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
a _toilette fraîche_ of 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 of _that_, 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
the _Daily 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?'