CHAPTER XII.
SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE.
Percival was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way to town that day,
though Varney was his companion, and in the full play of those animal
spirits which he owed to his unrivalled physical organization and the
obtuseness of his conscience. Seeing, at length, that his gayety did not
communicate itself to Percival, he paused, and looked at him
suspiciously. A falling leaf startles the steed, and a shadow the guilty
man.
"You are sad, Percival," he said inquiringly. "What has disturbed you?"
"It is nothing,--or, at least, would seem nothing to you," answered
Percival, with an effort to smile, for I have heard you laugh at the
doctrine of presentiments. We sailors are more superstitious."
"What presentiment can you possibly entertain?" asked Varney, more
anxiously than Percival could have anticipated.
"Presentiments are not so easily defined, Varney. But, in truth, poor
Helen has infected me. Have you not remarked that, gay as she habitually
is, some shadow comes over her so suddenly that one cannot trace the
cause?"
"My dear Percival," said Varney, after a short pause, "what you say does
not surprise me. It would be false kindness to conceal from you that I
have heard Madame Dalibard say that her mother was, when about her age,
threatened with consumptive symptoms; but she lived many years
afterwards. Nay, nay, rally yourself; Helen's appearance, despite the
extreme purity of her complexion, is not that of one threatened by the
terrible malady of our climate. The young are often haunted with the
idea of early death. As we grow older, that thought is less cherished;
in youth it is a sort of luxury. To this mournful idea (which you see
you have remarked as well as I) we must attribute not only Helen's
occasional melancholy, but a generosity of forethought which I cannot
deny myself the pleasure of communicating to you, though her delicacy
would be shocked at my indiscretion. You know how helpless her aunt is.
Well, Helen, who is entitled, when of age, to a moderate competence, has
persuaded me to insure her life and accept a trust to hold the moneys (if
ever unhappily due) for the benefit of my mother-in-law, so that Madame
Dalibard may not be left destitute if her niece die before she is twenty-
one. How like Helen, is it not?"
Percival was too overcome to answer.
Varney resumed: "I entreat you not to mention this to Helen; it would
offend her modesty to have the secret of her good deeds thus betrayed by
one to whom alone she confided them. I could not resist her entreaties,
though, entre nous, it cripples me not a little to advance for her the
necessary sums for the premiums. Apropos, this brings me to a point on
which I feel, as the vulgar idiom goes, 'very awkward,'--as I always do
in these confounded money-matters. But you were good enough to ask me to
paint you a couple of pictures for Laughton. Now, if you could let me
have some portion of the sum, whatever it be (for I don't price my
paintings to you), it would very much oblige me."
Percival turned away his face as he wrung Varney's hand, and muttered,
with a choked voice: "Let me have my share in Helen's divine forethought.
Good Heavens! she, so young, to look thus beyond the grave, always for
others--for others!"
Callous as the wretch was, Percival's emotion and his proposal struck
Varney with a sentiment like compunction. He had designed to appropriate
the lover's gold as it was now offered; but that Percival himself should
propose it, blind to the grave to which that gold paved the way, was a
horror not counted in those to which his fell cupidity and his goading
apprehensions had familiarized his conscience.
"No," he said, with one of those wayward scruples to which the blackest
criminals are sometimes susceptible,--"no. I have promised Helen to
regard this as a loan to her, which she is to repay me when of age. What
you may advance me is for the pictures. I have a right to do as I please
with what is bought by my own labour. And the subjects of the pictures,
what shall they be?"
"For one picture try and recall Helen's aspect and attitude when you came
to us in the garden, and entitle your subject: 'The Foreboding.'"
"Hem!" said Varney, hesitatingly. "And the other subject?"
"Wait for that till the joy-bells at Laughton have welcomed a bride, and
then--and then, Varney," added Percival, with something of his natural
joyous smile, "you must take the expression as you find it. Once under
my care, and, please Heaven, the one picture shall laughingly upbraid the
other!"
