The angler turned. "What's the matter? Hist! you have frightened my perch. Keep still, can't you?"
Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler.
"It is the most extraordinary perch, that!" muttered the stranger, soliloquizing. "It has the devil's own luck. It must have been born with a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never catch it – never! Ha! – no – only a weed. I give it up." With this, he indignantly jerked his rod from the water, and began to disjoint it. While leisurely engaged in this occupation, he turned to Leonard.
"Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?"
"No," answered Leonard. "I never saw it before."
Angler (solemnly). – "Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been the Dalilah of my existence."
Leonard (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical). – "The Dalilah! Sir – the Dalilah!"
Angler. – "The Dalilah. Young man, listen, and be warned by example. When I was about your age, I first came to this stream to fish. Sir, on that fatal day, about 3, p. m., I hooked up a fish – such a big one, it must have weighed a pound and a half. Sir, it was that length;" and the angler put finger to wrist. "And just when I had got it nearly ashore, by the very place where you are sitting, on that shelving bank, young man, the line broke, and the perch twisted himself among those roots, and – caco-dæmon that he was – ran off, hook and all. Well, that fish haunted me; never before had I seen such a fish. Minnows I had caught in the Thames and elsewhere, also gudgeons, and occasionally a dace. But a fish like that – a PERCH – all his fins up like the sails of a man-of-war – a monster perch – a whale of a perch! – No, never till then had I known what leviathans lie hid within the deeps. I could not sleep till I had returned; and again, sir – I caught that perch. And this time I pulled him fairly out of the water. He escaped; and how did he escape? Sir, he left his eye behind him on the hook. Years, long years, have passed since then; but never shall I forget the agony of that moment."
Leonard. – "To the perch, sir?"
Angler. – "Perch! agony to him! He enjoyed it: – agony to me. I gazed on that eye, and the eye looked as sly and as wicked as if it was laughing in my face. Well, sir, I had heard that there is no better bait for a perch than a perch's eye. I adjusted that eye on the hook, and dropped in the line gently. The water was unusually clear; in two minutes I saw that perch return. He approached the hook; he recognized his eye – frisked his tail – made a plunge – and, as I live, carried off the eye, safe and sound; and I saw him digesting it by the side of that water lily. The mocking fiend! Seven times since that day, in the course of a varied and eventful life, have I caught that perch, and seven times has that perch escaped."
Leonard (astonished): – "It can't be the same perch; perches are very tender fish – a hook inside of it, and an eye hooked out of it – no perch could withstand such havoc in its constitution."
Angler (with an appearance of awe). – "It does seem supernatural. But it is that perch; for harkye, sir, there is only one perch in the whole brook! All the years I have fished here, I have never caught another perch here; and this solitary inmate of the watery element I know by sight better than I know my own lost father. For each time that I have raised it out of the water, its profile has been turned to me, and I have seen, with a shudder, that it has had only – One Eye! It is a most mysterious and a most diabolical phenomenon, that perch! It has been the ruin of my prospects in life. I was offered a situation in Jamaica; I could not go, with that perch left here in triumph. I might afterward have had an appointment in India, but I could not put the ocean between myself and that perch: thus have I frittered away my existence in the fatal metropolis of my native land. And once a-week, from February to December, I come hither – Good Heavens! if I should catch the perch at last, the occupation of my existence will be gone."
Leonard gazed curiously at the angler, as the last thus mournfully concluded. The ornate turn of his periods did not suit with his costume. He looked woefully threadbare and shabby – a genteel sort of shabbiness too – shabbiness in black. There was humor in the corners of his lip; and his hands, though they did not seem very clean – indeed his occupation was not friendly to such niceties – were those of a man who had not known manual labor. His face was pale and puffed, but the tip of his nose was red. He did not seem as if the watery element was as familiar to himself as to his Dalilah – the perch.
"Such is Life!" recommenced the angler in a moralizing tone, as he slid his rod into its canvas case. "If a man knew what it was to fish all one's life in a stream that has only one perch! – to catch that one perch nine times in all, and nine times to see it fall back into the water, plump; – if a man knew what it was – why, then" – Here the angler looked over his shoulder full at Leonard – "why then, young sir, he would know what human life is to vain ambition. Good evening."
