Next morning the family at Dura paid a visit to the Gatehouse, to see all its capabilities, and arrange the changes which might be necessary. It was a bright morning after the rain, and they walked together down the dewy avenue, where the sunshine played through the network of leaves, and the refreshed earth sent up sweet odours. All was pleasant to sight and sound, and made a lightsome beginning to the working day. Mr Burton was pleased with himself and everything surrounding him. His children (he was very proud of his children) strolled along with their father and mother, and there was in Ned a precocious imitation of his own walk and way of holding himself which at once amused and flattered the genial papa. He was pleased by his boy's appreciation of his own charms of manner and appearance; and little Clara was like him, outwardly, at least, being of a larger mould than her mother. His influence was physically predominant in the family, and as for profounder influences these were not much visible as yet. Mrs Burton had atoilette fraîcheof the costliest simplicity. Two or three dogs attended them on their walk—a handsome pointer and a wonderful hairy Skye, and the tiniest of little Maltese terriers, with a blue ribbon round its neck such as Clara had, of whose colours her dog was a repetition. When she made a rush now and then along the road, herself like a great white and blue butterfly, the dogs ran too, throwing up their noses in the air, till Ned, marching along in his knickerbockers, with his chest set out, and his head held up like his father's, whistled the bigger ones to his masculine side. It was quite a pretty picture this family procession; they were so well off, so perfectly supplied with everything that was pleasant and suitable, so happily above the world and its necessities. There was a look of wealth about them that might almost have seemed insolent to a poor man. The spectator felt sure that if fricasseed bank-notes had been good to eat, they must have had a little dish of that for breakfast. And the crown of all was that they were going to do a good action—to give shelter and help to the homeless. Many simple persons would have wept over the spectacle, had they known it, out of pure delight in so much goodness—if Mrs Burton, looking on with those clear cold blue eyes of hers, had not thrown upon the matter something of a clearer light.
The inspection was satisfactory enough, revealing space sufficient to have accommodated twice as many people. And Mr Burton found it amusing too; for Susan, who was in charge, was very suspicious of their motives, and anxious to secure that she should not be put upon in any arrangement that might be made. There was a large, quaint old drawing-room, with five glimmering windows—three fronting to the road and two to the garden—not French sashes, cut down to the ground, but old-fashioned English windows with a sill to them, and a solid piece of wall underneath. The chimney had a high wooden mantelpiece with a little square of mirror let in, too high up for any purpose but that of giving a glimmer of reflection. The carpet, which was very much worn, was partially covered by a tightly strained white cloth, as if the room had been prepared for dancing. The furniture was very thin in the legs and angular in its proportions; some of the chairs were ebony, with bands of faded gilding and covers of minute old embroidery, into which whole lives had been worked. The curtains were of old-fashioned, big-patterned chintz—like that we call Cretonne now-a-days—with brown linings. Everything was very old and worn, but clean and carefully mended. The looker-on felt it possible that the entrance of a stranger might so break the spell that all might crumble into dust at a touch. But yet there was a quaint, old-fashioned elegance—not old enough to be antique, but yet getting venerable—about the silent old house. Mr Burton was of opinion that it would be better with new red curtains and some plain, solid mahogany; but, if the things would do, considered that it was unnecessary to incur further expense. When all the necessary arrangements had been settled upon, the family party went on to the railway station. This was a very frequent custom with them. Mr Burton liked to come home in state—to notify his arrival by means of the high-stepping greys and the commotion they made, to his subjects; but he was quite willing to leave in the morning with graceful humility and that exhibition of family affection which brings even the highest potentates to a level with common men. When he arrived with his wife and his children and his dogs at the station, it was touching to see the devotion with which the station-master and the porters and everybody about received the great man. The train seemed to have been made on purpose for him—to have come on purpose all the way out of the Midland Counties; the railway people ran all along its length as soon as it arrived to find a vacant carriage for their demigod. 'Here you are, sir!' cried a smiling porter. 'Here you are, sir!' echoed the station-master, rushing forward to open the door. The other porter, who was compelled by duty to stand at the little gate of exit and take the tickets, looked gloomily upon the active service of his brethren, but identified himself with their devotion by words at least, since nothing else was left him. 'What d'ye mean by being late?' he cried to the guard. 'A train didn't ought to be late as takes gentlemen to town for business. You're as slow, you are, as if you was the ladies' express.'
Mr Burton laughed as he passed, and gladness stole into the porter's soul. Oh, magical power of wealth! when it laughs, the world grows glad. To go into the grimy world of business, and be rubbed against in the streets by men who did him no homage, must be hard upon such a man, after the royal calm of the morning and all its pleasant circumstances. It was after just such another morning that he went again to St Mary's Road, and was admitted to see his cousin. She had shut herself up for a fortnight obstinately. She would have done so for a year, in defiance of herself and of nature, had it been possible, that all the world might know that Robert had 'the respect' due to him. She would not have deprived him of one day, one fold of crape, one imbecility of grief, of her own will. She would have been ill, if she could, to do him honour. All this was quite independent of that misery of which the world could know nothing, which was deep as the sea in her own heart. That must last let her do what she would. But she would fain have given to her husband the outside too. The fortnight, however, was all that poor Helen could give. Already stern need was coming in, and the creditors, to whom everything she had belonged. When Mr Burton was admitted, the man had begun to make an inventory of the furniture. The pretty drawing-room was already dismantled, the plants all removed from the conservatory; the canvases were stacked against the wall in poor Robert's studio, and a picture-dealer was there valuing them. They were of considerable value now—more than they would have been had it still been possible that they should be finished. People who were making collections of modern pictures would buy them readily as the only 'Drummond' now to be had. Mr Burton went and looked at the pictures, and pointed out one that he would like to buy. His feelings were not very delicate, but yet it struck a certain chill upon him to go into that room. Poor Drummond himself was lying at the bottom of the river—he could not reproach any one, even allowing that it was not all his own fault. And yet—the studio was unpleasant to Mr Burton. It affected his nerves; and in anticipation of his interview with Helen he wanted all his strength.
