Book: My Novel, Volume 6.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 6.




"Come to your home with me, my child, and we will talk of him by the
way."

"Him! Who are you? You did not know him!" said the girl, still with
anger. "Go away! Why do you disturb me? I do no one harm. Go! go!"

"You do yourself harm, and that will grieve him if he sees you yonder!
Come!"

The child looked at him through her blinding tears, and his face softened
and soothed her.

"Go!" she said, very plaintively, and in subdued accents. "I will but
stay a minute more. I--I have so much to say yet."

Leonard left the churchyard, and waited without; and in a short time the
child came forth, waived him aside as he approached her, and hurried
away. He followed her at a distance, and saw her disappear within the
inn.




CHAPTER V.

"Hip-Hip-Hurrah!" Such was the sound that greeted our young traveller as
he reached the inn door,--a sound joyous in itself, but sadly out of
harmony with the feelings which the child sobbing on the tombless grave
had left at his heart. The sound came from within, and was followed by
thumps and stamps, and the jingle of glasses. A strong odour of tobacco
was wafted to his olfactory sense. He hesitated a moment at the
threshold.

Before him, on benches under the beech-tree and within the arbour, were
grouped sundry athletic forms with "pipes in the liberal air."

The landlady, as she passed across the passage to the taproom, caught
sight of his form at the doorway, and came forward. Leonard still stood
irresolute. He would have gone on his way, but for the child: she had
interested him strongly.

"You seem full, ma'am," said he. "Can I have accommodation for the
night?"

"Why, indeed, sir," said the landlady, civilly, "I can give you a
bedroom, but I don't know where to put you meanwhile. The two parlours
and the tap-room and the kitchen are all choke-full. There has been a
great cattle-fair in the neighbourhood, and I suppose we have as many as
fifty farmers and drovers stopping here."

"As to that, ma'am, I can sit in the bedroom you are kind enough to give
me; and if it does not cause you much trouble to let me have some tea
there, I should be glad; but I can wait your leisure. Do not put
yourself out of the way for me."

The landlady was touched by a consideration she was not much habituated
to receive from her bluff customers. "You speak very handsome, sir, and
we will do our best to serve you, if you will excuse all faults. This
way, sir." Leonard lowered his knapsack, stepped into the passage, with
some difficulty forced his way through a knot of sturdy giants in top-
boots or leathern gaiters, who were swarining in and out the tap-room,
and followed his hostess upstairs to a little bedroom at the top of the
house.

"It is small, sir, and high," said the hostess, apologetically. "But
there be four gentlemen farmers that have come a great distance, and all
the first floor is engaged; you will be more out of the noise here."

"Nothing can suit me better. But, stay,--pardon me;" and Leonard,
glancing at the garb of the hostess, observed she was not in mourning.
"A little girl whom I saw in the churchyard yonder, weeping very
bitterly--is she a relation of yours? Poor child! she seems to have
deeper feelings than are common at her age."

"Ah, sir," said the landlady, putting the corner of her apron to her
eyes, "it is a very sad story. I don't know what to do. Her father was
taken ill on his way to Lunnon, and stopped here, and has been buried
four days. And the poor little girl seems to have no relations--and
where is she to go? Laryer Jones says we must pass her to Marybone
parish, where her father lived last; and what's to become of her then?
My heart bleeds to think on it."

Here there rose such an uproar from below, that it was evident some
quarrel had broken out; and the hostess, recalled to her duties, hastened
to carry thither her propitiatory influences.

Leonard seated himself pensively by the little lattice. Here was some
one more alone in the world than he; and she, poor orphan, had no stout
man's heart to grapple with fate, and no golden manuscripts that were to
be as the "Open-Sesame" to the treasures of Aladdin. By and by, the
hostess brought him up a tray with tea and other refreshments, and
Leonard resumed his inquiries. "No relatives?" said he; "surely the
child must have some kinsfolk in London? Did her father leave no
directions, or was he in possession of his faculties?"

"Yes, sir; he was quite reasonable like to the last. And I asked him if
he had not anything on his mind, and he said, 'I have.' And I said,
'Your little girl, sir?' And he answered me, 'Yes, ma'am;' and laying
his head on his pillow, he wept very quietly. I could not say more
myself, for it set me off to see him cry so meekly; but my husband is
harder nor I, and he said, 'Cheer up, Mr. Digby; had not you better write
to your friends?'

