"And how," cried Leonard, fiercely,—"how have they dared to slander this dead mother? How knew they that I—was—was—was not the child of wedlock?"
"There was no wedding-ring on Nora's finger—never any rumor of her marriage—her strange and sudden appearance at her father's house—her emotions on entrance, so unlike those natural to a wife returning to a parent's home: these are all the evidence against her. But Mr. Avenel deemed them strong, and so did I. You have a right to think we judged too harshly—perhaps we did."
"And no inquiries were ever made?" said Leonard mournfully, and after long silence—"no inquiries to learn who was the father of the motherless child?"
"Inquiries!—Mrs. Avenel would have died first. Your grandmother's nature is very rigid. Had she come from princes, from Cadwallader himself," said the Welshman, "she could not more have shrunk from the thought of dishonor. Even over her dead child, the child she had loved the best, she thought but how to save that child's name and memory from suspicion. There was luckily no servant in the house, only Mark Fairfield and his wife (Nora's sister): they had arrived the same day on a visit.
"Mrs. Fairfield was nursing her own infant, two or three months old; she took charge of you; Nora was buried, and the secret kept. None out of the family knew of it, but myself and the curate of the town—Mr. Dale. The day after your birth, Mrs. Fairfield, to prevent discovery, moved to a village at some distance. There her child died; and when she returned to Hazeldean, where her husband was settled, you passed as the son she had lost. Mark, I know, was a father to you, for he had loved Nora; they had been children together."
"And she came to London—London is strong and cruel," muttered Leonard. "She was friendless and deceived. I see all—I desire to know no more. This father, he must indeed have been like those whom I have read of in books. To love, to wrong her—thatI can conceive; but then to leave, to abandon; no visit to her grave—no remorse—no search for his own child. Well, well; Mrs. Avenel was right. Let us think ofhimno more."
The man-servant knocked at the door, and then put in his head. "Sir, the ladies are getting very impatient, and say they'll go."
"Sir," said Leonard, with a strange calm return to the things about him, "I ask your pardon for taking up your time so long. I go now. I will never mention to my moth—I mean to Mrs. Fairfield—what I have learned, nor to any one. I will work my way somehow. If Mr. Prickett will keep me, I will stay with him at present; but I repeat, I cannot take Mrs. Avenel's money and be bound apprentice. Sir, you have been good and patient with me—Heaven reward you."
The Doctor was too moved to answer. He wrung Leonard's hand, and in another minute the door closed upon the nameless boy. He stood alone in the streets of London; and the sun flashed on him, red and menacing, like the eye of a foe!
Leonard did not appear at the shop of Mr. Prickett that day. Needless it is to say where he wandered—what he suffered—what thought—what felt. All within was storm. Late at night he returned to his solitary lodging. On his table, neglected since the morning, was Helen's rose-tree. It looked parched and fading. His heart smote him: he watered the poor plant—perhaps with his tears.
Meanwhile Dr. Morgan, after some debate with himself whether or not to apprise Mrs. Avenel of Leonard's discovery and message, resolved to spare her an uneasiness and alarm that might be dangerous to her health, and unnecessary in itself. He replied shortly, that she need not fear Leonard's coming to her house—that he was disinclined to bind himself an apprentice, but that he was provided for at present; and in a few weeks, when Dr. Morgan heard more of him through the tradesman by whom he was employed, the Doctor would write to her from Germany. He then went to Mr. Prickett's—told the willing bookseller to keep the young man for the present—to be kind to him, watch over his habits and conduct, and report to the Doctor in his new home, on the Rhine, what avocation he thought Leonard would be best suited for, and most inclined to adopt. The charitable Welshman divided with the bookseller the salary given to Leonard, and left a quarter of his moity in advance. It is true that he knew he should be repaid on applying to Mrs. Avenel; but, being a man of independent spirit himself, he so sympathized with Leonard's present feelings, that he felt as if he should degrade the boy did he maintain him, even secretly, out of Mrs. Avenel's money—money intended not to raise, but keep him down in life. At the worst, it was a sum the doctor could afford, and he had brought the boy into the world.
Having thus, as he thought, safely provided for his two young charges, Helen and Leonard, the Doctor then gave himself up to his final preparations for departure. He left a short note for Leonard with Mr. Prickett, containing some brief advice, some kind cheering; a postscript to the effect that he had not communicated to Mrs. Avenel the information Leonard had acquired, and that it were best to leave her in that ignorance; and six small powders to be dissolved in water, and a tea-spoonful every fourth hour—"Sovereign against rage and sombre thoughts," wrote the Doctor. By the evening of the next day Dr. Morgan, accompanied by his pet patient with the chronic tic, whom he had talked into exile, was on the steamboat on his way to Ostend.
