Part 67 (1/2)
Leonard listened and made no opposition,--now that his day-dream was dispelled, he had no right to pretend to be Helen's protector. He could have prayed her to share his wealth and his fame; his penury and his drudgery--no.
It was a very sorrowful evening,--that between the adventurer and the child. They sat up late, till their candle had burned down to the socket; neither did they talk much; but his hand clasped hers all the time, and her head pillowed it self on his shoulder. I fear when they parted it was not for sleep.
And when Leonard went forth the next morning, Helen stood at the street door watching him depart--slowly, slowly. No doubt, in that humble lane there were many sad hearts; but no heart so heavy as that of the still, quiet child, when the form she had watched was to be seen no more, and, still standing on the desolate threshold, she gazed into s.p.a.ce, and all was vacant.
CHAPTER XVI.
Mr. p.r.i.c.kett was a believer in homeeopathy, and declared, to the indignation of all the apothecaries round Holborn, that he had been cured of a chronic rheumatism by Dr. Morgan. The good doctor had, as he promised, seen Mr. p.r.i.c.kett when he left Leonard, and asked him as a favour to find some light occupation for the boy, that would serve as an excuse for a modest weekly salary. ”It will not be for long,” said the doctor: ”his relations are respectable and well off. I will write to his grandparents, and in a few days I hope to relieve you of the charge. Of course, if you don't want him, I will repay what he costs meanwhile.”
Mr. p.r.i.c.kett, thus prepared for Leonard, received him very graciously; and, after a few questions, said Leonard was just the person he wanted to a.s.sist him in cataloguing his books, and offered him most handsomely L1 a week for the task.
Plunged at once into a world of books vaster than he had ever before won admission to, that old divine dream of knowledge, out of which poetry had sprung, returned to the village student at the very sight of the venerable volumes. The collection of Mr. p.r.i.c.kett was, however, in reality by no means large; but it comprised not only the ordinary standard works, but several curious and rare ones. And Leonard paused in making the catalogue, and took many a hasty s.n.a.t.c.h of the contents of each tome, as it pa.s.sed through his hands. The bookseller, who was an enthusiast for old books, was pleased to see a kindred feeling (which his shop-boy had never exhibited) in his new a.s.sistant; and he talked about rare editions and scarce copies, and initiated Leonard into many of the mysteries of the bibliographist.
Nothing could be more dark and dingy than the shop. There was a booth outside, containing cheap books and odd volumes, round which there was always an attentive group; within, a gas-lamp burned night and day.
But time pa.s.sed quickly to Leonard. He missed not the green fields, he forgot his disappointments, he ceased to remember even Helen. O strange pa.s.sion of knowledge! nothing like thee for strength and devotion!
Mr. p.r.i.c.kett was a bachelor, and asked Leonard to dine with him on a cold shoulder of mutton. During dinner the shop-boy kept the shop, and Mr. p.r.i.c.kett was really pleasant, as well as loquacious. He took a liking to Leonard, and Leonard told him his adventures with the publishers, at which Mr. p.r.i.c.kett rubbed his hands and laughed, as at a capital joke. ”Oh, give up poetry, and stick to a shop,” cried he; ”and to cure you forever of the mad whim to be author, I'll just lend you the 'Life and Works of Chatterton.' You may take it home with you and read before you go to bed. You'll come back quite a new man to-morrow.”
Not till night, when the shop was closed, did Leonard return to his lodging. And when he entered the room, he was struck to the soul by the silence, by the void. Helen was gone!
There was a rose-tree in its pot on the table at which he wrote, and by it a sc.r.a.p of paper, on which was written,
DEAR, dear brother Leonard, G.o.d bless you. I will let you know when we can meet again. Take care of this rose, Brother, and don't forget poor
HELEN.
Over the word ”forget” there was a big round blistered spot that nearly effaced the word.
Leonard leaned his face on his hands, and for the first time in his life he felt what solitude really is. He could not stay long in the room.
He walked out again, and wandered objectless to and fro the streets. He pa.s.sed that stiller and humbler neighbourhood, he mixed with the throng that swarmed in the more populous thoroughfares. Hundreds and thousands pa.s.sed him by, and still--still such solitude.
