Book: My Novel, Volume 7.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 7.




"He might say it," answered Leonard; "but he never meant posterity to
believe him. And he would have died of want, I suspect, rather than have
written 'Rasselas' for the 'Beehive'! Want is a grand thing," continued
the boy, thoughtfully,--"a parent of grand things. Necessity is strong,
and should give us its own strength; but Want should shatter asunder,
with its very writhings, the walls of our prison-house, and not sit
contented with the allowance the jail gives us in exchange for our work."

"There is no prison-house to a man who calls upon Bacchus; stay, I will
translate to you Schiller's Dithyramb. 'Then see I Bacchus; then up come
Cupid and Phcebus, and all the Celestials are filling my dwelling.'"

Breaking into impromptu careless rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but
spirited translation of that divine lyric. "O materialist!" cried the
boy, with his bright eyes suffused. "Schiller calls on the gods to take
him to their heaven with them; and you would debase the gods to a
ginpalace."

"Ho, ho!" cried Burley, with his giant laugh. "Drink, and you will
understand the Dithyramb."




CHAPTER VII.

Suddenly one morning, as Leonard sat with Burley, a fashionable
cabriolet, with a very handsome horse, stopped at the door. A loud
knock, a quick step on the stairs, and Randal Leslie entered. Leonard
recognized him, and started. Randal glanced at him in surprise, and
then, with a tact that showed he had already learned to profit by London
life, after shaking hands with Burley, approached, and said, with some
successful attempt at ease, "Unless I am not mistaken, sir, we have met
before. If you remember me, I hope all boyish quarrels are forgotten?"

Leonard bowed, and his heart was still good enough to be softened.

"Where could you two ever have met?" asked Burley. "In a village green,
and in single combat," answered Randal, smiling; and he told the story of
the Battle of the Stocks, with a well-bred jest on himself. Burley
laughed at the story. "But," said he, when this laugh was over, "my
young friend had better have remained guardian of the village stocks than
come to London in search of such fortune as lies at the bottom of an
inkhorn."

"Ah," said Randal, with the secret contempt which men elaborately
cultivated are apt to feel for those who seek to educate themselves,--
"ah, you make literature your calling, sir? At what school did you
conceive a taste for letters? Not very common at our great public
schools."

"I am at school now for the first time," answered Leonard, dryly.

"Experience is the best schoolmistress," said Burley; "and that was the
maxim of Goethe, who had book-learning enough, in all conscience."

Randal slightly shrugged his shoulders, and without wasting another
thought on Leonard, peasant-born and self-taught, took his seat, and
began to talk to Burley upon a political question, which made then the
war-cry between the two great parliamentary parties. It was a subject in
which Burley showed much general knowledge; and Randal, seeming to differ
from him, drew forth alike his information and his argumentative powers.
The conversation lasted more than an hour.

"I can't quite agree with you," said Randal, taking his leave; "but you
must allow me to call again,--will the same hour tomorrow suit you?"

"Yes," said Burley.

Away went the young man in his cabriolet. Leonard watched him from the
window.

For five days, consecutively, did Randal call and discuss the question in
all its bearings; and Burley, after the second day, got interested in the
matter, looked up his authorities, refreshed his memory, and even spent
an hour or two in the Library of the British Museum.

By the fifth day, Burley had really exhausted all that could well be said
on his side of the question.

Leonard, during these colloquies, had sat apart seemingly absorbed in
reading, and secretly stung by Randal's disregard of his presence. For
indeed that young man, in his superb self-esteem, and in the absorption
of his ambitious projects, scarce felt even curiosity as to Leonard's
rise above his earlier station, and looked on him as a mere journeyman of
Burley's.

But the self-taught are keen and quick observers; and Leonard had
remarked that Randal seemed more as one playing a part for some private
purpose, than arguing in earnest; and that, when he rose, and said, "Mr.
Burley, you have convinced me," it was not with the modesty of a sincere
reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck,
meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener with Burley's power of
generalization and the wide surface over which his information extended,
that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly,
purposeless man, and said aloud, "True; knowledge is not power."

"Certainly not," said Burley, dryly,--"the weakest thing in the world."

"Knowledge is power," muttered Randal Leslie, as, with a smile on his
lip, he drove from the door.