Leonard resumed his life at Mr. Prickett's; but the change in him did not escape the bookseller. All his ingenious simplicity had deserted him. He was very distant, and very taciturn; he seemed to have grown much older. I shall not attempt to analyze metaphysically this change. By the help of such words as Leonard may himself occasionally let fall, the reader will dive into the boy's heart, and see how there the change had worked, and is working still. The happy dreamy peasant-genius, gazing on glory with inebriate, undazzled eyes, is no more. It is a man, suddenly cut off from the old household holy ties—conscious of great powers, and confronted on all sides by barriers of iron—alone with hard reality, and scornful London; and if he catches a glimpse of the lost Helicon, he sees, where he saw the muse, a pale melancholy spirit veiling its face in shame—the ghost of the mournful mother, whose child has no name, not even the humblest, among the family of men.
On the second evening after Dr. Morgan's departure, as Leonard was just about to leave the shop, a customer stepped in with a bookin his hand which he had snatched from the shop-boy, who was removing the volumes for the night from the booth without.
"Mr. Prickett, Mr. Prickett!" said the customer, "I am ashamed of you. You presume to put upon this work, in two volumes, the sum of eight shillings."
Mr. Prickett stepped forth from the Cimmerian gloom of some recess, and cried, "What! Mr. Burley, is that you? But for your voice I should not have known you."
"Man is like a book, Mr. Prickett; the commonalty only look to his binding. I am better bound, it is very true."
Leonard glanced towards the speaker, who now stood under the gas-lamp, and thought he recognized his face. He looked again; yes, it was the perch-fisher whom he had met on the banks of the Brent, and who had warned him of the lost fish and the broken line.
Mr. Burley(continuing).—"But 'The Art of Thinking,'—you charge eight shillings for 'The Art of Thinking?'"
Mr. Prickett.—"Cheap enough, Mr. Burley. A very clean copy."
Mr. Burley.—"Usurer! I sold it to you for three shillings. It is more than 150 per cent. you propose to gain from my 'Art of Thinking.'"
Mr. Prickett, (stuttering and taken aback.)—"Yousold it to me! Ah! now I remember. But it was more than three shillings I gave. You forget—two glasses of brandy and water."
Mr. Burley.—"Hospitality, sir, is not to be priced. If you sell your hospitality, you are not worthy to possess my 'Art of Thinking.' I resume it. There are three shillings, and a shilling more for interest. No—on second thoughts, instead of that shilling, I will return your hospitality; and the first time you come my way you shall have two glasses of brandy and water."
Mr. Prickett did not look pleased, but he made no objection; and Mr. Burley put the book into his pocket, and turned to examine the shelves. He bought an old jest-book, a stray volume of the Comedies of Destouches—paid for them—put them also into his pocket, and was sauntering out, when he perceived Leonard, who was now standing at the doorway.
"Hem! who is that?" he asked, whispering to Mr. Prickett.
"A young assistant of mine, and very clever."
Mr. Burley scanned Leonard from top to toe.
"We have met before, sir. But you look as if you had returned to the Brent, and had been fishing for my perch."
"Possibly, sir," answered Leonard. "But my line is tough, and is not yet broken, though the fish drags it amongst the weeds, and buries itself in the mud."
He lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and walked on.
"Heisclever," said Mr. Burley to the bookseller: "he understands allegory."
Mr. Prickett.—"Poor youth! He came to town with the idea of turning author: you know whatthatis, Mr. Burley."
Mr. Burley, (with an air of superb dignity.)—"Bibliopole, yes! An author is a being between gods and men, who ought to be lodged in a palace, and entertained at the public charge on ortolans and tokay. He should be kept lapped in down, and curtained with silken awnings from the cares of life—have nothing to do but to write books upon tables of cedar, and fish for perch from a gilded galley. And that's what will come to pass when the ages lose their barbarism, and know their benefactors. Meanwhile, sir, I invite you to my rooms, and will regale you upon brandy and water as long as I can pay for it; and when I cannot, you shall regale me."
Mr. Prickett muttered, "A very bad bargain, indeed," as Mr. Burley, with his chin in the air, stepped into the street.
At first Leonard had always returned home through the crowded thoroughfares—the contact of numbers had animated his spirits. But the last two days, since the discovery of his birth, he had taken his way down the comparatively unpeopled path of the New Road. He had just gained that part of this outskirt in which the statuaries and tomb-makers exhibit their gloomy wares—furniture alike for gardens and for graves—and, pausing, contemplated a column, on which was placed an urn half covered with a funeral mantle, when his shoulder was lightly tapped, and, turning quickly, he saw Mr. Burley standing behind him.
"Excuse me, sir, but you understand perch-fishing; and since we find ourselves on the same road, I should like to be better acquainted with you. I hear you once wished to be an author. I am one."
