Book: My Novel, Volume 7.

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




"She has not intellect enough to charm him. She is not worthy of
Harley," said the proud mother.

"Between you and me," rejoined the earl, rather timidly, "I don't see
what good his intellect does him. He could not be more unsettled and
useless if he were the merest dunce in the three kingdoms. And so
ambitious as he was when a boy! Katherine, I sometimes fancy that you
know what changed him."

"I!" Nay, my dear Lord, it is a common change enough with the young,
when of such fortunes, who find, when they enter life, that there is
really little left for them to strive for. Had Harley been a poor man's
son, it might have been different."

"I was born to the same fortunes as Harley," said the earl, shrewdly,
"and yet I flatter myself I am of some use to old England."

The countess seized upon the occasion, complimented her Lord, and turned
the subject.




CHAPTER XVII.

Harley spent his day in his usual desultory, lounging manner,--dined in
his quiet corner at his favourite club. Nero, not admitted into the
club, patiently waited for him outside the door. The dinner over,
dog and man, equally indifferent to the crowd, sauntered down that
thoroughfare which, to the few who can comprehend the Poetry of London,
has associations of glory and of woe sublime as any that the ruins of the
dead elder world can furnish,--thoroughfare that traverses what was once
the courtyard of Whitehall, having to its left the site of the palace
that lodged the royalty of Scotland; gains, through a narrow strait, that
old isle of Thorney, in which Edward the Confessor received the ominous
visit of the Conqueror; and, widening once more by the Abbey and the Hall
of Westminster, then loses itself, like all memories of earthly grandeur,
amidst humble passages and mean defiles.

Thus thought Harley L'Estrange--ever less amidst the actual world around
him than the images invoked by his own solitary soul-as he gained the
bridge, and saw the dull, lifeless craft sleeping on the "Silent Way,"
once loud and glittering with the gilded barks of the antique Seignorie
of England.

It was on that bridge that Audley Egerton had appointed to meet
L'Estrange, at an hour when he calculated he could best steal a respite
from debate. For Harley, with his fastidious dislike to all the resorts
of his equals, had declined to seek his friend in the crowded regions of
Bellamy's.

Harley's eye, as he passed along the bridge, was attracted by a still
form, seated on the stones in one of the nooks, with its face covered by
its hands. "If I were a sculptor," said he to himself, "I should
remember that image whenever I wished to convey the idea of Despondency!"
He lifted his looks and saw, a little before him in the midst of the
causeway, the firm, erect figure of Audley Egerton. The moonlight was
full on the bronzed countenance of the strong public man, with its lines
of thought and care, and its vigorous but cold expression of intense
self-control.

"And looking yonder," continued Harley's soliloquy, "I should remember
that form, when I wished to hew out from the granite the idea of
Endurance."

"So you are come, and punctually," said Egerton, linking his arm in
Harley's.

HARLEY--"Punctually, of course, for I respect your time, and I will not
detain you long. I presume you will speak to-night?"

EGERTON.--"I have spoken."

HARLEY (with interest).--"And well, I hope?"

EGERTON.--" With effect, I suppose, for I have been loudly cheered, which
does not always happen to me."

HARLEY.--"And that gave you pleasure?"

EGERTON (after a moment's thought).--"No, not the least."

HARLEY.--"What, then, attaches you so much to this life,--constant
drudgery, constant warfare, the more pleasurable faculties dormant, all
the harsher ones aroused, if even its rewards (and I take the best of
those to be applause) do not please you?"

EGERTON.--"What? Custom."

HARLEY.--"Martyr."

EGERTON.--"You say it: but turn to yourself; you have decided, then, to
leave England next week?"

HARLEY (moodily).---"Yes. This life in a capital, where all are so
active, myself so objectless, preys on me like a low fever. Nothing here
amuses me, nothing interests, nothing comforts and consoles. But I am
resolved, before it be too late, to make one great struggle out of the
Past, and into the natural world of men. In a word, I have resolved to
marry."

EGERTON.--" Whom?"

HARLEY (seriously).--" Upon my life, my dear fellow, you are a great
philosopher. You have hit the exact question. You see I cannot marry a
dream; and where, out of dreams, shall I find this 'whom'?"

EGERTON.--"You do not search for her."

HARLEY. "Do we ever search for love? Does it not flash upon us when we
least expect it? Is it not like the inspiration to the muse? What poet
sits down and says, 'I will write a poem'? What man looks out and says,
'I will fall in love'? No! Happiness, as the great German tells us,
'falls suddenly from the bosom of the gods;' so does love."

