Harley L’Estrange was a man whom all things that belong to the romantic
and poetic side of our human life deeply impressed. When he came to
learn the ties between these two children of nature, standing side by
side, alone amidst the storms of fate, his heart was more deeply moved
than it had been for many years. In those dreary attics, overshadowed by
the smoke and reek of the humble suburb—the workday world in its
harshest and tritest forms below and around them—he recognised that
divine poem which comes out from all union between the mind and the
heart. Here, on the rough deal table, (the ink scarcely dry,) lay the
writings of the young wrestler for fame and bread; there, on the other
side the partition, on that mean pallet, lay the boy’s sole
comforter—the all that warmed his heart with living mortal affection. On
one side the wall, the world of imagination; on the other this world of
grief and of love. And in both, a spirit equally sublime—unselfish
Devotion—“the something afar from the sphere of our sorrow.”
He looked round the room into which he had followed Leonard, on quitting
Helen’s bedside. He noted the MSS. on the table, and, pointing to them,
said gently, “And these are the labours by which you supported the
soldier’s orphan?—soldier yourself, in a hard battle!”
“The battle was lost—I could not support her,” replied Leonard
mournfully.
“But you did not desert her. When Pandora’s box was opened, they say
Hope lingered last——”
“False, false,” said Leonard; “a heathen’s notion. There are deities
that linger behind Hope;—Gratitude, Love, and Duty.”
“Yours is no common nature,” exclaimed Harley admiringly, “but I must
sound it more deeply hereafter; at present I hasten for the physician; I
shall return with him. We must move that poor child from this low close
air as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let me qualify your rejection of the
old fable. Wherever Gratitude, Love, and Duty remain to man, believe me
that Hope is there too, though she may be oft invisible, hidden behind
the sheltering wings of the nobler deities.”
Harley said this with that wondrous smile of his, which cast a
brightness over the whole room—and went away.
Leonard stole softly towards the grimy window; and looking up towards
the stars that shone pale over the roof-tops, he murmured, “O thou, the
All-seeing and All-merciful!—how it comforts me now to think that though
my dreams of knowledge may have sometimes obscured the Heaven, I never
doubted that Thou wert there!—as luminous and everlasting, though behind
the cloud!” So, for a few minutes, he prayed silently—then passed into
Helen’s room, and sate beside her motionless, for she slept. She woke
just as Harley returned with a physician, and then Leonard, returning to
his own room, saw amongst his papers the letter he had written to Mr
Dale; and muttering, “I need not disgrace my calling—I need not be the
mendicant now”—held the letter to the flame of the candle. And while he
said this, and as the burning tinder dropped on the floor, the sharp
hunger, unfelt during his late anxious emotions, gnawed at his entrails.
Still, even hunger could not reach that noble pride which had yielded to
a sentiment nobler than itself—and he smiled as he repeated, “No
mendicant!—the life that I was sworn to guard is saved. I can raise
against Fate the front of the Man once more.”