Leonard had never before, to his knowledge, seen an author, and a mournful smile passed his lips as he surveyed the perch-fisher. Mr. Burley was indeed very differently attired since the first interview by the brooklet. He looked less like an author, but more perhaps like a perch-fisher. He had a new white hat, stuck on one side of his head—a new green overcoat—new gray trousers, and new boots. In his hand was a whalebone stick, with a silver handle. Nothing could be more fragrant, devil-me-carish, and to use a slang word,tigrish, than his whole air. Yet, vulgar as was his costume, he did not himself seem vulgar, but rather eccentric, lawless, something out of the pale of convention. His face looked more pale and more puffed than before, the tip of his nose redder; but the spark in his eye was of livelier light, and there was self-enjoyment in the corners of his sensual humorous lip.
"You are an author, sir," repeated Leonard. "Well, and what is the report of your calling? Yonder column props an urn. The column is tall, and the urn is graceful. But it looks out of place by the roadside: what say you?"
Mr. Burley.—"It would look better in the churchyard."
Leonard.—"So I was thinking. And you are an author!"
Mr. Burley.—"Ah, I said you had a quick sense of allegory. And so you think an author looks better in a churchyard, when you see him but as a muffled urn under the moonshine, than standing beneath the gas-lamp, in a white hat, and with a red tip to his nose. Abstractedly, you are right. But, with your leave, the author would rather be where he is. Let us walk on." The two men felt an interest in each other, and they walked some yards in silence.
"To return to the urn," said Mr. Burley, "you think of fame and churchyards. Natural enough, before illusion dies; but I think of the moment, of existence—and I laugh at fame. Fame, sir—not worth a glass of cold without! And as for a glass of warm, with sugar—and five shillings in one's pocket to spend as one pleases—what is there in Westminster Abbey to compare with it?"
"Talk on, sir—I should like to hear you talk. Let me listen and hold my tongue." Leonard pulled his hat over his brows, and gave up his moody, questioning, turbulent mind to his new acquaintance.
And John Burley talked on. A dangerous and a fascinating talk it was—the talk of a great intellect fallen. A serpent trailing its length on the ground, and showing bright, shifting, glorious hues as it grovelled. A serpent, yet without the serpent's guile. If John Burley deceived and tempted, he meant it not—he crawled and glittered alike honestly. No dove could be more simple.
Laughing at fame, he yet dwelt with an elegant enthusiasm on the joy of composition. "What do I care what men without are to say and think of the words that gush forth on my page?" cried he. "If you think of the public, of urns, and laurels, while you write, you are no genius; you are not fit to be an author. I write because it rejoices me, because it is my nature. Written, I care no more what becomes of it than the lark for the effect that the song has on the peasant it wakes to the plough. The poet, like the lark, sings 'from his watch-tower in the skies.' Is this true?"
"Yes, very true."
"What can rob us of this joy! The bookseller will not buy, the public will not read. Let them sleep at the foot of the ladder of the angels—we climb it all the same. And then one settles down into such good-tempered Lucianic contempt for men. One wants so little from them, when one knows what one's self is worth, and what they are. They are just worth the coin one can extract from them in order to live. Our life—thatis worth so much to us. And then their joys, so vulgar to them, we can make them golden and kingly. Do you suppose Burns drinking at the ale-house, with his boors around him, was drinking, like them, only beer and whisky? No, he was drinking nectar—he was imbibing his own ambrosial thoughts—shaking with the laughter of the gods. The coarse human liquid was just needed to unlock his spirit from the clay—take it from jerkin and corduroys, and wrap it in the 'singing-robes' that floated wide in the skies: the beer or the whisky was needed but for that, and then it changed at once into the drink of Hebe. But come, you have not known this life—you have not seen it. Come, give me this night. I have moneys about me—I will fling them abroad as liberally as Alexander himself, when he left to his share but hope. Come!"
"Whither?"
"To my throne. On that throne last sate Edmund Kean—mighty mime. I am his successor. We will see whether in truth these wild sons of genius, who are cited but 'to point a moral and adorn a tale,' were objects of compassion. Sober-suited cits to lament over a Savage and a Morland—a Porson and a Burns!—"
"Or a Chatterton," said Leonard, gloomily.
"Chatterton was an impostor in all things; he feigned excesses that he never knew.Hea bacchanalian—a royster! He!—No. We will talk of him. Come!"
Leonard went.
The Room! And the smoke-reek, and the gas-glare of it. The whitewash of the walls, and the prints thereon of the actors in their mime-robes, and stage postures; actors as far back as their own lost Augustan era, when the stage was a real living influence on the manners and the age. There was Betterton in wig and gown—as Cato, moralising on the soul's eternity, and halting between Plato and the dagger. There was Woodward as "The Fine Gentleman," with the inimitable rakehell air in which the heroes of Wycherly and Congreve and Farquhar live again. There was jovial Quin as Falstaff, with round buckler and "fair round belly." There was Colley Cibber in brocade—taking snuff as with "his Lord," the thumb and forefinger raised in air—and looking at you for applause. There was Macklin as Shylock, with knife in hand; and Kemble, in the solemn weeds of the Dane; and Kean in the place of honor over the chimneypiece.
