And now all the threads are shortening in the shuttle, and the web is
nearly woven out. If any one has ever supposed for a moment that Robert
Drummond and his wife would make a last appearance as cruel parents,
interfering with their daughter's happiness, it does not say much for
the historian's success in elucidating their characters. If Norah had
wanted to marry a bad man, they would no doubt have made a terrible
stand, and made themselves very unhappy; but when it was only their own
prejudices, and poverty, and other external disadvantages that had to be
taken into account, nothing but the forecasting imagination of two timid
lovers could have feared for the result. When two people have themselves
married upon nothing, it is so much more easy for them to see how that
can be managed over again; and, heaven save you, good people! so many of
us used to marry upon nothing in the old days.
But a great deal had to happen before this could come to pass. The
Drummonds went home to England late in the autumn, and Robert was
received back by the world with such acclamations as perhaps have not
greeted a man of his profession in England for ages. Of itself the
picture of 'Dives' had made a great impression upon the general mind;
but when his strange story became public, and it was known that the
picture of the year had been painted by a man risen, as it were, out of
the grave, warmer still became the interest in it. The largest sum which
had been given for a picture for years was offered for this to the
resuscitated painter. Helen, always visionary, revolted from the very
thought of selling this picture, which had been the link between herself
and her husband, and which had so many associations to them both; but
Robert had too much practical good sense to yield to this romantic
difficulty. 'I am no longer Dives,' he said, as he drew his wife's arm
through his own, and took her out with him to conclude the bargain. It
increased the income which Robert's American gains brought him, and made
them a great deal more comfortable. But Helen would never visit at the
great house where 'Dives' was, and she would have given half her living
to have possessed the greatest work her husband ever produced--the only
one by which, all the critics said, he would be known to posterity. This
was one of the disappointments of her new life, and it was without doubt
an unreasonable disappointment, as so many are that sting us most
deeply. The Drummonds were so fortunate, after some waiting and
bargaining, as to secure their old house in St Mary's Road, with the
studio in which such happy and such terrible hours had been passed. It
was beyond their means; but yet they made an effort to purchase this
pleasure for themselves. And here for two years the family lived
together unbroken. Now and then they went to the Gatehouse, and made the
hearts of the Haldanes glad. And painters would throng about the studio,
and the old life came back as if it had never had a break. By times
Helen would sit in the familiar room, and ask herself was it _now_--the
present--or was it the past which had come back? The difference was,
there was no child curled against the window, with brown hair about her
shoulders, and a book in her arms, but only that slim, fair, brown-eyed
maiden, who wore a ring of betrothal upon her finger, and had thoughts
which travelled far by times after her distant lover; and that the
master of the house, when he came into the room, was not the
light-footed, youthful-browed Robert of old, but a white-haired man,
growing old before his time. These were the changes; but everything else
was unchanged.
Robert Drummond, however, never painted another picture like that
'Dives;' it was the one passion flower, the single great blossom, of his
life. He painted other pictures as he used to do, which were good
Drummonds, specimens of that master which the picture-dealers were very
willing to have and collectors to add to their treasures, but which
belonged to a world altogether distinct from the other. This Helen felt
too with a gentle pang, but not as she had felt it of old. Once he had
risen above that pleasant, charming level of beautiful mediocrity; once
he had painted, not in common pigments, but in colours mixed with tears
and life-blood. At such a cost even she was glad that no more great
works should be produced. She was satisfied; her craving for genius and
fame had once been fed, almost at the cost of their lives; and now she
was content to descend to the gentler, lower work--the work by which men
earn their daily bread.
Ah! but even then, even now, had it been--not Raphael, perhaps, who was
one of the Shaksperian men, without passion, who do the work of gods as
if they were the humanest, commonest of labourers--but such a fiery soul
as that of Michelangelo whom this woman had mated! But it was not so.
She could have understood the imperfection which is full of genius; what
she was slow to understand was the perfection in which no genius was.
