Book: My Novel, Volume 6.

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




"Two lines only, and I am called--I am called--" Leonard's frame shook
from head to foot, and the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. He
could not complete the sentence. It seemed as if an ocean was rolling up
through his brain, and roaring in his ears. The doctor saw at a glance
that there was physical danger in his state, and hastily and soothingly
answered, "Sit down, sit down; calm yourself; you shall know all,--read
all; drink this water;" and he poured into a tumbler of the pure liquid a
drop or two from a tiny phial.

Leonard obeyed mechanically, for he was no longer able to stand. He
closed his eyes, and for a minute or two life seemed to pass from him;
then he recovered, and saw the good doctor's gaze fixed on him with great
compassion. He silently stretched forth his hand towards the letter.
"Wait a few moments," said the physician, judiciously, "and hear me
meanwhile. It is very unfortunate you should have seen a letter never
meant for your eye, and containing allusions to a secret you were never
to have known. But if I tell you more, will you promise me, on your word
of honour, that you will hold the confidence sacred from Mrs. Fairfield,
the Avenels,--from all? I myself am pledged to conceal a secret, which I
can only share with you on the same condition."

"There is nothing," announced Leonard, indistinctly, and with a bitter
smile on his lip,--" nothing, it seems, that I should be proud to boast
of. Yes, I promise; the letter, the letter!"

The doctor placed it in Leonard's right hand, and quietly slipped to the
wrist of the left his forefinger and thumb, as physicians are said to do
when a victim is stretched on the rack. "Pulse decreasing," he muttered;
"wonderful thing, aconite!" Meanwhile Leonard read as follows, faults in
spelling and all:--

DR. MORGAN

SIR,--I received your favur duly, and am glad to hear that the pore
boy is safe and Well. But he has been behaving ill, and ungrateful
to my good son Richard, who is a credit to the whole Famuly and has
made himself a Gentleman and Was very kind and good to the boy, not
knowing who and What he is--God forbid! I don't want never to see
him again--the boy. Pore John was ill and Restless for days
afterwards. John is a pore cretur now, and has had paralyticks.
And he Talked of nothing but Nora--the boy's eyes were so like his
Mother's. I cannot, cannot see the Child of Shame. He can't cum
here--for our Lord's sake, sir, don't ask it--he can't, so
Respectable as we've always been!--and such disgrace! Base
born! base born! Keep him where he is, bind him prentis, I'll pay
anything for That. You says, sir, he's clever, and quick at
learning; so did Parson Dale, and wanted him to go to Collidge and
make a Figur,--then all would cum out. It would be my death, sir; I
could not sleep in my grave, sir. Nora, that we were all so proud
of. Sinful creturs that we are! Nora's good name that we've saved,
now gone, gone. And Richard, who is so grand, and who was so fond
of pore, pore Nora! He would not hold up his Head again. Don't let
him make a Figur in the world; let him be a tradesman, as we were
afore him,--any trade he takes to,--and not cross us no more while
he lives. Then I shall pray for him, and wish him happy. And have
not we had enuff of bringing up children to be above their birth?
Nora, that I used to say was like the first lady o' the land-oh, but
we were rightly punished! So now, sir, I leave all to you, and will
Pay all you want for the boy. And be sure that the secret's kept.
For we have never heard from the father, and, at leest, no one knows
that Nora has a, living son but I and my daughter Jane, and Parson
Dale and you--and you Two are good Gentlemen--and Jane will keep her
word, and I am old, and shall be in my grave Soon, but I hope it
won't be while pore John needs me. What could he do without me?
And if that got wind, it would kill me straght, sir. Pore John is a
helpless cretur, God bless him. So no more from your servant in all
dooty,

M. AVENEL.


Leonard laid down this letter very calmly, and, except by a slight
heaving at his breast, and a deathlike whiteness of his lips, the
emotions he felt were undetected. And it is a proof how much exquisite
goodness there was in his heart that the first words he spoke were,
"Thank Heaven!"