When we are suddenly taken from practical life, with its real workday men, and presented to the portraits of those sole heroes of a World—Phantastic and Phantasmal, in the garments wherein they did "strut and frettheir hour upon the stage," verily there is something in the sight that moves an inner sense within ourselves—for all of us have an inner sense of some existence, apart from the one that wears away our days: an existence that, afar from St. James's and St. Giles's, the Law Courts and Exchange, goes its way in terror or mirth, in smiles or in tears, through a vague magic land of the poets. There, see those actors! They are the men who lived it—to whom our world was the false one, to whom the Imaginary was the Actual. And did Shakspeare himself, in his life, ever hearken to the applause that thundered round the Personators of his airy images? Vague children of the most transient of the arts, fleet shadows of running waters, though thrown down from the steadfast stars, were ye not happier than we who live in the Real? How strange you must feel in the great circuit that ye now take through eternity! No prompt-books, no lamps, no acting Congreve and Shakspeare there! For what parts in the skies have your studies on the earth fitted you? Your ultimate destinies are very puzzling. Hail to your effigies, and pass we on!
There, too, on the whitewashed walls, were admitted the portraits of ruder rivals in the arena of fame—yet they, too, had known an applause warmer than his age gave to Shakespeare; the champions of the ring—Cribb, and Molyneux, and Dutch Sam. Interspersed with these was an old print of Newmarket in the early part of the last century, and sundry engravings from Hogarth. But poets, oh! they were there, too: poets who might be supposed to have been sufficiently good fellows to be at home with such companions. Shakspeare, of course, with his placid forehead; Ben Jonson, with his heavy scowl; Burns and Byron cheek by jowl. But the strangest of all these heterogeneous specimens of graphic art was a full-length print of William Pitt!—William Pitt, the austere and imperious. What the deuce did he do there amongst prize-fighters, and actors, and poets? It seemed an insult to his grand memory. Nevertheless there he was, very erect, and with a look of ineffable disgust in his upturned nostrils. The portraits on the sordid walls were very like the crambo in the minds of ordinary men—very like the motley pictures of theFamoushung up in your parlour, O my Public! Actors and prize-fighters, poets and statesmen, all without congruity and fitness, all whom you have been to see or to hear for a moment, and whose names have stared out in your newspapers, O my Public!
And the company? Indescribable! Comedians from small theatres, out of employ: pale haggard-looking boys, probably the sons of worthy traders, trying their best to break their fathers' hearts; here and there the marked features of a Jew. Now and then you might see the curious puzzled face of some greenhorn about town, or perhaps a Cantab; and men of grave age, and gray-haired, were there, and amongst them a wondrous proportion of carbuncled faces and bottle noses. And when John Burley entered there was a shout, that made William Pitt shake in his frame. Such stamping and hallooing, and such hurrahs for "Burly John." And the gentleman who had filled the great high leathern chair in his absence gave it up to John Burley; and Leonard, with his grave observant eye, and lip half sad and half scornful, placed himself by the side of his introducer. There was a nameless expectant stir through the assembly, as when some great singer advances to the lamps, and begins "Di tanti palpiti." Time flies. Look at the Dutch clock over the door. Half-an-hour! John Burley begins to warm. A yet quicker light begins to break from his eye; his voice has a mellow luscious roll in it.
"He will be grand to-night," whispered a thin man who looked like a tailor, seated on the other side of Leonard.
Time flies—an hour! Look again at the Dutch clock, John Burleyisgrand, he is in his zenith, at his culminating point. What magnificent drollery!—what luxuriant humor! How the Rabelais shakes in his easy chair! Under the rush and the roar of this fun, (what word else shall describe it,) the man's intellect is as clear as a gold sand under a river. Such wit, and such truth, and, at times, such a flood of quick eloquence. All now are listeners, silent, save in applause. And Leonard listened too. Not, as he would some nights ago, in innocent unquestioning delight. No; his mind has passed through great sorrow, great passion, and it comes out unsettled, inquiring, eager, brooding over joy itself as over a problem. And the drink circulates, and faces change; and there are gabbling and babbling; and Burley's head sinks in his bosom, and he is silent. And up starts a wild, dissolute, bacchanalian glee for seven voices. And the smoke-reek grows denser and thicker, and the gas-light looks dizzy through the haze. And John Burley's eyes reel.
