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 to provide for.
Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's earnings,
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 against 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 wools 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 woeful hiatus in his wardrobe.
But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen sate 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!