"'Friends!' said the gentleman, in such a voice! 'Friends I have but
one, and I am going to Him! I cannot take her there!' Then he seemed
suddenly to recollect himself, and called for his clothes, and rummaged
in the pockets as if looking for some address, and could not find it. He
seemed a forgetful kind of gentleman, and his hands were what I call
helpless hands, sir! And then he gasped out, 'Stop, stop! I never had
the address. Write to Lord Les--', something like Lord Lester, but we
could not make out the name. Indeed he did not finish it, for there was
a rush of blood to his lips; and though he seemed sensible when he
recovered (and knew us and his little girl too, till he went off
smiling), he never spoke word more."

"Poor man," said Leonard, wiping his eyes. "But his little girl surely
remembers the name that he did not finish?"

"No. She says he must have meant a gentleman whom they had met in the
Park not long ago, who was very kind to her father, and was Lord
something; but she don't remember the name, for she never saw him before
or since, and her father talked very little about any one lately, but
thought he should find some kind friends at Screwstown, and travelled
down there with her from Lunnon. But she supposes he was disappointed,
for he went out, came back, and merely told her to put up the things, as
they must go back to Lunnon. And on his way there he--died. Hush,
what's that? I hope she did not overhear us. No, we were talking low.
She has the next room to your'n, sir. I thought I heard her sobbing.
Hush!"

"In the next room? I hear nothing. Well, with your leave, I will speak
to her before I quit you. And had her father no money with him?"

"Yes, a few sovereigns, sir; they paid for his funeral, and there is a
little left still,--enough to take her to town; for my husband said, says
he, 'Hannah, the widow gave her mite, and we must not take the orphan's;'
and my husband is a hard man, too, sir--bless him!"

"Let me take your hand, ma'am. God reward you both." "La, sir! why,
even Dr. Dosewell said, rather grumpily though, 'Never mind my bill; but
don't call me up at six o'clock in the morning again, without knowing a
little more about people.' And I never afore knew Dr. Dosewell go
without his bill being paid. He said it was a trick o' the other doctor
to spite him."

"What other doctor?"

"Oh, a very good gentleman, who got out with Mr. Digby when he was taken
ill, and stayed till the next morning; and our doctor says his name is
Morgan, and he lives in Lunnou, and is a homy--something."

"Homicide," suggested Leonard, ignorantly.

"Ah, homicide; something like that, only a deal longer and worse. But he
left some of the tiniest little balls you ever see, sir, to give the
child; but, bless you, they did her no good,--how should they?"

"Tiny balls, oh--homoeopathist--I understand. And the doctor was kind to
her; perhaps he may help her. Have you written to him?"

"But we don't know his address, and Lunnon is a vast place, sir."

"I am going to London and will find it out."

"Ah, sir, you seem very kind; and sin' she must go to Lunnon (for what
can we do with her here?--she's too genteel for service), I wish she was
going with you."

"With me!" said Leonard, startled,--"with me! Well, why not?"

"I am sure she comes of good blood, sir. You would have known her father
was quite the gentleman, only to see him die, sir. He went off so kind
and civil like, as if he was ashamed to give so much trouble,--quite a
gentleman, if ever there was one. And so are you, sir, I'm sure," said
the land lady, courtesying; "I know what gentlefolk be. I've been a
housekeeper in the first of families in this very shire, sir, though I
can't say I've served in Lunnon; and so, as gentlefolks know each other,
I 've no doubt you could find out her relations. Dear, dear! Coming,
coming!"

Here there were loud cries for the hostess, and she hurried away. The
farmers and drovers were beginning to depart, and their bills were to be
made out and paid. Leonard saw his hostess no more that night. The last
Hip-hip-hurrah was heard,--some toast, perhaps to the health of the
county members,--and the chamber of woe beside Leonard's rattled with the
shout. By and by, silence gradually succeeded the various dissonant
sounds below. The carts and gigs rolled away; the clatter of hoofs on
the road ceased; there was then a dumb dull sound as of locking-up, and
low, humming voices below, and footsteps mounting the stairs to bed, with
now and then a drunken hiccough or maudlin laugh, as some conquered
votary of Bacchus was fairly carried up to his domicile.

