CHAPTER XII. SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE.
Percival was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way to town thatday, though Varney was his companion, and in the full play of thoseanimal spirits which he owed to his unrivalled physical organization andthe obtuseness of his conscience. Seeing, at length, that his gayetydid not communicate itself to Percival, he paused, and looked at himsuspiciously. A falling leaf startles the steed, and a shadow the guiltyman.
"You are sad, Percival," he said inquiringly. "What has disturbed you?"
"It is nothing,--or, at least, would seem nothing to you," answeredPercival, with an effort to smile, "for I have heard you laugh at thedoctrine of presentiments. We sailors are more superstitious."
"What presentiment can you possibly entertain?" asked Varney, moreanxiously than Percival could have anticipated.
"Presentiments are not so easily defined, Varney. But, in truth, poorHelen has infected me. Have you not remarked that, gay as she habituallyis, some shadow comes over her so suddenly that one cannot trace thecause?"
"My dear Percival," said Varney, after a short pause, "what you say doesnot surprise me. It would be false kindness to conceal from you that Ihave heard Madame Dalibard say that her mother was, when about herage, threatened with consumptive symptoms; but she lived many yearsafterwards. Nay, nay, rally yourself; Helen's appearance, despite theextreme purity of her complexion, is not that of one threatened by theterrible malady of our climate. The young are often haunted with theidea 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 seeyou have remarked as well as I) we must attribute not only Helen'soccasional melancholy, but a generosity of forethought which I cannotdeny myself the pleasure of communicating to you, though her delicacywould be shocked at my indiscretion. You know how helpless her aunt is.Well, Helen, who is entitled, when of age, to a moderate competence, haspersuaded 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 thatMadame Dalibard may not be left destitute if her niece die before she istwenty-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 wouldoffend her modesty to have the secret of her good deeds thus betrayed byone 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 thenecessary sums for the premiums. Apropos, this brings me to a point onwhich I feel, as the vulgar idiom goes, 'very awkward,'--as I always doin these confounded money-matters. But you were good enough to ask meto paint you a couple of pictures for Laughton. Now, if you could letme have some portion of the sum, whatever it be (for I don't price mypaintings to you), it would very much oblige me."
Percival turned away his face as he wrung Varney's hand, andmuttered, with a choked voice: "Let me have my share in Helen's divineforethought. 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 struckVarney with a sentiment like compunction. He had designed to appropriatethe lover's gold as it was now offered; but that Percival himself shouldpropose it, blind to the grave to which that gold paved the way, was ahorror not counted in those to which his fell cupidity and his goadingapprehensions had familiarized his conscience.
"No," he said, with one of those wayward scruples to which the blackestcriminals are sometimes susceptible,--"no. I have promised Helen toregard this as a loan to her, which she is to repay me when of age. Whatyou may advance me is for the pictures. I have a right to do as I pleasewith 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 youcame 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, andthen--and then, Varney," added Percival, with something of his naturaljoyous smile, "you must take the expression as you find it. Once undermy care, and, please Heaven, the one picture shall laughingly upbraidthe other!"
As this was said, the cabriolet stopped at Percival's door. Varney dinedwith him that day; and if the conversation flagged, it did not revert tothe subject which had so darkened the bright spirits of the host, and sotried the hypocrisy of the guest. When Varney left, which he did assoon as the dinner was concluded, Percival silently put a check intohis hands, to a greater amount than Varney had anticipated even from hisgenerosity.
"This is for four pictures, not two," he said, shaking his head; andthen, with his characteristic conceit, he added: "Well, some years hencethe world shall not call them overpaid. Adieu, my Medici; a dozen suchmen, and Art would revive in England."
When he was left alone, Percival sat down, and leaning his face on bothhands, gave way to the gloom which his native manliness and the delicacythat belongs to true affection had made him struggle not to indulge inthe 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 thataustere, uncaressing, unsympathizing relation, under whose shade heryoung heart must have withered, seemed to him filled with a celestialpathos. And he almost hated Varney that the cynic painter could havetalked of it with that business-like phlegm. The evening deepened; thetranquil street grew still; the air seemed close; the solitude oppressedhim; he rose abruptly, seized his hat, and went forth slowly, and stillwith a heavy heart.
