Маргарет Олифант
At His Gates. Volume 1
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 a grande passion at 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. 'I have taught 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.
CHAPTER XVII
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 she felt as 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 God know? 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, a sourd resentment, 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, his éloge was 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, I dare not! 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, called par 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 it con amore and per 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.'
