“Oh, brother, do not go there again,—do not see more of this bad man.”
“Bad!—no! Hopeless and unhappy, he has stooped to stimulants and oblivion—but you cannot understand these things, my pretty preacher.”
“Yes, I do, Leonard. What is the difference between being good and bad? The good do not yield to temptations, and the bad do.”
The definition was so simple and so wise that Leonard was more struck with it than he might have been by the most elaborate sermon by Parson Dale.
“I have often murmured to myself since I lost you, ‘Helen was my good angel; ‘—say on. For my heart is dark to myself, and while you speak light seems to dawn on it.”
This praise so confused Helen that she was long before she could obey the command annexed to it. But, by little and little, words came to both more frankly. And then he told her the sad tale of Chatterton, and waited, anxious to hear her comments.
“Well,” he said, seeing that she remained silent, “how can I hope, when this mighty genius laboured and despaired? What did he want, save birth and fortune and friends and human justice?”
“Did he pray to God?” asked Helen, drying her tears. Again Leonard was startled. In reading the life of Chatterton he had not much noted the scepticism, assumed or real, of the ill-fated aspirer to earthly immortality. At Helen’s question, that scepticism struck him forcibly. “Why do you ask that, Helen?”
“Because, when we pray often, we grow so very, very patient,” answered the child. “Perhaps, had he been patient a few months more, all would have been won by him, as it will be by you, brother, for you pray, and you will be patient.”
Leonard bowed his head in deep thought, and this time the thought was not gloomy. Then out from that awful life there glowed another passage, which before he had not heeded duly, but regarded rather as one of the darkest mysteries in the fate of Chatterton.