Look again at the Dutch clock. Two hours have gone. John Burley has broken out again from his silence, his voice thick and husky, and his laugh cracked; and he talks, O ye gods! such rubbish and ribaldry; and the listeners roar aloud, and think it finer than before. And Leonard, who had hitherto been measuring himself, in his mind, against the giant, and saying inly, "He soars out of my reach," finds the giant shrink smaller and smaller, and saith to himself, "He is but of man's common standard after all."
Look again at the Dutch clock. Three hour have passed. Is John Burley now of man's common standard? Man himself seems to have vanished from the scene; his soul stolen from him, his form gone away with the fumes of the smoke, and the nauseoussteam from that fiery bowl. And Leonard looked round, and saw but the swine of Circe—some on the floor, some staggering against the walls, some hugging each other on the tables, some fighting, some bawling, some weeping. The divine spark had fled from the human face; the beast is everywhere growing more and more out of the thing that had been man. And John Burley, still unconquered, but clean lost to his senses, fancies himself a preacher, and drawls forth the most lugubrious sermon upon the brevity of life that mortal ever heard, accompanied with unctuous sobs; and now and then, in the midst of balderdash, gleams out a gorgeous sentence, that Jeremy Taylor might have envied; drivelling away again into a cadence below the rhetoric of a Muggletonian. And the waiters choked up the doorway, listening and laughing, and prepared to call cabs and coaches; and suddenly some one turned off the gas light, and all was dark as pitch—howls and laughter as of the damned, ringing through the Pandemonium. Out from the black atmosphere stept the boy-poet; and the still stars rushed on his sight, as they looked over the grimy roof-tops.
Well, Leonard, this is the first time thou hast shown that thou hast in thee the iron out of which true manhood is forged and shaped. Thou hastthe power to resist. Forth, unebriate, unpolluted, he came from the orgy, as yon star above him came from the cloud.
He had a latch key to his lodging. He let himself in, and walked noiselessly up the creaking wooden stair. It was dawn. He passed on to his window, and threw it open. The green elm-tree from the carpenter's yard looked as fresh and fair as if rooted in solitudes, leagues away from the smoke of Babylon.
—"Nature, Nature!" murmured Leonard, "I hear thy voice now. This stills—this strengthens. But the struggle is very dread. Here, despair of life—there, faith in life. Nature thinks of neither, and lives serenely on."
By-and-by a bird slid softly from the heart of the tree, and dropped on the ground below out of sight. But Leonard heard its carol. It awoke its companions—wings began to glance in the air, and the clouds grew red toward the east.
Leonard sighed and left the window. On the table, near Helen's rose-tree, which bent over wistfully, lay a letter. He had not observed it before. It was in Helen's hand. He took it to the light, and read it by the pure healthful gleams of morn:—
"Oh, my dear brother Leonard, will this find you well, and (more happy I dare not say, but) less sad than when we parted? I write kneeling, so that it seems to me as if I wrote and prayed at the same time. You may come and see me to-morrow evening, Leonard. Do come, do—we shall walk together in this pretty garden; and there is an arbor all covered with jessamine and honeysuckle, from which we can look down on London. I have looked from it so many times—so many—trying if I can guess the roofs in our poor little street; and fancying that I do see the dear elm-tree. Miss Starke is very kind to me; and I think, after I have seen you, that I shall be happy here—that is, if you are happy. Your own grateful sister,
"Helen."Ivy Lodge.
"P. S.—Any one will direct you to our house; it lies to the left, near the top of the hill, a little way down a lane that is overhung on one side with chestnut trees and lilies. I shall be watching for you at the gate."
Leonard's brow softened, he looked again like his former self. Up from the dark sea at his heart smiled the meek face of a child, and the waves lay still as at the charm of a spirit.
"And what is Mr. Burley, and what has he written?" asked Leonard of Mr. Prickett when he returned to the shop. Let us reply to that question in our own words, for we know more about Mr. Burley than Mr. Prickett does.
