Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sate 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
unsuccessful attempt at ease, "Unless I am 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, drily.
"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 to-morrow 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 sate 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, drily--"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 where he
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 humor 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 besides 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, shabby, 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 talked 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.