Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851

The police came in numbers to disperse the crowd, and Mr. Sprott prudently vanished. Leonard learned then what had befallen, and again saw himself without employment and the means of bread.

Slowly he walked back. "O, knowledge, knowledge! – powerless indeed!" he murmured.

As he thus spoke, a handbill in large capitals met his eyes on a dead wall – "Wanted, a few smart young men for India."

A crimp accosted him – "You would make a fine soldier, my man. You have stout limbs of your own." Leonard moved on.

"It has come back, then, to this. Brute physical force after all. O Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a machine again."

He entered his attic noiselessly, and gazed upon Helen as she sate at work, straining her eyes by the open window – with tender and deep compassion. She had not heard him enter, nor was she aware of his presence. Patient and still she sate, and the small fingers plied busily. He gazed, and saw that her cheek was pale and hollow, and the hands looked so thin! His heart was deeply touched, and at that moment he had not one memory of the baffled Poet, one thought that proclaimed the Egotist.

He approached her gently, laid his hand on her shoulder – "Helen, put on your shawl and bonnet, and walk out – I have much to say."

In a few moments she was ready, and they took their way to their favorite haunt upon the bridge. Pausing in one of the recesses or nooks, Leonard then began – "Helen we must part."

"Part? – Oh, brother!"

"Listen. All work that depends on mind is over for me; nothing remains but the labor of thews and sinews. I can not go back to my village and say to all, 'My hopes were self-conceit, and my intellect a delusion!' I can not. Neither in this sordid city can I turn menial or porter. I might be born to that drudgery, but my mind has, it may be unhappily, raised me above my birth. What, then, shall I do? I know not yet – serve as a soldier, or push my way to some wilderness afar, as an emigrant, perhaps. But whatever my choice, I must henceforth be alone; I have a home no more, but there is a home for you, a very humble one (for you, too, so well born), but very safe – the roof of – of – my peasant mother. She will love you for my sake, and – and – "

Helen clung to him trembling, and sobbed out, "Any thing, any thing you will. But I can work; I can make money, Leonard, I do, indeed, make money – you do not know how much – but enough for us both till better times come to you. Do not let us part."

"And I – a man, and born to labor, to be maintained by the work of an infant! No, Helen, do not so degrade me."

She drew back as she looked on his flushed brow, bowed her head submissively, and murmured, "Pardon."

"Ah," said Helen, after a pause, "if now we could but find my poor father's friend! I never so much cared for it before."

"Yes, he would surely provide for you."

"For me!" repeated Helen, in a tone of soft deep reproach, and she turned away her head to conceal her tears.

"You are sure you would him remember if we met him by chance?"

"Oh yes. He was so different from all we see in this terrible city, and his eyes were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog, whom he called Nero – I could not forget that."

"But his dog may not be always with him."

"But the clear, bright eyes are! Ah, now you look up to heaven, and yours seem to dream like his."

Leonard did not answer, for his thoughts were indeed less on earth than struggling to pierce into that remote and mysterious heaven.

Both were silent long; the crowd passed them by unheedingly. Night deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamplights on its waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the darkness of the strong current, and the craft that lay eastward on the tide, with sailless, spectral masts and black dismal hulks, looked death-like in their stillness.

Leonard looked down, and the thought of Chatterton's grim suicide came back to his soul, and a pale scornful face with luminous haunting eyes seemed to look up from the stream, and murmur from livid lips, "Struggle no more against the tides on the surfaces – all is calm and rest within the deep."

Starting in terror from the gloom of his reverie, the boy began to talk fast to Helen, and tried to soothe her with descriptions of the lowly home which he had offered.

He spoke of the light cares which she would participate with his mother – for by that name he still called the widow – and dwelt, with an eloquence that the contrast round him made sincere and strong, on the happy rural life, the shadowy woodlands, the rippling corn-fields, the solemn lone church-spire soaring from the tranquil landscape. Flatteringly he painted the flowery terraces of the Italian exile, and the playful fountain that, even as he spoke, was flinging up its spray to the stars, through serene air untroubled by the smoke of cities, and untainted by the sinful sighs of men. He promised her the love and protection of natures akin to the happy scene: the simple affectionate mother – the gentle pastor – the exile wise and kind – Violante, with dark eyes full of the mystic thoughts that solitude calls from childhood – Violante should be her companion.