But she was calmed and changed by all she had gone through, and had
learned how dearly such excellence may be bought, and that life is too
feeble to bear so vast a strain. Accordingly, fortified and consoled by
the one gleam of glory which had crowned his brows, Helen smiled upon
her painter, and took pleasure in his work, even when it ceased to be
glorious. That was over; but the dear common life--the quiet, blessed
routine of every day--that ordinary existence, with love to lighten it,
and work to burden it, and care and pleasure intermingled, which, apart
from the great bursts of passion and sorrow and delight that come in
from time to time, is the best blessing God gives to man--that had come
back, and was here in all its fulness, in perfect fellowship and
content.
Norah lived at home with her parents for two years--the reason of which
was, not that they objected to poor Ned, but that Ned was so sick at
heart with all that he had suffered, that he was not capable of settling
down to such work as could be procured for him in England. He was
'Burton's son;' and though even the people who looked cold at him on
account of his parentage would soon have forgotten it, Ned himself could
not forget. There was even a moment of despair in which he had declared
that he would not share his disgrace with the girl he loved, but would
carry it with him to his grave as soon as might be, and trouble no one
any more. This state of mind alarmed Norah dreadfully, but it did not
alarm the more experienced persons, who were aware that the mind at
one-and-twenty has a great many vagaries, and is not always to be taken
at its word. The despair came to a sudden end when Ned found himself
suddenly appointed to a vice-consulship in an Italian seaport, where his
chief made him do all the work, and where he received very little of the
pay. When this serious moment came, and life had to be fairly looked in
the face, Ned came to himself--he became a reasonable creature. Of
course, after his despair, his first idea was to be married instantly;
but finally he consented to wait until something better--something they
could live on--could be procured for him. He bore his banishment
valiantly, and so did Norah. And it did him good; he began to forget
that he was 'Burton's son;' the whole terrible story began to steal out
of his mind with that blessed facility which belongs to youth. His sky
brightened from those early clouds; his mind, which was a very good,
clear, capable intelligence, developed and strengthened; and finally,
the exertions of his mother and grandfather, and those of Drummond, who
had some influence too among great people who were lovers of art,
procured him an appointment at home. Ned would have nothing to do with
business; he shuddered at the very name of it, and rejected the plans
his kind grandfather had formed for him with a repugnance which was
almost horror. Mr Baldwin did not understand how the boy could be so
foolish; but his mother understood, and subdued all opposition. Instead
of taking his chance, therefore, of commerce, with the hope of becoming
in his turn a millionnaire, Ned made himself very happy in the public
service on a few hundreds a year. If he lived long enough, and nobody
was promoted over him, and nothing happened to him or the office, the
chances were that after thirty years or so he might find himself in
enjoyment of a thousand a year. And all the family said to each other,
'That is very good, you know, for a young man without much interest,'
and congratulated Ned as if he had the thousand a year already which was
thirty years off, and subject to all the chances of good and evil
fortune, of economical ministers, and those public crises which demand
the sacrifice of junior clerks. But notwithstanding all these drawbacks,
Ned was very happy in his new appointment, and his marriage day drew
nigh.
Mrs Burton had lived for some time with her father and her aunts at
Clapham--as long, indeed, as she could bear it; then she took a little
house in town. She had given up half of her settlement to her husband's
creditors; and whether she measured her sacrifice by her own knowledge
of human nature, or did it simply in the revulsion of her heart, after
Ned's careless reception of the larger offering which she was willing to
have made for him--certain it is that she got much more honour from her
public renunciation of the half than she would have done had she let the
whole go as she once intended. Her magnanimity was in all the papers,
and everybody commended the modest, unexaggerated sacrifice. And she had
still a very good income of her own, derived from the half she retained.
