astonished).--"It can't be the same perch; perches are very
tender fish. A hook inside of it, and an eye hooked out of it--no perch
could withstand such havoc in its constitution."
ANGLER (with an appearance of awe).--"It does seem supernatural. But it
is that perch; for hark ye, sir, there is ONLY ONE perch in the whole
brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught another
perch; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I know by sight
better than I knew my own lost father. For each time that I have raised
it out of the water, its profile has been turned to me, and I have seen
with a shudder that it has had only--One Eye! It is a most mysterious
and a most diabolical phenomenon, that perch! It has been the ruin of my
prospects in life. I was offered a situation in Jamaica: I could not go
with that perch left here in triumph. I might afterwards have had an
appointinent in India, but I could not put the ocean between myself and
that perch: thus have I frittered away my existence in the fatal
metropolis of my native land. And once a week from February to December
I come hither. Good heavens! if I should catch the perch at last, the
occupation of my existence will be gone."
Leonard gazed curiously at the angler, as the last thus mournfully
concluded. The ornate turn of his periods did not suit with his costume.
He looked wofully threadbare and shabby,--a genteel sort of shabbiness
too,--shabbiness in black. There was humour in the corners of his lip;
and his hands, though they did not seem very clean--indeed his occupation
was not friendly to such niceties--were those of a man who had not known
manual labour. His face was pale and puffed, but the tip of the nose was
red. He did not seem as if the watery element was as familiar to himself
as to his Delilah, the perch.
"Such is Life!" recommenced the angler, in a moralizing tone, as he slid
his rod into its canvas case. "If a man knew what it was to fish all
one's life in a stream that has only one perch, to catch that one perch
nine times in all, and nine times to see it fall back into the water,
plump,--if a man knew what it was, why, then "--here the angler looked
over his shoulder full at Leonard--"why then, young sir, he would know
what human life is to vain ambition. Good-evening."
Away he went treading over the daisies and kingcups. Helen's eyes
followed him wistfully.
"What a strange person!" said Leonard, laughing.
"I think he is a very wise one," murmured Helen; and she came close up to
Leonard, and took his hand in both hers, as if she felt already that he
was in need of the Comforter,--the line broken, and the perch lost!
CHAPTER IX.
At noon the next day, London stole upon them through a gloomy, thick,
oppressive atmosphere; for where is it that we can say London bursts on
the sight? It stole on them through one of its fairest and most gracious
avenues of approach,--by the stately gardens of Kensington, along the
side of Hyde Park, and so on towards Cumberland Gate.
Leonard was not the least struck. And yet with a very little money, and
a very little taste, it would be easy to render this entrance to London
as grand and as imposing as that to Paris from the Champs Elysees. As
they came near the Edgware Road, Helen took her new brother by the hand
and guided him; for she knew all that neighbourhood, and she was
acquainted with a lodging near that occupied by her father (to that
lodging itself she could not have gone for the world), where they might
be housed cheaply.
But just then the sky, so dull and overcast since morning, seemed one
mass of black cloud. There suddenly came on a violent storm of rain.
The boy and girl took refuge in a covered mews, in a street running out
of the Edgware Road. This shelter soon became crowded; the two young
pilgrims crept close to the wall, apart from the rest, Leonard's arm
round Helen's waist, sheltering her from the rain that the strong wind
contending with it beat in through the passage. Presently a young
gentleman of better mien and dress than the other refugees entered, not
hastily, but rather with a slow and proud step, as if, though he deigned
to take shelter, he scorned to run to it. He glanced somewhat haughtily
at the assembled group, passed on through the midst of it, came near
Leonard, took off his hat, and shook the rain from its brim. His head
thus uncovered, left all his features exposed; and the village youth
recognized, at the first glance, his old victorious assailant on the
green at Hazeldean.
CHAPTER IX.
Yet Randal Leslie was altered. His dark cheek was as thin as in boyhood,
and even yet more wasted by intense study and night vigils; but the
expression of his face was at once more refined and manly, and there was
a steady concentrated light in his eye, like that of one who has been in
the habit of bringing all his thoughts to one point. He looked older
than he was. He was dressed simply in black, a colour which became him;
and altogether his aspect and figure were, not showy indeed, but
distinguished. He looked to the common eye a gentleman; and to the more
observant a scholar.