John Burley was the only son of a poor clergyman, in a village near Ealing, who had scraped and saved and pinched, to send his son to an excellent provincial school in a northern country, and thence to college. At the latter, during his first year, young Burley was remarked by the undergraduates for his thick shoes and coarse linen, and remarkable to the authorities for his assiduity and learning. The highest hopes were entertained of him by the tutors and examiners. At the beginning of the second year his high animal spirits, before kept down by study, broke out. Reading had become easy to him. He knocked off his tasks with a facile stroke, as it were. He gave up his leisure hours to symposia by no means Socratical. He fell into an idle hard-drinking set. He got into all kinds of scrapes. The authorities were at first kind and forbearing in their admonitions, for they respected his abilities, and still hoped he might become an honor to the university. But at last he went drunk into a formal examination, and sent in papers after the manner of Aristophanes, containing capital jokes upon the Dons and Bigwigs themselves. The offence was the greater, and seemed the more premeditated, for being clothed in Greek. John Burley was expelled. He went home to his father's a miserable man, for with all his follies he had a good heart. Removed from ill example, his life for a year was blameless. He got admitted as usher into the school in which he had received instruction as a pupil. This schoolwas in a large town. John Burley became member of a club formed among the tradesmen, and spent three evenings a week there. His astonishing convivial and conversational powers began to declare themselves. He grew the oracle of the club; and from being the most sober peaceful assembly in which grave fathers of a family ever smoked a pipe or sipped a glass, it grew under Mr. Burley's auspices the parent of revels as frolicking and frantic as those out of which the old Greek Goat Song ever tipsily rose. This would not do. There was a great riot in the streets one night, and the next morning the usher was dismissed. Fortunately for John Burley's conscience, his father had died before this happened—died believing in the reform of his son. During his ushership Mr. Burley had scraped acquaintance with the editor of the county newspaper, and given him some capital political articles; for Burley was like Parr and Porson, a notable politician. The editor furnished him with letters to the journalists in London, and John came to the metropolis and got employed on a very respectable newspaper. At college he had known Audley Egerton, though but slightly; that gentleman was then just rising into repute in Parliament. Burley sympathized with some questions on which Audley had distinguished himself, and wrote a very good article thereon—an article so good that Egerton inquired into the authorship, found out Burley, and resolved in his own mind to provide for him whenever he himself came into office. But Burley was a man whom it was impossible to provide for. He soon lost his connection with the newspaper. First, he was so irregular that he could never be depended upon. Secondly, he had strange honest eccentric twists of thinking, that could coalesce with the thoughts of no party in the long run. An article of his, inadvertently admitted, had horrified all the proprietors, staff, and readers of the paper. It was diametrically opposite to the principles the paper advocated, and compared its pet politician to Catiline. Then John Burley shut himself up and wrote books. He wrote two or three books, very clever, but not at all to the popular taste—abstract and learned, full of whims that werecaviareto the multitude, and larded with Greek. Nevertheless, they obtained for him a little money, and among literary men some reputation.
Now Audley Egerton came into power, and got him, though with great difficulty—for there were many prejudices against this scampish harum-scarum son of the Muses—a place in a public office. He kept it about a month, and then voluntarily resigned it. "My crust of bread and liberty!" quoth John Burley, and he vanished into a garret. From that time to the present he lived—Heaven knows how. Literature is a business, like everything else; John Burley grew more and more incapable of business. "He could not do task-work," he said; he wrote when the whim seized him, or when the last penny was in his pouch, or when he was actually in the spunging-house or the Fleet—migrations which occurred to him, on an average, twice a year. He could generally sell what he had positively written, but no one would engage him beforehand. Magazines and other periodicals were very glad to have his articles, on the condition that they were anonymous; and his style was not necessarily detected, for he could vary it with the facility of a practised pen. Audley Egerton continued his best supporter, for there were certain questions on which no one wrote with such force as John Burley—questions connected with the metaphysics of politics, such as law reform and economical science. And Audley Egerton was the only man John Burley put himself out of the way to serve, and for whom he would give up a drinking-bout and dotask-work; for John Burley was grateful by nature, and he felt that Egerton had really tried to befriend him. Indeed, it was true, as he had stated to Leonard by the Brent, that, even after he had resigned his desk in the London office, he had had the offer of an appointment in Jamaica, and a place in India from the Minister. But probably there were other charms then than those exercised by the one-eyed perch, that kept him to the neighborhood of London. With all his grave faults of character and conduct, John Burley was not without the fine qualities of a large nature. He was most resolutely his own enemy, it is true, but he could hardly be said to be any one else's. Even when he criticised some more fortunate writer, he was good-humored in his very satire; he had no bile, no envy. And as for freedom from malignant personalities, he might have been a model to all critics. I must except politics, however, for in these he could be rabid and savage. He had a passion for independence, which, though pushed to excess, was not without grandeur. No lick-platter, no parasite, no toadeater, no literary beggar, no hunter after patronage and subscriptions; even in his dealings with Audley Egerton, he insisted on naming the price for his labors. He took a