Leonard walked sturdily on in the high-road to the Great City. The day
was calm and sunlit, but with a gentle breeze from gray hills at the
distance; and with each mile that he passed, his step seemed to grow
more firm, and his front more elate. Oh! it is such joy in youth to be
alone with one's day-dreams. And youth feels so glorious a vigor in the
sense of its own strength, though the world be before and--against it!
Removed from that chilling counting-house--from the imperious will of a
patron and master--all friendless, but all independent--the young
adventurer felt a new being--felt his grand nature as Man. And on the
Man rushed the genius long interdicted--and thrust aside--rushing back,
with the first breath of adversity to console--no! the Man needed not
consolation--to kindle, to animate, to rejoice! If there is a being in
the world worthy of our envy, after we have grown wise philosophers of
the fireside, it is not the palled voluptuary, nor the care-worn
statesman, nor even the great prince of arts and letters, already
crowned with the laurel, whose leaves are as fit for poison as for
garlands; it is the young child of adventure and hope. Ay, and the
emptier his purse, ten to one but the richer his heart, and the wider
the domains which his fancy enjoys as he goes on with kingly step to the
Future.
Not till toward the evening did our adventurer slacken his pace, and
think of rest and refreshment. There, then, lay before him, on either
side the road, those wide patches of uninclosed land, which in England
often denote the entrance to a village. Presently one or two neat
cottages came in sight--then a small farm-house, with its yard and
barns. And some way further yet, he saw the sign swinging before an inn
of some pretensions--the sort of inn often found on a long stage between
two great towns, commonly called "The Half-way House." But the inn stood
back from the road, having its own separate sward in front, whereon were
a great beech tree (from which the sign extended) and a rustic arbor--so
that, to gain the inn, the coaches that stopped there took a sweep from
the main thoroughfare. Between our pedestrian and the inn there stood
naked and alone, on the common land, a church; our ancestors never would
have chosen that site for it; therefore it was a modern church--modern
Gothic--handsome to an eye not versed in the attributes of
ecclesiastical architecture--very barbarous to an eye that was. Somehow
or other the church looked cold, and raw, and uninviting. It looked a
church for show--much too big for the scattered hamlet--and void of all
the venerable associations which give their peculiar and unspeakable
atmosphere of piety to the churches in which succeeding generations have
knelt and worshiped. Leonard paused and surveyed the edifice with an
unlearned but poetical gaze--it dissatisfied him. And he was yet
pondering why, when a young girl passed slowly before him, her eyes
fixed on the ground, opened the little gate that led into the
church-yard, and vanished. He did not see the child's face; but there
was something in her movements so utterly listless, forlorn, and sad,
that his heart was touched. What did she there? He approached the low
wall with a noiseless step, and looked over it wistfully.
There by a grave evidently quite recent, with no wooden tomb nor
tombstone like the rest, the little girl had thrown herself, and she was
sobbing loud and passionately. Leonard opened the gate, and approached
her with a soft step. Mingled with her sobs, he heard broken sentences,
wild and vain, as all human sorrowings over graves must be.
"Father! oh, father! do you not really hear me? I am so lone--so lone!
Take me to you--take me!" And she buried her face in the deep grass.
"Poor child!" said Leonard, in a half whisper--"he is not there. Look
above!"
The girl did not heed him--he put his arm round her waist gently--she
made a gesture of impatience and anger, but she would not turn her
face--and she clung to the grave with her hands.
After clear sunny days the dews fall more heavily; and now, as the sun
set, the herbage was bathed in a vaporous haze--a dim mist rose around.
The young man seated himself beside her, and tried to draw the child to
his breast. Then she turned eagerly, indignantly, and pushed him aside
with jealous arms. He profaned the grave! He understood her with his
deep poet-heart, and rose. There was a pause.
Leonard was the first to break it.
"Come to your home with me, my child, and we will talk of _him_ by the
way."
"Him! Who are you? You did not know him!" said the girl, still with
anger. "Go away--why do you disturb me? I do no one harm. Go--go!"
"You do yourself harm, and that will grieve him if he sees you yonder!
Come!"
The child looked at him through her blinding tears, and his face
softened and soothed her.
"Go!" she said very plaintively, and in subdued accents. "I will but
stay a minute more. I--I have so much to say yet."
Leonard left the church-yard, and waited without; and in a short time
the child came forth, waved him aside as he approached her, and hurried
away. He followed her at a distance, and saw her disappear within the
inn.