"And oh!" cried Helen, "if life be thus happy there, return with me, return – return!"

"Alas!" murmured the boy, "if the hammer once strike the spark from the anvil, the spark must fly upward: it can not fall back to earth until life has left it. Upward still, Helen – let me go upward still!"

CHAPTER XV

The next morning Helen was very ill – so ill that, shortly after rising, she was forced to creep back to bed. Her frame shivered – her eyes were heavy – her hand burned like fire. Fever had set in. Perhaps she might have caught cold on the bridge – perhaps her emotions had proved too much for her frame. Leonard, in great alarm, called on the nearest apothecary. The apothecary looked grave, and said there was danger. And danger soon declared itself. – Helen became delirious. For several days she lay in this state, between life and death. Leonard then felt that all the sorrows of earth are light, compared with the fear of losing what we love. How valueless the envied laurel seemed beside the dying rose.

Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed and tending than to medical skill, she recovered sense at last – immediate peril was over But she was very weak and reduced – her ultimate recovery doubtful – convalescence, at best, likely to be very slow.

But when she learned how long she had been thus ill, she looked anxiously at Leonard's face as he bent over her, and faltered forth, "Give me my work! I am strong enough for that now – it would amuse me."

Leonard burst into tears.

Alas! he had no work himself; all their joint money had melted away; the apothecary was not like good Dr. Morgan; the medicines were to be paid for, and the rent. Two days before, Leonard had pawned Riccabocca's watch; and when the last shilling thus raised was gone, how should he support Helen? Nevertheless he conquered his tears, and assured her that he had employment; and that so earnestly that she believed him, and sank into soft sleep. He listened to her breathing, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He turned into his own neighboring garret, and, leaning his face on his hands, collected all his thoughts.

He must be a beggar at last. He must write to Mr. Dale for money – Mr. Dale, too, who knew the secret of his birth. He would rather have begged of a stranger – it served to add a new dishonor to his mother's memory for the child to beg of one who was acquainted with her shame. Had he himself been the only one to want and to starve, he would have sunk inch by inch into the grave of famine, before he would have so subdued his pride. But Helen, there on that bed – Helen needing, for weeks perhaps, all support, and illness making luxuries themselves like necessaries! Beg he must. And when he so resolved, had you but seen the proud, bitter soul he conquered, you would have said – "This which he thinks is degradation – this is heroism. Oh strange human heart! – no epic ever written achieves the Sublime and the Beautiful which are graven, unread by human eye, in thy secret leaves." Of whom else should he beg? His mother had nothing, Riccabocca was poor, and the stately Violante, who had exclaimed, "Would that I were a man!" he could not endure the thought that she should pity him, and despise. The Avenels! No – thrice No. He drew toward him hastily ink and paper, and wrote rapid lines that were wrung from him as from the bleeding strings of life.

But the hour for the post had passed – the letter must wait till the next day; and three days at least must elapse before he could receive an answer. He left the letter on the table, and, stifling as for air, went forth. He crossed the bridge – he passed on mechanically – and was borne along by a crowd pressing toward the doors of Parliament. A debate that excited popular interest was fixed for that evening, and many bystanders collected in the street to see the members pass to and fro, or hear what speakers had yet risen to take part in the debate, or try to get orders for the gallery.

He halted amidst these loiterers, with no interest, indeed, in common with them, but looking over their heads abstractedly toward the tall Funeral Abbey – Imperial Golgotha of Poets, and Chiefs, and Kings.

Suddenly his attention was diverted to those around by the sound of a name – displeasingly known to him, "How are you, Randal Leslie? coming to hear the debate?" said a member who was passing through the street.

"Yes; Mr. Egerton promised to get me under the gallery. He is to speak himself to-night, and I have never heard him. As you are going into the House, will you remind him?"

