Mr Burton called next morning to ascertain Drummond's decision, and
found that he had been sitting up half the night with Stephen Haldane,
and was wholly occupied by his friend's illness. The merchant suffered a
little vexation to be visible in his smooth and genial aspect. He was a
middle-aged man, with a bland aspect and full development, not fat but
ample. He wore his whiskers long, and had an air that was always jovial
and comfortable. The cleanness of the man was almost aggressive. He
impressed upon you the fact that he not only had his bath every morning,
but that his bath was constructed on the newest principles, with
water-pipes which wandered through all the house. He wore buff
waistcoats and light trousers, and the easiest of overcoats. His
watch-chain was worthy of him, and so were the heavy gold buttons at his
sleeves. He looked and moved and spoke like wealth, with a roll in his
voice, which is only attainable in business, and when business goes very
well with you. Consequently the shade of vexation which came over him
was very perceptible. He found the Drummonds only at breakfast, though
he had breakfasted two hours before, and this mingled in his seriousness
a certain tone of virtuous reproof.
'My dear fellow, I don't want to disturb you,' he said; 'but how you can
make this sort of thing pay I can't tell. _I_ breakfasted at eight; but
then, to be sure, I am only a City man, and can't expect my example to
be much thought of at the West-end.'
'Is this the West-end?' said Robert, laughing. 'But if you breakfasted
at eight, you must want something more by this time. Sit down and have
some coffee. We are late because we have been up half the night.' And he
told his new visitor the story of poor Stephen and his sudden illness.
Mr Burton was moderately concerned, for he had married Mr Baldwin's only
daughter, and was bound to take a certain interest in his
father-in-law's _protégé_. He heard the story to an end with admirable
patience, and shook his head, and said, 'Poor fellow! I am very sorry
for him,' with due gravity. But he was soon tired of Stephen's story. He
took out his watch, and consulted it seriously, muttering something
about his appointments.
'My dear good people,' he said, 'it may be all very well for you to
spend your time and your emotions on your friends, but a man of business
cannot so indulge himself. I thought I should have had a definite answer
from you, Drummond, yes or no.'
'Yes,' said Robert with professional calmness. 'I am very sorry. So I
intended myself; but this business about poor Haldane put everything
else out of my head.'
'Well,' said Mr Burton, rising and walking to the fireplace, according
to British habit, though there was no fire, 'you know best what you can
do. I, for my part, should not be able to neglect my business if my best
friend was on his death-bed. Of course you understand Rivers's is not
likely to go begging for partners. Such an offer is not made to every
one. I am certain that you should accept it for your own sake; but if
you do not think it of importance, there is not another word to say.'
'My dear fellow,' cried Robert, 'of course I think it of importance; and
I know I owe it to your consideration. Don't think me ungrateful,
pray.'
'As for gratitude, that is neither here nor there,' said the merchant;
'there is nothing to be grateful about. But we have a meeting to-day to
arrange the preliminaries, and probably everything will be settled then.
I should have liked to place your name at once on the list. To leave
such things over, unless you mean simply to abandon them, is a great
mistake.'
'I am sure I don't see any particular reason why we should leave it
over,' Robert said, faltering a little; and then he looked at his wife.
Helen's face was clouded and very pale. She was watching him with a
certain furtive eagerness, but she did not meet his eye. There was a
tremulous pause, which seemed like an hour to both of them, during the
passing of which the air seemed to rustle and beat about Helen's ears.
Her husband gazed at her, eagerly questioning her; but she could not
raise her eyes--something prevented her, she could not tell what; her
eyelids seemed heavy and weighed them down. It was not weakness or fear
or a desire to avoid the responsibility of immediate action, but
positive physical inability. He looked at her for, perhaps, a full
minute by the clock, and then he said slowly, 'I see no reason to
delay. I think Helen and I are agreed. This matter put the other out of
my head; but it is natural you should be impatient. I think I will
accept your kind offer, Burton, without any more delay.'
How easy it is to say such words! The moment they were spoken Robert
felt them so simple, so inevitable, and knew that all along he had meant
to say them. But still he was somewhat excited; a curious feeling came
into his mind, such as a king may feel when he has crossed his
neighbour's frontier with an invading army. Half-a-dozen steps were
enough to do it; but how to get back again? and what might pass before
the going back! The thought caught at his breath, and gave him a
tremendous thrill through all his frame.