Away he went, treading over the daisies and king cups. Helen's eyes followed him wistfully.
"What a strange person!" said Leonard, laughing.
"I think he is a very wise one," murmured Helen; and she came close up to Leonard, and took his hand in both hers, as if she felt already that he was in need of the Comforter – the line broke, and the perch lost!
CHAPTER IX
At noon the next day, London stole upon them, through a gloomy, thick, oppressive atmosphere. For where is it that we can say London bursts on the sight? It stole on them through one of its fairest and most gracious avenues of approach – by the stately gardens of Kensington – along the side of Hyde Park, and so on toward Cumberland Gate.
Leonard was not the least struck. And yet, with a very little money, and a very little taste, it would be easy to render this entrance to London as grand and imposing as that to Paris from the Champs Elysées. As they came near the Edgeware Road, Helen took her new brother by the hand and guided him. For she knew all that neighborhood, and she was acquainted with a lodging near that occupied by her father (to that lodging itself she could not have gone for the world), where they might be housed cheaply.
But just then the sky, so dull and overcast since morning, seemed one mass of black cloud. There suddenly came on a violent storm of rain. The boy and girl took refuge in a covered mews, in a street running out of the Edgeware Road. This shelter soon became crowded; the two young pilgrims crept close to the wall, apart from the rest; Leonard's arm round Helen's waist, sheltering her from the rain that the strong wind contending with it beat in through the passage. Presently a young gentleman, of better mien and dress than the other refugees, entered, not hastily, but rather with a slow and proud step, as if, though he deigned to take shelter, he scorned to run to it. He glanced somewhat haughtily at the assembled group – passed on through the midst of it – came near Leonard – took off his hat, and shook the rain from its brim. His head thus uncovered, left all his features exposed; and the village youth recognized, at the first glance, his old victorious assailant on the green at Hazeldean.
Yet Randal Leslie was altered. His dark cheek was as thin as in boyhood, and even yet more wasted by intense study and night vigils; but the expression of his face was at once more refined and manly, and there was a steady concentrated light in his large eye, like that of one who has been in the habit of bringing all his thoughts to one point. He looked older than he was. He was dressed simply in black, a color which became him; and altogether his aspect and figure were not showy indeed, but distinguished. He looked, to the common eye, a gentleman; and to the more observant, a scholar.
Helter-skelter! – pell-mell! the group in the passage – now pressed each on each – now scattered on all sides – making way – rushing down the mews – against the walls – as a fiery horse darted under shelter; the rider, a young man, with a very handsome face, and dressed with that peculiar care which we commonly call dandyism, cried out, good-humoredly, "Don't be afraid; the horse shan't hurt any of you – a thousand pardons – so ho! so ho!" He patted the horse, and it stood as still as a statue, filling up the centre of the passage. The groups resettled – Randal approached the rider.
"Frank Hazeldean!"
"Ah – is it indeed Randal Leslie!"
Frank was off his horse in a moment, and the bridle was consigned to the care of a slim prentice-boy holding a bundle.
"My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you. How lucky it was that I should turn in here. Not like me either, for I don't much care for a ducking. Staying in town, Randal?"
"Yes, at your uncle's, Mr. Egerton. I have left Oxford."
"For good?"
"For good."
"But you have not taken your degree, I think? We Etonians all considered you booked for a double first. Oh! we have been so proud of your fame – you carried off all the prizes."
"Not all; but some, certainly. Mr. Egerton offered me my choice – to stay for my degree, or to enter at once into the Foreign Office. I preferred the end to the means. For, after all, what good are academical honors but as the entrance to life? To enter now, is to save a step in a long way, Frank."
"Ah! you were always ambitious, and you will make a great figure, I am sure."
"Perhaps so – if I work for it. Knowledge is power!"
Leonard started.
"And you," resumed Randal, looking with some curious attention at his old school-fellow. "You never came to Oxford. I did hear you were going into the army."