As he entered Piccadilly, on the broad step of that house successivelyinhabited by the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Hertford,--on the step ofthat mansion up which so many footsteps light with wanton pleasure havegayly trod, Percival's eye fell upon a wretched, squalid, ragged object,doubled up, as it were, in that last despondency which has ceased tobeg, that has no care to steal, that has no wish to live. Percivalhalted, and touched the outcast.
"What is the matter, my poor fellow? Take care; the policeman will notsuffer you to rest here. Come, cheer up, I say! There is something tofind you a better lodging!"
The silver fell unheeded on the stones. The thing of rags did not evenraise its head, but a low, broken voice muttered,--
"It be too late now; let 'em take me to prison, let 'em send me 'crossthe sea to Buttany, let 'em hang me, if they please. I be 's good fornothin' now,--nothin'!"
Altered as the voice was, it struck Percival as familiar. He looked downand 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 todespair again."
The hearty accent, more than the words, touched and aroused the poorcreature. He rose mechanically, and a sickly, grateful smile passed overhis wasted features as he recognized St. John.
"Come! how is this? I have always understood that to keep a crossing wasa flourishing trade nowadays."
"I 'as no crossin'. I 'as sold her!" groaned Beck. "I be's good fornothin' now but to cadge about the streets, and steal, and filch, andhang like the rest on us! Thank you kindly, sir," and Beck pulled hisforelock, "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 abed and a supper. Come and see me to-morrow at nine o'clock; you knowwhere,--the same house in Curzon Street; you shall tell me then yourwhole story, and it shall go hard but I'll buy you another crossing, orget you something just as good."
Poor Beck swayed a moment or two on his slender legs like a drunkenman, and then, suddenly falling on his knees, he kissed the hem of hisbenefactor's garment, and fairly wept. Those tears relieved him; theyseemed to wash the drought of despair from his heart.
"Hush, hush! or we shall have a crowd round us. You'll not forget, m
ypoor friend, No.---- Curzon Street,--nine to-morrow. Make haste now, andget food and rest; you look, indeed, as if you wanted them. Ah, would toHeaven all the poverty in this huge city stood here in thy person, andwe could aid it as easily as I can thee!"
Percival had moved on as he said those last words, and looking back, hehad the satisfaction to see that Beck was slowly crawling after him,and had escaped the grim question of a very portly policeman, who hadno doubt expressed a natural indignation at the audacity of so ragged askeleton not keeping itself respectably at home in its churchyard.
Entering one of the clubs in St. James's Street, Percival found a smallknot of politicians in eager conversation respecting a new book whichhad been published but a day or two before, but which had already seizedthe public attention with that strong grasp which constitutes always anera in an author's life, sometimes an epoch in a nation's literature.The newspapers were full of extracts from the work,--the gossips, ofconjecture as to the authorship. We need scarcely say that a book whichmakes 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 beremembered that that year parliament sat during great part of the monthof October, that it was the year in which the Reform Bill was rejectedby the House of Lords, and that public feeling in our time had neverbeen so keenly excited. This work appeared during the short intervalbetween 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 stampedwith the passion of the time, there was a weight of calm and sternreasoning embodied in its vigorous periods, which gave to the argumentsof the advocate something of the impartiality of the judge. Unusuallyabstracted and unsocial,--for, despite his youth and that peculiarbashfulness before noticed, he was generally alive enough to all thatpassed around him,--Percival paid little attention to the comments thatcirculated round the easy-chairs in his vicinity, till a subordinate inthe administration, with whom he was slightly acquainted, pushed a smallvolume 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 ithas 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 readvery little of M----y, I should think," said the subordinate, with thetrue sneer of an official and a critic.