As this was said, the cabriolet stopped at Percival's door. Varney dined
with him that day; and if the conversation flagged, it did not revert to
the subject which had so darkened the bright spirits of the host, and so
tried the hypocrisy of the guest. When Varney left, which he did as soon
as the dinner was concluded, Percival silently put a check into his
hands, to a greater amount than Varney had anticipated even from his
generosity.
"This is for four pictures, not two," he said, shaking his head; and
then, with his characteristic conceit, he added: "Well, some years hence
the world shall not call them overpaid. Adieu, my Medici; a dozen such
men, and Art would revive in England."
When he was left alone, Percival sat down, and leaning his face on both
hands, gave way to the gloom which his native manliness and the delicacy
that belongs to true affection had made him struggle not to indulge in
the presence of another. Never had he so loved Helen as in that hour;
never had he so intimately and intensely felt her matchless worth. The
image of her unselfish, quiet, melancholy consideration for that austere,
uncaressing, unsympathizing relation, under whose shade her young heart
must have withered, seemed to him filled with a celestial pathos. And he
almost hated Varney that the cynic painter could have talked of it with
that business-like phlegm. The evening deepened; the tranquil street
grew still; the air seemed close; the solitude oppressed him; he rose
abruptly, seized his hat, and went forth slowly, and still with a heavy
heart.
As he entered Piccadilly, on the broad step of that house successively
inhabited by the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Hertford,--on the step of
that mansion up which so many footsteps light with wanton pleasure have
gayly trod, Percival's eye fell upon a wretched, squalid, ragged object,
doubled up, as it were, in that last despondency which has ceased to beg,
that has no care to steal, that has no wish to live. Percival halted,
and touched the outcast.
"What is the matter, my poor fellow? Take care; the policeman will not
suffer you to rest here. Come, cheer up, I say! There is something to
find you a better lodging!"
The silver fell unheeded on the stones. The thing of rags did not even
raise its head, but a low, broken voice muttered,--
"It be too late now; let 'em take me to prison, let 'em send me 'cross
the sea to Buttany, let 'em hang me, if they please. I be 's good for
nothin' now,--nothin'!"
Altered as the voice was, it struck Percival as familiar. He looked down
and caught a view of the drooping face. "Up, man, up!" he said cheerily.
"See, Providence sends you an old friend in need, to teach you never to
despair again."
The hearty accent, more than the words, touched and aroused the poor
creature. He rose mechanically, and a sickly, grateful smile passed over
his wasted features as he recognized St. John.
"Come! how is this? I have always understood that to keep a crossing
was a flourishing trade nowadays."
"I 'as no crossin'. I 'as sold her!" groaned Beck. "I be's good for
nothin' now but to cadge about the streets, and steal, and filch, and
hang like the rest on us! Thank you kindly, sir," and Beck pulled his
forelock, "but, please your honour, I vould rather make an ind on it!"
"Pooh, pooh! didn't I tell you when you wanted a friend to come to me?
Why did you doubt me, foolish fellow? Pick up those shillings; get a bed
and a supper. Come and see me to-morrow at nine o'clock; you know
where,--the same house in Curzon Street; you shall tell me then your
whole story, and it shall go hard but I'll buy you another crossing, or
get you something just as good."
Poor Beck swayed a moment or two on his slender legs like a drunken man,
and then, suddenly falling on his knees, he kissed the hem of his
benefactor's garment, and fairly wept. Those tears relieved him; they
seemed to wash the drought of despair from his heart.
"Hush, hush! or we shall have a crowd round us. You'll not forget, my
poor friend, No.---- Curzon Street,--nine to-morrow. Make haste now, and
get food and rest; you look, indeed, as if you wanted them. Ah, would to
Heaven all the poverty in this huge city stood here in thy person, and we
could aid it as easily as I can thee!"
