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.'
'It is very kind--it is more than I had any right to expect,' said Mrs
Haldane. 'And we are going to the country too. We are going to Dura, to
a house Mr Burton has kindly offered to us. Oh, Mrs Drummond, now I
think of it, probably we owe it to you.'
'No,' said Helen, startled and mystified; and then she added slowly, 'I
am going to Dura too.'
'Oh, how very lucky that is! Oh, how glad I am!' said the old lady.
'Stephen, do you hear? Of course, Mr Burton is your cousin; it is
natural you should be near him. Stephen, this is good news for you. You
will have Miss Norah, whom you were always so fond of, to come about you
as she used to do--that is, if her mamma will allow her. Oh, my dear, I
am so glad! I must go and tell Jane. Jane, here is something that will
make you quite happy. Mrs Drummond is coming too.'
She went to the door to summon her daughter, and Helen was left alone
with the sick man. She had not loved him in the old time, but yet he
looked a part of Robert now, and her heart melted towards him. She was
glad to have him to herself, as glad as if he had been a brother. She
put her hand on the arm of his chair, laying a kind of doubtful claim to
him. 'You have seen what they say?' she asked, looking in his face.
'Yes, all; with fury,' he said, 'with indignation! Oh my God, that I
should be chained here, and good for nothing! They might as well have
said it of that child.'
'Oh, is it not cruel, cruel!' she said.
These half-dozen words were all that passed between them, and yet they
comforted her more than all Dr Maurice had said. He had been indignant
too, it is true; but not with this fiery, visionary wrath--the rage of
the helpless, who can do nothing.
When Miss Jane came in with her mother, they did the most of the
talking, and Helen shrunk into herself; but when she had risen to go
away, Stephen thrust a little packet into her hand. 'Read it when you go
home,' he said. It was his little dissenting magazine, the insignificant
brochure which she would have scorned so in the old days. With what
tears, with what swelling of her heart, with what an agony of pride and
love and sorrow she read it that night!
And so the old house was closed, and the old life ended. Henceforward,
everything that awaited her was cold and sad and new.
END OF VOL. I.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
End of Project Gutenberg's At His Gates, Vol. 1(of 3), by Margaret Oliphant