At last they came within easy reach of London; but Leonard had resolved
not to enter the metropolis fatigued and exhausted, as a wanderer
needing refuge, but fresh and elate, as a conqueror coming in triumph to
take possession of the capital. Therefore they halted early in the
evening of the day preceding this imperial entry, about six miles from
the metropolis, in the neighborhood of Ealing (for by that route lay
their way). They were not tired on arriving at their inn. The weather
was singularly lovely, with that combination of softness and brilliancy
which is only known to the rare true summer days of England: all below
so green, above so blue--days of which we have about six in the year,
and recall vaguely when we read of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, of Damsel
and Knight, in Spenser's golden Summer Song, or of Jacques, dropped
under the oak tree, watching the deer amidst the dells of Ardennes. So,
after a little pause in their inn, they strolled forth, not for travel,
but pleasure, toward the cool of sunset, passing by the grounds that
once belonged to the Duke of Kent, and catching a glimpse of the shrubs
and lawns of that beautiful domain through the lodge-gates; then they
crossed into some fields, and came to a little rivulet called the Brent.
Helen had been more sad that day than on any during their journey.
Perhaps, because, on approaching London, the memory of her father became
more vivid; perhaps from her precocious knowledge of life, and her
foreboding of what was to befall them, children that they both were. But
Leonard was selfish that day; he could not be influenced by his
companion's sorrow, he was so full of his own sense of being, and he
already caught from the atmosphere the fever that belongs to anxious
Capitals.
"Sit here, sister," said he imperiously throwing himself under the shade
of a pollard tree that overhung the winding brook, "sit here and talk."
He flung off his hat, tossed back his rich curls, and sprinkled his brow
from the stream that eddied round the roots of the tree that bulged out,
bald and gnarled, from the bank, and delved into the waves below. Helen
quietly obeyed him, and nestled close to his side.
"And so this London is really very vast?--VERY?" he repeated
inquisitively.
"Very," answered Helen, as abstractedly she plucked the cowslips near
her, and let them fall into the running waters. "See how the flowers are
carried down the stream! They are lost now. London is to us what the
river is to the flowers--very vast--very strong;" and she added, after a
pause, "very cruel?"
"Cruel! Ah, it _has_ been so to you; but _now_!--now I will take care of
you!" he smiled triumphantly; and his smile was beautiful both in its
pride and its kindness. It is astonishing how Leonard had altered since
he had left his uncle's. He was both younger and older; for the sense of
genius, when it snaps its shackles, makes us both older and wiser as to
the world it soars to--younger and blinder as to the world it springs
from.
"And it is not a very handsome city either, you say?"
"Very ugly, indeed," said Helen, with some fervor; "at least all I have
seen of it."
"But there must be parts that are prettier than others? You say there
are parks; why should not we lodge near them, and look upon the green
trees?"
"That would be nice," said Helen, almost joyously; "but--" and here the
head was shaken--"there are no lodgings for us except in courts and
alleys."
"Why?"
"Why?" echoed Helen, with a smile, and she held up the purse.
"Pooh! always that horrid purse; as if, too, we were not going to fill
it. Did I not tell you the story of Fortunio? Well, at all events, we
will go first to the neighborhood where you last lived, and learn there
all we can; and then the day after to-morrow, I will see this Dr.
Morgan, and find out the Lord--"
The tears started to Helen's soft eyes. "You want to get rid of me soon,
brother."
"I! ah, I feel so happy to have you with me, it seems to me as if I had
pined for you all my life, and you had come at last; for I never had
brother, nor sister, nor any one to love, that was not older than
myself, except--"
"Except the young lady you told me of," said Helen, turning away her
face; for children are very jealous.
"Yes, I loved her, love her still. But that was different," said
Leonard, with a heightened color. "I could never have talked to her as
to you; to you I open my whole heart; you are my little Muse, Helen. I
confess to you my wild whims and fancies as frankly as if I were writing
poetry." As he said this, a step was heard, and a shadow fell over the
stream. A belated angler appeared on the margin, drawing his line
impatiently across the water, as if to worry some dozing fish into a
bite before it finally settled itself for the night. Absorbed in his
occupation, the angler did not observe the young persons on the sward
under the tree, and he halted there, close upon them.
"Curse that perch!" said he aloud.
"Take care, sir," cried Leonard; for the man in stepping back, nearly
trod upon Helen.
The angler turned. "What's the matter? Hist! you have frightened my
perch. Keep still, can't you?"
Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He
remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler.