But Helen received him very gently, more so than he could have hoped. She had not seen the papers. The world and its interests had gone away from her. She had read nothing but the good books which she felt it was right to read during her seclusion. She was unaware of all that had happened, unsuspicious, did not even care. It had never occurred to her to think of dishonour as possible. All calamity was for her concentrated in the one which had happened, which had left her nothing more to fear. She was seated in a very small room opening on the garden, which had once been appropriated to Norah and her playthings. She was very pale, with the white rim of her cap close round her face, and her hair concealed. Norah was there too, seated close to her mother, giving her what support she could with instinctive faithfulness. Mr Burton was more overcome by the sight of them than he could have thought it possible to be. They were worse even than the studio. He faltered, he cleared his throat, he took Helen's hand and held it—then let it drop in a confused way. He was overcome, she thought, with natural emotion, with grief and pity. And it made her heart soft even to a man she loved so little. 'Thanks,' she murmured, as she sank down upon her chair. That tremor in his voice covered a multitude of sins.
'I have been here before,' he said.
'Yes, so I heard; it was very kind. Don't speak ofthat, please. I am not able to bear it, though it is kind, very kind of you.'
'Everybody is sorry for you, Helen,' he said, 'but I don't want to recall your grief to your mind——'
'Recall!' she said, with a kind of miserable smile. 'That was not what I meant; but—Reginald—my heart is too sore to bear talking. I—cannot speak, and—I would rather not cry—not just now.'
She had not called him Reginald before since they were boy and girl together; and that, and the piteous look she gave him, and her tremulous protest that she would rather not cry, gave the man such a twinge through his very soul as he had never felt before. He would have changed places at the moment with one of his own porters to get out of it—to escape from a position which he alone was aware of. Norah was crying without restraint. It was such a scene as a man in the very height of prosperity and comfort would hesitate to plunge into, even if there had not risen before him those ghosts in the newspapers which one day or other, if not now, Helen must find out.
'What I wanted to speak of was your own plans,' he said hastily, 'what you think of doing, and—if you will not think me impertinent—what you have to depend upon? I am your nearest relation, Helen, and it is right I should know.'
'If everything has to be given up, I suppose I shall have nothing,' she said faintly. 'There was my hundred a year settled upon me. The papers came the other day. Who must I give them to? I have nothing, I suppose.'
'If your hundred a year was settled on you, of course you have that, heaven be praised,' said Mr Burton, 'nobody can touch that. And, Helen, if you like to come back to the old neighbourhood, I have part of a house I could offer you. It is of no use to me. I can't let it; so you might be quite easy in your mind about that. And it is furnished after a sort; and it would be rent free.'
The tears which she had been restraining rushed to her eyes. 'How kind you are!' she said. 'Oh, I can't say anything, but you are very, very kind.'
'Never mind about that. You used to speak as if you did not like the old neighbourhood——'
'Ah!' she said, 'that was when I cared. All neighbourhoods are the same to me now.'
'But you will get to care after a while,' he said. 'You will not always be as you are now.'
She shook her head with that faint little gleam of the painfullest smile. To such a suggestion she could make no answer. She did not believe her grief would ever lighten. She did not wish to feel differently. She had not even that terrible experience which teaches some that the broken heart must heal one way or other—mend of its wound, or at least have its wound skinned over; for she had never been quite stricken down to the ground before.
'Anyhow, you will think of it,' Mr Burton said in a soothing tone. 'Norah, you would like to come and live in the country, where there was a nice large garden and plenty of room to run about. You must persuade your mother to come. I won't stay now to worry you, Helen, and besides, my time is precious; but you will let me do this much for you, I hope.'
She stood up in her black gown, which was so dismal and heavy, without any reflection of light in its dull blackness, and held out to him a hand which was doubly white by the contrast, and thin with fasting and watching. 'You are very kind,' she said again. 'If I ever was unjust to you, forgive me. I must have a home—for Norah; and I have nowhere—nowhere to go!'
'Then that is settled,' he said with eagerness. It was an infinite relief to him. Never in his life had he been so anxious to serve another. Was it because he had loved her once? because he was fond of her still? because she was his relation? His wife at that very moment was pondering on the matter, touching it as it were with a little sharp spear, which was not celestial like Ithuriel's. Being his wife, it would have been natural enough if some little impulse of jealousy had come across her, and moved her towards the theory that her husband did this out of love for his cousin. But Mrs Burton had not blood enough in her veins, and she had too clear an intelligence in her head, to be jealous. She came to such a very different conclusion, that I hesitate to repeat it; and she, too, half scared by the long journey she had taken, and her very imperfect knowledge of the way by which she had travelled, did not venture to put it into words. But the whisper at the bottom of her heart was, 'Remorse! Remorse!' Mrs Burton herself did not know for what, nor how far her husband was guilty towards his cousin.
But it was a relief to all parties when this interview was over. Mr Burton went away drawing a long breath. And Helen applied herself courageously to the work which was before her. She did not make any hardship to herself about those men who were taking the inventory. It had to be, and what was that—what was the loss of everything in comparison——The larger loss deadened her to the smaller ones, which is not always the case. She had her own and Norah's clothes to pack, some books, a few insignificant trifles which she was allowed to retain, and the three unfinished pictures, which indeed, had they not been given to her, she felt she could have stolen. The little blurred sketch from the easel, a trifling subject, meaning little, but bearing in its smeared colours the last handwriting of poor Robert's despair; and that wistful face looking up from the depths, up to the bit of blue sky far above and the one star. Was that the Dives he had thought of, the soul in pain so wistful, so sad, yet scarcely able to despair? It was like his letter, a sacred appeal to her not on this earth only, but beyond—an appeal which would outlast death and the grave. 'The door into hell,' she did not understand, but she knew it had something to do with her husband's last agony. These mournful relics were all she had to take with her into the changed world.
A woman cannot weep violently when she is at work. Tears may come into her eyes, tears may drop among the garments in which her past is still existing, but her movements to and fro, her occupations, stem the full tide and arrest it. Helen was quite calm. While Norah brought the things for her out of the drawers she talked to the child as ordinary people talk whose hearts are not broken. She had fallen into a certain stillness—a hush of feeling. It did her good to be astir. When the boxes were full and fastened she turned to her pictures, enveloping them carefully, protecting the edges with cushions of folded paper. Norah was still very busy in finding the cord for her, and holding the canvases in their place. The child had rummaged out a heap of old newspapers, with which the packing was being done. Suddenly she began to cry as she stood holding one in her hand.