The young member could have slunk into a nutshell. Percival, with verylanguid interest, glanced over the volume. But despite his mood, and hismoderate affection for political writings, the passage he opened uponstruck and seized him unawares. Though the sneer of the official wasjust, and the style was not comparable to M----y's (whose is?), still,the steady rush of strong words, strong with strong thoughts, heapedmassively together, showed the ease of genius and the gravity ofthought. The absence of all effeminate glitter, the iron grapple withthe pith and substance of the argument opposed, seemed familiar toPercival. He thought he heard the deep bass of John Ardworth's earnestvoice when some truth roused his advocacy, or some falsehood provokedhis wrath. He put down the book, bewildered. Could it be the obscure,briefless lawyer in Gray's Inn (that very morning the object ofhis young pity) who was thus lifted into fame? He smiled at his owncredulity. But he listened with more attention to the enthusiasticpraises that circled round, and the various guesses which accompaniedthem. Soon, however, his former gloom returned,--the Babel began tochafe and weary him. He rose, and went forth again into the air. Hestrolled on without purpose, but mechanically, into the street where hehad first seen Helen. He paused a few moments under the colonnade whichfaced Beck's old deserted crossing. His pause attracted the notice ofone of the unhappy beings whom we suffer to pollute our streets and rotin our hospitals. She approached and spoke to him,--to him whose heartwas so full of Helen! He shuddered, and strode on. At length he pausedbefore the twin towers of Westminster Abbey, on which the moon rested insolemn splendour; and in that space one man only shared his solitude. Afigure with folded arms leaned against the iron rails near the statueof Canning, and his gaze comprehended in one view the walls of theParliament, in which all passions wage their war, and the gloriousabbey, which gives a Walhalla to the great. The utter stillness of thefigure, so in unison with the stillness of the scene, had upon Percivalmore effect than would have been produced by the most clamorous crowd.He looked round curiously as he passed, and uttered an exclamation as herecognized 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 intoArdworth's.
"Twenty years hence I will tell you what brought me hither!" answeredArdworth, moving slowly back towards Whitehall.
"If we are alive then!"
"We live till our destinies below are fulfilled; till our uses havepassed from us in this sphere, and rise to benefit another. For the soulis as a sun, but with this noble distinction,--the sun is confinedin its career; day after day it visits the same lands, gilds the sameplanets or rather, as the astronomers hold, stands, the motionlesscentre of moving worlds. But the soul, when it sinks into seemingdarkness and the deep, rises to new destinies, fresh regions unvisitedbefore. What we call Eternity, may be but an endless series of thosetransitions 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 thedull Elysium of the Heathen, but carrying with it evermore itselements,--Activity and Desire. Why should the soul ever repose? God,its Principle, reposes never. While we speak, new worlds are sparklingforth, suns are throwing off their nebulae, nebulae are hardening intoworlds. The Almighty proves his existence by creating. Think you thatPlato is at rest, and Shakspeare only basking on a sun-cloud? Labour isthe very essence of spirit, as of divinity; labour is the purgatory ofthe erring; it may become the hell of the wicked, but labour is not lessthe heaven of the good!"
Ardworth spoke with unusual earnestness and passion, and his idea of thefuture was emblematic of his own active nature; for each of us is wiselyleft to shape out, amidst the impenetrable mists, his own ideal of theHereafter. The warrior child of the biting North placed his Hela amidsnows, and his Himmel in the banquets of victorious war; the son ofthe East, parched by relentless summer,--his hell amidst fire, and hiselysium by cooling streams; the weary peasant sighs through life forrest, and rest awaits his vision beyond the grave; the workman ofgenius,--ever ardent, ever young,--honours toil as the gloriousdevelopment of being, and springs refreshed over the abyss of the grave,to follow, from star to star, the progress that seems to him at oncethe supreme felicity and the necessary law. So be it with the fantasy ofeach! Wisdom that is infallible, and love that never sleeps, watch overthe darkness, and bid darkness be, that we may dream!