Percival had moved on as he said those last words, and looking back, he
had the satisfaction to see that Beck was slowly crawling after him, and
had escaped the grim question of a very portly policeman, who had no
doubt expressed a natural indignation at the audacity of so ragged a
skeleton not keeping itself respectably at home in its churchyard.
Entering one of the clubs in St. James's Street, Percival found a small
knot of politicians in eager conversation respecting a new book which had
been published but a day or two before, but which had already seized the
public attention with that strong grasp which constitutes always an era
in an author's life, sometimes an epoch in a nation's literature. The
newspapers were full of extracts from the work,--the gossips, of
conjecture as to the authorship. We need scarcely say that a book which
makes this kind of sensation must hit some popular feeling of the hour,
supply some popular want. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, therefore,
its character is political; it was so in the present instance. It may be
remembered that that year parliament sat during great part of the month
of October, that it was the year in which the Reform Bill was rejected by
the House of Lords, and that public feeling in our time had never been so
keenly excited. This work appeared during the short interval between the
rejection of the Bill and the prorogation of parliament [Parliament was
prorogued October 20th; the bill rejected by the Lords, October 8th].
And what made it more remarkable was, that while stamped with the passion
of the time, there was a weight of calm and stern reasoning embodied in
its vigorous periods, which gave to the arguments of the advocate
something of the impartiality of the judge. Unusually abstracted and
unsocial,--for, despite his youth and that peculiar bashfulness before
noticed, he was generally alive enough to all that passed around him,--
Percival paid little attention to the comments that circulated round the
easy-chairs in his vicinity, till a subordinate in the administration,
with whom he was slightly acquainted, pushed a small volume towards him
and said,--"You have seen this, of course, St. John? Ten to one you do
not guess the author. It is certainly not B----m, though the Lord
Chancellor has energy enough for anything. R---- says it has a touch of
S----r."
"Could M----y have written it?" asked a young member of parliament,
timidly.
"M----y! Very like his matchless style, to be sure! You can have read
very little of M----y, I should think," said the subordinate, with the
true sneer of an official and a critic.
The young member could have slunk into a nutshell. Percival, with very
languid interest, glanced over the volume. But despite his mood, and his
moderate affection for political writings, the passage he opened upon
struck and seized him unawares. Though the sneer of the official was
just, and the style was not comparable to M----y's (whose is?), still,
the steady rush of strong words, strong with strong thoughts, heaped
massively together, showed the ease of genius and the gravity of thought.
The absence of all effeminate glitter, the iron grapple with the pith and
substance of the argument opposed, seemed familiar to Percival. He
thought he heard the deep bass of John Ardworth's earnest voice when some
truth roused his advocacy, or some falsehood provoked his wrath. He put
down the book, bewildered. Could it be the obscure, briefless lawyer in
Gray's Inn (that very morning the object of his young pity) who was thus
lifted into fame? He smiled at his own credulity. But he listened with
more attention to the enthusiastic praises that circled round, and the
various guesses which accompanied them. Soon, however, his former gloom
returned,--the Babel began to chafe and weary him. He rose, and went
forth again into the air. He strolled on without purpose, but
mechanically, into the street where he had first seen Helen. He paused a
few moments under the colonnade which faced Beck's old deserted crossing.
His pause attracted the notice of one of the unhappy beings whom we
suffer to pollute our streets and rot in our hospitals. She approached
and spoke to him,--to him whose heart was so full of Helen! He
shuddered, and strode on. At length he paused before the twin towers of
Westminster Abbey, on which the moon rested in solemn splendour; and in
that space one man only shared his solitude. A figure with folded arms
leaned against the iron rails near the statue of Canning, and his gaze
comprehended in one view the walls of the Parliament, in which all
passions wage their war, and the glorious abbey, which gives a Walhalla
to the great. The utter stillness of the figure, so in unison with the
stillness of the scene, had upon Percival more effect than would have
been produced by the most clamorous crowd. He looked round curiously as
he passed, and uttered an exclamation as he recognized John Ardworth.
