Then Helen busied herself in the rooms. She found her father's box, which had been duly forwarded. She re-examined its contents, and wept as she touched each humble and pious relic. But her father's memory itself thus seemed to give this home a sanction which the former had not; and she rose quietly and began mechanically to put things in order, sighing as she saw all so neglected, till she came to the rose-tree, and that alone showed heed and care. "Dear Leonard!" she murmured, and the smile resettled on her lips.
CHAPTER IX.
Nothing, perhaps, could have severed Leonard from Burley but Helen's return to his care. It was impossible for him, even had there been another room in the house vacant, (which there was not,) to install this noisy, riotous son of the Muse by Bacchus, talking at random, and smelling of spirits, in the same dwelling with an innocent, delicate, timid, female child. And Leonard could not leave her alone all the twenty-four hours. She restored a home to him, and imposed its duties. He, therefore, told Mr. Burley that in future he should write and study in his own room, and hinted with many a blush, and as delicately as he could, that it seemed to him that whatever he obtained from his pen ought to be halved with Burley, to whose interest he owed the employment, and from whose books or whose knowledge he took what helped to maintain it; but that the other half, if his, he could no longer afford to spend upon feasts or libations. He had another to provide for.
Burley pooh-poohed the notion of taking half his coadjutor's earning, with much grandeur, but spoke very fretfully of Leonard's sober appropriation of the other half; and, though a good-natured, warm-hearted man, felt extremely indignant against the sudden interposition of poor Helen. However, Leonard was firm; and then Burley grew sullen, and so they parted. But the rent was still to be paid. How? Leonard for the first time thought of the pawn-broker. He had clothes to spare, and Riccabocca's watch. No; that last he shrank from applying to such base uses.
He went home at noon and met Helen at the street door. She too had been out, and her soft cheek was rosy red with unwonted exercise and the sense of joy. She had still preserved the few gold pieces which Leonard had taken back to her on his first visit to Miss Starke's. She had now gone out and bought wools and implements for work; and meanwhile she had paid the rent.
Leonard did not object to the work, but he blushed deeply when he knew about the rent, and was very angry. He payed back to her that night what she had advanced; and Helen wept silently at his pride, and wept more when she saw the next day a woeful hiatus in his wardrobe.
But Leonard now worked at home, and worked resolutely; and Helen sat by his side, working too; so that next day, and the next, slipped peacefully away, and in the evening of the second be asked her to walk out in the fields. She sprang up joyously at the invitation, when bang went the door, and in reeled John Burley—drunk;—And so drunk!
CHAPTER X.
And with Burley there reeled in another man—a friend of his—a man who had been a wealthy trader and once well to do, but who, unluckily, had literary tastes, and was fond of hearing Burley talk. So, since he had known the wit, his business had fallen from him, and he had passed through the Bankrupt Court. A very shabby-looking dog he was, indeed, and his nose was redder than Burley's.
John made a drunken dash at poor Helen. "So you are the Pentheus in petticoats who defies Bacchus," cried he; and therewith he roared out a verse from Euripides. Helen ran away, and Leonard interposed.