He came back, lighted his candle, and resolutely drew forth the ”Chatterton” which the bookseller had lent him. It was an old edition, in one thick volume. It had evidently belonged to some contemporary of the poet's,--apparently an inhabitant of Bristol,--some one who had gathered up many anecdotes respecting Chatterton's habits, and who appeared even to have seen him, nay, been in his company; for the book was interleaved, and the leaves covered with notes and remarks, in a stiff clear hand,--all evincing personal knowledge of the mournful immortal dead. At first, Leonard read with an effort; then the strange and fierce spell of that dread life seized upon him,--seized with pain and gloom and terror,--this boy dying by his own hand, about the age Leonard had attained himself. This wondrous boy, of a genius beyond all comparison the greatest that ever yet was developed and extinguished at the age of eighteen,--self-taught, self-struggling, self-immolated.
Nothing in literature like that life and that death!
With intense interest Leonard perused the tale of the brilliant imposture, which had been so harshly and so absurdly construed into the crime of a forgery, and which was (if not wholly innocent) so akin to the literary devices always in other cases viewed with indulgence, and exhibiting, in this, intellectual qualities in themselves so amazing,--such patience, such forethought, such labour, such courage, such ingenuity,--the qualities that, well directed, make men great, not only in books, but action. And, turning from the history of the imposture to the poems themselves, the young reader bent before their beauty, literally awed and breathless. How this strange Bristol boy tamed and mastered his rude and motley materials into a music that comprehended every tune and key, from the simplest to the sublimest!
He turned back to the biography; he read on; he saw the proud, daring, mournful spirit alone in the Great City, like himself. He followed its dismal career, he saw it falling with bruised and soiled wings into the mire. He turned again to the later works, wrung forth as tasks for bread,--the satires without moral grandeur, the politics without honest faith. He shuddered and sickened as he read. True, even here his poet mind appreciated (what perhaps only poets can) the divine fire that burned fitfully through that meaner and more sordid fuel,--he still traced in those crude, hasty, bitter offerings to dire Necessity the hand of the young giant who had built up the stately verse of Rowley.
But alas! how different from that ”mighty line.” How all serenity and joy had fled from these later exercises of art degraded into journey-work! Then rapidly came on the catastrophe,--the closed doors, the poison, the suicide, the ma.n.u.scripts torn by the hands of despairing wrath, and strewed round the corpse upon the funereal floors. It was terrible! The spectre of the t.i.tan boy (as described in the notes written on the margin), with his haughty brow, his cynic smile, his l.u.s.trous eyes, haunted all the night the baffled and solitary child of song.
CHAPTER XVII.
It will often happen that what ought to turn the human mind from some peculiar tendency produces the opposite effect. One would think that the perusal in the newspaper of some crime and capital punishment would warn away all who had ever meditated the crime, or dreaded the chance of detection. Yet it is well known to us that many a criminal is made by pondering over the fate of some predecessor in guilt. There is a fascination in the Dark and Forbidden, which, strange to say, is only lost in fiction. No man is more inclined to murder his nephews, or stifle his wife, after reading ”Richard the Third” or ”Oth.e.l.lo.” It is the reality that is necessary to const.i.tute the danger of contagion.
Now, it was this reality in the fate and life and crowning suicide of Chatterton that forced itself upon Leonard's thoughts, and sat there like a visible evil thing, gathering evil like cloud around it. There was much in the dead poet's character, his trials, and his doom, that stood out to Leonard like a bold and colossal shadow of himself and his fate. Alas! the book seller, in one respect, had said truly. Leonard came back to him the next day a new man; and it seemed even to himself as if he had lost a good angel in losing Helen. ”Oh, that she had been by my side!” thought he. ”Oh, that I could have felt the touch of her confiding hand; that, looking up from the scathed and dreary ruin of this life, that had sublimely lifted itself from the plain, and sought to tower aloft from a deluge, her mild look had spoken to me of innocent, humble, unaspiring childhood! Ah! If indeed I were still necessary to her,--still the sole guardian and protector,--then could I say to myself; 'Thou must not despair and die! Thou hast her to live and to strive for.' But no, no! Only this vast and terrible London,--the solitude of the dreary garret, and those l.u.s.trous eyes, glaring alike through the throng and through the solitude.”
CHAPTER XVIII.