"I can't now, for he is speaking already – and well too. I hurried from the Athenæum, where I was dining, on purpose to be in time, as I heard that his speech was making a great effect."

"This is very unlucky," said Randal. "I had no idea he would speak so early."

"M – brought him up by a direct personal attack. But follow me; perhaps I can get you into the House; and a man like you, Leslie, of whom we expect great things some day, I can tell you, should not miss any such opportunity of knowing what this House of ours is on a field night. Come on!"

The member hurried toward the door; and as Randal followed him, a bystander cried – "That is the young man who wrote the famous pamphlet – Egerton's relation."

"Oh, indeed!" said another. "Clever man, Egerton – I am waiting for him."

"So am I."

"Why, you are not a constituent, as I am?"

"No; but he has been very kind to my nephew, and I must thank him. You are a constituent – he is an honor to your town."

"So he is; enlightened man!"

"And so generous."

"Brings forward really good measures," quoth the politician.

"And clever young men," said the uncle.

Therewith one or two others joined in the praise of Audley Egerton, and many anecdotes of his liberality were told.

Leonard listened at first listlessly, at last with thoughtful attention. He had heard Burley, too, speak highly of this generous statesman, who, without pretending to genius himself, appreciated it in others. He suddenly remembered, too, that Egerton was half-brother to the Squire. Vague notions of some appeal to this eminent person, not for charity, but employ to his mind, gleamed across him – inexperienced boy that he yet was! And while thus meditating, the door of the House opened, and out came Audley Egerton himself. A partial cheering, followed by a general murmur, apprised Leonard of the presence of the popular statesman. Egerton was caught hold of by some five or six persons in succession; a shake of the hand, a nod, a brief whispered word or two, sufficed the practiced member for graceful escape; and soon, free from the crowd, his tall erect figure passed on, and turned toward the bridge. He paused at the angle and took out his watch, looking at it by the lamp-light.

"Harley will be here soon," he muttered "he is always punctual; and now that I have spoken, I can give him an hour or so. That is well."

As he replaced his watch in his pocket, and re-buttoned his coat over his firm, broad chest, he lifted his eyes, and saw a young man standing before him.

"Do you want me?" asked the statesmen, with the direct brevity of his practical character.

"Mr. Egerton," said the young man, with a voice that slightly trembled, and yet was manly amidst emotion, "you have a great name, and great power – I stand here in these streets of London without a friend, and without employ. I believe that I have it in me to do some nobler work than that of bodily labor, had I but one friend – one opening for my thoughts. And now I have said this, I scarcely know how or why, but from despair, and the sudden impulse which that despair took from the praise that follows your success. I have nothing more to add."

Audley Egerton was silent for a moment, struck by the tone and address of the stranger; but the consummate and wary man of the world, accustomed to all manner of strange applications, and all varieties of imposture, quickly recovered from a passing effect.

"Are you a native of – ?" (naming the town he represented as member.)

"No, sir."

"Well, young man, I am very sorry for you; but the good sense you must possess (for I judge of that by the education you have evidently received) must tell you that a public man, whatever be his patronage, has it too fully absorbed by claimants who have a right to demand it, to be able to listen to strangers."

He paused a moment, and, as Leonard stood silent, added, with more kindness than most public men so accosted would have showed —

"You say you are friendless – poor fellow, in early life that happens to many of us, who find friends enough before the close. Be honest, and well-conducted; lean on yourself, not on strangers; work with the body if you can't with the mind; and, believe me, that advice is all I can give you, unless this trifle," and the minister held out a crown piece.

Leonard bowed, shook his head sadly, and walked away. Egerton looked after him with a slight pang.

"Pooh!" said he to himself, "there must be thousands in the same state in the streets of London. I can not redress these necessities of civilization. Well educated! It is not from ignorance henceforth that society will suffer – it is from over-educating the hungry thousands who, thus unfitted for manual toil, and with no career for mental, will some day or other stand like that boy in our streets, and puzzle wiser ministers than I am."

