Part 76 (2/2)
”But the bright clear eyes are! Ah, now you look up to heaven, and yours seem to dream like his.”
Leonard did not answer, for his thoughts were indeed less on earth than struggling to pierce into that remote and mysterious heaven.
Both were silent long; the crowd pa.s.sed them by unheedingly. Night deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamp-lights on its waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the darkness of the strong current; and the craft that lay eastward on the tide, with sail-less spectral masts and black dismal hulks, looked death-like in their stillness.
Leonard looked down, and the thought of Chatterton's grim suicide came back to his soul; and a pale, scornful face, with luminous haunting eyes, seemed to look up from the stream, and murmur from livid lips, ”Struggle no more against the tides on the surface,--all is calm and rest within the deep.”
Starting in terror from the gloom of his revery, the boy began to talk fast to Helen, and tried to soothe her with descriptions of the lowly home which he had offered.
He spoke of the light cares which she would partic.i.p.ate with his mother (for by that name he still called the widow), and dwelt, with an eloquence that the contrast round him made sincere and strong, on the happy rural life, the shadowy woodlands, the rippling cornfields, the solemn, lone churchspire soaring from the tranquil landscape.
Flatteringly he painted the flowery terraces of the Italian exile, and the playful fountain that, even as he spoke, was flinging up its spray to the stars, through serene air untroubled by the smoke of cities, and untainted by the sinful sighs of men. He promised her the love and protection of natures akin to the happy scene: the simple, affectionate mother, the gentle pastor, the exile wise and kind, Violante, with dark eyes full of the mystic thoughts that solitude calls from childhood,--Violante should be her companion.
”And, oh!” cried Helen, ”if life be thus happy there, return with me, return! return!”
”Alas!” murmured the boy, ”if the hammer once strike the spark from the anvil, the spark must fly upward; it cannot fall back to earth until light has left it. Upward still, Helen,--let me go upward still!”
CHAPTER XV.
The next morning Helen was very ill,--so ill that, shortly after rising, she was forced to creep back to bed. Her frame s.h.i.+vered, her eyes were heavy, her hand burned like fire. Fever had set in. Perhaps she might have caught cold on the bridge, perhaps her emotions had proved too much for her frame. Leonard, in great alarm, called in the nearest apothecary. The apothecary looked grave, and said there was danger. And danger soon declared itself,--Helen became delirious. For several days she lay in this state, be tween life and death. Leonard then felt that all the sorrows of earth are light, compared with the fear of losing what we love. How valueless the envied laurel seemed beside the dying rose!
Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed and tending than to medical skill, she recovered sense at last. Immediate peril was over; but she was very weak and reduced, her ultimate recovery doubtful, convalescence, at best, likely to be very slow.
But when she learned how long she had been thus ill, she looked anxiously at Leonard's face as he bent over her, and faltered forth, ”Give me my work; I am strong enough for that now,--it would amuse me.”
Leonard burst into tears.
Alas! he had no work himself; all their joint money had melted away. The apothecary was not like good Dr. Morgan; the medicines were to be paid for, and the rent. Two days before, Leonard had p.a.w.ned Riccabocca's watch; and when the last s.h.i.+lling thus raised was gone, how should he support Helen? Nevertheless he conquered his tears, and a.s.sured her that he had employment; and that so earnestly that she believed him, and sank into soft sleep. He listened to her breathing, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He turned into his own neighbouring garret, and leaning his face on his hands, collected all his thoughts.
He must be a beggar at last. He must write to Mr. Dale for money,--Mr.
Dale, too, who knew the secret of his birth. He would rather have begged of a stranger; it seemed to add a new dishonour to his mother's memory for the child to beg of one who was acquainted with her shame. Had he himself been the only one to want and to starve, he would have sunk inch by inch into the grave of famine, before he would have so subdued his pride. But Helen, there on that bed,--Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries!
Beg he must. And when he so resolved, had you but seen the proud, bitter soul he conquered, you would have said, ”This, which he thinks is degradation,--this is heroism.” Oh, strange human heart! no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves.
Of whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, ”Would that I were a man!
”--he could not endure the thought that she should pity him and despise.
The Avenels! No,--thrice No. He drew towards him hastily ink and paper, and wrote rapid lines that were wrung from him as from the bleeding strings of life.
But the hour for the post had pa.s.sed, the letter must wait till the next day; and three days at least would elapse before he could receive an answer. He left the letter on the table, and, stifling as for air, went forth. He crossed the bridge, he pa.s.sed on mechanically, and was borne along by a crowd pressing towards the doors of parliament. A debate that excited popular interest was fixed for that evening, and many bystanders collected in the street to see the members pa.s.s to and fro, or hear what speakers had yet risen to take part in the debate, or try to get orders for the gallery.
He halted amidst these loiterers, with no interest, indeed, in common with them, but looking over their heads abstractedly towards the tall Funeral Abbey,--imperial Golgotha of Poets and Chiefs and Kings.
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