All, then, at last was silent, just as the clock from the church sounded
the stroke of eleven.

Leonard, meanwhile, had been looking over his manuscripts. There was
first a project for an improvement on the steam-engine,--a project that
had long lain in his mind, begun with the first knowledge of mechanics
that he had gleaned from his purchases of the tinker. He put that aside
now,--it required too great an effort of the reasoning faculty to
re-examine.

He glanced less hastily over a collection of essays on various subjects,
--some that he thought indifferent, some that he thought good. He then
lingered over a collection of verses written in his best hand with loving
care,--verses first inspired by his perusal of Nora's melancholy
memorials. These verses were as a diary of his heart and his fancy,--
those deep, unwitnessed struggles which the boyhood of all more
thoughtful natures has passed in its bright yet murky storm of the cloud
and the lightning-flash, though but few boys pause to record the crisis
from which slowly emerges Man. And these first desultory grapplings with
the fugitive airy images that flit through the dim chambers of the brain
had become with each effort more sustained and vigorous, till the
phantoms were spelled, the flying ones arrested, the Immaterial seized,
and clothed with Form. Gazing on his last effort, Leonard felt that
there at length spoke forth the poet. It was a work which though as yet
but half completed, came from a strong hand; not that shadow trembling on
unsteady waters, which is but the pale reflex and imitation of some
bright mind, sphered out of reach and afar, but an original substance,--
a life, a thing of the Creative Faculty,--breathing back already the
breath it had received. This work had paused during Leonard's residence
with Mr. Avenel, or had only now and then, in stealth, and at night,
received a rare touch. Now, as with a fresh eye he reperused it, and
with that strange, innocent admiration, not of self--for a man's work is
not, alas! himself,--it is the beautified and idealized essence,
extracted he knows not how from his own human elements of clay;
admiration known but to poets,--their purest delight, often their sole
reward. And then with a warmer and more earthly beat of his full heart,
he rushed in fancy to the Great City, where all rivers of fame meet, but
not to be merged and lost, sallying forth again, individualized and
separate, to flow through that one vast Thought of God which we call
THE WORLD.

He put up his papers; and opened his window, as was his ordinary custom,
before he retired to rest,--for he had many odd habits; and he loved to
look out into the night when he prayed. His soul seemed to escape from
the body--to mount on the air, to gain more rapid access to the far
Throne in the Infinite--when his breath went forth among the winds, and
his eyes rested fixed on the stars of heaven.

So the boy prayed silently; and after his prayer he was about,
lingeringly, to close the lattice, when he heard distinctly sobs close at
hand. He paused, and held his breath, then looked gently out; the
casement next his own was also open. Someone was also at watch by that
casement,--perhaps also praying. He listened yet more intently, and
caught, soft and low, the words, "Father, Father, do you hear me now?"




CHAPTER VI.

Leonard opened his door and stole towards that of the room adjoining; for
his first natural impulse had been to enter and console. But when his
touch was on the handle, he drew back. Child though the mourner was, her
sorrows were rendered yet more sacred from intrusion by her sex.
Something, he knew not what, in his young ignorance, withheld him from
the threshold. To have crossed it then would have seemed to him
profanation. So he returned, and for hours yet he occasionally heard the
sobs, till they died away, and childhood wept itself to sleep.

But the next morning, when he heard his neighbour astir, he knocked
gently at her door: there was no answer. He entered softly, and saw her
seated very listlessly in the centre of the room,--as if it had no
familiar nook or corner as the rooms of home have, her hands drooping on
her lap, and her eyes gazing desolately on the floor. Then he approached
and spoke to her.

Helen was very subdued, and very silent. Her tears seemed dried up;
and it was long before she gave sign or token that she heeded him. At
length, however, he gradually succeeded in rousing her interest; and the
first symptom of his success was in the quiver of her lip, and the
overflow of her downcast eyes.