"I am in the Guards," said Frank, trying hard not to look too conceited as he made that acknowledgment. "The Governor pished a little, and would rather I had come to live with him in the old Hall, and take to farming. Time enough for that – eh? By Jove, Randal, how pleasant a thing is life in London? Do you go to Almack's to-night?"
"No; Wednesday is a holiday in the House! There is a great parliamentary dinner at Mr. Egerton's. He is in the Cabinet now, you know; but you don't see much of your uncle, I think."
"Our sets are different," said the young gentleman, in a tone of voice worthy of Brummel. "All those parliamentary fellows are devilish dull. The rain's over. I don't know whether the Governor would like me to call at Grosvenor-square; but pray come and see me; here's my card to remind you; you must dine at our mess. Such nice fellows. What day will you fix?"
"I will call and let you know. Don't you find it rather expensive in the Guards? I remember that you thought the Governor, as you call him, used to chafe a little when you wrote for more pocket-money; and the only time I ever remember to have seen you with tears in your eyes, was when Mr. Hazeldean, in sending you £5, reminded you that his estates were not entailed – were at his own disposal, and they should never go to an extravagant spendthrift. It was not a pleasant threat, that, Frank."
"Oh!" cried the young man coloring deeply, "It was not the threat that pained me, it was that my father could think so meanly of me as to fancy that – well – well, but those were school-boy days. And my father was always more generous than I deserved. We must see a good deal of each other, Randal. How good-natured you were at Eton, making my longs and shorts for me; I shall never forget it. Do call soon."
Frank swung himself into his saddle, and rewarded the slim youth with half-a-crown; a largess four times more ample than his father would have deemed sufficient. A jerk of the rein and a touch of the heel – off bounded the fiery horse and the gay young rider. Randal mused; and as the rain had now ceased, the passengers under shelter dispersed and went their way. Only Randal, Leonard, and Helen remained behind. Then, as Randal, still musing, lifted his eyes, they fell full upon Leonard's face. He started, passed his hand quickly over his brow – looked again, hard and piercingly; and the change in his pale cheek to a shade still paler – a quick compression and nervous gnawing of his lip – showed that he too recognized an old foe. Then his glance ran over Leonard's dress, which was somewhat dust-stained, but far above the class among which the peasant was born. Randal raised his brows in surprise, and with a smile slightly supercilious – the smile stung Leonard; and with a slow step Randal left the passage, and took his way toward Grosvenor-square. The Entrance of Ambition was clear to him.
Then the little girl once more took Leonard by the hand, and led him through rows of humble, obscure, dreary streets. It seemed almost like an allegory personified, as the sad, silent child led on the penniless and low-born adventurer of genius by the squalid shops, and through the winding lanes, which grew meaner and meaner, till both their forms vanished from the view.
CHAPTER X
"But do come; change your dress, return and dine with me; you will have just time, Harley. You will meet the most eminent men of our party; surely they are worth your study, philosopher that you affect to be."
Thus said Audley Egerton to Lord L'Estrange, with whom he had been riding (after the toils of his office). The two gentlemen were in Audley's library. Mr. Egerton, as usual, buttoned up, seated in his chair, in the erect posture of a man who scorns "inglorious ease." Harley, as usual, thrown at length on a sofa, his long hair in careless curls, his neckcloth loose, his habiliments flowing —simplex munditiis, indeed – his grace all his own; seemingly negligent, never slovenly; at ease every where and with every one, even with Mr. Audley Egerton, who chilled or awed the ease out of most people.
"Nay, my dear Audley, forgive me. But your eminent men are all men of one idea, and that not a diverting one – politics! politics! politics! The storm in the saucer."
"But, what is your life, Harley? – the saucer without the storm?"
"Do you know, that's very well said, Audley; I did not think you had so much liveliness of repartee. Life – life! it is insipid, it is shallow. No launching argosies in the saucer. Audley, I have the oddest fancy – "
"That of course," said Audley drily; "you never have any other. What is the new one?"