'Very well,' said Burton, withdrawing his hands from under his
coat-tails, and drawing a slightly long breath, which the other in his
excitement did not observe. Mr Burton did not show any excitement,
except that long breath, which, after all, might have been accidental;
no sign or indication of feeling had been visible in him. It was a
great, a very great matter to the Drummonds; but it was a small matter
to one who had been for years a partner in Rivers's. 'Very well. I will
submit your name to the directors to-day. I don't think you need fear
that the result will be doubtful. And I am very glad you have come to
such a wise decision. Helen, when your husband is rich, as I trust he
soon will be, I hope you will fancy a little house at Dura, and be our
neighbour. It would be like old times. I should like it more than I can
say.'
'I never was fond of Dura,' said Helen, with some abruptness. This
reference to his greatness irritated her, as it always did; for whatever
new-comer might take a little house at Dura, he was the lord of the
place, supreme in the great house, and master of everything. Such an
allusion always stirred up what was worst in her, and gave to her
natural pride a certain tone of spitefulness and envy, which disgusted
and wounded herself. But it did not wound her cousin, it pleased him. He
laughed with a suppressed enjoyment and triumph.
'Well,' he said, 'Dura is my home, and a very happy one, therefore, of
course, I am fond of it. And it has a great many associations too, some
of them, perhaps, not so agreeable. But it is always pleasant to feel,
as I do, that everything that has happened to one has been for the
best.'
'The conversation has taken a highly edifying tone,' said Robert with
some surprise. He saw there was more meant than met the eye, but he did
not know what it was. 'We shall all be thanking Providence next, as
people do chiefly, I observe, in celebration of the sufferings of
others. Well, since you think I am on the fair way to be rich, perhaps I
had better thank Providence by anticipation. Must I go with you to-day?'
'Not to-day. You will have full intimation when your presence is wanted.
You forget--nothing is settled yet,' said Mr Burton; 'the whole
arrangement may come to nothing yet, for what I know. But I must be
going; remember me to poor Haldane when he is able to receive good
wishes. I hope he'll soon be better. Some of these days I'll call and
see him. Good morning, Helen. Good-bye, Drummond. I'm glad you've made
up your mind. My conviction is, it will turn out the best day's work you
ever did in your life.'
'Is he true, I wonder?' Helen said to herself as the two men left the
room, and stood talking in the hall. It was the first time the idea had
crossed her mind, and now it took its origin more from the malicious
shaft her cousin had shot at herself than from any indication of
double-dealing she had seen in him. It was against all the traditions of
the Burtons to imagine that he could be anything but true. They had been
business people as long as they had been anything, and commercial honour
had been their god. It went against her to imagine that 'a relation of
mine!' could be other than perfect in this particular; and she sighed,
and dismissed the idea from her mind, blaming herself, as she often did
now, for ill-temper and suspiciousness. 'It was mean to make that
allusion to the past, but it is meaner of me to doubt him on that
account,' she said to herself, with a painful sigh. It was so hard in
her to overcome nature, and subdue those rebellious feelings that rose
in her unawares. 'Why should I care?' she thought, 'it is my vanity. I
suppose if the man had never got over my rejection of him I should have
been pleased. I should have thought better of him! Such a man as that!
After all, we women must be fools indeed.' This was the edifying
sentiment in her mind when Robert came back.
'Well, Helen, the die is cast,' he said, half cheerfully, half sadly.
'However we come to shore, the ship has set out. If it were not for
poor Stephen I should make to-day a holiday and take you somewhere. This
day ought to be distinguished from the rest.'
'I hope he is true. I wonder if he is true?' Helen repeated to herself,
half unconsciously, beneath her breath.
'Whom? Your cousin!!' said Robert, with quite two notes of admiration in
his tone. 'Why, Helen, what a cynic you are growing. You will suspect me
next.'
'Am I a cynic?' she said, looking up at him with a sudden tear in her
eye. 'It is because I am beginning to be so wretchedly doubtful about
myself.'
This admission burst from her she could not tell how. She had no
intention of making it. And she was sorry the moment the words were
said. But as for Robert, he gazed at her first in consternation, then
laughed, then took her in his kind arms with those laughing accusations
of love which are more sweet than any eulogy. 'Yes,' he said, 'you are a
very suspicious character altogether, you know so much harm of yourself
that it is evident you must think badly of others. What a terrible
business for me to have such a wife!'
Thus ended the episode in their lives which was to colour them to their
very end, and decide everything else. They had been very solemn about it
at the beginning, and had made up their minds to proceed very warily,
and ask everybody's advice; but, as so often happens in human affairs,
the decision which was intended to be done so seriously had been
accomplished in a moment, without consideration, almost without thought.
And, being done, it was a weight off the minds of both. They had no
longer this disturbing matter between them to be discussed and thought
over. Robert dismissed it out of simple light-heartedness, and that
delightful economy of sensation which is fortunately so common among the
artist class: 'It is done, and all the thinking in the world will not
make any difference. Why should I bother myself about it?' If this
_insouciance_ sometimes does harm, heaven knows it does a great deal of
good sometimes, and gives the artist power to work where a man who felt
his anxieties more heavily would fail. Helen had not this happy temper;
but she was a woman, more occupied with personal feelings than with any
fact, however important. The fact was outside, and never, she thought,
could vanquish her--her enemies were within.