"You, Percival!" said Ardworth. "A strange meeting-place at this hour!
What can bring you hither?"
"Only whim, I fear; and you?" as Percival linked his arm into Ardworth's.
"Twenty years hence I will tell you what brought me hither!" answered
Ardworth, moving slowly back towards Whitehall.
"If we are alive then!"
"We live till our destinies below are fulfilled; till our uses have
passed from us in this sphere, and rise to benefit another. For the soul
is as a sun, but with this noble distinction,--the sun is confined in its
career; day after day it visits the same lands, gilds the same planets or
rather, as the astronomers hold, stands, the motionless centre of moving
worlds. But the soul, when it sinks into seeming darkness and the deep,
rises to new destinies, fresh regions unvisited before. What we call
Eternity, may be but an endless series of those transitions which men
call 'deaths,' abandonments of home after home, ever to fairer scenes and
loftier heights. Age after age, the spirit, that glorious Nomad, may
shift its tent, fated not to rest in the dull Elysium of the Heathen, but
carrying with it evermore its elements,--Activity and Desire. Why should
the soul ever repose? God, its Principle, reposes never. While we
speak, new worlds are sparkling forth, suns are throwing off their
nebulae, nebulae are hardening into worlds. The Almighty proves his
existence by creating. Think you that Plato is at rest, and Shakspeare
only basking on a sun-cloud? Labour is the very essence of spirit, as of
divinity; labour is the purgatory of the erring; it may become the hell
of the wicked, but labour is not less the heaven of the good!"
Ardworth spoke with unusual earnestness and passion, and his idea of the
future was emblematic of his own active nature; for each of us is wisely
left to shape out, amidst the impenetrable mists, his own ideal of the
Hereafter. The warrior child of the biting North placed his Hela amid
snows, and his Himmel in the banquets of victorious war; the son of the
East, parched by relentless summer,--his hell amidst fire, and his
elysium by cooling streams; the weary peasant sighs through life for
rest, and rest awaits his vision beyond the grave; the workman of
genius,--ever ardent, ever young,--honours toil as the glorious
development of being, and springs refreshed over the abyss of the grave,
to follow, from star to star, the progress that seems to him at once the
supreme felicity and the necessary law. So be it with the fantasy of
each! Wisdom that is infallible, and love that never sleeps, watch over
the darkness, and bid darkness be, that we may dream!
"Alas!" said the young listener, "what reproof do you not convey to
those, like me, who, devoid of the power which gives results to every
toil, have little left to them in life, but to idle life away. All have
not the gift to write, or harangue, or speculate, or--"
"Friend," interrupted Ardworth, bluntly, "do not belie yourself. There
lives not a man on earth--out of a lunatic asylum--who has not in him the
power to do good. What can writers, haranguers, or speculators do more
than that? Have you ever entered a cottage, ever travelled in a coach,
ever talked with a peasant in the field, or loitered with a mechanic at
the loom, and not found that each of those men had a talent you had not,
knew some things you knew not? The most useless creature that ever
yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags under the suns of
Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect. What men want is not
talent, it is purpose,--in other words, not the power to achieve, but the
will to labour. You, Percival St. John,--you affect to despond, lest you
should not have your uses; you, with that fresh, warm heart; you, with
that pure enthusiasm for what is fresh and good; you, who can even admire
a thing like Varney, because, through the tawdry man, you recognize art
and skill, even though wasted in spoiling canvas; you, who have only to
live as you feel, in order to diffuse blessings all around you,--fie,
foolish boy! you will own your error when I tell you why I come from my
rooms at Gray's Inn to see the walls in which Hampden, a plain country
squire like you, shook with plain words the tyranny of eight hundred
years."