The doctor did not expect that thanksgiving, and he was so startled that
he exclaimed, "For what?"

"I have nothing to pity or excuse in the woman I knew and honoured as a
mother. I am not her son--her-" He stopped short.

"No: but don't be hard on your true mother,--poor Nora!"

Leonard staggered, and then burst into a sudden paroxysm of tears.

"Oh, my own mother! my dead mother! Thou for whom I felt so mysterious
a love,--thou from whom I took this poet soul! pardon me, pardon me!
Hard on thee! Would that thou wert living yet, that I might comfort
thee! What thou must have suffered!"

These words were sobbed forth in broken gasps from the depth of his
heart. Then he caught up the letter again, and his thoughts were changed
as his eyes fell upon the writer's shame and fear, as it were, of his
very existence. All his native haughtiness returned to him. His crest
rose, his tears dried. "Tell her," he said, with astern, unfaltering
voice, "tell Mrs. Avenel that she is obeyed; that I will never seek her
roof, never cross her path, never disgrace her wealthy son. But tell
her, also, that I will choose my own way in life,--that I will not take
from her a bribe for concealment. Tell her that I am nameless, and will
yet make a name."

A name! Was this but an idle boast, or was it one of those flashes of
conviction which are never belied, lighting up our future for one lurid
instant, and then fading into darkness?

"I do not doubt it, my prave poy," said Dr. Morgan, growing exceedingly
Welsh in his excitement; "and perhaps you may find a father, who--"

"Father! who is he, what is he? He lives, then! But he has deserted
me,--he must have betrayed her! I need him not. The law gives me no
father."

The last words were said with a return of bitter anguish: then, in a
calmer tone, he resumed, "But I should know who he is--as another one
whose path I may not cross."

Dr. Morgan looked embarrassed, and paused in deliberation. "Nay," said
he, at length, "as you know so much, it is surely best that you should
know all."

The doctor then proceeded to detail, with some circumlocution, what we
will here repeat from his account more succinctly.

Nora Avenel, while yet very young, left her native village, or rather the
house of Lady Lansinere, by whom she had been educated and brought up, in
order to accept the place of companion to a lady in London. One evening
she suddenly presented herself at her father's house, and at the first
sight of her mother's face she fell down insensible. She was carried to
bed. Dr. Morgan (then the chief medical practitioner of the town) was
sent for. That night Leonard came into the world, and his mother died.
She never recovered her senses, never spoke intelligibly from the time
she entered the house. "And never, therefore, named your father," said
Dr. Morgan. "We knew not who he was."

"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 rumour 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 Mrs. 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 a
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 dishonour. 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 as 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 in deed have been like those whom I have read of in
books. To love, to wrong her,--that I 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 of him no 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!




CHAPTER XIX.

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 moiety 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 teaspoonful 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 ingenuous 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 book in 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 one hundred and fifty per cent you propose to gain from my 'Art of
Thinking.'"

MR. PRICKETT (stuttering and taken aback).--"You sold 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 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 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.

"He is clever," 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 what that is, 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 upon 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.




CHAPTER XX.

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 much 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
vagrant, devil-me-Garish, and, to use a slang word, tigerish, 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 a 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 your
report of the 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 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 eloquent 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--that is 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 alehouse, with his boors around him, was drinking, like
them, only beer and whiskey? 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 whiskey 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 sat 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 tits to lament over a Savage or 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. He a bacchanalian, a royster! HE! No. We will talk of
him. Come!"

Leonard went.




CHAPTER XXI.

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, moralizing on the soul's
eternity, and halting between Plato and the dagger. There was Woodward
as "The Fine Gentleman," with the inimitable rake-hell 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 honour 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
Fantastic and Phantasmal, in the garments wherein they did "strut and
fret their 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 such applause as thundered round the personators of his airy
images? Vague children of the most transient of the arts, fleet shadows
on 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!

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