EGERTON.--"You remember the old line in Horace: 'The tide flows away
while the boor sits on the margin and waits for the ford.'"

HARLEV.--"An idea which incidentally dropped from you some weeks ago, and
which I have before half-meditated, has since haunted me. If I could but
find some child with sweet dispositions and fair intellect not yet
formed, and train her up according to my ideal. I am still young enough
to wait a few years. And meanwhile I shall have gained what I so sadly
want,--an object in life."

EGERTON.--"You are ever the child of romance. But what--"

Here the minister was interrupted by a messenger from the House of
Commons, whom Audley had instructed to seek him on the bridge should his
presence be required. "Sir, the Opposition are taking advantage of the
thinness of the House to call for a division. Mr. ----- is put up to
speak for time, but they won't hear him."

Egerton turned hastily to Lord L'Estrange. "You see, you must excuse me
now. To-morrow I must go to Windsor for two days: but we shall meet on
my return."

"It does not matter," answered Harley; "I stand out of the pale of your
advice, O practical man of sense. And if," added Harley, with
affectionate and mournful sweetness,--"if I weary you with complaints
which you cannot understand, it is only because of old schoolboy habits.
I can have no trouble that I do not confide to you."

Egerton's hand trembled as it pressed his friend's, and without a word,
he hurried away abruptly. Harley remained motionless for some seconds,
in deep and quiet revery; then he called to his dog, and turned back
towards Westminster.

He passed the nook in which had sat the still figure of Despondency; but
the figure had now risen, and was leaning against the balustrade. The
dog, who preceded his master, passed by the solitary form and sniffed it
suspiciously.

"Nero, sir, come here," said Harley.

"Nero,"--that was the name by which Helen had said that her father's
friend had called his dog; and the sound startled Leonard as he leaned,
sick at heart, against the stone. He lifted his head and looked
wistfully, eagerly into Harley's face. Those eyes, bright, clear, yet so
strangely deep and absent, which Helen had described, met his own, and
chained them. For L'Estrange halted also; the boy's countenance was not
unfamiliar to him. He returned the inquiring look fixed on his own, and
recognized the student by the bookstall.

"The dog is quite harmless, sir," said L'Estrange, with a smile.

"And you call him 'Nero'?" said Leonard, still gazing on the stranger.

Harley mistook the drift of the question.

"Nero, sir; but he is free from the sanguinary propensities of his Roman
namesake." Harley was about to pass on, when Leonard said falteringly,

"Pardon me, but can it be possible that you are one whom I have sought in
vain on behalf of the child of Captain Digby?"

Harley stopped short. "Digby!" he exclaimed, "where is he? He should
have found me easily. I gave him an address."

"Ah, Heaven be thanked!" cried Leonard. "Helen is saved--she will not
die," and he burst into tears.

A very few moments and a very few words sufficed to explain to Harley the
state of his old fellow-soldier's orphan. And Harley himself soon stood
in the young sufferer's room, supporting her burning temples on his
breast, and whispering into ears that heard him as in a happy dream,
"Comfort, comfort; your father yet lives in me."

And then Helen, raising her eyes, said, "But Leonard is my brother--more
than brother-and he needs a father's care more than I do."

"Hush, hush, Helen. I need no one, nothing now!" cried Leonard, and his
tears gushed over the little hand that clasped his own.




CHAPTER XVIII.

Harley L'Estrange was a man whom all things that belong to the romantic
and poetic side of our human life deeply impressed. When he came to
learn the ties between these two Children of Nature, standing side by
side, alone amidst the storms of fate, his heart was more deeply moved
than it had been for many years. In those dreary attics, overshadowed by
the smoke and reek of the humble suburb, the workday world in its
harshest and tritest forms below and around them, he recognized that
divine poem which comes out from all union between the mind and the
heart. Here, on the rough deal table (the ink scarcely dry), lay the
writings of the young wrestler for fame and bread; there, on the other
side of the partition, on that mean pallet, lay the boy's sole comforter,
the all that warmed his heart with living mortal affection. On one side
the wall, the world of imagination; on the other, this world of grief and
of love. And in both, a spirit equally sublime,--unselfish devotion,--
"the something afar from the sphere of our sorrow."