As Egerton thus mused, and passed on to the bridge, a bugle-horn rang merrily from the box of a gay four-in-hand. A drag-coach with superb blood-horses, rattled over the causeway, and in the driver Egerton recognized his nephew – Frank Hazeldean.

The young Guardsman was returning, with a lively party of men, from dining at Greenwich; and the careless laughter of these children of pleasure floated far over the still river.

It vexed the ear of the careworn statesman – sad, perhaps, with all his greatness, lonely amidst all his crowd of friends. It reminded him, perhaps, of his own youth, when such parties and companionships were familiar to him, though through them all he bore an ambitious, aspiring soul – "Le jeu, vaut-il la chandelle?" said he, shrugging his shoulders.

The coach rolled rapidly past Leonard, as he stood leaning against the corner of the bridge, and the mire of the kennel splashed over him from the hoofs of the fiery horses. The laughter smote on his ear more discordantly than on the minister's, but it begot no envy.

"Life is a dark riddle," said he, smiting his breast.

And he walked slowly on, gained the recess where he had stood several nights before with Helen; and dizzy with want of food, and worn out for want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear; as under the social key-stone wails and rolls on forever the mystery of Human Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker, by the stream! 'Tis the river that founded and gave pomp to the city; and without the discontent, where were progress – what were Man? Take comfort, O Thinker! wherever the stream over which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary and desolate, frets the arch that supports thee – never dream that, by destroying the bridge, thou canst silence the moan of the wave.

(to be continued.)

THE FORTUNES OF THE REVEREND CALEB ELLISON

CHAPTER THE FIRST

The Reverend Caleb Ellison had an odd way of doing every thing; but he was so good a man, and so adored a clergyman, that his being in love was an interesting circumstance to a large proportion of the inhabitants of the country town in which he lived. When he looked up at the chimney-pots as he walked the streets, or went slowly skipping along the foot-pavement to the Reading-room in the market-place, the elders of his congregation might wish that he would walk more like other men, and the children giggled at the sight; but the ladies, young and old, regarded these things as a part of the "originality" which they admired in him; and Joanna Carey would scarcely admit to herself that such freaks required forbearance.

On Friday evening Mr. Carey returned before the rest of his party from a strawberry feast, to tell his wife that their dear girl had shown him by a look, that she must now decide on her lot for life. Ellison had certainly spoken. Joanna must decide for herself. If she was satisfied to have the greatest blessings that a woman could have – high moral and spiritual excellence in a man who loved her – and could, for these, make light of the daily drawbacks of his oddities, it was not for any one else to object. Mr. Carey could not say that his own temper would bear with so eccentric a companion; but perhaps he was narrow: perhaps his wife's nice household ways for twenty-five years had spoiled him. Joanna knew what she was undertaking. She knew that it was as much as the clerk and the deacons could do, to get the pastor into the pulpit in proper time every Sunday, and that this would be her business now. She knew that he seldom remembered to shave, and how he had burned his marble chimney-piece black; and – Well; perhaps these were trifles. Perhaps it was a fault not to regard them as such. If a father was fortunate enough to have a man of eminent single-mindedness for his son-in-law, and genius to boot, he ought not, perhaps, to require common sense also; but it had always been Mr. Carey's belief that good sense was the greatest part of genius.

By Sunday evening Mr. Carey was little disposed to desire any thing more in his intended son-in-law than had appeared that day. Joanna had engaged herself to him on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning there was something in the tone of his pathetic voice so unusual, in the very first verses of the Psalm, that many hearers looked up; and then they saw something very unusual in his countenance. He so preached, that a stranger inquired earnestly who this Mr. Ellison was, and whence he came; and his admirers in the congregation said he was inspired.

"Joanna behaved very well, did not she?" whispered Mrs. Carey to her husband, as they were returning from chapel.

"Very well, indeed. And it was extremely fine, his preaching to-day. Extremely fine!"

And this particular day, the father feared as little for Joanna as Joanna for herself.

