Leonard went out the next day with his precious manuscripts. 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 recognized
him,--there was on his face so deep, so silent, and 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
manuscripts; 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 disillusion 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 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 manuscript,
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 anything 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 was 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 manuscripts 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 a while?"
"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,--teaspoonful
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's 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 forever."
"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!"