"My Novel" — Volume 06
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"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."
"Why?"
"Why?" echoed Helen, with a smile, and she held up the purse.
"Pooh! always that horrid purse; as if, too, we were not going to fill it! Did not I tell you the story of Fortunio? Well, at all events, we will go first to the neighbourhood where you last lived, and learn there all we can; and then the day after to-morrow I will see this Dr. Morgan, and find out the lord."
The tears started to Helen's soft eyes. "You want to get rid of me soon, brother."
"I! Ah, I feel so happy to have you with me it seems to me as if I had pined for you all my life, and you had come at last; for I never had brother nor sister nor any one to love, that was not older than myself, except—"
"Except the young lady you told me of," said Helen, turning away her face; for children are very jealous.
"Yes, I loved her, love her still. But that was different," said Leonard. "I could never have talked to her as to you: to you I open my whole heart; you are my little Muse, Helen: I confess to you my wild whims and fancies as frankly as if I were writing poetry." As he said this, a step was heard, and a shadow fell over the stream. A belated angler appeared on the margin, drawing his line impatiently across the water, as if to worry some dozing fish into a bite before it finally settled itself for the night. Absorbed in his occupation, the angler did not observe the young persons on the sward under the tree, and he halted there, close upon them.
"Curse that perch!" said he, aloud.
"Take care, sir," cried Leonard; for the man, in stepping back, nearly trod upon Helen.
The angler turned. "What 's the matter? Hist! you have frightened my perch. Keep still, can't you?"
Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler.
"It is the most extraordinary perch, that!" muttered the stranger, soliloquizing. "It has the devil's own luck. It must have been born with a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never catch it,—never! Ha! no, only a weed. I give it up." With this, he indignantly jerked his rod from the water and began to disjoint it. While leisurely engaged in this occupation, he turned to Leonard.
"Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?"
"No," answered Leonard. "I never saw it before."
ANGLER, (solemnly).—"Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been the Delilah of my existence."
LEONARD (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical).—"The Delilah! sir, the Delilah!"
ANGLER.—"The Delilah. Young man, listen, and be warned by example. When I was about your age, I first came to this stream to fish. Sir, on that fatal day, about three p.m., I hooked up a fish,—such a big one, it must have weighed a pound and a half. Sir, it was that length; "and the angler put finger to wrist. "And just when I had got it nearly ashore, by the very place where you are sitting, on that shelving bank, young man, the line broke, and the perch twisted himself among those roots, and—cacodaemon that he was—ran off, hook and all. Well, that fish haunted me; never before had I seen such a fish. Minnows I had caught in the Thames and elsewhere, also gudgeons, and occasionally a dace. But a fish like that—a PERCH, all his fins up, like the sails of a man-of-war —a monster perch,—a whale of a perch! No, never till then had I known what leviathans lie hid within the deeps. I could not sleep till I had returned; and again, sir,—I caught that perch. And this time I pulled him fairly out of the water. He escaped; and how did he escape? Sir, he left his eye behind him on the hook. Years, long years, have passed since then; but never shall I forget the agony of that moment."
LEONARD.—"To the perch, sir?"
ANGLER.—"Perch! agony to him! He enjoyed it. Agony to me! I gazed on that eye, and the eye looked as sly and as wicked as if it were laughing in my face. Well, sir, I had heard that there is no better bait for a perch than a perch's eye. I adjusted that eye on the hook, and dropped in the line gently. The water was unusually clear; in two minutes I saw that perch return. He approached the hook; he recognized his eye, frisked his tail, made a plunge, and, as I live, carried off the eye, safe and sound; and I saw him digesting it by the side of that water- lily. The mocking fiend! Seven times since that day, in the course of a varied and eventful life, have I caught that perch, and seven times has that perch escaped."
LEONARD (astonished).—"It can't be the same perch; perches are very tender fish. A hook inside of it, and an eye hooked out of it—no perch could withstand such havoc in its constitution."
ANGLER (with an appearance of awe).—"It does seem supernatural. But it is that perch; for hark ye, sir, there is ONLY ONE perch in the whole brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught another perch; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I know by sight better than I knew my own lost father. For each time that I have raised it out of the water, its profile has been turned to me, and I have seen with a shudder that it has had only—One Eye! It is a most mysterious and a most diabolical phenomenon, that perch! It has been the ruin of my prospects in life. I was offered a situation in Jamaica: I could not go with that perch left here in triumph. I might afterwards have had an appointinent in India, but I could not put the ocean between myself and that perch: thus have I frittered away my existence in the fatal metropolis of my native land. And once a week from February to December I come hither. Good heavens! if I should catch the perch at last, the occupation of my existence will be gone."
