Nothing, perhaps, could have severed Leonard from Burley but Helen's
return to his care. It was impossible for him, even had there been
another room in the house vacant (which there was not), to install this
noisy, riotous son of the Muse by Bacchus, talking at random and smelling
of spirits, in the same dwelling with an innocent, delicate, timid,
female child. And Leonard could not leave her alone all the twenty-four
hours. She restored a home to him and imposed its duties. He therefore
told Mr. Burley that in future he should write and study in his own room,
and hinted, with many a blush, and as delicately as he could, that it
seemed to him that whatever he obtained from his pen ought to be halved
with Burley, to whose interest he owed the employment, and from whose
books or whose knowledge he took what helped to maintain it; but that the
other half, if his, he could no longer afford to spend upon feasts or
libations. He had another life to provide for.
Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's earning with
much grandeur, but spoke very fretfully of Leonard's sober appropriation
of the other half; and though a good-natured, warm-hearted man, felt
extremely indignant at the sudden interposition of poor Helen. However,
Leonard was firm; and then Burley grew sullen, and so they parted. But
the rent was still to be paid. How? Leonard for the first time thought
of the pawnbroker. He had clothes to spare, and Riccabocca's watch. No;
that last he shrank from applying to such base uses.
He went home at noon, and met Helen at the street-door. She too had been
out, and her soft cheek was rosy red with unwonted exercise and the sense
of joy. She had still preserved the few gold pieces which Leonard had
taken back to her on his first visit to Miss Starke's. She had now gone
out and bought wool and implements for work; and meanwhile she had paid
the rent.
Leonard did not object to the work, but he blushed deeply when he knew
about the rent, and was very angry. He paid back to her that night what
she had advanced; and Helen wept silently at his pride, and wept more
when she saw the next day a woful hiatus in his wardrobe.
But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen sat by
his side, working too; so that next day, and the next, slipped peacefully
away, and in the evening of the second he asked her to walk out in the
fields. She sprang up joyously at the invitation, when bang went the
door, and in reeled John Burley,--drunk,--and so drunk!