Part 76 (1/2)
Helen in vain and with tears entreated her to take no step in reply to the advertis.e.m.e.nt. Mrs. Smedley felt that it was an affair of duty, and was obdurate, and shortly afterwards put on her bonnet and left the house. Helen conjectured that she was on her way to Miss Starke's, and her whole soul was bent on flight. Leonard had gone to the office of the ”Beehive” with his ma.n.u.scripts; but she packed up all their joint effects, and just as she had done so, he returned. She communicated the news of the advertis.e.m.e.nt, and said she should be so miserable if compelled to go back to Miss Starke's, and implored him so pathetically to save her from such sorrow, that he at once a.s.sented to her proposal of flight. Luckily, little was owing to the landlady,--that little was left with the maid-servant; and, profiting by Mrs. Smedley's absence, they escaped without scene or conflict. Their effects were taken by Leonard to a stand of hackney vehicles, and then left at a coach-office while they went in search of lodgings. It was wise to choose an entirely new and remote district; and before night they were settled in an attic in Lambeth.
CHAPTER XIII.
As the reader will expect, no trace of Burley could Leonard find: the humourist had ceased to communicate with the ”Beehive.” But Leonard grieved for Burley's sake; and, indeed, he missed the intercourse of the large, wrong mind. But he settled down by degrees to the simple, loving society of his child companion, and in that presence grew more tranquil.
The hours in the daytime that he did not pa.s.s at work, he spent as before, picking up knowledge at book-stalls; and at dusk he and Helen would stroll out,--sometimes striving to escape from the long suburb into fresh rural air; more often wandering to and fro the bridge that led to glorious Westminster--London's cla.s.sic land--and watching the vague lamps reflected on the river. This haunt suited the musing, melancholy boy. He would stand long and with wistful silence by the bal.u.s.trade, seating Helen thereon, that she too might look along the dark mournful waters, which, dark though they be, still have their charm of mysterious repose.
As the river flowed between the world of roofs, and the roar of human pa.s.sions on either side, so in those two hearts flowed Thought--and all they knew of London was its shadow.
CHAPTER XIV.
There appeared in the ”Beehive” certain very truculent political papers,--papers very like the tracts in the tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the ”Beehive” than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the ”Beehive” and all its papers and plant. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard, unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not new to his ear was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations against ”tyrants.” He looked, and, to his amaze, recognized in the orator Mr. Sprott the Tinker.
The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr. Sprott prudently vanished. Leonard learned, then, what had befallen, and again saw himself without employment and the means of bread.
Slowly he walked back. ”O knowledge, knowledge!--powerless, indeed!” he murmured.
As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead wall, ”Wanted, a few smart young men for India.”
A crimp accosted him. ”You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have stout limbs of your own.” Leonard moved on.
”It has come back then to this,--brute physical force after all! O Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a machine again!” He entered his attic noiselessly, and gazed upon Helen as she sat at work, straining her eyes by the open window--with tender and deep compa.s.sion. She had not heard him enter, nor was she aware of his presence. Patient and still she sat, and the small fingers plied busily. He gazed, and saw that her cheek was pale and hollow, and the hands looked so thin! His heart was deeply touched, and at that moment he had not one memory of the baffled Poet, one thought that proclaimed the Egotist.
He approached her gently, laid his hand on her shoulder, ”Helen, put on your shawl and bonnet, and walk out,--I have much to say.”
In a few moments she was ready, and they took their way to their favourite haunt upon the bridge. Pausing in one of the recesses, or nooks, Leonard then began, ”Helen, we must part!”
”Part?--Oh, brother!”
”Listen. All work that depends on mind is over for me, nothing remains but the labour of thews and sinews. I cannot go back to my village and say to all, 'My hopes were self-conceit, and my intellect a delusion!' I cannot. Neither in this sordid city can I turn menial or porter. I might be born to that drudgery, but my mind has, it may be unhappily, raised me above my birth. What, then, shall I do? I know not yet,--serve as a soldier, or push my way to some wilderness afar, as an emigrant, perhaps. But whatever my choice, I must henceforth be alone; I have a home no more. But there is a home for you, Helen, a very humble one (for you too, so well born), but very safe,--the roof of--of--my peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and--and--”
Helen clung to him trembling, and sobbed out, ”Anything, anything you will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard. I do, indeed, make money,--you do not know how much, but enough for us both till better times come to you. Do not let us part.”
”And I--a man, and born to labour--to be maintained by the work of an infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me.”
She drew back as she looked on his flushed brow, bowed her head submissively, and murmured, ”Pardon.”
”Ah,” said Helen, after a pause, ”if now we could but find my poor father's friend! I never so much cared for it before.”
”Yes, he would surely provide for you.”
”For me!” repeated Helen, in a tone of soft, deep reproach, and she turned away her head to conceal her tears.
”You are sure you would remember him, if we met him by chance?”
”Oh, yes. He was so different from all we see in this terrible city, and his eyes were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog, whom he called Nero--I could not forget that.”
”But his dog may not be always with him.”