Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sat with Burley, a fashionable
cabriolet, with a very handsome horse, stopped at the door. A loud
knock, a quick step on the stairs, and Randal Leslie entered. Leonard
recognized him, and started. Randal glanced at him in surprise, and
then, with a tact that showed he had already learned to profit by London
life, after shaking hands with Burley, approached, and said, with some
successful attempt at ease, "Unless I am not mistaken, sir, we have met
before. If you remember me, I hope all boyish quarrels are forgotten?"
Leonard bowed, and his heart was still good enough to be softened.
"Where could you two ever have met?" asked Burley. "In a village green,
and in single combat," answered Randal, smiling; and he told the story of
the Battle of the Stocks, with a well-bred jest on himself. Burley
laughed at the story. "But," said he, when this laugh was over, "my
young friend had better have remained guardian of the village stocks than
come to London in search of such fortune as lies at the bottom of an
inkhorn."
"Ah," said Randal, with the secret contempt which men elaborately
cultivated are apt to feel for those who seek to educate themselves,--
"ah, you make literature your calling, sir? At what school did you
conceive a taste for letters? Not very common at our great public
schools."
"I am at school now for the first time," answered Leonard, dryly.
"Experience is the best schoolmistress," said Burley; "and that was the
maxim of Goethe, who had book-learning enough, in all conscience."
Randal slightly shrugged his shoulders, and without wasting another
thought on Leonard, peasant-born and self-taught, took his seat, and
began to talk to Burley upon a political question, which made then the
war-cry between the two great parliamentary parties. It was a subject in
which Burley showed much general knowledge; and Randal, seeming to differ
from him, drew forth alike his information and his argumentative powers.
The conversation lasted more than an hour.
"I can't quite agree with you," said Randal, taking his leave; "but you
must allow me to call again,--will the same hour tomorrow suit you?"
"Yes," said Burley.
Away went the young man in his cabriolet. Leonard watched him from the
window.
For five days, consecutively, did Randal call and discuss the question in
all its bearings; and Burley, after the second day, got interested in the
matter, looked up his authorities, refreshed his memory, and even spent
an hour or two in the Library of the British Museum.
By the fifth day, Burley had really exhausted all that could well be said
on his side of the question.
Leonard, during these colloquies, had sat apart seemingly absorbed in
reading, and secretly stung by Randal's disregard of his presence. For
indeed that young man, in his superb self-esteem, and in the absorption
of his ambitious projects, scarce felt even curiosity as to Leonard's
rise above his earlier station, and looked on him as a mere journeyman of
Burley's.
But the self-taught are keen and quick observers; and Leonard had
remarked that Randal seemed more as one playing a part for some private
purpose, than arguing in earnest; and that, when he rose, and said, "Mr.
Burley, you have convinced me," it was not with the modesty of a sincere
reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck,
meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener with Burley's power of
generalization and the wide surface over which his information extended,
that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly,
purposeless man, and said aloud, "True; knowledge is not power."
"Certainly not," said Burley, dryly,--"the weakest thing in the world."
"Knowledge is power," muttered Randal Leslie, as, with a smile on his
lip, he drove from the door.
Not many days after this last interview there appeared a short pamphlet;
anonymous, but one which made a great impression on the town. It was on
the subject discussed between Randal and Burley. It was quoted at great
length in the newspapers. And Burley started to his feet one morning,
and exclaimed, "My own thoughts! my very words! Who the devil is this
pamphleteer?"
Leonard took the newspaper from Burley's hand. The most flattering
encomiums preceded the extracts, and the extracts were as stereotypes of
Burley's talk.
"Can you doubt the author?" cried Leonard, in deep disgust and ingenuous
scorn. "The young man who came to steal your brains, and turn your
knowledge--"
"Into power," interrupted Burley, with a laugh,--but it was a laugh of
pain. "Well, this was very mean; I shall tell him so when he comes."
"He will come no more," said Leonard. Nor did Randal come again. But he
sent Mr. Burley a copy of the pamphlet with a polite note, saying, with
candid but careless acknowledgment, that he "had profited much by Mr.
Burley's hints and remarks."
And now it was in all the papers that the pamphlet which had made so
great a noise was by a very young man, Mr. Audley Egerton's relation.
And high hopes were expressed of the future career of Mr. Randal Leslie.
Burley still attempted to laugh, and still his pain was visible. Leonard
most cordially despised and hated Randal Leslie, and his heart moved to
Burley with noble but perilous compassion. In his desire to soothe and
comfort the man whom he deemed cheated out of fame, he forgot the caution
he had hitherto imposed on himself, and yielded more and more to the
charm of that wasted intellect. He accompanied Burley now to the haunts
to which his friend went to spend his evenings; and more and more--though
gradually, and with many a recoil and self-rebuke--there crept over him
the cynic's contempt for glory, and miserable philosophy of debased
content.
Randal had risen into grave repute upon the strength of Burley's
knowledge. But, had Burley written the pamphlet, would the same repute
have attended him? Certainly not. Randal Leslie brought to that
knowledge qualities all his own,--a style simple, strong, and logical;
a certain tone of good society, and allusions to men and to parties that
showed his connection with a Cabinet minister, and proved that he had
profited no less by Egerton's talk than Burley's.
Had Burley written the pamphlet, it would have showed more genius, it
would have had humour and wit, but have been so full of whims and quips,
sins against taste, and defects in earnestness, that it would have failed
to create any serious sensation. Here, then, there was something else be
sides knowledge, by which knowledge became power. Knowledge must not
smell of the brandy-bottle.
Randal Leslie might be mean in his plagiarism, but he turned the useless
into use. And so far he was original. But one's admiration, after all,
rests where Leonard's rested,--with the poor, riotous, lawless, big,
fallen man. Burley took himself off to the Brent, and fished again for
the one-eyed perch. Leonard accompanied him. His feelings were indeed
different from what they had been when he had reclined under the old
tree, and talked with Helen of the future. But it was almost pathetic to
see how Burley's nature seemed to alter, as he strayed along the banks of
the rivulet, and discoursed of his own boyhood. The man then seemed
restored to something of the innocence of the child. He cared, in truth,
little for the perch, which continued intractable, but he enjoyed the air
and the sky, the rustling grass and the murmuring waters. These
excursions to the haunts of youth seemed to rebaptize him, and then his
eloquence took a pastoral character, and Izaak Walton himself would have
loved to hear him. But as he got back into the smoke of the metropolis,
and the gas-lamps made him forget the ruddy sunset and the soft evening
star, the gross habits reassumed their sway; and on he went with his
swaggering, reckless step to the orgies in which his abused intellect
flamed forth, and then sank into the socket quenched and rayless.