Time passed very quietly after this great decision. There was a lull,
during which Stephen Haldane grew better, and Mrs Drummond learned to
feel a certain friendliness and sympathy for the lonely mother and
sister, who were flattered by her inquiries after him. She came even to
understand her husband's jokes about Miss Jane, the grim and practical
person who ruled the little house in Victoria Villas--whom she sometimes
laughed at, but whom little Norah took a violent fancy for, which much
mollified her mother. And then, in the matter of Rivers's bank, there
began to rise a certain agreeable excitement and importance in their
life. 'Drummond among the list of bank directors! _Drummond!_ What does
it mean?' This question ran through all the studios, and came back in
amusing colours to the two who knew all about it. 'His wife belongs to
that sort of people, and has hosts of business connections,' said one.
'The fellow is rich,' said another: 'don't you know what a favourite he
is with all the dealers, and has been for ever so long?' 'His wife has
money,' was the judgment of a third; 'take my word for it, that is the
way to get on in this world. A rich wife keeps you going till you've
made a hit--if you are ever going to make a hit--and helps you on.' 'It
is all that cousin of hers,' another would say, 'that fellow Burton whom
one meets there. He bought my last picture, so I have reason to know,
and has a palace in the country, like the rest of those City fellows.'
'What luck some men have!' sighed the oldest of all. 'I am older than
Drummond, but none of these good things ever came my way.' And this man
was a better painter than Drummond, and knew it, but somehow had never
caught the tide. Drummond's importance rose with every new report. When
he secured that clerkship for Bob Chance, Chance the sculptor's son, he
made one family happy, and roused a certain excitement in many others;
for poor artists, like poor clergymen and other needy persons, insist
upon having large families. Two or three of the men who were Robert's
contemporaries, who had studied with him in the schools, or had guided
his early labours, went to see him--while others wrote--describing
promising boys who would soon be ready for business, and for whom they
would gladly secure something less precarious than the life of art.
These applications were from the second class of artists, the men who
are never very successful, yet who 'keep on,' as they themselves would
say, rambling from exhibition to exhibition, painting as well as a man
can be taught to paint who has no natural impulse, or turning out in
conscientious marble fair limbs of nymphs that ought, as the only reason
for their being, to have sprung ethereal from the stone. And these poor
painters and sculptors were often so good, so kindly, and unblamable as
men; fond of their families, ready to do anything to push on the sons
and daughters who showed 'talent,' or had any means offered of bettering
themselves. How gladly Robert would have given away a dozen clerkships!
how happy it would have made him to scatter upon them all some share of
his prosperity! but he could not do this, and it was the first
disagreeable accompaniment of his new position. He had other
applications, however, of a different kind. Those in the profession who
had some money to invest came and asked for his advice, feeling that
they could have confidence in him. 'Rivers's has a name like the Bank of
England,' they said; and he had the privilege of some preference shares
to allot to them. All this advanced him in his own opinion, in his
wife's, in that of all the world. He was no longer a man subject to
utter demolition at the hands of an ill-natured critic; but a man
endowed with large powers in addition to his genius, whom nobody could
demolish or even seriously harm.
Perhaps, however, the greatest height of Drummond's triumph was reached
when, the year having crept round from summer to autumn, his friend Dr
Maurice came to call one evening after a visit to Haldane. It was that
moment between the two lights which is dear to all busy people. The
first fire of the year was lit in Helen's drawing-room, which of itself
was a little family event. Robert had strayed in from the studio in his
painting coat, which he concealed by sitting in the shade by the side of
the chimney. The autumn evenings had been growing wistful and eerie for
some time back, the days shortening, yet the season still too mild for
fires--so that the warm interior, all lit by the kindly, fitful flame,
was a novelty and a pleasure. The central figure in the picture was
Norah, in a thick white piqué frock, with her brown hair falling on her
shoulders, reading by the firelight. The little white figure rose from
the warm carpet into the rosy firelight, herself less vividly tinted, a
curious little abstract thing, the centre of the life around her, yet
taking no note of it. She had shielded her cheek with one of her hands,
and was bending her brows over the open book, trying to shade the light
which flickered and danced, and made the words dance too before her. The
book was too big for her, filling her lap and one crimsoned arm which
held its least heavy side. The new-comer saw nothing but Norah against
the light as he came in. He stopped, in reality because he was fond of
Norah, with a disapproving word.