Leonard gazed curiously at the angler, as the last thus mournfully concluded. The ornate turn of his periods did not suit with his costume. He looked wofully threadbare and shabby,—a genteel sort of shabbiness too,—shabbiness in black. There was humour in the corners of his lip; and his hands, though they did not seem very clean—indeed his occupation was not friendly to such niceties—were those of a man who had not known manual labour. His face was pale and puffed, but the tip of the nose was red. He did not seem as if the watery element was as familiar to himself as to his Delilah, the perch.
"Such is Life!" recommenced the angler, in a moralizing tone, as he slid his rod into its canvas case. "If a man knew what it was to fish all one's life in a stream that has only one perch, to catch that one perch nine times in all, and nine times to see it fall back into the water, plump,—if a man knew what it was, why, then "—here the angler looked over his shoulder full at Leonard—"why then, young sir, he would know what human life is to vain ambition. Good-evening."
Away he went treading over the daisies and kingcups. Helen's eyes followed him wistfully.
"What a strange person!" said Leonard, laughing.
"I think he is a very wise one," murmured Helen; and she came close up to Leonard, and took his hand in both hers, as if she felt already that he was in need of the Comforter,—the line broken, and the perch lost!
CHAPTER IX
At noon the next day, London stole upon them through a gloomy, thick, oppressive atmosphere; for where is it that we can say London bursts on the sight? It stole on them through one of its fairest and most gracious avenues of approach,—by the stately gardens of Kensington, along the side of Hyde Park, and so on towards Cumberland Gate.
Leonard was not the least struck. And yet with a very little money, and a very little taste, it would be easy to render this entrance to London as grand and as imposing as that to Paris from the Champs Elysees. As they came near the Edgware Road, Helen took her new brother by the hand and guided him; for she knew all that neighbourhood, and she was acquainted with a lodging near that occupied by her father (to that lodging itself she could not have gone for the world), where they might be housed cheaply.
But just then the sky, so dull and overcast since morning, seemed one mass of black cloud. There suddenly came on a violent storm of rain. The boy and girl took refuge in a covered mews, in a street running out of the Edgware Road. This shelter soon became crowded; the two young pilgrims crept close to the wall, apart from the rest, Leonard's arm round Helen's waist, sheltering her from the rain that the strong wind contending with it beat in through the passage. Presently a young gentleman of better mien and dress than the other refugees entered, not hastily, but rather with a slow and proud step, as if, though he deigned to take shelter, he scorned to run to it. He glanced somewhat haughtily at the assembled group, passed on through the midst of it, came near Leonard, took off his hat, and shook the rain from its brim. His head thus uncovered, left all his features exposed; and the village youth recognized, at the first glance, his old victorious assailant on the green at Hazeldean.
CHAPTER IX
Yet Randal Leslie was altered. His dark cheek was as thin as in boyhood, and even yet more wasted by intense study and night vigils; but the expression of his face was at once more refined and manly, and there was a steady concentrated light in his eye, like that of one who has been in the habit of bringing all his thoughts to one point. He looked older than he was. He was dressed simply in black, a colour which became him; and altogether his aspect and figure were, not showy indeed, but distinguished. He looked to the common eye a gentleman; and to the more observant a scholar.
Helter-skelter! pell-mell! the group in the passage now pressed each on each, now scattered on all sides, making way, rushing down the mews, against the walls, as a fiery horse darted under shelter. The rider, a young man with a very handsome face, and dressed with that peculiar care which we commonly call dandyism, cried out, good-humouredly, "Don't be afraid; the horse sha'n't hurt any of you. A thousand pardons—so ho! so ho!" He patted the horse, and it stood as still as a statue, filling up the centre of the passage. The groups resettled; Randal approached the rider.
"Frank Hazeldean!"
"Ah, is it indeed Randal Leslie?"
Frank was off his horse in a moment, and the bridle was consigned to the care of a slim 'prentice-boy holding a bundle.
"My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you. How lucky it was that I should turn in here. Not like me either, for I don't much care for a ducking. Staying in town, Randal?"
"Yes; at your uncle's, Mr. Egerton. I have left Oxford."
"For good?"
"For good."
"But you have not taken your degree, I think? We Etonians all considered you booked for a double-first. Oh, we have been so proud of your fame,— you carried off all the prizes."
"Not all; but some, certainly. Mr. Egerton offered me my choice,—to stay for my degree, or to enter at once into the Foreign Office. I preferred the end to the means. For, after all, what good are academical honours but as the entrance to life? To enter now is to save a step in a long way, Frank."