He looked round the room into which he had followed Leonard, on quitting
Helen's bedside. He noted the manuscripts on the table, and pointing to
them, said gently, "And these are the labours by which you supported the
soldier's orphan?--soldier yourself in a hard battle!"

"The battle was lost,--I could not support her," replied Leonard,
mournfully.

"But you did not desert her. When Pandora's box was opened, they say
Hope lingered last--"

"False, false," said Leonard; "a heathen's notion. There are deities
that linger behind Hope,--Gratitude, Love, and Duty."

"Yours is no common nature," exclaimed Harley, admiringly, "but I must
sound it more deeply hereafter: at present I hasten for the physician; I
shall return with him. We must move that poor child from this low close
air as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let me qualify your rejection of the
old fable. Wherever Gratitude, Love, and Duty remain to man, believe me
that Hope is there too, though she may be often invisible, hidden behind
the sheltering wings of the nobler deities."

Harley said this with that wondrous smile of his, which cast a brightness
over the whole room, and went away. Leonard stole softly towards the
grimy window; and looking up towards the stars that shone pale over the
roof-tops, he murmured, "O Thou, the All-seeing and All-merciful! how it
comforts me now to think that, though my dreams of knowledge may have
sometimes obscured the heavens, I never doubted that Thou wert there!
as luminous and everlasting, though behind the cloud! "So, for a few
minutes, he prayed silently, then passed into Helen's room, and sat
beside her motionless, for she slept. She woke just as Harley returned
with a physician; and then Leonard, returning to his own room, saw
amongst his papers the letter he had written to Mr. Dale, and muttering,
"I need not disgrace my calling,--I need not be the mendicant now"--held
the letter to the flame of the candle. And while he said this, and as
the burning tinder dropped on the floor, the sharp hunger, unfelt during
his late anxious emotions, gnawed at his entrails. Still, even hunger
could not reach that noble pride which had yielded to a sentiment nobler
than itself, and he smiled as he repeated, "No mendicant!--the life that
I was sworn to guard is saved. I can raise against Fate the front of Man
once more."




CHAPTER XIX.

A few days afterwards, and Helen, removed to a pure air, and under the
advice of the first physicians, was out of all danger.

It was a pretty detached cottage, with its windows looking over the wild
heaths of Norwood, to which Harley rode daily to watch the convalescence
of his young charge: an object in life was already found. As she grew
better and stronger, he coaxed her easily into talking, and listened to
her with pleased surprise. The heart so infantine and the sense so
womanly struck him much by its rare contrast and combination. Leonard,
whom he had insisted on placing also in the cottage, had stayed there
willingly till Helen's recovery was beyond question. Then he came to
Lord L'Estrange, as the latter was about one day to leave the cottage,
and said quietly, "Now, my Lord, that Helen is safe, and now that she
will need me no more, I can no longer be a pensioner on your bounty. I
return to London."

"You are my visitor, not my pensioner, foolish boy," said Harley, who had
already noticed the pride which spoke in that farewell; "come into the
garden and let us talk."

Harley seated himself on a bench on the little lawn; Nero crouched at his
feet; Leonard stood beside him.

"So," said Lord L'Estrange, "you would return to London? What to do?"

"Fulfil my fate."

"And that?"

"I cannot guess. Fate is the Isis whose veil no mortal can ever raise."

"You should be born for great things," said Harley, abruptly. "I am sure
that you write well. I have seen that you study with passion. Better
than writing and better than study, you have a noble heart, and the proud
desire of independence. Let me see your manuscripts, or any copies of
what you have already printed. Do not hesitate,--I ask but to be a
reader. I don't pretend to be a patron: it is a word I hate."

Leonard's eyes sparkled through their sudden moisture. He brought out
his portfolio, placed it on the bench beside Harley, and then went softly
to the farther part of the garden. Nero looked after him, and then rose
and followed him slowly. The boy seated himself on the turf, and Nero
rested his dull head on the loud heart of the poet.