"Ardworth, I will not wait your time to tell me what took you yonder. I
have penetrated a secret that you, not kindly, kept from me. This
morning you rose and found yourself famous; this evening you have come to
gaze upon the scene of the career to which that fame will more rapidly
conduct you--"
"And upon the tomb which the proudest ambition I can form on earth must
content itself to win! A poor conclusion, if all ended here!"
"I am right, however," said Percival, with boyish pleasure. "It is you
whose praises have just filled my ears. You, dear, dear Ardworth! How
rejoiced I am!"
Ardworth pressed heartily the hand extended to him: "I should have
trusted you with my secret to-morrow, Percival; as it is, keep it for the
present. A craving of my nature has been satisfied, a grief has found
distraction. As for the rest, any child that throws a stone into the
water with all his force can make a splash; but he would be a fool indeed
if he supposed that the splash was a sign that he had turned a stream."
Here Ardworth ceased abruptly; and Percival, engrossed by a bright idea,
which had suddenly occurred to him, exclaimed,--
"Ardworth, your desire, your ambition, is to enter parliament; there must
be a dissolution shortly,--the success of your book will render you
acceptable to many a popular constituency. All you can want is a sum for
the necessary expenses. Borrow that sum from me; repay me when you are
in the Cabinet, or attorney-general. It shall be so!"
A look so bright that even by that dull lamplight the glow of the cheek,
the brilliancy of the eye were visible, flashed over Ardworth's face. He
felt at that moment what ambitious man must feel when the object he has
seen dimly and afar is placed within his grasp; but his reason was proof
even against that strong temptation.
He passed his arm round the boy's slender waist, and drew him to his
heart with grateful affection as he replied,--"And what, if now in
parliament, giving up my career,--with no regular means of subsistence,--
what could I be but a venal adventurer? Place would become so vitally
necessary to me that I should feed but a dangerous war between my
conscience and my wants. In chasing Fame, the shadow, I should lose the
substance, Independence. Why, that very thought would paralyze my
tongue. No, no, my generous friend. As labour is the arch elevator of
man, so patience is the essence of labour. First let me build the
foundation; I may then calculate the height of my tower. First let me be
independent of the great; I will then be the champion of the lowly.
Hold! Tempt me no more; do not lure me to the loss of self-esteem. And
now, Percival," resumed Ardworth, in the tone of one who wishes to plunge
into some utterly new current of thought, "let us forget for awhile these
solemn aspirations, and be frolicsome and human. 'Nemo mortalium omnibus
horis sapit.' 'Neque semper arcum tendit Apollo.' What say you to a
cigar?"
Percival stared. He was not yet familiarized to the eccentric whims of
his friend.
"Hot negus and a cigar!" repeated Ardworth, while a smile, full of
drollery, played round the corners of his lips and twinkled in his deep-
set eyes.
"Are you serious?"
"Not serious; I have been serious enough," and Ardworth sighed, "for the
last three weeks. Who goes 'to Corinth to be sage,' or to the Cider
Cellar to be serious?"
"I subscribe, then, to the negus and cigar," said Percival, smiling; and
he had no cause to repent his compliance as he accompanied Ardworth to
one of the resorts favoured by that strange person in his rare hours of
relaxation.
For, seated at his favourite table, which happened, luckily, to be
vacant, with his head thrown carelessly back, and his negus steaming
before him, John Ardworth continued to pour forth, till the clock struck
three, jest upon jest, pun upon pun, broad drollery upon broad drollery,
without flagging, without intermission, so varied, so copious, so ready,
so irresistible that Percival was transported out of all his melancholy
in enjoying, for the first time in his life, the exuberant gayety of a
grave mind once set free,--all its intellect sparkling into wit, all its
passion rushing into humour. And this was the man he had pitied,
supposed to have no sunny side to his life! How much greater had been
his compassion and his wonder if he could have known all that had passed,
within the last few weeks, through that gloomy, yet silent breast, which,
by the very breadth of its mirth, showed what must be the depth of its
sadness!