'At it again!' he said. 'That child will ruin her eyesight and her
complexion, and I don't know what besides.'
'Never fear,' said Drummond, with a laugh, out of the corner, revealing
himself, and Helen rose from the other side. She had been invisible too
in a shady corner. A certain curious sensation came over the man who was
older, richer, and felt himself wiser, than the painter. All this
Drummond had for his share, though he had not done much to deserve
it--whereas in the big library near Berkeley Square there was no fire,
no child pushing a round shoulder out of her frock, and roasting her
cheeks, no gracious woman rising softly out of the shadows. Of course,
Dr Maurice might have been married too, and had not chosen; but
nevertheless it was hard to keep from a momentary envy of the painter
who could come home to enjoy himself between the lights, and for whom
every night a new pose arranged itself of that child reading before the
fire. Dr Maurice was a determined old bachelor, and thought more of the
child than of the wife.
'Haldane is better to-day,' he said, seating himself behind Norah, who
looked up dreamily, with hungry eyes possessed by her tale, to greet
him, at her mother's bidding. 'Nearly as well as he will ever be. We
must amuse him with hopes of restoration, I suppose; but he will never
budge out of that house as long as he lives.'
'But he will live?' said Robert.
'Yes, if you can call it living. Fancy, Drummond! a man about your own
age, a year or two younger than I am--a man fond of wandering, fond of
movement; and yet shut up in that dreary prison--for life!'
A silence fell upon them all as he spoke. They were too much awed to
make any response, the solemnity being beyond words. Norah woke up at
the pause. Their voices did not disturb her; but the silence did.
'Who is to be in the dreary prison?' she said, looking round upon them
with her big brown wondering eyes.
'Hush! Poor Mr Haldane, dear,' said the mother, under her breath.
Then Norah burst into a great cry. 'Oh, who has done it--who has done
it? It is a shame--it is a sin! He is so good.'
'My child,' said the doctor, with something like a sob, 'it is God who
has done it. If it had been a man, we would have throttled him before he
touched poor Stephen. Now, heaven help us! what can we do? I suppose it
is God.'
'Maurice, don't speak so before the child,' said Robert from a corner.
'How can I help it?' he cried. 'If it was a man's doing, what could we
say bad enough? Norah, little one, you don't know what I mean. Go back
to your book.'
'Norah, go up-stairs and get dressed for dinner,' said Helen. 'But you
cannot, you must not be right, doctor. Oh, say you are sometimes
deceived. Things happen that you don't reckon on. It is not for his
life?'
Dr Maurice shook his head. He looked after Norah regretfully as she went
out of the room with the big book clasped in her arms.
'You might have let the child stay,' he said reproachfully. 'There was
nothing that could have disturbed _her_ in what I said.'
And then for a moment or two the sound of the fire flickering its light
about, making sudden leaps and sudden downfalls like a living thing,
was the only sound heard; and it was in this pensive silence, weighted
and subdued by the neighbourhood of suffering, that the visitor suddenly
introduced a subject so different. He said abruptly--
'I have to congratulate you on becoming a great man, Drummond. I don't
know how you have done it. But this bank, I suppose, will make your
fortune. I want to venture a little in it on my own account.'
'You, Maurice? My dear fellow!' said Robert, getting up with sudden
enthusiasm, and seizing his friend by both his hands, '_you_ going in
for Rivers's! I never was so glad in my life!'
'You need not be violent,' said the doctor. 'Have I said anything very
clever, Mrs Drummond? I am going in for Rivers's because it seems such a
capital investment. I can't expect, of course, to get put on the board
of directors, or to sit at the receipt of custom, like such a great man
as you are. Don't shake my hands off, my good fellow. What is there
wonderful in this?'
'Nothing wonderful,' said Robert; 'but the best joke I ever heard in my
life. Fancy, Helen, I was going to him humbly, hat in hand, to ask his
advice, thinking perhaps he would put his veto on it, and prevent me
from making my fortune. And now he is a shareholder like the rest. You
may not see it, but it is the best joke! You must stay to dinner, old
fellow, and we will talk business all the evening. Helen, we cannot let
him go to-night.'
And Helen smiled too as she repeated her husband's invitation. Robert
had been wiser than his friends, though he had asked nobody's advice but
hers. It was a salve to her often-wounded pride. The doctor did not like
it half so much. His friend had stolen a march upon him, reversed their
usual positions, gone first, and left the other to follow. He stayed to
dinner, however, all the same, and pared apples for Norah, and talked
over Rivers's afterwards over his wine. But when he left the door to go
home, he shrugged his shoulders with a half-satisfied prophecy. 'He will
never paint another good picture,' Maurice said, with a certain tone of
friendly vengeance. 'When wealth comes in good-bye to art.'