My Novel Part 68

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And how," cried Leonard, fiercely,--"how have they dared to slander this dead mother? How knew they that I--was--was--was not the child of wedlock?"

"There was no wedding-ring on Nora's finger, never any rumour of her marriage; her strange and sudden appearance at her father's house; her emotions on entrance, so unlike those natural to a wife returning to a parent's home,--these are all the evidence against her. But Mrs. Avenel deemed them strong, and so did I. You have a right to think we judged too harshly,--perhaps we did."

"And no inquiries were ever made?" said Leonard, mournfully, and after a long silence,--"no inquiries to learn who was the father of the motherless child?"

"Inquiries! Mrs. Avenel would have died first. Your grandmother's nature is very rigid. Had she come from princes, from Cadwallader himself,"

said the Welshman, "she could not more have shrunk from the thought of dishonour. Even over her dead child, the child she had loved the best, she thought but how to save that child's name and memory from suspicion.

There was luckily no servant in the house, only Mark Fairfield and his wife (Nora's sister): they had arrived the same day on a visit.

"Mrs. Fairfield was nursing her own infant two or three months old; she took charge of you; Nora was buried and the secret kept. None out of the family knew of it but myself and the curate of the town,--Mr. Dale. The day after your birth, Mrs. Fairfield, to prevent discovery, moved to a village at some distance. There her child died; and when she returned to Hazeldean, where her husband was settled, you pa.s.sed as the son she had lost. Mark, I know, was as a father to you, for he had loved Nora: they had been children together."

"And she came to London,--London is strong and cruel," muttered Leonard.

"She was friendless and deceived. I see all,--I desire to know no more.

This father--he must in deed have been like those whom I have read of in books. To love, to wrong her,--that I can conceive; but then to leave, to abandon; no visit to her grave, no remorse, no search for his own child. Well, well; Mrs. Avenel was right. Let us think of him no more."

The man-servant knocked at the door, and then put in his head. "Sir, the ladies are getting very impatient, and say they'll go."

"Sir," said Leonard, with a strange calm return to the things about him, "I ask your pardon for taking up your time so long. I go now. I will never mention to my moth--I mean to Mrs. Fairfield--what I have learned, nor to any one. I will work my way somehow. If Mr. p.r.i.c.kett will keep me, I will stay with him at present; but I repeat, I cannot take Mrs.

Avenel's money and be bound apprentice. Sir, you have been good and patient with me,--Heaven reward you."

The doctor was too moved to answer. He wrung Leonard's hand, and in another minute the door closed upon the nameless boy. He stood alone in the streets of London; and the sun flashed on him, red and menacing, like the eye of a foe!

CHAPTER XIX.

Leonard did not appear at the shop of Mr. p.r.i.c.kett that day. Needless it is to say where he wandered, what he suffered, what thought, what felt.

All within was storm. Late at night he returned to his solitary lodging.

On his table, neglected since the morning, was Helen's rose-tree. It looked parched and fading. His heart smote him: he watered the poor plant,--perhaps with his tears.

Meanwhile Dr. Morgan, after some debate with himself whether or not to apprise Mrs. Avenel of Leonard's discovery and message, resolved to spare her an uneasiness and alarm that might be dangerous to her health, and unnecessary in itself. He replied shortly, that she need not fear Leonard's coming to her house; that he was disinclined to bind himself an apprentice, but that he was provided for at present; and in a few weeks, when Dr. Morgan heard more of him through the tradesman by whom he was employed, the doctor would write to her from Germany. He then went to Mr. p.r.i.c.kett's, told the willing bookseller to keep the young man for the present,--to be kind to him, watch over his habits and conduct, and report to the doctor in his new home, on the Rhine, what avocation he thought Leonard would be best suited for, and most inclined to adopt. The charitable Welshman divided with the bookseller the salary given to Leonard, and left a quarter of his moiety in advance. It is true that he knew he should be repaid on applying to Mrs. Avenel; but being a man of independent spirit himself, he so sympathized with Leonard's present feelings, that he felt as if he should degrade the boy did he maintain him, even secretly, out of Mrs. Avenel's money,--money intended not to raise, but keep him down in life. At the worst, it was a sum the doctor could afford, and he had brought the boy into the world.

Having thus, as he thought, safely provided for his two young charges, Helen and Leonard, the doctor then gave himself up to his final preparations for departure. He left a short note for Leonard with Mr.

p.r.i.c.kett, containing some brief advice, some kind cheering; a postscript to the effect that he had not communicated to Mrs. Avenel the information Leonard had acquired, and that it were best to leave her in that ignorance; and six small powders to be dissolved in water, and a teaspoonful every fourth hour,--"Sovereign against rage and sombre thoughts," wrote the doctor.