There was no reason for delay about the marriage. Mr. Ellison had three hundred pounds a year from his office, and was never likely to have any more. The interest of Joanna's portion – one thousand pounds – was hers whenever she married. She was four-and-twenty, and Mr. Ellison was five years older. They were no children; there was no reason for delay; so every body knew of the engagement immediately, and the preparations went on diligently.

A pastor's marriage is always a season of great interest and amusement. In this case it was unusually diverting from the singular innocence of the gentleman about all household affairs. He showed all the solicitude of which he was capable to have every thing right and comfortable for Joanna; but his ideas were so extraordinary, that his friends suspected that he had been quizzed by certain youths of his congregation, who had indeed made solemn suggestions to him about dredging-boxes and rolling-pins, and spigots, and ball-irons, and other conveniences, the names of which were strange to him. He had promised to leave the whole concern of furnishing in the hands of a discreet lady and her daughters, with a power of appeal to Mrs. Carey in doubtful cases; but when these mysterious names had been lying on his mind for some days, he could not help making inquiries and suggestions, which brought nothing but laughter upon him. Mr. and Mrs. Carey thought the quizzing went rather too far; but Joanna did not seem to mind it.

"His head should not be stuffed with nonsense," observed Mr. Carey to his wife, "when business that he really ought to be attending to is left undone."

"You mean the Life Insurance," replied she. "Why do you not remind him of it?"

"I believe I must. But it is not a pleasant thing to do. No man in his circumstances ought to need to be spoken to more than once. However, I have to suggest to him to insure all this pretty furniture that his friends are giving him; and while I am speaking about the Fire Insurance, I can easily mention the more important one."

"I should feel no difficulty," observed Mrs. Carey. "He will be purely thankful to you for telling him what he ought to do."

An opportunity soon occurred. The presents came in fast: the Careys were consulted about how to stow them all. One evening at supper, the conversation naturally turned – as it probably does in every house – on what should be saved first in case of fire. Mr. Carey asked Mr. Ellison whether his landlord had not insured the cottage, and whether he himself was not thinking of insuring the furniture from fire.

Instant opposition arose from Mr. Carey's second daughter, Charlotte, who declared that she could not bear to think of such a thing. She begged that nobody would speak of such a thing. Indeed, she wondered that any body could. When induced to explain the emotions with which her mind was laboring, she declared her horror that any one belonging to her could feel that any money could compensate for the loss of the precious things, such as old letters, and fond memorials, which perish in a fire.

"How old are you, my dear?" inquired her father.

"Sixteen, papa."

"Indeed! I should have taken you to be six years younger. I should wonder at a child of ten talking so sillily as you are doing."

Mr. Ellison stared; for his sympathy with Charlotte's sentiment was so strong, that he was looking at her with beaming eyes, and softly ejaculating, "Dear Charlotte! dear child!"

It took some time to convince both (for young ladies of sixteen sometimes see things less clearly than six years before and ten years after that age) that, if precious papers and gifts are unhappily lost in a fire, that is no reason why tables and chairs, and fish-kettles and dredging-boxes, and carpets and house linen should not be paid for by an Insurance Office; but at last both young lady and pastor saw this. Still, Charlotte did not look satisfied; and her father invited her to utter what was in her mind. After some fencing about whether her thoughts were silly, and whether it would be silly to speak them, out came the scruple. Was there not something worldly in thinking so much about money and the future?

"Dear Charlotte! dear child!" again soliloquized Mr. Ellison.

Mr. Carey did not think the apprehension silly; but, in his opinion, the danger of worldliness lay the other way. He thought the worldliness lay in a man's spending all his income, leaving wife and children to be maintained by their neighbors, in case of accidents which may happen any day to any body, and which do happen to a certain proportion of people, within an assigned time, as regularly as death happens to all. Charlotte had nothing to say against life insurance, because every man knows that he shall die; and there is no speculation in the case. But she was extremely surprised to hear that there is an equal certainty, though of a narrower extent, about fire, and other accidents; that it is a fact that, out of so many householders, such and such a number will have their houses burned down.