Her life in London, she thought, was happier than at Clapham. Yet,
perhaps, a doubt may be entertained on this subject; for a life so
limited was hard to her, however luxurious it might be. She did not care
for luxuries; but she did care to watch the secret movements of life, to
penetrate the secrets of human machinery, to note how men met the
different emergencies of their existence. She gathered a little society
round her who were as fond of this pursuit as herself; but unless they
could have provided themselves with cases on which to operate, this
association could not do them much good, and it was dry fare to be
driven to scrutinising each other. She thought she was happier in her
tiny house in Mayfair, where she kept three maids and a man, and was
extremely comfortable; but I believe that in reality her time of highest
enjoyment was also her time of greatest suffering, when she was ruling
her own little world at Dura, and seeing her house tumble to pieces, and
holding out against fate. She had had a chance for a moment of a better
life when her son came back, and touched with a careless, passing hand
those chords of her heart which had never vibrated before. But the touch
was careless, momentary. Before that vibration had done more than thrill
through her, the thoughtless hand was lifted, and the opportunity over,
and Mrs Burton, with her soft cynic smile, her perfect toleration for
the wants and weaknesses of humanity, her self-contained and
self-sufficing character, had returned to herself. She was proud, very
proud, in her way, and she was never betrayed into such weakness again.
Which was to blame, the mother or the son, it would be hard to say; and
yet Ned could hardly be blamed for failing to perceive an opportunity
which he never guessed at nor dreamed of. Some exceptionally sympathetic
natures might perhaps by instinct have felt the power that had been put
into their hands; but it is impossible to say that he was to blame for
not feeling it. Of all human creatures in this chilly universe, Ned
remained the one who most deeply interested his mother. She made no
opposition to his marriage; she even made a distinct effort to like and
to attract Norah, who on her side did her best to be affectionate and
filial to the woman whose cold gentleness and softness of manner were so
unlike her own. It was an experiment which mutually could not be said to
have failed. They were always, as people say, on the best of terms; but
so far as any real _rapprochement_ went, it cannot be said that it
succeeded. Ned's life, however, such as it was, was the one point in her
family to which Mrs Burton could turn without that emotion of
calmly-observant contempt--if the sentiment could be described as
anything so decided or warm as contempt--with which she regarded human
nature in general. Her husband, when he reached America, at once wrote
home to claim a share in the income secured by her settlement, which she
accorded him without hesitation, moved by a certain gentle, unexpressed
disdain. He received his allowance, as she termed it, or his share, as
he called it, with unfailing regularity, and made a hundred ventures
with it in the new field of speculation he had entered on with varying
success. He gained money and he lost it as he moved about from one town
to another; and sometimes in his letters he would tell her of his
successes--successes which made her smile. It was his nature, just as it
was Mr Baldwin's nature to take the chair at meetings, to devote himself
to the interests of the denomination. The one tendency was no more
elevated than the other, when you came to look into them, the student of
human nature thought. Perhaps, on the whole, the commercial gambling on
a small scale which now occupied the ruined merchant was more honest
than the other; for Burton thought of nothing but his own profit or
gain, whereas Mr Baldwin thought he was doing God a service. But this
was not a comparison for a daughter, for a wife, to make.
And then Clara came back from her southern villa, a young mother, with a
husband who was no longer her lover, and of whom she had become aware
that he was growing old. The villa was situated on the shores of the
loveliest sea, in the most beautiful climate in the world; but Clara
tired of it, and found it dull, and with her dulness bored her husband
so that his life became a burden to him. He brought her home at her
urgent desire, with her baby, and they lived about in London for a short
time, now in an hotel, now in a lodging, till it occurred to Clara that
it was her duty to go and live near 'dear grandpapa,' and delight his
old age with the fourth generation of his descendants. It suited her
very well for a time. 'Dear grandpapa' was abject to her; her aunts
became slaves to herself and her baby; she became the centre of all
their thoughts and plans. Clary, who loved all pleasant things, and to
whom luxury and ease were life, made herself at home at Clapham; and Mr
Golden relieved her of his presence, paid visits here and there, lived
at his club--which, strangely enough, had not expelled him--and
returned to all the delights of his old bachelor life. What was to be
the final end of it was hard to prophesy; but already Clary had begun to
be bored at Clapham, and to make scenes with her husband when he paid
her his unfrequent visits. And this was the love-match so romantically
made! Clary, amid all her jealousies and all her dulness, kept so firm a
hold upon the rich old people who could not live for ever, and who could
restore her at their death, if they so pleased, to much of her old
splendour, that her mother derived a certain painful amusement from this
new manifestation of her life. Amusement, I cannot deny,--and painful, I
hope; seeing that the creature who thus showed forth to her once again
the poor motives and self-seeking of humanity was her only daughter. But
with such evidences before her eyes of what human nature could be, was
it wonderful that Mrs Burton should stand more and more by herself, and
harden day by day into a colder toleration, a more disdainful
acquiescence in the evils she could not fight against. What was the good
of fighting against them? What could she do but render herself extremely
unhappy, and spoil the comfort of others without doing them any good? It
was not their fault; they were acting according to their nature. Thus
Mrs Burton's philosophy grew, and thus she spent her diminished life.