'Oh, mamma!' she said, looking up with big eyes in Helen's face. Crying was not so rare in the house as to surprise her mother. She said—
'Hush, my darling!' and went on. But when she felt the paper thrust into her hand, Helen stopped short in her task and looked, not at it but at Norah. The tears were hanging on the child's cheeks, but she had stopped crying. She pointed to one column in the paper and watched her mother with eyes like those of Dives in the picture. Helen gave a cry when she looked at it, 'Ah!' as if some sharp blow had been given to her. It was the name, nothing but her husband's name, that had pierced her like a sudden dagger. But she read on, without doubting, without thinking. It was the article written two days before on the history of the painter Drummond, 'the wretched man,' who had furnished a text for a sermon to theDaily Semaphore.
Norah had read only a sentence at the beginning which she but partially understood. It was something unkind, something untrue about 'poor papa.' But she read her mother now instead, comprehending it by her looks. Helen went over the whole without drawing breath. It brought back the blood to her pale cheeks; it ran like a wild new life into every vein, into every nerve. She turned round in the twinkling of an eye, without a pause for thought, and put on the black bonnet with its overwhelming crape veil which had been brought to her that morning. She had not wanted it before. It was the first time in her life that she had required to look at the world through those folds of crape.
'May I come too, mamma?' said Norah softly. She did not know where they were going; but henceforward where her mother was there was the place for Norah, at home or abroad, sleeping or waking. The child clung to Helen's hand as they opened the familiar door, and went out once again—after a lifetime—into the once familiar, the changed and awful world. A summer evening, early June, the bloom newly off the lilacs, the first roses coming on the trees; the strange daylight dazzled them, the sound of passing voices buzzed and echoed as if they had been the centre of a crowd. Or rather, this was their effect upon Helen. Norah clinging to her hand, pressed close to her side, watched her, and thought of nothing more.
Dr Maurice was going to his solitary dinner. He had washed his hands and made himself daintily nice and tidy, as he always was; but he had not changed his morning coat. He was standing with his back against the writing-table in his library, looking up dreamily at poor Drummond's picture, and waiting for the sound of the bell which should summon him into the next room to his meal. When the door bell sounded instead impatience seized him.
'What fool can be coming now?' he said to himself, and turned round in time to see John's scared face peeping into the room before he introduced those two figures, those two with their dark black dresses, the one treading in the very steps of the other, moving with her movement. He gave a cry of surprise. He had not seen them since the day after Drummond's death. He had gone to inquire, and had left anxious kind messages, but he, too, had conventional ideas in his mind and had thought the widow 'would not be able' to see any one. Yet now she had come to him—
'Dr Maurice,' she said, with no other preliminary, coming forward to the table with her newspaper, holding out no hand, giving him no salutation, while Norah moved with her step for step, like a shadow. 'Dr Maurice, what does this mean?'
I would not like to say what despairing thought Dr Maurice might have had about his dinner in the first moment when he turned round and saw Helen Drummond's pale face under her crape veil, but there were many thoughts on the subject in his household, and much searchings of heart. John had been aghast at the arrival of visitors, and especially of such visitors, at such a moment; but his feelings would not permit him to carry up dinner immediately, or to sound the bell, the note of warning.
'I canna do it, I canna do it—don't ask me,' he said, for John was a north-country-man, and when his heart was moved fell back upon his old idiom.
'Maybe the lady would eat a bit herself, poor soul,' the cook said in insinuating tones. 'I've known folks eat in a strange house, for the strangeness of it like, when they couldn't swallow a morsel in their own.'
'Don't ask me!' said John, and he seized a stray teapot and began to polish it in the trouble of his heart. There was silence in the kitchen for ten minutes at least, for the cook was a mild woman till driven to extremities; but to see fish growing into wool and potatoes to lead was more than any one could be expected to bear.
'Do you see that?' she said in despair, carrying the dish up to him, and thrusting it under his eyes. John threw down his teapot and fled. He went and sat on the stairs to be out of reach of her remonstrances. But the spectre of that fish went with him, and would not leave his sight; the half-hour chimed, the three-quarters—
'I canna stand this no longer!' John said in desperation, and rushing up to the dining-room, sounded the dinner-bell.
Its clang disturbed the little party in the next room who were so differently occupied. Helen was seated by the table with a pile of papers before her; her hands trembled as she turned from one to another, but her attention did not swerve. She was following through them every scrap that bore upon that one subject. Dr Maurice had procured them all for her. He had felt that one time or other she must know all, and that then her information must be complete. He himself was walking about the room with his hands in his pocket, now stopping to point out or explain something, now taking up a book, unsettled and unhappy, as a man generally looks when he has to wait, and has nothing to do. He had sought out a book for Norah, to the attractions of which the poor child had gradually yielded. At first she had stood close by her mother. But the contents of those papers were not for Norah's eye, and Helen herself had sent her away. She had put herself in the window, her natural place; the ruddy evening light streamed in upon her, and found out between the black of her dress and that of her hat, a gleam of brown hair, to which it gave double brightness by the contrast; and gradually she fell into her old attitude, her old absorption. Dr Maurice walked about the room, and pondered a hundred things. He would have given half he possessed for that fatherless child who sat reading in the light, and forgetting her childish share of sorrow. The mother in her mature beauty was little to him—but the child—a child like that! And she was not his. She was Robert Drummond's, who lay drowned at the bottom of the river, and whose very name was drowned too in those bitter waters of calumny and shame. Strange Providence that metes so unequally to one and to another. The man did not think that he too might have had a wife and children had he so chosen; but his heart hankered for this that was his neighbour's, and which no magic, not even any subtle spell of love or protecting tenderness, could ever make his own.