Not many days after this last interview there appeared a short pamphlet;
anonymous, but one which made a great impression on the town. It was on
the subject discussed between Randal and Burley. It was quoted at great
length in the newspapers. And Burley started to his feet one morning,
and exclaimed, "My own thoughts! my very words! Who the devil is this
pamphleteer?"

Leonard took the newspaper from Burley's hand. The most flattering
encomiums preceded the extracts, and the extracts were as stereotypes of
Burley's talk.

"Can you doubt the author?" cried Leonard, in deep disgust and ingenuous
scorn. "The young man who came to steal your brains, and turn your
knowledge--"

"Into power," interrupted Burley, with a laugh,--but it was a laugh of
pain. "Well, this was very mean; I shall tell him so when he comes."

"He will come no more," said Leonard. Nor did Randal come again. But he
sent Mr. Burley a copy of the pamphlet with a polite note, saying, with
candid but careless acknowledgment, that he "had profited much by Mr.
Burley's hints and remarks."

And now it was in all the papers that the pamphlet which had made so
great a noise was by a very young man, Mr. Audley Egerton's relation.
And high hopes were expressed of the future career of Mr. Randal Leslie.

Burley still attempted to laugh, and still his pain was visible. Leonard
most cordially despised and hated Randal Leslie, and his heart moved to
Burley with noble but perilous compassion. In his desire to soothe and
comfort the man whom he deemed cheated out of fame, he forgot the caution
he had hitherto imposed on himself, and yielded more and more to the
charm of that wasted intellect. He accompanied Burley now to the haunts
to which his friend went to spend his evenings; and more and more--though
gradually, and with many a recoil and self-rebuke--there crept over him
the cynic's contempt for glory, and miserable philosophy of debased
content.

Randal had risen into grave repute upon the strength of Burley's
knowledge. But, had Burley written the pamphlet, would the same repute
have attended him? Certainly not. Randal Leslie brought to that
knowledge qualities all his own,--a style simple, strong, and logical;
a certain tone of good society, and allusions to men and to parties that
showed his connection with a Cabinet minister, and proved that he had
profited no less by Egerton's talk than Burley's.

Had Burley written the pamphlet, it would have showed more genius, it
would have had humour and wit, but have been so full of whims and quips,
sins against taste, and defects in earnestness, that it would have failed
to create any serious sensation. Here, then, there was something else be
sides knowledge, by which knowledge became power. Knowledge must not
smell of the brandy-bottle.

Randal Leslie might be mean in his plagiarism, but he turned the useless
into use. And so far he was original. But one's admiration, after all,
rests where Leonard's rested,--with the poor, riotous, lawless, big,
fallen man. Burley took himself off to the Brent, and fished again for
the one-eyed perch. Leonard accompanied him. His feelings were indeed
different from what they had been when he had reclined under the old
tree, and talked with Helen of the future. But it was almost pathetic to
see how Burley's nature seemed to alter, as he strayed along the banks of
the rivulet, and discoursed of his own boyhood. The man then seemed
restored to something of the innocence of the child. He cared, in truth,
little for the perch, which continued intractable, but he enjoyed the air
and the sky, the rustling grass and the murmuring waters. These
excursions to the haunts of youth seemed to rebaptize him, and then his
eloquence took a pastoral character, and Izaak Walton himself would have
loved to hear him. But as he got back into the smoke of the metropolis,
and the gas-lamps made him forget the ruddy sunset and the soft evening
star, the gross habits reassumed their sway; and on he went with his
swaggering, reckless step to the orgies in which his abused intellect
flamed forth, and then sank into the socket quenched and rayless.




CHAPTER VIII.