It was in the midst of all these varied circumstances that the joy-bells
rang for Norah's wedding. Mrs Burton did not go; for even her philosophy
was not equal to the sight of Dura, where, according to the wish of both
bride and bridegroom, the bridal was; but Clara, eager in the dulness of
Clapham for any change, was present in a toilet which filled her aunts
with compunction, yet admiration, and which one of them had been
wheedled into giving her. Clara took great state upon her as the matron,
the only one of the party who had attained that glory, though she was
the youngest, as she reminded them all. 'But if I don't do better than
Clary has done, I hope I shall never marry at all,' Katie Dalton cried
with natural indignation. The pretty procession went out of the
Gatehouse on foot to the church behind the trees, where Norah, as she
said, had been 'brought up,' and where Mr Dalton blessed the young pair,
while his kind wife stood holding Helen's hand and crying softly, as it
were, under her breath. Helen herself did not cry; and Norah's tears
came amid such an April shining of happiness, that no one could object
to them. The whole village came out to watch the pair whom the whole
village knew. A certain tenderness of respect, such as the crowd seldom
shows, was in the salutations Dura gave to the son of the ruined man who
had so long reigned among them. No one could remember, not the most
tenacious rural memory, an unkind act of Ned's; and the people were so
sorry for him, that their pleasure in his joy was half pathetic. 'Poor
lad!' they said; 'poor fellow! And it was none of his fault.' And the
friendliness that brought him back to hold his high festival and morning
joy of youth among them touched the kindly folks, and went to their
hearts. Stephen Haldane sat at his window, and watched the bride come
and go. Tears came into his eyes, and a pathetic mixture of gladness and
sorrow to his heart. He watched the procession go out, and in his
loneliness folded his hands and prayed for them while they were in
church. It was summer once more, and the blossomed limes were full of
bees, and all the air sweet with scent and sound. While all the goodly
company walked together to the kirk, Stephen, who could not go with
them, sat there in the sunshine with his folded hands. What thoughts
were in his mind! What broken lights of God's meaning and ways gleamed
about him! What strange clouds passed over him through the
sunshine--recollections of his own life, hopes for theirs! And when the
bride went away from the door, away into the world with her husband--in
that all-effectual separation from her father's house which may be but
for a few days, but which is more or less for ever, Stephen once more
looked out upon them from his window. And by his side stood Helen,
escaped there to command herself and to console him. The father leaned
out of the window, waving his hand; but the mother stood behind, with
her hand upon the arm of the invalid's chair. When Robert turned round,
it was with wonder that he perceived in Stephen's eyes a deeper feeling,
a more penetrating emotion, than he himself felt, or had any thought of.
He held out his hand to his friend, and he put his arm round his wife.
'Well, Helen,' he said, with his cheery voice, 'she is gone as you went
from your mother; and there are two of us still, whatever life may have
in store.'
'If there had not been two of us,' the mother cried, with momentary
passion, 'I think I should have died!'
Stephen Haldane took her hand in his, in sign of his sympathy. He held
it tightly, swaying for a moment in his chair. And he said nothing, for
there was no one whose ear was his, to whom his words were precious. But
in his heart he murmured, God hearing him, 'There is but one of me; and
I never die.'
THE END.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
End of Project Gutenberg's At His Gates, Vol. 3(of 3), by Margaret Oliphant