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 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.