Helen was seized with profound and anxious sadness. Leonard had been
three or four times to see her, and each time she saw a change in him
that excited all her fears. He seemed, it is true, more shrewd, more
worldly-wise, more fitted, it might be, for coarse daily life; but, on
the other hand, the freshness and glory of his youth were waning slowly.
His aspirings drooped earthward. He had not mastered the Practical, and
moulded its uses with the strong hand of the Spiritual Architect, of the
Ideal Builder; the Practical was overpowering himself. She grew pale
when he talked of Burley, and shuddered, poor little Helen? when she
found he was daily, and almost nightly, in a companionship which, with
her native honest prudence, she saw so unsuited to strengthen him in his
struggles, and aid him against temptation. She almost groaned when,
pressing him as to his pecuniary means, she found his old terror of debt
seemed fading away, and the solid healthful principles he had taken from
his village were loosening fast. Under all, it is true, there was what a
wiser and older person than Helen would have hailed as the redeeming
promise. But that something was grief,--a sublime grief in his own sense
of falling, in his own impotence against the Fate he had provoked and
coveted. The Sublimity of that grief Helen could not detect; she saw
only that it was grief, and she grieved with it, letting it excuse every
fault,--making her more anxious to comfort, in order that she might save.
Even from the first, when Leonard had exclaimed, "Ah, Helen, why did you
ever leave me?" she had revolved the idea of return to him; and when in
the boy's last visit he told her that Burley, persecuted by duns, was
about to fly from his present lodgings, and take his abode with Leonard,
in the room she had left vacant, all doubt was over. She resolved to
sacrifice the safety and shelter of the home assured her. She resolved
to come back and share Leonard's penury and struggles, and save the old
room, wherein she had prayed for him, from the tempter's danger ous
presence. Should she burden him? No; she had assisted her father by
many little female arts in needle and fancy work. She had improved
herself in these during her sojourn with Miss Starke. She could bring
her share to the common stock. Possessed with this idea, she determined
to realize it before the day on which Leonard had told her Burley was to
move his quarters. Accordingly she rose very early one morning; she
wrote a pretty and grateful note to Miss Starke, who was fast asleep,
left it on the table, and before any one was astir, stole from the house,
her little bundle on her arm.

She lingered an instant at the garden-gate, with a remorseful sentiment,
--a feeling that she had ill-repaid the cold and prim protection that
Miss Starke had shown her. But sisterly love carried all before it. She
closed the gate with a sigh, and went on.

She arrived at the lodging-house before Leonard was up, took possession
of her old chamber, and presenting herself to Leonard, as he was about to
go forth, said (story-teller that she was), "I am sent away, brother, and
I have come to you to take care of me. Do not let us part again. But
you must be very cheerful and very happy, or I shall think that I am
sadly in your way."

Leonard at first did look cheerful, and even happy; but then he thought
of Burley, and then of his own means of supporting Helen, and was
embarrassed, and began questioning her as to the possibility of
reconciliation with Miss Starke. And Helen said gravely, "Impossible,--
do not ask it, and do not go near her."

Then Leonard thought she had been humbled and insulted, and remembered
that she was a gentleman's child, and felt for her wounded pride, he was
so proud himself. Yet still he was embarrassed.

"Shall I keep the purse again, Leonard?" said Helen, coaxingly.

"Alas!" replied Leonard, "the purse is empty."

"That is very naughty in the purse," said Helen, "since you put so much
into it."

"Did not you say that you made, at least, a guinea a week?"

"Yes; but Burley takes the money; and then, poor fellow! as I owe all to
him, I have not the heart to prevent him spending it as he likes."

"Please, I wish you could settle the month's rent," said the landlady,
suddenly showing herself. She said it civilly, but with firmness.

Leonard coloured. "It shall be paid to-day."

Then he pressed his hat on his head, and putting Helen gently aside, went
forth.

"Speak to me in future, kind Mrs. Smedley," said Helen, with the air of a
housewife. "He is always in study, and must not be disturbed."

The landlady--a good woman, though she liked her rent--smiled benignly.
She was fond of Helen, whom she had known of old.

"I am so glad you are come back; and perhaps now the young man will not
keep such late hours. I meant to give him warning, but--"

"But he will be a great man one of these days, and you must bear with him
now." And Helen kissed Mrs. Smedley, and sent her away half inclined to
cry.

Then Helen busied herself in the rooms. She found her father's box,
which had been duly forwarded. She re-examined its contents, and wept as
she touched each humble and pious relic. But her father's memory itself
thus seemed to give this home a sanction which the former had not; and
she rose quietly and began mechanically to put things in order, sighing
as she saw all so neglected, till she came to the rosetree, and that
alone showed heed and care. "Dear Leonard!" she murmured, and the smile
resettled on her lips.




CHAPTER IX.

Nothing, perhaps, could have severed Leonard from Burley but Helen's
return to his care. It was impossible for him, even had there been
another room in the house vacant (which there was not), to install this
noisy, riotous son of the Muse by Bacchus, talking at random and smelling
of spirits, in the same dwelling with an innocent, delicate, timid,
female child. And Leonard could not leave her alone all the twenty-four
hours. She restored a home to him and imposed its duties. He therefore
told Mr. Burley that in future he should write and study in his own room,
and hinted, with many a blush, and as delicately as he could, that it
seemed to him that whatever he obtained from his pen ought to be halved
with Burley, to whose interest he owed the employment, and from whose
books or whose knowledge he took what helped to maintain it; but that the
other half, if his, he could no longer afford to spend upon feasts or
libations. He had another life to provide for.

Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's earning with
much grandeur, but spoke very fretfully of Leonard's sober appropriation
of the other half; and though a good-natured, warm-hearted man, felt
extremely indignant at the sudden interposition of poor Helen. However,
Leonard was firm; and then Burley grew sullen, and so they parted. But
the rent was still to be paid. How? Leonard for the first time thought
of the pawnbroker. He had clothes to spare, and Riccabocca's watch. No;
that last he shrank from applying to such base uses.

He went home at noon, and met Helen at the street-door. She too had been
out, and her soft cheek was rosy red with unwonted exercise and the sense
of joy. She had still preserved the few gold pieces which Leonard had
taken back to her on his first visit to Miss Starke's. She had now gone
out and bought wool and implements for work; and meanwhile she had paid
the rent.

Leonard did not object to the work, but he blushed deeply when he knew
about the rent, and was very angry. He paid back to her that night what
she had advanced; and Helen wept silently at his pride, and wept more
when she saw the next day a woful hiatus in his wardrobe.

But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen sat by
his side, working too; so that next day, and the next, slipped peacefully
away, and in the evening of the second he asked her to walk out in the
fields. She sprang up joyously at the invitation, when bang went the
door, and in reeled John Burley,--drunk,--and so drunk!




CHAPTER X.

And with Burley there reeled in another man,--a friend of his, a man who
had been a wealthy trader and once well to do, but who, unluckily, had
literary tastes, and was fond of hearing Burley talk. So, since he had
known the wit, his business had fallen from him, and he had passed
through the Bankrupt Court. A very shabby-looking dog he was, indeed,
and his nose was redder than Burley's.

John made a drunken dash at poor Helen. "So you are the Pentheus in
petticoats who defies Bacchus," cried he; and therewith he roared out a
verse from Euripides. Helen ran away, and Leonard interposed.

"For shame, Burley!"

"He's drunk," said Mr. Douce, the bankrupt trader, "very drunk; don't
mind him. I say, sir, I hope we don't intrude. Sit still, Burley, sit
still, and talk, do,--that's a good man. You should hear him--ta--ta--
talk, sir." Leonard meanwhile had got Helen out of the room into her
own, and begged her not to be alarmed, and keep the door locked. He then
returned to Burley, who had seated himself on the bed, trying wondrous
hard to keep himself upright; while Mr. Douce was striving to light a
short pipe that he carried in his button-hole--without having filled it--
and, naturally failing in that attempt, was now beginning to weep.

Leonard was deeply shocked and revolted for Helen's sake; but it was
hopeless to make Burley listen to reason. And how could the boy turn
out of his room the man to whom he was under obligations?

Meanwhile there smote upon Helen's shrinking ears loud jarring talk and
maudlin laughter, and cracked attempts at jovial songs. Then she heard
Mrs. Smedley in Leonard's room, remonstrating; and Burley's laugh was
louder than before, and Mrs. Smedley, who was a meek woman, evidently got
frightened, and was heard in precipitate retreat. Long and loud talk
recommenced, Burley's great voice predominant, Mr. Douce chiming in with
hiccoughy broken treble. Hour after hour this lasted, for want of the
drink that would have brought it to a premature close. And Burley
gradually began to talk himself somewhat sober. Then Mr. Douce was
heard descending the stairs, and silence followed. At dawn, Leonard
knocked at Helen's door. She opened it at once, for she had not gone
to bed.

"Helen," said he, very sadly, "you cannot continue here. I must find out
some proper home for you. This man has served me when all London was
friendless, and he tells me that he has nowhere else to go,--that the
bailiffs are after him. He has now fallen asleep. I will go and find
you some lodging close at hand, for I cannot expel him who has protected
me; and yet you cannot be under the same roof with him. My own good
angel, I must lose you."