By the evening of the next day Dr. Morgan, accompanied by his pet patient with the chronic tic, whom he had talked into exile, was on the steamboat on his way to Ostend.

Leonard resumed his life at Mr. p.r.i.c.kett's; but the change in him did not escape the bookseller. All his ingenuous simplicity had deserted him. He was very distant and very taciturn; he seemed to have grown much older. I shall not attempt to a.n.a.lyze metaphysically this change. By the help of such words as Leonard may himself occasionally let fall, the reader will dive into the boy's heart, and see how there the change had worked, and is working still. The happy, dreamy peasant-genius gazing on Glory with inebriate, undazzled eyes is no more. It is a man, suddenly cut off from the old household holy ties,--conscious of great powers, and confronted on all sides by barriers of iron, alone with hard Reality and scornful London; and if he catches a glimpse of the lost Helicon, he sees, where he saw the Muse, a pale melancholy spirit veiling its face in shame,--the ghost of the mournful mother, whose child has no name, not even the humblest, among the family of men.

On the second evening after Dr. Morgan's departure, as Leonard was just about to leave the shop, a customer stepped in with a book in his hand, which he had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the shop-boy, who was removing the volumes for the night from the booth without.

"Mr. p.r.i.c.kett, Mr. p.r.i.c.kett!" said the customer, "I am ashamed of you.

You presume to put upon this work, in two volumes, the sum of eight shillings."

Mr. p.r.i.c.kett stepped forth from the Cimmerian gloom of some recess, and cried, "What! Mr. Burley, is that you? But for your voice, I should not have known you."

"Man is like a book, Mr. p.r.i.c.kett; the commonalty only look to his binding. I am better bound, it is very true." Leonard glanced towards the speaker, who now stood under the gas-lamp, and thought he recognized his face. He looked again. Yes; it was the perch-fisher whom he had met on the banks of the Brent, and who had warned him of the lost fish and the broken line.

MR. BURLEY (continuing).--"But the 'Art of Thinking'!--you charge eight shillings for the 'Art of Thinking.'"

MR. p.r.i.c.kETT.--"Cheap enough, Mr. Burley. A very clean copy."

MR. BURLEY.--"Usurer! I sold it to you for three shillings. It is more than one hundred and fifty per cent you propose to gain from my 'Art of Thinking.'"

MR. p.r.i.c.kETT (stuttering and taken aback).--"You sold it to me! Ah, now I remember. But it was more than three shillings I gave. You forget,--two gla.s.ses of brandy-and-water."

MR. BURLEY.--"Hospitality, sir, is not to be priced. If you sell your hospitality, you are not worthy to possess my 'Art of Thinking.' I resume it. There are three shillings, and a shilling more for interest.

No; on second thoughts, instead of that shilling, I will return your hospitality: and the first time you come my way you shall have two gla.s.ses of brandy-and-water."

Mr. p.r.i.c.kett did not look pleased, but he made no objection; and Mr.

Burley put the book into his pocket, and turned to examine the shelves. He bought an old jest-book, a stray volume of the Comedies of Destouches, paid for them, put them also into his pocket, and was sauntering out, when he perceived Leonard, who was now standing at the doorway.

"Hem! who is that?" he asked, whispering Mr. p.r.i.c.kett. "A young a.s.sistant of mine, and very clever."

Mr. Burley scanned Leonard from top to toe.

"We have met before, sir. But you look as if you had returned to the Brent, and been fishing for my perch."

"Possibly, sir," answered Leonard. "But my line is tough, and is not yet broken, though the fish drags it amongst the weeds, and buries itself in the mud."

He lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and walked on.

"He is clever," said Mr. Burley to the bookseller: "he understands allegory."

MR. p.r.i.c.kETT.--"Poor youth! He came to town with the idea of turning author: you know what that is, Mr. Burley."

MR. BURLEY (with an air of superb dignity).--"Bibliopole, yes! An author is a being between G.o.ds and men, who ought to be lodged in a palace, and entertained at the public charge upon ortolans and Tokay. He should be kept lapped in down, and curtained with silken awnings from the cares of life, have nothing to do but to write books upon tables of cedar, and fish for perch from a gilded galley. And that 's what will come to pa.s.s when the ages lose their barbarism and know their benefactors.

Meanwhile, sir, I invite you to my rooms, and will regale you upon brandy-and-water as long as I can pay for it; and when I cannot--you shall regale me."

Mr. p.r.i.c.kett muttered, "A very bad bargain indeed," as Mr. Burley, with his chin in the air, stepped into the street.

CHAPTER XX.