"Ah, you were always ambitious, and you will make a great figure, I am sure."
"Perhaps so—if I work for it. Knowledge is power." Leonard started.
"And you!" resumed Randal, looking with some curious attention at his old schoolfellow. "You never came to Oxford. I did hear you were going into the army."
"I am in the Guards," said Frank, trying hard not to look too conceited as he made that acknowledgment. "The governor pished a little, and would rather I had come to live with him in the old Hall, and take to farming. Time enough for that, eh? By Jove, Randal, how pleasant a thing is life in London! Do you go to Almack's to-night?"
"No; Wednesday is a holiday in the House. There is a great parliamentary dinner at Mr. Egerton's. He is in the Cabinet now, you know; but you don't see much of your uncle, I think."
"Our sets are different," said the young gentleman, in a tone of voice worthy of Brummel. "All those parliamentary fellows are devilish dull. The rain's over. I don't know whether the governor would like me to call at Grosvenor Square; but pray come and see me. Here's my card to remind you; you must dine at our mess. Such capital fellows! What day will you fix?"
"I will call and let you know. Don't you find it rather expensive in the Guards? I remember that you thought the governor, as you call him, used to chafe a little when you wrote for more pocket-money; and the only time I ever saw you with tears in your eyes was when Mr. Hazeldean, in sending you L5, reminded you that his estates were not entailed,—were at his own disposal, and they should never go to an extravagant spendthrift. It was not a pleasant threat that, Frank."
"Oh!" cried the young man, colouring deeply. "It was not the threat that pained me; it was that my father could think so meanly of me as to fancy that—-Well, well, but those were schoolboy days. And my father was always more generous than I deserved. We must see a great deal of each other, Randal. How good-natured you were at Eton, making my longs and shorts for me; I shall never forget it. Do call soon."
Frank swung himself into his saddle, and rewarded the slim youth with half-a-crown,—a largess four times more ample than his father would have deemed sufficient. A jerk of the reins and a touch of the heel, off bounded the fiery horse and the gay young rider. Randal mused, and as the rain had now ceased, the passengers under shelter dispersed and went their way. Only Randal, Leonard, and Helen remained behind. Then, as Randal, still musing, lifted his eyes, they fell full upon Leonard's face. He started, passed his hand quickly over his brow, looked again, hard and piercingly; and the change in his pale cheek to a shade still paler, a quick compression and nervous gnawing of his lip, showed that he too recognized an old foe. Then his glance ran over Leonard's dress, which was somewhat dust-stained, but far above the class amongst which the peasant was born. Randal raised his brows in surprise, and with a smile slightly supercilious—the smile stung Leonard—and with a slow step, Randal left the passage, and took his way towards Grosvenor Square. The Entrance of Ambition was clear to him.
Then the little girl once more took Leonard by the hand, and led him through rows of humble, obscure, dreary streets. It seemed almost like an allegory personified, as the sad, silent child led on the penniless and low-born adventurer of genius by the squalid shops and through the winding lanes, which grew meaner and meaner, till both their forms vanished from the view.
CHAPTER X
"But do come; change your dress, return and dine with me; you will have just time, Harley. You will meet the most eminent men of our party; surely they are worth your study, philosopher that you affect to be."
Thus said Audley Egerton to Lord L'Estrange, with whom he had been riding (after the toils of his office). The two gentlemen were in Audley's library,—Mr. Egerton, as usual, buttoned up, seated in his chair, in the erect posture of a man who scorns "inglorious ease;" Harley, as usual, thrown at length on the sofa., his long hair in careless curls, his neckcloth loose, his habiliments flowing simplex mundit is, indeed, his grace all his own; seemingly negligent, never slovenly; at ease everywhere and with every one, even with Mr. Audley Egerton, who chilled or awed the ease out of most people.
"Nay, my dear Audley, forgive me. But your eminent men are all men of one idea, and that not a diverting one, politics! politics! politics! The storm in the saucer."
"But what is your life, Harley?—the saucer without the storm?"
"Do you know, that's very well said, Audley? I did not think you had so much liveliness of repartee. Life! life! it is insipid, it is shallow, —no launching Argosies in the saucer. Audley, I have the oddest fancy—"
"That of course," said Audley, dryly; "you never had any other. What is the new one?"
HARLEY (with great gravity).—"Do you believe in Mesmerism?"
AUDLEY.—"Certainly not."