And Helen, almost unconscious of the presence of either, read through those papers which had been preserved for her. She read Golden's letter, and the comment upon it. She read the letter which Dr Maurice had written, contradicting those cruel assertions. She read the further comments upon that. How natural it was; how praiseworthy was the vehemence of friends in defence of the dead—and how entirely without proof! The newspaper pointed out with a cold distinctness, which looked like hatred to Helen, that the fact of the disappearance of the books told fatally against 'the unhappy man.' Why did he destroy those evidences which would no doubt have cleared him had he acted fairly and honestly? Day by day she traced the course of this controversy which had been going on while she had shut herself up in the darkness. It gleamed across her as she turned from one to another that this was why her energy had been preserved and her strength sustained. She had not broken down like other women, for this cause. God had kept her up for this. The discussion had gone on down to that very morning, when a little editorial note, appended to a short letter—one of the many which had come from all sorts of people in defence of the painter—had announced that such a controversy could no longer be carried on 'in these pages.' 'No doubt the friends of Mr Drummond will take further steps to prove the innocence of which they are so fully convinced,' it said, 'and it must be evident to all parties that the columns of a newspaper is not the place for a prolonged discussion on a personal subject.' Helen scarcely spoke while she read all these. She did not hear the dinner-bell. The noise of the door when Dr Maurice rushed to it with threatening word and look, to John's confusion, scarcely moved her. 'Be quiet, dear,' she said unconsciously, when the doctor's voice in the hall, where he had fallen upon his servant, came faintly into her abstraction. 'You rascal! how dare you take such a liberty when you knew who was with me?' was what Dr Maurice was saying, with rage in his voice. But to Helen it seemed as if little Norah, forgetting the cloud of misery about her, had begun to talk more lightly than she ought. 'Oh, my child, be quiet,' she repeated; 'be quiet!' all her soul was absorbed in this. She had no room for any other thought.
Dr Maurice came back with a flush of anger on his face. 'These people would think it necessary to consider their miserable dishes if the last judgment were coming on,' he said. He was a kind man, and very sorry for his friend's widow. He would have given up much to help her; but perhaps he too was hungry, and the thought of the spoilt dishes increased his vehemence. She looked at him, putting back her veil with a blank look of absolute incomprehension. She had heard nothing, knew nothing. Comfort, and dinners, and servants, and all the paraphernalia of ordinary life, were a hundred miles away from her thoughts.
'I have read them all,' she said in a tone so low that he had to stoop to hear her. 'Oh, that I should have lost so much time in selfish grieving! I thought nothing more could happen after. Dr Maurice, do you know what I ought to do?'
'You!' he said. There was something piteous in her look of appeal. The pale face and the gleaming eyes, the helplessness and the energy, all struck him at a glance—a combination which he did not understand.
'Yes—me! You will say what can I do? I cannot tell the world what he was, as you have done. Thanks for that,' she said, holding out her hand to him. 'The wife cannot speak for her husband, and I cannot write to the papers. I am quite ignorant. Dr Maurice, tell me if you know. What can I do?'
Her gleam of wild indignation was gone. It had sunk before the controversy, the discussion which the newspapers would no longer continue. If poor Robert had met with no defenders, she would have felt herself inspired. But his friends had spoken, friends who could speak. And deep depression fell over her. 'Oh!' she said, clasping her hands, 'must we bear it? Is there nothing—nothing I can do?'
Again and again had he asked himself the same question. 'Mrs Drummond,' he said, 'you can do nothing; try and make up your mind to it. I hoped you might never know. A lady can do nothing in a matter of business. You feel yourself that you cannot write or speak. And what good would it do even if you could? I say that a more honourable man never existed. You could say, I know, a great deal more than that; but what does it matter without proof? If we could find out about those books——'
'He did not know anything about books,' said Helen; 'he could not even keep his own accounts—at least it was a trouble to him. Oh, you know that; how often have we—laughed——Oh, my God, my God!'
Laughed! The words brought the tears even to Dr Maurice's eyes. He put his hand on her arm and patted it softly, as if she had been a child. 'Poor soul! poor soul!' he said: the tears had got into his voice too, and all his own thoughts went out of his mind in the warmth of his sympathy. He was a cautious man, not disposed to commit himself; but the touch of such emotion overpowered all his defences. 'Look here, Mrs Drummond,' he said; 'I don't know what we may be able to do, but I promise you something shall be done—I give you my word. The shareholders are making a movement already, but so many of them are ruined, so many hesitate, as people say, to throw good money after the bad. I don't know why I should hesitate, I am sure. I have neither chick nor child.' He glanced at Norah as he spoke—at Norah lost in her book, with the light in her hair, and her outline clear against the window. But Helen did not notice, did not think what he could mean, being absorbed in her own thoughts. She watched him, notwithstanding, with dilating eyes. She saw all that at that moment she was capable of seeing in his face—the rising resolution that came with it, the flash of purpose. 'It ought to be done,' he said, 'even for justice. I will do it—for that—and for Robert's sake.'
She held out both her hands to him in the enthusiasm of her ignorance. 'Oh, God bless you! God reward you!' she said. It seemed to her as if she had accomplished all she had come for, and had cleared her husband's name. At least his friend had pledged himself to do it, and it seemed to Helen so easy. He had only to refute the lies which had been told; to prove how true, how honest, how tender, how good, incapable of hurting a fly; even how simple and ignorant of business, more ignorant almost than she was, he had been; a man who never had kept any books, not even his own accounts; who had a profession of his own, quite different, at which he worked; who had not been five times in the City in his life before he came connected with the Rivers's. After she had bestowed that blessing, it seemed to her almost as if she were making too much of it, as if she had but to go herself and tell it all, and prove his whitest innocence. To go herself—but she did not know where.
Dr Maurice came down with a little tremulousness of excitement about him from the pinnacle of that resolution. He knew better what it was. Her simple notion of 'going and telling' resolved itself, in his mind, to an action before the law-courts, to briefs, and witnesses, and expenditure. But he was a man without chick or child; he was not ruined by Rivers's. The sum he had lost had been enough to give him an interest in the question, not enough to injure his powers of operation. And it was a question of justice, a matter which some man ought to take up. Nevertheless it was a great resolution to take. It would revolutionize his quiet life, and waste the substance which he applied, he knew, to many good uses. He felt a little shaken when he came down. And then—his dinner, the poor friendly unfortunate man!
'Let Norah come and eat something with me,' he said, 'the child must be tired. Come too and you shall have a chair to rest in, and we will not trouble you; and then I will see you home.'