Harley took up the various papers before him, and read them through
leisurely. Certainly he was no critic. He was not accustomed to analyze
what pleased or displeased him; but his perceptions were quick, and his
taste exquisite. As he read, his countenance, always so genuinely
expressive, exhibited now doubt and now admiration. He was soon struck
by the contrast, in the boy's writings, between the pieces that sported
with fancy and those that grappled with thought. In the first, the young
poet seemed so unconscious of his own individuality. His imagination,
afar and aloft from the scenes of his suffering, ran riot amidst a
paradise of happy golden creations. But in the last, the THINKER stood
out alone and mournful, questioning, in troubled sorrow, the hard world
on which he gazed. All in the thought was unsettled, tumultuous; all in
the fancy serene and peaceful. The genius seemed divided into twain
shapes,--the one bathing its wings amidst the starry dews of heaven; the
other wandering, "melancholy, slow," amidst desolate and boundless sands.
Harley gently laid down the paper and mused a little while. Then he rose
and walked to Leonard, gazing on his countenance as he neared the boy,
with a new and a deeper interest.

"I have read your papers," he said, "and recognize in them two men,
belonging to two worlds, essentially distinct." Leonard started, and
murmured, "True, true!"

"I apprehend," resumed Harley, "that one of these men must either destroy
the other, or that the two must become fused and harmonized into a single
existence. Get your hat, mount my groom's horse, and come with me to
London; we will converse by the way. Look you, I believe you and I agree
in this,--that the first object of every noble spirit is independence.
It is towards this independence that I alone presume to assist you, and
this is a service which the proudest man can receive without a blush."

Leonard lifted his eyes towards Harley's, and those eyes swam with
grateful tears; but his heart was too full to answer. "I am not one of
those," said Harley, when they were on the road, "who think that because
a young man writes poetry he is fit for nothing else, and that he must be
a poet or a pauper. I have said that in you there seems to me to be two
men,--the man of the Actual world, the man of the Ideal. To each of
these men I can offer a separate career. The first is perhaps the more
tempting. It is the interest of the State to draw into its service all
the talent and industry it can obtain; and under his native State every
citizen of a free country should be proud to take service. I have a
friend who is a minister, and who is known to encourage talent,--Audley
Egerton. I have but to say to him, 'There is a young man who will repay
the government whatever the government bestows on him;' and you will rise
to-morrow independent in means, and with fair occasions to attain to
fortune and distinction. This is one offer,--what say you to it?"

Leonard thought bitterly of his interview with Audley Egerton, and the
minister's proffered crown-piece. He shook his head, and replied,

"Oh, my Lord, how have I deserved such kindness? Do with me what you
will; but if I have the option, I would rather follow my own calling.
This is not the ambition that inflames me."

"Hear, then, the other offer. I have a friend with whom I am less
intimate than Egerton, and who has nothing in his gift to bestow. I
speak of a man of letters,--Henry Norreys,--of whom you have doubtless
heard, who, I should say, conceived an interest in you when be observed
you reading at the bookstall. I have often heard him say that literature
as a profession is misunderstood, and that rightly followed, with the
same pains and the same prudence which are brought to bear on other
professions, a competence at least can be always ultimately obtained.
But the way may be long and tedious, and it leads to no power but over
thought; it rarely attains to wealth; and though reputation may be
certain, fame, such as poets dream of, is the lot of few. What say you
to this course?"

"My Lord, I decide," said Leonard, firmly; and then, his young face
lighting up with enthusiasm, he exclaimed, "Yes, if, as you say, there be
two men within me, I feel that were I condemned wholly to the mechanical
and practical world, one would indeed destroy the other. And the
conqueror would be the ruder and the coarser. Let me pursue those ideas
that, though they have but flitted across me, vague and formless, have
ever soared towards the sunlight. No matter whether or not they lead to
fortune or to fame,--at least they will lead me upward! Knowledge for
itself I desire; what care I if it be not power!"

"Enough," said Harley, with a pleased smile at his young companion's
outburst. "As you decide so shall it be settled. And now permit me, if
not impertinent, to ask you a few questions. Your name is Leonard
Fairfield?"

The boy blushed deeply, and bowed his head as if in assent.

"Helen says you are self-taught; for the rest she refers me to you,--
thinking, perhaps, that I should esteem you less--rather than yet more
highly--if she said you were, as I presume to conjecture, of humble
birth."

"My birth," said Leonard, slowly, "is very--very--humble."

"The name of Fairfield is not unknown to me. There was one of that name
who married into a family in Lansmere, married an Avenel," continued
Harley, and his voice quivered. "You change countenance. Oh, could your
mother's name have been Avenel?"

"Yes," said Leonard, between his set teeth. Harley laid his hand on the
boy's shoulder. "Then, indeed, I have a claim on you; then, indeed, we
are friends. I have a right to serve any of that family."