"Alas!" said the young listener, "what reproof do you not convey tothose, like me, who, devoid of the power which gives results to everytoil, have little left to them in life, but to idle life away. All havenot the gift to write, or harangue, or speculate, or--"
"Friend," interrupted Ardworth, bluntly, "do not belie yourself. Therelives not a man on earth--out of a lunatic asylum--who has not in himthe power to do good. What can writers, haranguers, or speculators domore than that? Have you ever entered a cottage, ever travelled ina coach, ever talked with a peasant in the field, or loitered with amechanic at the loom, and not found that each of those men had a talentyou had not, knew some things you knew not? The most useless creaturethat ever yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags under thesuns of Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect. What men want isnot 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,l
est 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 caneven admire a thing like Varney, because, through the tawdry man, yourecognize art and skill, even though wasted in spoiling canvas; you, whohave only to live as you feel, in order to diffuse blessings all aroundyou,--fie, foolish boy! you will own your error when I tell you why Icome from my rooms at Gray's Inn to see the walls in which Hampden, aplain country squire like you, shook with plain words the tyranny ofeight 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. Thismorning you rose and found yourself famous; this evening you havecome to gaze upon the scene of the career to which that fame will morerapidly conduct you--"
"And upon the tomb which the proudest ambition I can form on earth mustcontent itself to win! A poor conclusion, if all ended here!"
"I am right, however," said Percival, with boyish pleasure. "It is youwhose praises have just filled my ears. You, dear, dear Ardworth! Howrejoiced I am!"
Ardworth pressed heartily the hand extended to him: "I should havetrusted you with my secret to-morrow, Percival; as it is, keep it forthe present. A craving of my nature has been satisfied, a grief hasfound distraction. As for the rest, any child that throws a stone intothe water with all his force can make a splash; but he would be a foolindeed if he supposed that the splash was a sign that he had turned astream."
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; theremust be a dissolution shortly,--the success of your book will render youacceptable to many a popular constituency. All you can want is a sum forthe necessary expenses. Borrow that sum from me; repay me when you arein 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. Hefelt at that moment what ambitious man must feel when the object he hasseen dimly and afar is placed within his grasp; but his reason was proofeven against that strong temptation.
He passed his arm round the boy's slender waist, and drew him to hisheart with grateful affection as he replied,--"And what, if nowin parliament, giving up my career,--with no regular means ofsubsistence,--what could I be but a venal adventurer? Place wouldbecome so vitally necessary to me that I should feed but a dangerouswar between my conscience and my wants. In chasing Fame, the shadow, Ishould lose the substance, Independence. Why, that very thought wouldparalyze my tongue. No, no, my generous friend. As labour is the archelevator of man, so patience is the essence of labour. First let mebuild the foundation; I may then calculate the height of my tower. Firstlet me be independent of the great; I will then be the champion ofthe lowly. Hold! Tempt me no more; do not lure me to the loss ofself-esteem. And now, Percival," resumed Ardworth, in the tone of onewho wishes to plunge into some utterly new current of thought, "let usforget for awhile these solemn aspirations, and be frolicsome andhuman. 'Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit.' 'Neque semper arcum tenditApollo.' What say you to a cigar?"
Percival stared. He was not yet familiarized to the eccentric whims ofhis friend.
"Hot negus and a cigar!" repeated Ardworth, while a smile, full ofdrollery, played round the corners of his lips and twinkled in hisdeep-set eyes.
"Are you serious?"
"Not serious; I have been serious enough," and Ardworth sighed, "forthe last three weeks. Who goes 'to Corinth to be sage,' or to the CiderCellar to be serious?"
"I subscribe, then, to the negus and cigar," said Percival, smiling; andhe had no cause to repent his compliance as he accompanied Ardworth toone of the resorts favoured by that strange person in his rare hours ofrelaxation.
For, seated at his favourite table, which happened, luckily, to bevacant, with his head thrown carelessly back, and his negus steamingbefore him, John Ardworth continued to pour forth, till the clock struckthree, 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 melancholyin enjoying, for the first time in his life, the exuberant gayety of agrave mind once set free,--all its intellect sparkling into wit, allits 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 beenhis compassion and his wonder if he could have known all that hadpassed, within the last few weeks, through that gloomy, yet silentbreast, which, by the very breadth of its mirth, showed what must be thedepth of its sadness!