'Ah!' Helen gave an unconscious cry at the word. But already, even in this one hour, she had learned the first hard lesson of grief, which is that it must not fatigue others with its eternal presence—that they who suffer most must be content often to suffer silently, and put on such smiles as are possible—the ghost must not appear at life's commonest board any more than at the banquet. It seemed like a dream when five minutes later she found herself seated in an easy-chair in Dr Maurice's dining-room, painfully swallowing some wine, while Norah sat at the table by him and shared his dinner. It was like a dream; twilight had begun to fall by this time, and the lamp was lighted on the table—a lamp which left whole acres of darkness all round in the long dim room. Helen sat and looked at the bright table and Norah's face, which turning to her companion began to grow bright too, unawares. A fortnight is a long age of trouble to a child. Norah's tears were still ready to come, but the bitterness was out of them. She was sad for sympathy now. And this change, the gleam of light, the smile of her old friend—his fond, half-mocking talk, felt like happiness come back. Her mother looked on from the shady corner where she was sitting, and understood it all. Robert's friend loved him; but was glad now to pass to other matters, to common life. And Robert's child loved him; but she was a child, and she was ready to reply to the first touch of that same dear life. Helen was growing wiser in her trouble. A little while ago she would have denounced this changeableness, and struggled against it. But now she understood and accepted what was out of her power to change.
And then in the pauses of his talk with Norah, which was sweet to him, Dr Maurice heard all their story—how the house was already in the creditors' hands, how they had prepared all their scanty possessions to go away, and how Mr Burton had been very kind. Helen had not associated him in any way with the assault on her husband's memory. She spoke of him with a half gratitude which filled the doctor with suppressed fury. He had been very kind—he had offered her a house.
'I thought you disliked Dura,' he said with an impatience which he could not restrain.
'And so I did,' she answered drearily, 'as long as I could. It does not matter now.'
'Then you will still go?'
'Still? Oh, yes; where should we go else? The whole world is the same to us now,' said Helen. 'And Norah will be happier in the country; it is good air.'
'Good air!' said Dr Maurice. 'Good heavens, what can you be thinking of? And the child will grow up without any one to teach her, without a—friend. What is to be done for her education? What is to be done—Mrs Drummond, I beg your pardon. I hope you will forgive me. I have got into a way of interfering and making myself ridiculous, but I did not mean——'
'Nay,' said Helen gently, half because she felt so weary, half because there was a certain comfort in thinking that any one cared, 'I am not angry. I knew you would think of what is best for Norah. But, Dr Maurice, we shall be very poor.'
He did not make any reply; he was half ashamed of his vehemence, and yet withal he was unhappy at this new change. Was it not enough that he had lost Drummond, his oldest friend, but he must lose the child too, whom he had watched ever since she was born? He cast a glance round upon the great room, which might have held a dozen people, and in his mind surveyed the echoing chambers above, of which but one was occupied. And then he glanced at Norah's face, still bright, but slightly clouded over, beside him, and thought of the pretty picture she had made in the library seated against the window. Burton, who was their enemy, who had been the chief agent in bringing them to poverty, could give them a home to shelter their houseless heads. And why could not he, who had neither chick nor child, who had a house so much too big for him, why could not he take them in? Just to have the child in the house, to see her now and then, to hear her voice on the stairs, or watch her running from room to room, would be all he should want. They could live there and harm nobody, and save their little pittance. This thought ran through his mind, and then he stopped and confounded Burton. But Burton had nothing to do with it. He had better have confounded the world, which would not permit him to offer shelter to his friend's widow. He gave a furtive glance at Helen in the shadow. He did not want Helen in his house. His friend's wife had never attracted him; and though he would have been the kindest of guardians to his friend's widow, still there was nothing in her that touched his heart. But he could not open his doors to her and say, 'Come.' He knew if he did so how the men would grin and the women whisper; how impertinent prophecies would flit about, or slanders much worse than impertinent. No, he could not do it; he could not have Norah by, to help on her education, to have a hand in her training, to make her a child of his own. He had no child. It was his lot to live alone and have no soft hand ever in his. All this was very ridiculous, for, as I have said before, Dr Maurice was very well off; he was not old nor bad-looking, and he might have married like other men. But then he did not want to marry. He wanted little Norah Drummond to be his child, and he wanted nothing more.
Helen leaned back in her chair without any thought of what was passing through his heart. That her child should have inspired agrande passionat twelve had never entered her mind, and she took his words in their simplicity and pondered over them. 'I can teach her myself,' she said with a tremor in her voice. This man was not her friend, she knew. He had no partial good opinion of her, such as one likes one's friends to have, but judged her on her merits, which few people are vain enough to put much trust in; and she thought that very likely he would not think her worthy of such a charge. 'Ihavetaught her most of what she knows,' she added with a little more confidence. 'And then the great thing is, we shall be very poor.'
'Forgive me!' he said; 'don't say any more. I was unpardonably rash—impertinent—don't think of what I said.'
And then he ordered his carriage for them and sent them home. I do not know whether perhaps it did not occur to Helen as she drove back through the summer dusk to her dismantled house what a difference there was between their destitution and poverty and all the warm glow of comfort and ease which surrounded this lonely man. But there can be no doubt that Norah thought of it, who had taken in everything with her brown eyes, though she said little. While they were driving along in the luxurious smoothly-rolling brougham, the child crept close to her mother, clasping Helen's arm with both her hands. 'Oh, mamma,' she said, 'how strange it is that we should have lost everything and Dr Maurice nothing, that he should have that great house and this nice carriage, and us be driven away from St Mary's Road! What can God be thinking of, mamma?'
'Oh, Norah, my dear child, we have each other, and he has nobody,' said Helen; and in her heart there was a frenzy of triumph over this man who was so much better off than she was. The poor so often have that consolation; and sometimes it is not much of a consolation after all. But Helen felt it to the bottom of her heart as she drew her child to her, and felt the warm, soft clasp of hands, the round cheek against her own. Two desolate, lonely creatures in their black dresses—but two, and together; whereas Dr Maurice, in his wealth, in his strength, in what the world would have called his happiness, was but one.