Leonard looked at him in surprise--"For," continued Harley, recovering
himself, "they always served my family; and my recollections of Lansmere,
though boyish, are indelible." He spurred on his horse as the words
closed, and again there was a long pause; but from that time Harley
always spoke to Leonard in a soft voice, and often gazed on him with
earnest and kindly eyes.

They reached a house in a central, though not fashionable street. A man-
servant of a singularly grave and awful aspect opened the door,--a man
who had lived all his life with authors. Poor fellow, he was indeed
prematurely old! The care on his lip and the pomp on his brow--no
mortal's pen can describe!

"Is Mr. Norreys at home?" asked Harley.

"He is at home--to his friends, my Lord," answered the man, majestically;
and he stalked across the hall with the step of a Dangeau ushering some
Montmorenci into the presence of Louis le Grand.

"Stay; show this gentleman into another room. I will go first into the
library; wait for me, Leonard." The man nodded, and conducted Leonard
into the dining-room. Then pausing before the door of the library, and
listening an instant, as if fearful to disturb some mood of inspiration,
opened it very softly. To his ineffable disgust, Harley pushed before,
and entered abruptly. It was a large room, lined with books from the
floor to the ceiling. Books were on all the tables, books were on all
the chairs. Harley seated himself on a folio of Raleigh's "History of
the World," and cried, "I have brought you a treasure!"

"What is it?" said Norreys, good-humouredly, looking up from his desk.

"A mind!"

"A mind!" echoed Norreys, vaguely.

"Your own?"

"Pooh! I have none,--I have only a heart and a fancy. Listen. You
remember the boy we saw reading at the book stall. I have caught him for
you, and you shall train him into a man. I have the warmest interest in
his future, for I know some of his family, and one of that family was
very dear to me. As for money, he has not a shilling, and not a shilling
would he accept gratis from you or me either. But he comes with bold
heart to work,--and work you must find him." Harley then rapidly told
his friend of the two offers he had made to Leonard, and Leonard's
choice.

"This promises very well; for letters a man must have a strong vocation,
as he should have for law. I will do all that you wish."

Harley rose with alertness, shook Norreys cordially by the hand, hurried
out of the room, and returned with Leonard.

Mr. Norreys eyed the young man with attention. He was naturally rather
severe than cordial in his manner to strangers,--contrasting in this, as
in most things, the poor vagabond Burley; but he was a good judge of the
human countenance, and he liked Leonard's. After a pause he held out his
hand.

"Sir," said he, "Lord L'Estrange tells me that you wish to enter
literature as a calling, and no doubt to study it as an art. I may help
you in this, and you meanwhile can help me. I want an amanuensis,--I
offer you that place. The salary will be proportioned to the services
you will render me. I have a room in my house at your disposal. When I
first came up to London, I made the same choice that I hear you have
done. I have no cause, even in a worldly point of view, to repent my
choice. It gave me an income larger than my wants. I trace my success
to these maxims, which are applicable to all professions: 1st, Never to
trust to genius for what can be obtained by labour; 2dly, Never to
profess to teach what we have not studied to understand; 3dly, Never to
engage our word to what we do not our best to execute.

"With these rules, literature--provided a man does not mistake his
vocation for it, and will, under good advice, go through the preliminary
discipline of natural powers, which all vocations require--is as good a
calling as any other. Without them, a shoeblack's is infinitely better."

"Possibly enough," muttered Harley; "but there have been great writers
who observed none of your maxims."

"Great writers, probably, but very unenviable men. My Lord, my Lord,
don't corrupt the pupil you bring to me." Harley smiled, and took his
departure, and left Genius at school with Common-Sense and Experience.




CHAPTER XX.

While Leonard Fairfield had been obscurely wrestling against poverty,
neglect, hunger, and dread temptation, bright had been the opening day
and smooth the upward path of Randal Leslie. Certainly no young man,
able and ambitious, could enter life under fairer auspices; the
connection and avowed favourite of a popular and energetic statesman,
the brilliant writer of a political work that had lifted him at once into
a station of his own, received and courted in those highest circles, to
which neither rank nor fortune alone suffices for a familiar passport,
--the circles above fashion itself. the circles of POWER,--with every
facility of augmenting information, and learning the world betimes
through the talk of its acknowledged masters,--Randal had but to move
straight onward, and success was sure. But his tortuous spirit
delighted in scheme and intrigue for their own sake. In scheme and
intrigue he saw shorter paths to fortune, if not to fame.

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