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 neighborhood 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 in 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 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 fervor; "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 I not tell you the story of Fortunio? Well, at all events, we
will go first to the neighborhood 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 startled 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, with a heightened color. "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 Dalilah of my existence."
_Leonard_, (interested, the last sentence seemed to him
poetical.)--"The Dalilah! sir, the Dalilah!"
_Angler._--"The Dalilah. 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 3 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--caco daemon 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 was
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 harkye, sir, there is ONLY ONE perch in
the whole brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught
another perch here; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I
know by sight better than I know 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 appointment in India, but I could not put
the ocean between myself and that perch: thus have I fritted 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 woefully threadbare and shabby--a genteel sort of
shabbiness too--shabbiness in black. There was humor 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 labor. His face was pale and puffed, but the
tip of his nose was red. He did not seem as if the watery element was
as familiar to himself as to his Dalilah--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 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 king cups. 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 broke, and the perch
lost!