“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. Prickett 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. Prickett 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. Prickett’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. Prickett, 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. Prickett’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 analyze 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.