There appeared in the "Beehive" certain very truculent political papers,
--papers very like the tracts in the tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed
them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the
"Beehive" than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last
were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the
manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home
Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the "Beehive" and all its
papers and plant. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal
prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not
like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard,
unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he
found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not
new to his ear was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations
against "tyrants." He looked, and, to his amaze, recognized in the
orator Mr. Sprott the Tinker.
The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr. Sprott
prudently vanished. Leonard learned, then, what had befallen, and again
saw himself without employment and the means of bread.
Slowly he walked back. "O knowledge, knowledge!---powerless, indeed!" he
murmured.
As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead
wall, "Wanted, a few smart young men for India."
A crimp accosted him. "You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have
stout limbs of your own." Leonard moved on.
"It has come back then to this,--brute physical force after all! O Mind,
despair! O Peasant, be a machine again!" He entered his attic
noiselessly, and gazed upon Helen as she sat at work, straining her eyes
by the open window--with tender and deep compassion. She had not heard
him enter, nor was she aware of his presence. Patient and still she sat,
and the small fingers plied busily. He gazed, and saw that her cheek was
pale and hollow, and the hands looked so thin! His heart was deeply
touched, and at that moment he had not one memory of the baffled Poet,
one thought that proclaimed the Egotist.
He approached her gently, laid his hand on her shoulder, "Helen, put on
your shawl and bonnet, and walk out,--I have much to say."
In a few moments she was ready, and they took their way to their
favourite haunt upon the bridge. Pausing in one of the recesses, or
nooks, Leonard then began, "Helen, we must part!"
"Part?--Oh, brother!"
"Listen. All work that depends on mind is over for me, nothing remains
but the labour of thews and sinews. I cannot go back to my village and
say to all, 'My hopes were self-conceit, and my intellect a delusion!' I
cannot. Neither in this sordid city can I turn menial or porter. I
might be born to that drudgery, but my mind has, it may be unhappily,
raised me above my birth. What, then, shall I do? I know not yet,--
serve as a soldier, or push my way to some wilderness afar, as an
emigrant, perhaps. But whatever my choice, I must henceforth be alone;
I have a home no more. But there is a home for you, Helen, a very humble
one (for you too, so well born), but very safe,--the roof of--of--my
peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and--and--"
Helen clung to him trembling, and sobbed out, "Anything, anything you
will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard. I do, indeed, make
money,--you do not know how much, but enough for us both till better
times come to you. Do not let us part."
"And I--a man, and born to labour--to be maintained by the work of an
infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me."
She drew back as she looked on his flushed brow, bowed her head
submissively, and murmured, "Pardon."
"Ah," said Helen, after a, pause, "if now we could but find my poor
father's friend! I never so much cared for it before."
"Yes, he would surely provide for you."
"For me!" repeated Helen, in a tone of soft, deep reproach, and she
turned away her head to conceal her tears.
"You are sure you would remember him, if we met him by chance?"
"Oh, yes. He was so different from all we see in this terrible city, and
his eyes were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light
seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your
thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog,
whom he called Nero--I could not forget that."
"But his dog may not be always with him."
"But the bright clear eyes are! Ah, now you look up to heaven, and yours
seem to dream like his."
Leonard did not answer, for his thoughts were indeed less on earth than
struggling to pierce into that remote and mysterious heaven.
Both were silent long; the crowd passed them by unheedingly. Night
deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamp-lights on its
waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the
darkness of the strong current; and the craft that lay eastward on the
tide, with sail-less spectral masts and black dismal hulks, looked death-
like in their stillness.
Leonard looked down, and the thought of Chatterton's grim suicide came
back to his soul; and a pale, scornful face, with luminous haunting eyes,
seemed to look up from the stream, and murmur from livid lips, "Struggle
no more against the tides on the surface,--all is calm and rest within
the deep."
Starting in terror from the gloom of his revery, the boy began to talk
fast to Helen, and tried to soothe her with descriptions of the lowly
home which he had offered.
He spoke of the light cares which she would participate with his mother
(for by that name he still called the widow), and dwelt, with an
eloquence that the contrast round him made sincere and strong, on the
happy rural life, the shadowy woodlands, the rippling cornfields, the
solemn, lone churchspire soaring from the tranquil landscape.
Flatteringly he painted the flowery terraces of the Italian exile, and
the playful fountain that, even as he spoke, was flinging up its spray to
the stars, through serene air untroubled by the smoke of cities, and
untainted by the sinful sighs of men. He promised her the love and
protection of natures akin to the happy scene: the simple, affectionate
mother, the gentle pastor, the exile wise and kind, Violante, with dark
eyes full of the mystic thoughts that solitude calls from childhood,--
Violante should be her companion.
"And, oh!" cried Helen, "if life be thus happy there, return with me,
return! return!"
"Alas!" murmured the boy, "if the hammer once strike the spark from the
anvil, the spark must fly upward; it cannot fall back to earth until
light has left it. Upward still, Helen,--let me go upward still!"