By little and little he wormed himself into her confidence; and she told
him in broken whispers her simple story. But what moved him the most
was, that beyond her sense of loneliness she did not seem to feel her own
unprotected state. She mourned the object she had nursed and heeded and
cherished, for she had been rather the protectress than the protected to
the helpless dead. He could not gain from her any more satisfactory
information than the landlady had already imparted, as to her friends and
prospects; but she permitted him passively to look among the effects her
father had left, save only that, if his hand touched something that
seemed to her associations especially holy, she waved him back, or drew
it quickly away. There were many bills receipted in the name of Captain
Digby, old yellow faded music-scores for the flute, extracts of Parts
from Prompt Books, gay parts of lively comedies, in which heroes have so
noble a contempt for money,--fit heroes for a Sheridan and a Farquhar;
close by these were several pawnbroker's tickets; and, not arrayed
smoothly, but crumpled up, as if with an indignant nervous clutch of the
helpless hands, some two or three letters. He asked Helen's permission
to glance at these, for they might afford a clew to friends. Helen gave
the permission by a silent bend of the head. The letters, however, were
but short and freezing answers from what appeared to be distant
connections or former friends, or persons to whom the deceased had
applied for some situation. They were all very disheartening in their
tone. Leonard next endeavoured to refresh Helen's memory as to the name
of the nobleman which had been last on her father's lips; but there he
failed wholly. For it may be remembered that Lord L'Estrange, when he
pressed his loan on Mr. Digby, and subsequently told that gentleman to
address him at Mr. Egerton's, had, from a natural delicacy, sent the
child on, that she might not witness the charity bestowed on the father;
and Helen said truly that Mr. Digby had sunk latterly into an habitual
silence on all his affairs. She might have heard her father mention the
name, but she had not treasured it up; all she could say was, that she
should know the stranger again if she met him, and his dog too. Seeing
that the child had grown calm, Leonard was then going to leave the room,
in order to confer with the hostess, when she rose suddenly, though
noiselessly, and put her little hand in his, as if to detain him. She
did not say a word; the action said all,--said, "Do not desert me." And
Leonard's heart rushed to his lips, and he answered to the action, as he
bent down, and kissed her cheek, "Orphan, will you go with me? We have
one Father yet to both of us, and He will guide us on earth. I am
fatherless like you." She raised her eyes to his, looked at him long,
and then leaned her head confidingly on his strong young shoulder.




CHAPTER VII.

At noon that same day the young man and the child were on their road to
London. The host had at first a little demurred at trusting Helen to so
young a companion; but Leonard, in his happy ignorance, had talked so
sanguinely of finding out this lord, or some adequate protectors for the
child; and in so grand a strain, though with all sincerity, had spoken of
his own great prospects in the metropolis (he did not say what they
were!) that had he been the craftiest impostor he could not more have
taken in the rustic host. And while the landlady still cherished the
illusive fancy that all gentlefolks must know each other in London, as
they did in a county, the landlord believed, at least, that a young man
so respectably dressed, although but a foot-traveller, who talked in so
confident a tone, and who was so willing to undertake what might be
rather a burdensome charge, unless he saw how to rid himself of it, would
be sure to have friends older and wiser than himself, who would judge
what could best be done for the orphan.

And what was the host to do with her? Better this volunteered escort, at
least, than vaguely passing her on from parish to parish, and leaving her
friendless at last in the streets of London. Helen, too, smiled for the
first time on being asked her wishes, and again put her hand in
Leonard's. In short, so it was settled.

The little girl made up a bundle of the things she most prized or needed.
Leonard did not feel the additional load, as he slung it to his knapsack;
the rest of the luggage was to be sent to London as soon as Leonard wrote
(which he promised to do soon) and gave an address.

Helen paid her last visit to the churchyard; and she joined her companion
as he stood on the road, without the solemn precincts. And now they had
gone on some hours; and when he asked her if she were tired, she still
answered "No." But Leonard was merciful, and made their day's journey
short; and it took them some days to reach London. By the long lonely
way they grew so intimate, at the end of the second day, they called each
other brother and sister; and Leonard, to his delight, found that as her
grief, with the bodily movement and the change of scene, subsided from
its first intenseness and its insensibility to other impressions, she
developed a quickness of comprehension far beyond her years. Poor child!
that had been forced upon her by Necessity. And she understood him in
his spiritual consolations, half poetical, half religious; and she
listened to his own tale, and the story of his self-education and
solitary struggles,--those, too, she understood. But when he burst out
with his enthusiasm, his glorious hopes, his confidence in the fate
before them, then she would shake her head very quietly and very sadly.
Did she comprehend them! Alas! perhaps too well. She knew more as to
real life than he did. Leonard was at first their joint treasurer; but
before the second day was over, Helen seemed to discover that he was too
lavish; and she told him so, with a prudent grave look, putting her hand
on his arm as he was about to enter an inn to dine; and the gravity would
have been comic, but that the eyes through their moisture were so meek
and grateful. She felt he was about to incur that ruinous extravagance
on her account. Somehow or other, the purse found its way into her
keeping, and then she looked proud and in her natural element.