"It is the most extraordinary perch, that!" muttered the stranger,
soliloquizing. "It has the devil's own luck. It must have been born with
a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never catch
it--never! Ha!--no--only a weed. I give it up." With this, he
indignantly jerked his rod from the water, and began to disjoint it.
While leisurely engaged in this occupation, he turned to Leonard.
"Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?"
"No," answered Leonard. "I never saw it before."
ANGLER (solemnly).--"Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give
way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been
the Dalilah of my existence."
LEONARD (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical).--"The
Dalilah! Sir--the Dalilah!"
ANGLER.--"The Dalilah. Young man, listen, and be warned by example. When
I was about your age, I first came to this stream to fish. Sir, on that
fatal day, about 3, P.M., I hooked up a fish--such a big one, it must
have weighed a pound and a half. Sir, it was that length;" and the
angler put finger to wrist. "And just when I had got it nearly ashore,
by the very place where you are sitting, on that shelving bank, young
man, the line broke, and the perch twisted himself among those roots,
and--caco-daemon that he was--ran off, hook and all. Well, that fish
haunted me; never before had I seen such a fish. Minnows I had caught in
the Thames and elsewhere, also gudgeons, and occasionally a dace. But a
fish like that--a PERCH--all his fins up like the sails of a
man-of-war--a monster perch--a whale of a perch!--No, never till then
had I known what leviathans lie hid within the deeps. I could not sleep
till I had returned; and again, sir--I caught that perch. And this time
I pulled him fairly out of the water. He escaped; and how did he escape?
Sir, he left his eye behind him on the hook. Years, long years, have
passed since then; but never shall I forget the agony of that moment."
LEONARD.--"To the perch, sir?"
ANGLER.--"Perch! agony to him! He enjoyed it:--agony to me. I gazed on
that eye, and the eye looked as sly and as wicked as if it was laughing
in my face. Well, sir, I had heard that there is no better bait for a
perch than a perch's eye. I adjusted that eye on the hook, and dropped
in the line gently. The water was unusually clear; in two minutes I saw
that perch return. He approached the hook; he recognized his
eye--frisked his tail--made a plunge--and, as I live, carried off the
eye, safe and sound; and I saw him digesting it by the side of that
water lily. The mocking fiend! Seven times since that day, in the course
of a varied and eventful life, have I caught that perch, and seven times
has that perch escaped."
LEONARD (astonished):--"It can't be the same perch; perches are very
tender fish--a hook inside of it, and an eye hooked out of it--no perch
could withstand such havoc in its constitution."
ANGLER (with an appearance of awe).--"It does seem supernatural. But it
_is_ that perch; for harkye, sir, there is ONLY ONE perch in the whole
brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught another
perch here; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I know by
sight better than I know my own lost father. For each time that I have
raised it out of the water, its profile has been turned to me, and I
have seen, with a shudder, that it has had only--One Eye! It is a most
mysterious and a most diabolical phenomenon, that perch! It has been the
ruin of my prospects in life. I was offered a situation in Jamaica; I
could not go, with that perch left here in triumph. I might afterward
have had an appointment in India, but I could not put the ocean between
myself and that perch: thus have I frittered away my existence in the
fatal metropolis of my native land. And once a-week, from February to
December, I come hither--Good Heavens! if I should catch the perch at
last, the occupation of my existence will be gone."
Leonard gazed curiously at the angler, as the last thus mournfully
concluded. The ornate turn of his periods did not suit with his costume.
He looked woefully threadbare and shabby--a genteel sort of shabbiness
too--shabbiness in black. There was humor in the corners of his lip; and
his hands, though they did not seem very clean--indeed his occupation
was not friendly to such niceties--were those of a man who had not known
manual labor. His face was pale and puffed, but the tip of his nose was
red. He did not seem as if the watery element was as familiar to himself
as to his Dalilah--the perch.
"Such is Life!" recommenced the angler in a moralizing tone, as he slid
his rod into its canvas case. "If a man knew what it was to fish all
one's life in a stream that has only one perch!--to catch that one perch
nine times in all, and nine times to see it fall back into the water,
plump;--if a man knew what it was--why, then"--Here the angler looked
over his shoulder full at Leonard--"why then, young sir, he would know
what human life is to vain ambition. Good evening."
Away he went, treading over the daisies and king cups. Helen's eyes
followed him wistfully.
"What a strange person!" said Leonard, laughing.
"I think he is a very wise one," murmured Helen; and she came close up
to Leonard, and took his hand in both hers, as if she felt already that
he was in need of the Comforter--the line broke, and the perch lost!