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
tie 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 recognized 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 labors 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 sat 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 emotion, 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."