price, because, as the papers required by Audley demanded much reading and detail, which was not at all to his taste, he considered himself entitled fairly to something more than the editor of the journal, wherein the papers appeared, was in the habit of giving. But he assessed this extra price himself, and as he would have done to a bookseller. And, when in debt and in prison, though he knew a line to Egerton would have extricated him, he never wrote that line. He would depend alone on his pen, dipped it hastily in the ink, and scrawled himself free. The most debased point about him was certainly the incorrigible vice of drinking, and with it the usual concomitant of that vice—the love of low company. Tobe King of the Bohemians—to dazzle by his wild humor, and sometimes to exalt, by his fanciful eloquence, the rude gross nature that gathered round him—this was a royalty that repaid him for all sacrifice of solid dignity; a foolscap crown that he would not have changed for an emperor's diadem. Indeed, to appreciate rightly the talents of John Burley, it was necessary to hear him talk on such occasions. As a writer, after all, he was only capable now of unequal desultory efforts. But as a talker, in his own wild way, he was original and matchless. And the gift of talk is one of the most dangerous gifts a man can possess for his own sake—the applause is so immediate, and gained with so little labor. Lower, and lower, and lower, had sunk John Burley, not only in the opinion of all who knew his name, but in the habitual exercise of his talents. And this seemed wilfully—from choice. He would write for some unstamped journal of the populace, out of the pale of the law, for pence, when he could have got pounds from journals of high repute. He was very fond of scribbling off penny ballads, and then standing in the street to hear them sung. He actually once made himself the poet of an advertising tailor, and enjoyed it excessively. But that did not last long, for John Burley was a Pittite—not a Tory, he used to say, but a Pittite. And if you had heard him talk of Pitt, you would never have known what to make of that great statesman. He treated him as the German commentators do Shakspeare, and invested him with all imaginary meanings and objects, that would have turned the grand practical man into a sybil. Well, he was a Pittite; the tailor a fanatic for Thelwall and Cobbett. Mr. Burley wrote a poem, wherein Britannia appeared to the tailor, complimented him highly on the art he exhibited in adorning the persons of her sons; and, bestowing upon him a gigantic mantle, said that he, and he alone, might be enabled to fit it to the shoulders of living men. The rest of the poem was occupied in Mr. Snip's unavailing attempts to adjust this mantle to the eminent politicians of the day, when, just as he had sunk down in despair, Britannia reappeared to him, and consoled him with the information that he had done all mortal man could do, and that she had only desired to convince pigmies that no human art could adjust totheirproportions the mantle of William Pitt.Sic itur ad astra. She went back to the stars, mantle and all. Mr. Snip was exceedingly indignant at this allegorical effusion, and with wrathful shears cut the tie between himself and his poet.
Thus, then, the reader has, we trust, a pretty good idea of John Burley—a specimen of his genus, not very common in any age, and now happily almost extinct, since authors of all degrees share in the general improvement in order, economy, and sober decorum, which has obtained in the national manners. Mr. Prickett, though entering into less historical detail than we have done, conveyed to Leonard a tolerably accurate notion of the man, representing him as a person of great powers and learning, who had thoroughly thrown himself away.
Leonard did not, however, see how much Mr. Burley himself was to be blamed for his waste of life; he could not conceive a man of genius voluntarily seating himself at the lowest step in the social ladder. He rather supposed he had been thrust down there by Necessity.
And when Mr. Prickett, concluding, said, "Well, I should think Burley would cure you of the desire to be an author even more than Chatterton," the young man answered gloomily, "Perhaps," and turned to the book-shelves.
With Mr. Prickett's consent, Leonard was released earlier than usual from his task, and a little before sunset he took his way to Highgate. He was fortunately directed to take the new road by the Regent's Park, and so on through a very green and smiling country. The walk, the freshness of the air, the songs of the birds, and, above all, when he had got half-way, the solitude of the road, served to rouse him from his stern and sombre meditations. And when he came into the lane overhung with chestnut trees, and suddenly caught sight of Helen's watchful and then brightening face, as she stood by the wicket, and under the shadow of cool murmurous boughs, the blood rushed gayly through his veins, and his heart beat loud and gratefully.
She drew him into the garden with such true childlike joy!
Now behold them seated in the arbor—a perfect bower of sweets and blossoms; the wilderness of roof-tops and spires stretching below, broad and far; London seen dim and silent, as in a dream.
She took his hat from his brows gently, and looked him in the face with tearful penetrating eyes.
She did not say, "You have changed."—She said, "Why, why did I leave you?" and then turned away.
"Never mind me, Helen. I am man, and rudely born—speak of yourself. This lady is kind to you, then?"
"Does she not let me see you? Oh! very kind—and look here."
Helen pointed to fruits and cakes set out on the table. "A feast, brother."
And she began to press her hospitality with pretty winning ways, more playful than was usual for her, and talking very fast, and with forced but silvery laughter.
By degrees she stole him from his gloom and reserve; and, though he could not reveal to her the cause of his bitterest sorrow,he owned that he had suffered much. He would not have ownedthatto another living being. And then, quickly turning from this brief confession, with assurances that the worst was over, he sought to amuse her by speaking of his new acquaintance with the perch-fisher. But when he spoke of this man with a kind of reluctant admiration, mixed with compassionate yet gloomy interest, and drew a grotesque though subdued sketch of the wild scene in which he had been spectator, Helen grew alarmed and grave.