The pretty house in St Mary's Road—what a change had come upon it! There was a great painted board in front describing the desirable residence, with studio attached, which was to be let. The carpets were half taken up and laid in rolls along the floor, the chairs piled together, the costly, pretty furniture, so carefully chosen, the things which belonged to the painter's early life, and those which were the product of poor Drummond's wealth, all removed and jumbled together, and ticketed 'Lot 16,' 'Lot 20.' 'Lot 20' was the chair which had been Helen's chair for years—the one poor Robert had kissed. If she had known that, she would have spent her last shilling to buy it back out of the rude hands that turned it over. But even Helen only knew half of the tragedy which had suddenly enveloped her life. They threaded their way up-stairs to their bed-room through all those ghosts. It was still early; but what could they do down-stairs in the house which no longer retained a single feature of home? Helen put her child to bed, and then sat down by her, shading the poor little candle. It was scarcely quite dark even now. It is never dark in June. Through the open window there came the sound of voices, people walking about the streets after their work was over. There are so many who have only the streets to walk in, so many to whom St Mary's Road, with its lilacs and laburnums and pretty houses, was pleasant and fresh as if it had been in the depths of the country. Helen saw them from the window, coming and going, so often two, arm in arm, two who loitered and looked up at the lighted house, and spoke softly to each other, making their cheerful comments. The voices sounded mellow, the distant rattle of carriages was softened by the night, and a soft wind blew through the lilacs, and some stars looked wistfully out of the pale sky. Why are they so sad in summer, those lustrous stars? Helen looked out at them, and big tears fell softly out of her eyes. Oh, face of Dives looking up! Oh, true and kind and just and gentle soul! Must she not even think of him as in heaven, as hidden in God with the dead who depart in faith and peace, but gone elsewhere, banished for ever? The thought crossed her like an awful shadow, but did not sting. There are some depths of misery to which healthy nature refuses to descend, and this was one. Had shefeltas many good people feel on this subject, and as she herself believed theoretically that she felt, I know what Helen would have done. She would have gone down to that river and joined him in his own way, wherever he was, choosing it so. No doubt, she would have been wrong. But she did not descend into that abyss. She kept by her faith in God instinctively, not by any doctrine. Did not Godknow? But even the edge of it, the shadow of the thought, was enough to chill her from head to foot. She stole in from the window, and sat down at the foot of the bed where Norah lay, and tried to think. She had thought there could be no future change, no difference one way or other; but since this very morning what changes there were!—her last confidence shattered, her last comfort thrust from her. Robert's good name! She sat quite silent for hours thinking it over while Norah slept. Sometimes for a moment it went nigh to make her mad. Of all frantic things in the world, there is nothing like that sense of impotence—to feel the wrong and to be unable to move against it. It woke a feverish irritation in her, asourdresentment, a rage which she could not overcome, nor satisfy by any exertion. What could she do, a feeble woman, against the men who had cast this stigma on her husband? She did not even know who they were, except Golden. It was he who was the origin of it all, and whose profit it was to prove himself innocent by the fable of Robert's guilt! It was the most horrible farce, a farce which was a tragedy, which every one who knew him must laugh at wildly among their tears. But then the world did not know him; and the world likes to think the worst, to believe in guilt as the one thing always possible. That there were people who knew better had been proved to her—people who had ventured to call out indignantly, and say, 'This is not true,' without waiting to be asked. Oh, God bless them! God bless them! But they were not the world.
When the night was deeper, when the walkers outside had gone, when all was quiet, except now and then the hurried step of a late passer-by, Helen went to the window once more, and looked out upon that world. What a little bit of a world it is that a woman can see from her window!—a few silent roofs and closed windows, one or two figures going and coming, not a soul whom she knew or could influence; but all those unknown people, when they heard her husband's name, if it were years and years hence, would remember the slander that had stained it, and would never know his innocence, his incapacity even for such guilt. This is what gives force to a lie, this is what gives bitterness, beyond telling, to the hearts of those who are impotent, whose contradiction counts for nothing, who have no proof, but only certainty. What a night it was!—like Paradise even in London. The angels might have been straying through those blue depths of air, through the celestial warmth and coolness, without any derogation from their high estate. It was not moonlight, nor starlight, nor dawn, but some heavenly combination of all three which breathed over the blue arch above, so serene, so deep, so unfathomable; and down below the peopled earth lay like a child, defenceless and trustful in the arms of its Maker. 'Dear God, the very city seems asleep!' But here was one pair of eyes that no sleep visited, which dared not look up to heaven too closely lest her dead should not be there; which dared not take any comfort in the pity of earth, knowing that it condemned while it pitied. God help the solitary, the helpless, the wronged, those who can see no compensation for their sufferings, no possible alchemy that can bring good out of them! Helen crept to bed at last, and slept. It was the only thing in which there remained any consolation; to be unconscious, to shut out life and light and all that accompanies them; to be for an hour, for a moment, as good as dead. There are many people always, to whom this is the best blessing remaining in the world.
The morning brought a letter from Mr Burton, announcing that the house at Dura was ready to receive his cousin. Helen would have been thankful to go but for the discovery she had made on the previous day. After that it seemed to her that to be on the spot, to be where she could maintain poor Robert's cause, or hear of others maintaining it, was all she wanted now in the world. But this was a mere fancy, such as the poor cannot indulge in. She arranged everything to go to her new home on the next day. It was time at least that she should leave this place in which her own room was with difficulty preserved to her for another night. All the morning the mother and daughter shut themselves up there, hearing the sounds of the commotion below—the furniture rolled about here and there, the heavy feet moving about the uncarpeted stairs and rooms that already sounded hollow and vacant. Bills of the sale were in all the windows; the very studio, the place which now would have been sacred if they had been rich enough to indulge in fancies. But why linger upon such a scene? The homeliest imagination can form some idea of circumstances which in themselves are common enough.