Ah! what happy meals under her care were provided; so much more enjoyable
than in dull, sanded inn-parlours, swarming with flies, and reeking with
stale tobacco. She would leave him at the entrance of a village, bound
forward, and cater, and return with a little basket and a pretty blue
jug--which she had bought on the road,--the last filled with new milk;
the first with new bread, and some special dainty in radishes or water-
tresses. And she had such a talent for finding out the prettiest spot
whereon to halt and dine: sometimes in the heart of a wood,--so still,
it was like a forest in fairy tales, the hare stealing through the
alleys, or the squirrel peeping at them from the boughs; sometimes by a
little brawling stream, with the fishes seen under the clear wave, and
shooting round the crumbs thrown to them. They made an Arcadia of the
dull road up to their dread Thermopylae, the war against the million that
waited them on the other side of their pass through Tempo.

"Shall we be as happy when we are great?" said Leonard, in his grand
simplicity.

Helen sighed, and the wise little head was shaken.




CHAPTER VIII.

At last they came within easy reach of London; but Leonard had resolved
not to enter the metropolis fatigued and exhausted, as a wanderer needing
refuge, but fresh and elate, as a conqueror coming in triumph to take
possession of the capital. Therefore they halted early in the evening of
the day preceding this imperial entry, about six miles from the
metropolis, in the neighbourhood of Ealing (for by that route lay their
way). They were not tired on arriving at their inn. The weather was
singularly lovely, with that combination of softness and brilliancy which
is only known to the rare true summer days of England; all below so
green, above so blue,--days of which we have about six in the year, and
recall vaguely when we read of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, of Damsel and
Knight in Spenser's golden Summer Song, or of Jacques, dropped under the
oak-tree, watching the deer amidst the dells of Ardennes. So, after a
little pause at their inn, they strolled forth, not for travel but
pleasure, towards the cool of sunset, passing by the grounds that once
belonged to the Duke of Kent, and catching a glimpse of the shrubs and
lawns of that beautiful domain through the lodge-gates; then they crossed
into some fields, and came to a little rivulet called the Brent. Helen
had been more sad that day than on any during their journey,--perhaps
because, on approaching London, the memory of her father became more
vivid; perhaps from her precocious knowledge of life, and her foreboding
of what was to befall them, children that they both were. But Leonard
was selfish that day; he could not be influenced by his companion's
sorrow; he was so full of his own sense of being, and he already caught
from the atmosphere the fever that belongs to anxious capitals.

"Sit here, sister," said he, imperiously, throwing himself under the
shade of a pollard-tree that overhung the winding brook, "sit here and
talk."

He flung off his hat, tossed back his rich curls, and sprinkled his brow
from the stream that eddied round the roots of the tree that bulged out,
bald and gnarled, from the bank and delved into the waves below. Helen
quietly obeyed him, and nestled close to his side.

"And so this London is really very vast,--VERY?" he repeated
inquisitively.

"Very," answered Helen, as, abstractedly, she plucked the cowslips near
her, and let them fall into the running waters. "See how the flowers are
carried down the stream! They are lost now. London is to us what the
river is to the flowers, very vast, very strong;" and she added, after a
pause, "very cruel!"

"Cruel! Ah, it has been so to you; but now--now I will take care of
you!" he smiled triumphantly; and his smile was beautiful both in its
pride and its kindness. It is astonishing how Leonard had altered since
he had left his uncle's. He was both younger and older; for the sense of
genius, when it snaps its shackles, makes us both older and wiser as to
the world it soars to, younger and blinder as to the world it springs
from.

"And it is not a very handsome city, either, you say?"

"Very ugly indeed," said Helen, with some fervour; "at least all I have
seen of it."

"But there must be parts that are prettier than others? You say there
are parks: why should not we lodge near them and look upon the green
trees?"

"That would be nice," said Helen, almost joyously; "but--" and here the
head was shaken--"there are no lodgings for us except in courts and
alleys."

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