He did not wait for her answer, but hurried down stairs. The morning
looked through the shutterless panes in Leonard's garret, and the birds
began to chird from the elmtree, when Burley rose and shook himself, and
stared round. He could not quite make out where he was. He got hold of
the water-jug, which he emptied at three draughts, and felt greatly
refreshed. He then began to reconnoitre the chamber,--looked at
Leonard's manuscripts, peeped into the drawers, wondered where the devil
Leonard himself had gone to, and finally amused himself by throwing down
the fireirons, ringing the bell, and making all the noise he could, in
the hopes of attracting the attention of somebody or other, and procuring
himself his morning dram.

In the midst of this charivari the door opened softly, but as if with a
resolute hand, and the small quiet form of Helen stood before the
threshold. Burley turned round, and the two looked at each other for
some moments with silent scrutiny.

BURLEY (composing his features into their most friendly expression).--
"Come hither, my dear. So you are the little girl whom I saw with
Leonard on the banks of the Brent, and you have come back to live with
him,--and I have come to live with him too. You shall be our little
housekeeper, and I will tell you the story of Prince Pettyman, and a
great many others not to be found in 'Mother Goose.' Meanwhile, my dear
little girl, here's sixpence,--just run out and change this for its worth
in rum."

HELEN (coming slowly up to Mr. Burley, and still gazing earnestly into
his face).--"Ah, sir, Leonard says you have a kind heart, and that you
have served him; he cannot ask you to leave the house; and so I, who have
never served him, am to go hence and live alone."

BURLEY (moved).--"You go, my little lady; and why? Can we not all live
together?"

HELEN.--"No, sir. I left everything to come to Leonard, for we had met
first at my father's grave; but you rob me of him, and I have no other
friend on earth."

BURLEY (discomposed).--"Explain yourself. Why must you leave him because
I come?"

Helen looked at Mr. Burley again, long and wistfully, but made no answer.

BURLEY (with a gulp).--"Is it because he thinks I am not fit company for
you?"

Helen bowed her head.

Burley winced, and after a moment's pause said, "He is right."

HELEN (obeying the impulse of her heart, springs forward and takes
Burley's hand).--"Ah, sir," she cried, "before he knew you he was so
different; then he was cheerful, then, even when his first disappointment
came, I grieved and wept but I felt he would conquer still, for his heart
was so good and pure. Oh, sir, don't think I reproach you; but what is
to become of him if--if---No, it is not for myself I speak. I know that
if I was here, that if he had me to care for, he would come home early,
and work patiently, and--and--that I might save him. But now when I am
gone, and you live with him,--you to whom he is grateful, you whom he
would follow against his own conscience (you must see that, sir), what is
to become of him?"

Helen's voice died in sobs.

Burley took three or four long strides through the room; he was greatly
agitated. "I am a demon," he murmured. "I never saw it before; but it
is true, I should be this boy's ruin." Tears stood in his eyes, he
paused abruptly, made a clutch at his hat, and turned to the door.

Helen stopped the way, and taking him gently by the arm, said, "Oh, sir,
forgive me,--I have pained you;" and looked up at him with a
compassionate expression, that indeed made the child's sweet face
as that of an angel.

Burley bent down as if to kiss her, and then drew back, perhaps with a
sentiment that his lips were not worthy to touch that innocent brow.

"If I had had a sister,--a child like you, little one," he muttered,
"perhaps I too might have been saved in time. Now--"

"Ah, now you may stay, sir; I don't fear you any more."

"No, no; you would fear me again ere night-time, and I might not be
always in the right mood to listen to a voice like yours, child. Your
Leonard has a noble heart and rare gifts. He should rise yet, and he
shall. I will not drag him into the mire. Good-by,--you will see me no
more." He broke from Helen, cleared the stairs with a bound, and was out
of the house.

When Leonard returned he was surprised to hear his unwelcome guest was
gone,--but Helen did not venture to tell him of her interposition. She
knew instinctively how such officiousness would mortify and offend the
pride of man; but she never again spoke harshly of poor Burley. Leonard
supposed that he should either see or hear of the humourist in the course
of the day. Finding he did not, he went in search of him at his old
haunts; but no trace. He inquired at the "Beehive" if they knew there of
his new address, but no tidings of Burley could be obtained.

As he came home disappointed and anxious, for he felt uneasy as to the
disappearance of his wild friend, Mrs. Smedley met him at the door.

"Please, sir, suit yourself with another lodging," said she. "I can have
no such singings and shoutings going on at night in my house. And that
poor little girl, too! you should be ashamed of yourself."

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.