Helter-skelter! pell-mell! the group in the passage now pressed each on
each, now scattered on all sides, making way, rushing down the mews,
against the walls, as a fiery horse darted under shelter. The rider, a
young man with a very handsome face, and dressed with that peculiar care
which we commonly call dandyism, cried out, good-humouredly, "Don't be
afraid; the horse sha'n't hurt any of you. A thousand pardons--so ho!
so ho!" He patted the horse, and it stood as still as a statue, filling
up the centre of the passage. The groups resettled; Randal approached
the rider.
"Frank Hazeldean!"
"Ah, is it indeed Randal Leslie?"
Frank was off his horse in a moment, and the bridle was consigned to the
care of a slim 'prentice-boy holding a bundle.
"My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you. How lucky it was that I
should turn in here. Not like me either, for I don't much care for a
ducking. Staying in town, Randal?"
"Yes; at your uncle's, Mr. Egerton. I have left Oxford."
"For good?"
"For good."
"But you have not taken your degree, I think? We Etonians all considered
you booked for a double-first. Oh, we have been so proud of your fame,--
you carried off all the prizes."
"Not all; but some, certainly. Mr. Egerton offered me my choice,--to
stay for my degree, or to enter at once into the Foreign Office. I
preferred the end to the means. For, after all, what good are academical
honours but as the entrance to life? To enter now is to save a step in a
long way, Frank."
"Ah, you were always ambitious, and you will make a great figure, I am
sure."
"Perhaps so--if I work for it. Knowledge is power." Leonard started.
"And you!" resumed Randal, looking with some curious attention at his old
schoolfellow. "You never came to Oxford. I did hear you were going into
the army."
"I am in the Guards," said Frank, trying hard not to look too conceited
as he made that acknowledgment. "The governor pished a little, and would
rather I had come to live with him in the old Hall, and take to farming.
Time enough for that, eh? By Jove, Randal, how pleasant a thing is life
in London! Do you go to Almack's to-night?"
"No; Wednesday is a holiday in the House. There is a great parliamentary
dinner at Mr. Egerton's. He is in the Cabinet now, you know; but you
don't see much of your uncle, I think."
"Our sets are different," said the young gentleman, in a tone of voice
worthy of Brummel. "All those parliamentary fellows are devilish dull.
The rain's over. I don't know whether the governor would like me to call
at Grosvenor Square; but pray come and see me. Here's my card to remind
you; you must dine at our mess. Such capital fellows! What day will you
fix?"
"I will call and let you know. Don't you find it rather expensive in the
Guards? I remember that you thought the governor, as you call him, used
to chafe a little when you wrote for more pocket-money; and the only time
I ever saw you with tears in your eyes was when Mr. Hazeldean, in sending
you L5, reminded you that his estates were not entailed,--were at his own
disposal, and they should never go to an extravagant spendthrift. It was
not a pleasant threat that, Frank."
"Oh!" cried the young man, colouring deeply. "It was not the threat that
pained me; it was that my father could think so meanly of me as to fancy
that---Well, well, but those were schoolboy days. And my father was
always more generous than I deserved. We must see a great deal of each
other, Randal. How good-natured you were at Eton, making my longs and
shorts for me; I shall never forget it. Do call soon."
Frank swung himself into his saddle, and rewarded the slim youth with
half-a-crown,--a largess four times more ample than his father would have
deemed sufficient. A jerk of the reins and a touch of the heel, off
bounded the fiery horse and the gay young rider. Randal mused, and as
the rain had now ceased, the passengers under shelter dispersed and went
their way. Only Randal, Leonard, and Helen remained behind. Then, as
Randal, still musing, lifted his eyes, they fell full upon Leonard's
face. He started, passed his hand quickly over his brow, looked again,
hard and piercingly; and the change in his pale cheek to a shade still
paler, a quick compression and nervous gnawing of his lip, showed that he
too recognized an old foe. Then his glance ran over Leonard's dress,
which was somewhat dust-stained, but far above the class amongst which
the peasant was born. Randal raised his brows in surprise, and with a
smile slightly supercilious--the smile stung Leonard--and with a slow
step, Randal left the passage, and took his way towards Grosvenor Square.
The Entrance of Ambition was clear to him.
Then the little girl once more took Leonard by the hand, and led him
through rows of humble, obscure, dreary streets. It seemed almost like
an allegory personified, as the sad, silent child led on the penniless
and low-born adventurer of genius by the squalid shops and through the
winding lanes, which grew meaner and meaner, till both their forms
vanished from the view.