In the afternoon the two went out—to escape from the house more than anything else. 'We will go and see the Haldanes,' Helen said to her child; and Norah wondered, but acquiesced gladly. Mrs Drummond had never taken kindly to the fact that her husband's chief friend lived in Victoria Villas, and was a Dissenting minister with a mother and sister who could not be called gentlewomen. But all that belonged to the day of her prosperity, and now her heart yearned for some one who loved Robert—some one who would believe in him—to whom no vindication, even in thought, would be necessary. And the Haldanes had been ruined by Rivers's. This was another bond of union. She had called but once upon them before, and then under protest; but now she went nimbly, almost eagerly, down the road, past the line of white houses with their railings. There had been much thought and many discussions over Mr Burton's proposal within those walls. They had heard of it nearly a fortnight since, but they had not yet made any formal decision; that is to say, Mrs Haldane was eager to go; Miss Jane had made a great many calculations, and decided that the offer ought to be accepted as a matter of duty; but Stephen's extreme reluctance still kept them from settling. Something, however, had occurred that morning which had added a sting to Stephen's discouragement, and taken away the little strength with which he had faintly maintained his own way. In the warmth and fervour of his heart, he had used his little magazine to vindicate his friend. A number of it had been just going to the press when the papers had published Drummond's condemnation, and Haldane, who knew him so well—all his weakness and his strength—had dashed into the field and proclaimed, in the only way that was possible to him, the innocence and excellence of his friend. All his heart had been in it; he had made such a sketch of the painter, of his genius (poor Stephen thought he had genius), of his simplicity and goodness and unimpeachable honour, as would have filled the whole denomination with delight, had the subject of the sketch been one of its potentates or even a member of Mr Haldane's chapel. But Robert was not even a Dissenter at all, he had nothing to do with the denomination; and, to tell the truth, hisélogewas out of place. Perhaps Stephen himself felt it was so after he had obeyed the first impulse which prompted it. But at least he was not left long in doubt. A letter had reached him from the magazine committee that morning. They had told him that they could not permit their organ to be made the vehicle of private feeling; they had suggested an apology in the next number; and they had threatened to take it altogether out of his hands. Remonstrances had already reached them, they said, from every quarter as to the too secular character of the contents; and they ventured to remind Mr Haldane that this was not a mere literary journal, but the organ of the body, and intended to promote its highest, its spiritual interests. Poor Stephen! he was grieved, and he writhed under the pinch of this interference. And then the magazine not only brought him in the half of his income, but was the work of his life—he had hoped to 'do some good' that way. He had aimed at improving it, cutting short the gossip and scraps of local news, and putting in something of a higher character. In this way he had been able to persuade himself, through all his helplessness, that he still possessed some power of influence over the world. He had been so completely subdued by the attack, that he had given in about Mr Burton's house, and that very day the proposal had been accepted; but he had not yet got the assault itself out of his head. All the morning he had been sitting with the manuscripts and proofs before him which were to make up his new number, commenting upon them in the bitterness of his heart.
'I suppose I must put this in now, whether I like it or not,' he said. 'I never suspected before how many pangs ruin brings with it, mother; not one, but a legion. They never dreamt of interfering with me before. Now look at this rabid, wretched thing. I would put it in the fire if I dared, and free the world of so much ill-tempered folly; but Bateman wrote it, and I dare not. Fancy, Idarenot! If I had been independent, I should have made a stand. And my magazine—all the little comfort I had—'
'Oh, Stephen, my dear! but what does it matter what you put in if they like it? You are always writing, writing, wearing yourself out. Why shouldn't they have some of the trouble. You oughtn't to mind——'
'But I do mind,' he said, with a feeble smile. 'It is all I have to do, mother. It is to me what I am to you; you would not like to see me neglected, fed upon husks, like the prodigal.'
'Oh, Stephen dear, how can you talk so?—you neglected!' said his mother with tears in her eyes.
'Well, that is what I feel, mother. I shall have to feed my child with husks—tea-meetings and reports of this and that chapel, and how much they give. They were afraid of me once; they dared not grumble when I rejected and cut out; but—it is I who dare not now.'
Mrs Haldane wisely made no reply. In her heart she had liked the magazine better when it was all about the tea-meetings and the progress of the good cause. She liked the bits of sectarian gossip, and to know how much the different chapels subscribed, which congregation had given its minister a silver teapot, and which had given him his dismissal. All this was more interesting to her than all Stephen's new-fangled discussions of public matters, his eagerness about education and thought, and a great many other things that did not concern his mother. But she held this opinion within herself, and was as indignant with the magazine committee as heart could desire. The two fell silent for some time, he going on with his literature, and she with her sewing, till the only servant they had left, a maiden, calledpar excellence'the girl,' came in with a tray laden with knives and forks to lay the cloth for dinner. The girl's eyes were red, and a dirty streak across one cheek showed where her tears had been wiped away with her apron.
'What is the matter?' said Mrs Haldane.
'Oh, please, it's Miss Jane,' cried the handmaid. 'She didn't ought to speak so; oh, she didn't ought to. My mother's a seat-holder in our chapel, and I'm a member. I'm not a-going to bear it! We ain't folks to be pushed about.'
'Lay the cloth, and do it quietly,' said the old lady. And with a silent exasperation, such as only a woman can feel, she watched the unhandy creature. 'Thank heaven, we shall want no girl in the country,' she said to herself. But when her eye fell on Stephen, he was actually smiling—smiling at the plea for exception, with that mingled sadness and bitterness which it pained his mother to see. The girl went on sniffing and sobbing all the same. She had already driven her other mistress almost frantic in the kitchen. Miss Jane had left a little stew, a savoury dish such as Stephen's fanciful appetite required to tempt it, by the fire, slowly coming to perfection. 'The girl' had removed it to the fender, where it was standing, growing cold, just at the critical moment when all its juices should have been blending under the gentle, genial influence of the fire. Common cooks cannot stew. They can boil, or they can burn; but they never catch the delicious medium between. Only such persons as cook for love, or such as possess genius, can hit this more than golden mean. Miss Jane combined both characters. She did itcon amoreandper amore; and when she found her fragrant dish set aside for the sake of 'the girl's' kettle, her feelings can be but faintly imagined by the uninitiated. 'I wish I could beat you,' she said, with natural exasperation. And this to 'a joined member,' a seat-holder's daughter! Stephen laughed when the tale was repeated to him, with a laugh which was full of bitterness. He tried to swallow his portion of the stew, but it went against him. 'It is the same everywhere,' he said; 'the same subjection of the wise to the foolish, postponing of the best to the worst. Rubbish to please the joined members—silence and uselessness to us.'
'Oh, Stephen!' said Mrs Haldane, 'you know I am not always of your way of thinking. After all there is something in it; for when a girl is a church member, she can't be quite without thought; and when she neglects her work, it is possible, you know, that she might be occupied with better things. I don't mean to say that it is an excuse.'