HARLEY.—"If it were in the power of an animal magnetizer to get me out of my own skin into somebody's else! That's my fancy! I am so tired of myself,—so tired! I have run through all my ideas,—know every one of them by heart. When some pretentious impostor of an idea perks itself up and says, 'Look at me,—I 'm a new acquaintance,' I just give it a nod, and say 'Not at all, you have only got a new coat on; you are the same old wretch that has bored me these last twenty years; get away.' But if one could be in a new skin, if I could be for half-an-hour your tall porter, or one of your eminent matter-of-fact men, I should then really travel into a new world.' Every man's brain must be a world in itself, eh? If I could but make a parochial settlement even in yours, Audley,— run over all your thoughts and sensations. Upon my life, I 'll go and talk to that French mesmerizer about it."
[If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humour is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan.]
AUDLEY (who does not seem to like the notion of having his thoughts and sensations rummaged, even by his friend, and even in fancy)—"Pooh, pooh, pooh! Do talk like a man of sense."
HARLEY.—"Man of sense! Where shall I find a model? I don't know a man of sense!—never met such a creature. Don't believe it ever existed. At one time I thought Socrates must have been a man of sense: a delusion; he would stand gazing into the air, and talking to his Genius from sunrise to sunset. Is that like a man of sense? Poor Audley! how puzzled he looks! Well, I'll try and talk sense to oblige you. And first" (here Harley raised himself on his elbow),—"first, is it true, as I have heard vaguely, that you are paying court to the sister of that infamous Italian traitor?"
"Madame di Negra? No: I am not paying court to her," answered Audley, with a cold smile. "But she is very handsome; she is very clever; she is useful to me,—I need not say how or why; that belongs to my metier as a politician. But I think, if you will take my advice, or get your friend to take it, I could obtain from her brother, through my influence with her, some liberal concessions to your exile. She is very anxious to know where he is."
"You have not told her?"
"No; I promised you I would keep that secret."
"Be sure you do; it is only for some mischief, some snare, that she could desire such information. Concessions! pooh! This is no question of concessions, but of rights."
"I think you should leave your friend to judge of that."
"Well, I will write to him. Meanwhile, beware of this woman. I have heard much of her abroad, and she has the character of her brother for duplicity and—"
"Beauty," interrupted Audley, turning the conversation with practised adroitness. "I am told that the count is one of the handsomest men in Europe, much handsomer than his sister still, though nearly twice her age. Tut, tut, Harley; fear not for me. I am proof against all feminine attractions. This heart is dead."
"Nay, nay; it is not for you to speak thus,—leave that to me. But even I will not say it. The heart never dies. And you; what have you lost?— a wife; true: an excellent, noble-hearted woman. But was it love that you felt for her? Enviable man, have you ever loved?"
"Perhaps not, Harley," said Audley, with a sombre aspect and in dejected accents; "very few men ever have loved, at least as you mean by the word. But there are other passions than love that kill the heart, and reduce us to mechanism."
While Egerton spoke, Harley turned aside, and his breast heaved. There was a short silence; Audley was the first to break it.
"Speaking of my lost wife, I am sorry that you do not approve what I have done for her young kinsman, Randal Leslie."
HARLEY (recovering himself with an effort).—"Is it true kindness to bid him exchange manly independence for the protection of an official patron?"
AUDLEV.—"I did not bid him. I gave him his choice. At his age, I should have chosen as he has done."
HARLEY.—"I trust not; I think better of you. But answer me one question frankly, and then I will ask another. Do you mean to make this young man your heir?"
AUDLEY (with a slight embarrassment).—"Heir, pooh! I am young still. I may live as long as he—time enough to think of that."
HARLEY.—"Then now to my second question. Have you told this youth plainly that he may look to you for influence, but not for wealth?"
AUDLEY (firmly).—"I think I have; but I shall repeat it more emphatically."
HARLEY.—"Then I am satisfied as to your conduct, but not as to his. For he has too acute an intellect not to know what it is to forfeit independence; and, depend on it, he has made his calculations, and would throw you into the bargain in any balance that he could strike in his favour. You go by your experience in judging men; I by my instincts. Nature warns us as it does the inferior animals,—only we are too conceited, we bipeds, to heed her. My instincts of soldier and gentleman recoil from that old young man. He has the soul of the Jesuit. I see it in his eye, I hear it in the tread of his foot; /volto sciolto/ he has not; /i pensieri stretti/ he has. Hist! I hear now his step in the hall. I should know it from a thousand. That's his very touch on the handle of the door."
Randal Leslie entered. Harley—who, despite his disregard for forms, and his dislike to Randal, was too high-bred not to be polite to his junior in age or inferior in rank-rose and bowed. But his bright piercing eyes did not soften as they caught and bore down the deeper and more latent fire in Randal's. Harley did not resume his seat, but moved to the mantelpiece, and leaned against it.