"Oh, brother, do not go there again—do not see more of this bad man."
"Bad!—no! Hopeless and unhappy, he has stooped to stimulants and oblivion;—but you cannot understand these things, my pretty preacher."
"Yes I do, Leonard. What is the difference between being good and bad? The good do not yield to temptations, and the bad do."
The definition was so simple and so wise that Leonard was more struck with it than he might have been by the most elaborate sermon by Parson Dale.
"I have often murmured to myself since I lost you, 'Helen was my good angel;'—say on. For my heart is dark to myself, and while you speak light seems to dawn on it."
This praise so confused Helen that she was long before she could obey the command annexed to it. But, by little and little, words came to both more frankly. And then he told her the sad tale of Chatterton, and waited, anxious to hear her comments.
"Well," he said, seeing that she remained silent, "how canIhope, when this mighty genius labored and despaired? What did he want, save birth and fortune, and friends, and human justice."
"Did he pray to God?" said Helen, drying her tears.
Again Leonard was startled. In reading the life of Chatterton, he had not much noted the scepticism, assumed or real, of the ill-fated aspirer to earthly immortality. At Helen's question, that scepticism struck him forcibly.
"Why do you ask that, Helen?"
"Because, when we pray often, we grow so very, very patient," answered the child. "Perhaps, had he been patient a few months more all would have been won by him, as it will be by you, brother; for you pray, and you will be patient."
Leonard bowed his head in deep thought, and this time the thought was not gloomy. Then out from that awful life there glowed another passage, which before he had not heeded duly, but regarded rather as one of the darkest mysteries in the fate of Chatterton.
At the very time the despairing poet had locked himself up in his garret, to dismiss his soul from its earthly ordeal, his genius had just found its way into the light of renown. Good and learned and powerful men were preparing to serve and save him. Another year,—nay, perchance, another month—and he might have stood acknowledged and sublime in the foremost front of his age.
"Oh Helen!" cried Leonard, raising his brows from which the cloud had passed,—"Why, indeed, did you leave me?"
Helen started in her turn as he repeated this regret, and in her turn grew thoughtful. At length she asked him if he had written for the box which had belonged to her father, and been left at the inn.
And Leonard, though a little chafed at what he thought a childish interruption to themes of graver interest, owned with self-reproach that he had forgotten to do so. Should he not write now to order the box to be sent to her at Miss Starke's.
"No; let it be sent to you. Take care of it. I should like to know that something of mine is with you; and perhaps I may not stay here long."
"Not stay here? That you must, my dear Helen—at least as long as Miss Starke will keep you, and is kind. By-and-by, (added Leonard, with something of his former sanguine tone) I may yet make my way, and we shall have our cottage to ourselves. But—Oh Helen!—I forgot—you wounded me; you left your money with me. I only found it in my drawers the other day. Fie!—I have brought it back."
"It was not mine—it is yours. We were to share together—you paid all; and how can I want it here, too?"
But Leonard was obstinate; and as Helen mournfully received back all that of fortune her father had bequeathed to her, a tall female figure stood at the entrance of the harbor, and said, that scattered all sentiment to the winds—"Young man, it is time to go."
"Already!" said Helen, with faltering accents, as she crept to Miss Starke's side, while Leonard rose and bowed. "I am very grateful to you, Madam," said he, with the grace that comes from all refinement of idea, "for allowing me to see Miss Helen. Do not let me abuse your kindness." Miss Starke seemed struck with his look and manner, and made a stiff half curtsey.
A form more rigid than Miss Starke's it was hard to conceive. She was like the grim white woman in the nursery ballads. Yet, apparently, there was a good nature in allowing the stranger to enter her trim garden, and providing for him and her little charge those fruit and cakes which belied her aspect. "May I go with him to the gate?" whispered Helen, as Leonard had already passed up the path.
"You may, child; but do not loiter. And then come back, and lock up the cakes and cherries, or Patty will get at them."
Helen ran after Leonard.
"Write to me, brother—write to me; and do not, do not be friends with this man who took you to that wicked, wicked place."
"Oh, Helen, I go from you strong enough to brave worse dangers than that," said Leonard almost gaily.
They kissed each other at the little wicket gate, and parted.
Leonard walked home under the summer moonlight, and on entering his chamber, looked first at his rose-tree. The leaves of yesterday's flowers lay strewn round it; but the tree had put forth new buds.
"Nature ever restores," said the young man. He paused a moment, and added, "It is that Nature is very patient?"
His sleep that night was not broken by the fearful dreams he had lately known. He rose refreshed, and went his way to his day's work—not stealing along the less crowded paths, but with a firm step, through the throng of men. Be bold, adventurer—thou hast more to suffer! Wilt thou sink? I look into thy heart, and I cannot answer.