'I should think not, indeed,' said Miss Jane. 'I'd rather have some one that knew her work, and did it, than a dozen church members. A heathen to-day would have been as much use to me.'
'That may be very true,' said her mother; 'but I think, considering Stephen's position, that such a thing should not be said by you or me. In my days a person stood up for chapel, through thick and thin, especially when he had a relation who was a minister. You think you are wiser, you young ones, and want to set up for being liberal, and think church as good as chapel, and the world, so far as I can make out, as good as either. But that way of thinking would never answer me.'
'Well, thank heaven,' said Miss Jane in a tone of relief, 'in the country we shall not want any "girl."'
'That is what I have been thinking,' said Mrs Haldane with alacrity; and in the painful moment which intervened while the table was being cleared and the room put in order, she painted to herself a fancy picture of 'the country.' She was a Londoner born, and had but an imperfect idea what the word meant. It was to her a vague vision of greenness, parks and trees and great banks of flowers. The village street was a thing she had no conception of. A pleasant dream of some pleasant room opening on a garden, and level with it, crossed her mind. It was a cottage of romance, one of those cottages which make their appearance in the stories which she half disapproved of, yet felt a guilty pleasure in reading. There had been one, an innocent short one, with the gentlest of good meanings, in the last number of Stephen's magazine, with just such a cottage in it, where a sick heroine recovered. She thought she could see the room, and the invalid chair outside the door, in which he could be wheeled into the garden to the seat under the apple-tree. Her heart overflowed with that pleasant thought. And Stephen might get well! Such a joy was at the end of every vista to Mrs Haldane. She sat and dreamed over this with a smile on her face while the room was being cleared; and her vision was only stayed by the unusual sound of Helen's knock at the door.
'It will be some one to see the house,' said Miss Jane, and she went away hurriedly, with loud-whispered instructions to the girl, into 'the front drawing-room,' to be ready to receive any applicant; so that Miss Jane was not in the room when Helen with her heart beating, and Norah clinging close to her as her shadow, was shown abruptly into the invalid's room. 'The girl' thrust her in without a word of introduction or explanation. Norah was familiar in the place, though her mother was a stranger. Mrs Haldane rose hastily to meet them, and an agitated speech was on Helen's lips that she had come to say good-bye, that she was going away, that they might never meet again in this world,—when her eye caught the helpless figure seated by the window, turning a half-surprised, half-sympathetic look upon her. She had never seen poor Stephen since his illness, and she was not prepared for this complete and lamentable overthrow. It drove her own thoughts, even her own sorrows, out of her mind for the moment. She gave a cry of mingled wonder and horror. She had heard all about it, but seeing is so very different from hearing.
'Oh, Mr Haldane!' she said, going up to him, forgetting herself—with such pity in her voice as he had not heard for years. It drove out of his mind, too, the more recent and still more awful occasion he had to pity her. He looked at her with sudden gratitude in his eyes.
'Yes, it is a change, is it not?' he said with a faint smile. He had been an Alp-climber, a mighty walker, when she saw him last.
Some moments passed before she recovered the shock. She sat down by him trembling, and then she burst into sudden tears—not that she was a woman who cried much in her sorrow, but that her nerves were affected beyond her power of control.
'Mr Haldane, forgive me,' she faltered. 'I have never seen you since—and so much has happened—oh, so much!'
'Ah, yes,' he said. 'I could cry too—not for myself, for that is an old story. I would have gone to you, had I been able—you know that; and it is very, very kind of you to come to me.'
'It is to say good-bye. We are going away to the country, Norah and I,' said Helen; 'there is no longer any place for us here. But I wanted to see you, to tell you—you seem—to belong—so much—to the old time.'
Ah, that old time! the time which softens all hearts. It had not been perfect while it existed, but now how fair it was! Perhaps Stephen Haldane remembered it better than she did; perhaps it might even cross his mind that in that old time she had not cared much to see him, had not welcomed him to her house with any pleasure. But he was too generous to allow himself even to think such a thought, in her moment of downfall. The depths were more bitter to her even than to him. He would not let the least shadow even in his mind fret her in her great trouble. He put out his hand, and grasped hers with a sympathy which was more telling than words.
'And I hope your mother will forgive me too,' she said with some timidity. 'I thought I had more command of myself. We could not go without coming to say good-bye.'
'It is very kind—it is more than I had any right to expect,' said Mrs Haldane. 'And we are going to the country too. We are going to Dura, to a house Mr Burton has kindly offered to us. Oh, Mrs Drummond, now I think of it, probably we owe it to you.'
'No,' said Helen, startled and mystified; and then she added slowly, 'I am going to Dura too.'
'Oh, how very lucky that is! Oh, how glad I am!' said the old lady. 'Stephen, do you hear? Of course, Mr Burton is your cousin; it is natural you should be near him. Stephen, this is good news for you. You will have Miss Norah, whom you were always so fond of, to come about you as she used to do—that is, if her mamma will allow her. Oh, my dear, I am so glad! I must go and tell Jane. Jane, here is something that will make you quite happy. Mrs Drummond is coming too.'
She went to the door to summon her daughter, and Helen was left alone with the sick man. She had not loved him in the old time, but yet he looked a part of Robert now, and her heart melted towards him. She was glad to have him to herself, as glad as if he had been a brother. She put her hand on the arm of his chair, laying a kind of doubtful claim to him. 'You have seen what they say?' she asked, looking in his face.
'Yes, all; with fury,' he said, 'with indignation! Oh my God, that I should be chained here, and good for nothing! They might as well have said it of that child.'
'Oh, is it not cruel, cruel!' she said.
These half-dozen words were all that passed between them, and yet they comforted her more than all Dr Maurice had said. He had been indignant too, it is true; but not with this fiery, visionary wrath—the rage of the helpless, who can do nothing.
When Miss Jane came in with her mother, they did the most of the talking, and Helen shrunk into herself; but when she had risen to go away, Stephen thrust a little packet into her hand. 'Read it when you go home,' he said. It was his little dissenting magazine, the insignificant brochure which she would have scorned so in the old days. With what tears, with what swelling of her heart, with what an agony of pride and love and sorrow she read it that night!
And so the old house was closed, and the old life ended. Henceforward, everything that awaited her was cold and sad and new.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
[The end ofAt His Gates, Volume 1by Margaret Oliphant]