Helen in vain and with tears entreated her to take no step in reply to the advertisement. Mrs. Smedley felt it was an affair of duty, and was obdurate, and shortly afterward put on her bonnet and left the house. Helen conjectured that she was on her way to Miss Starke's, and her whole soul was bent on flight. Leonard had gone to the office of the Beehive with his MSS.; but she packed up all their joint effects, and, just as she had done so, he returned. She communicated the news of the advertisement, and said she should be so miserable if compelled to go back to Miss Starke's, and implored him so pathetically to save her from such sorrow that he at once assented to her proposal of flight. Luckily, little was owing to the landlady—that little was left with the maid-servant; and, profiting by Mrs. Smedley's absence, they escaped without scene or conflict. Their effects were taken by Leonard to a stand of hackney vehicles, and then left at a coach-office, while they went in search of lodgings. It was wise to choose an entirely new and remote district; and before night they were settled in an attic in Lambeth.
CHAPTER XIII.
As the reader will expect, no trace of Burley could Leonard find: the humorist had ceased to communicate with the Beehive. But Leonard grieved for Burley's sake; and, indeed, he missed the intercourse of the large wrong mind. But he settled down by degrees to the simple loving society of his child companion, and in that presence grew more tranquil. The hours in the day time that he did not pass at work he spent as before, picking up knowledge at bookstalls; and at dusk he and Helen would stroll out—sometimes striving to escape from the long suburb into fresh rural air; more often wandering to and fro the bridge that led to glorious Westminster—London's classic land—and watching the vague lamps reflected on the river. This haunt suited the musing melancholy boy. He would stand long and with wistful silence by the balustrade—seating Helen thereon, that she too might look along the dark mournful waters which, dark though they be, still have their charm of mysterious repose.
As the river flowed between the world of roofs, and the roar of human passions on either side, so in those two hearts flowed Thought—and all they knew of London was its shadow.
CHAPTER XIV.
There appeared in the Beehive certain very truculent political papers—papers very like the tracts in the Tinker's bag. Leonard did not heed them much, but they made far more sensation in the public that read the Beehive than Leonard's papers, full of rare promise though the last were. They greatly increased the sale of the periodical in the manufacturing towns, and began to awake the drowsy vigilance of the Home Office. Suddenly a descent was made upon the Beehive, and all its papers and plant. The editor saw himself threatened with a criminal prosecution, and the certainty of two years' imprisonment: he did not like the prospect, and disappeared. One evening, when Leonard, unconscious of these mischances, arrived at the door of the office, he found it closed. An agitated mob was before it, and a voice that was not new to his ear, was haranguing the bystanders, with many imprecations against "tyrans." He looked, and, to his amaze, recognized in the orator Mr. Sprott the Tinker.
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.