At His Gates: A Novel. Vol. 1 (of 3), Page 4

  CHAPTER IV.

  It is needless to say that Helen's superstition about the fall of thepicture and the sighing of the wind vanished with the night, and that inthe morning her nervousness was gone, and her mind had returned to itsprevious train of thought. Her passing weakness, however, had left onetrace behind. While he was soothing her fanciful terrors, Robert hadsaid, in a burst of candour and magnanimity, 'I will tell you what Iwill do, Helen. I will not act on my own judgment. I'll ask Haldane andMaurice for their advice,' 'But I do not care for their advice,' she hadsaid, with a certain pathos. 'Yes, to be sure,' Robert had answered;for, good as he was, he liked his own way, and sometimes was perverse.'They are my oldest friends; they are the most sensible fellows I know.I will tell them all the circumstances, and they will give me theiradvice.'

  This was a result which probably would have come whether Helen had beennervous or not; for Haldane and Maurice were the two authorities whomthe painter held highest after his wife. But Helen had never been ableto receive them with her husband's faith, or to agree to them as sharersof her influence over him. It said much for her that she had sotolerated them and schooled herself in their presence that poor Drummondhad no idea of the rebellion which existed against them in her heart.But both of them were instinctively aware of it, and felt that they werenot loved by their friend's wife. He made the same announcement to hernext morning with cheerful confidence, and a sense that he deservednothing but applause for his prudence. 'I am going to keep my promise,'he said. 'You must not think I say anything to please you which I don'tmean to carry out. I am going to speak to Haldane and Maurice. Mauriceis very knowing about business, and as for Stephen, his father was in anoffice all his life.'

  'But, Robert, I don't want you to ask their advice. I have no faith inthem. I would rather a hundred times you judged for yourself.'

  'Yes, my darling,' said Robert; 'they are the greatest helps to a manin making such a decision. I know my own opinion, and I know yours; andour two good friends, who have no bias, will put everything right.'

  And he went out with his hat brushed and a new pair of gloves, cheerfuland respectable as if he were already a bank director, cleansed of thevelvet coats and brigand hats and all the weaknesses of his youth. Andhis wife sat down with an impatient sigh to hear Norah play her scales,which was not exhilarating, for Norah's notions of time and harmony wereas yet but weakly developed. While the child made direful havoc amongthe black notes, Helen was sounding a great many notes quite as black inher inmost mind. What could they know about it? What were they to him incomparison with herself? Why should he so wear his heart upon hissleeve? It raised a kind of silent exasperation within her, so good ashe was, so kind, and tender, and loving; and yet this was a matter inwhich she had nothing to do but submit.

  These two cherished friends of Robert's were not men after Helen'sheart. The first, Stephen Haldane, was a Dissenting minister, a memberof a class which all prejudices were in arms against. It was not thatshe cared for his religious opinions or views, which differed from herown. She was not theological nor ecclesiastical in her turn of mind,and, to tell the truth, was not given to judging her acquaintances by anintellectual standard, much less a doctrinal one. But she shrank fromhis intimacy because he was a Dissenter--a man belonging to a class notacknowledged in society, and of whom she understood vaguely that theywere very careless about their h's, and were not gentlemen. The factthat Stephen Haldane was a gentleman as much as good manners, and goodlooks, and a tolerable education could make him, did not change hersentiments. She was too much of an idealist (without knowing it) to letproof invalidate theory. Accordingly, she doubted his good manners,mistrusted his opinions, and behaved towards him with studied civility,and a protest, carefully veiled but never forgotten, against hisadmission to her society. He had no right to be there; he was anintruder, an inferior. Such was her conclusion in a social point ofview; and her husband's inclination to consult him on most importantmatters in their history was very galling to her. The two had come toknow each other in their youth, when Haldane was going through thecurious incoherent education which often leads a young man temporarilyto the position of Dissenting minister. He had started in life as aBluecoat boy, and had shown what people call 'great talent,' but not inthe academical way. As a young man he had loved modern literature betterthan ancient. Had he been born to an estate of ten thousand a year, orhad he been born in a rank which would have secured him diplomatic orofficial work, he would have had a high character for accomplishmentsand ability; but he was born only of a poor Dissenting family, without asixpence, and when his school career was over he did not know what to dowith himself. He took to writing, as such men do, by nature, and workedhis way into the newspapers. Thus he began to earn a little money, whilevaguely playing with a variety of careers. Once he thought he would be adoctor, and it was while in attendance at an anatomical class that hemet Drummond. But Haldane was soon sick of doctoring. Then he became alecturer, getting engagements from mechanics' institutions and literarysocieties, chiefly in the country. It was at one of these lectures thathe fell under the notice of a certain Mr Baldwin, a kind of lay bishopin a great Dissenting community. Mr Baldwin was much 'struck' by theyoung lecturer. He agreed with his views, and applauded his eloquence;and when the lecture was over had himself introduced to the speaker.This good man had a great many peculiarities, and was rich enough to bepermitted to indulge them. One of these peculiarities was an inclinationto find out and encourage 'rising talent.' And he told everybody he hadseldom been so much impressed as by the talents of this young man, whowas living (innocently) by his wits, and did not know what to do withhimself. It is not necessary to describe the steps by which youngHaldane ripened from a lecturer upon miscellaneous subjects, literaryand philosophical, into a most esteemed preacher. He pursued his studiesfor a year or two at Mr Baldwin's cost, and at the end of that time waspromoted, not of course nominally, but very really, by Mr Baldwin'sinfluence, to the pulpit of the flourishing and wealthy congregation ofwhich that potentate was the head.

  This was Stephen Haldane's history; but he was not the sort of man to beproduced naturally by such a training. He was full of naturalrefinement, strangely blended with a contented adherence to all thehomely habits of his early life. He had not attempted, had not eventhought of, 'bettering' himself. He lived with his mother and sister,two homely Dissenting women, narrow as the little house they lived in,who kept him, his table, and surroundings, on exactly the same model ashis father's house had been kept. All the luxuries of the wealthy chapelfolks never tempted him to imitation. He did not even claim to himselfthe luxury of a private study in which to write his sermons, but had hiswriting-table in the common sitting-room, in order that his womankindmight preserve the cold fiction of a 'best room' in which to receivevisitors. To be sure, he might have been able to afford a larger house;but then Mrs Haldane and Miss Jane would have been out of place in alarger house. They lived in Victoria Villas, one of those smallerstreets which copy and vulgarize the better ones in all London suburbs.It was close to St Mary's Road, in which Drummond's house was situated,and the one set of houses was a copy of the other in little. Thearrangement of the rooms, the shape of the garden, the outside aspectwas the same, only so many degrees smaller. And this, it must beallowed, was one of the reasons why the Haldanes were unpalatableneighbours to Mrs Drummond; for, as a general rule, the people who livedin St Mary's Road did not know the inferior persons who inhabitedVictoria Villas. The smaller copied the greater, and were despised bythem in consequence. It was 'a different class,' everybody said. And itmay be supposed that it was very hard upon poor Helen to have it knownthat her husband's closest friend, the man whose opinion he asked aboutmost things, and whom he believed in entirely, was one who combined inhimself almost all the objectionable qualities possible. He was aDissenter--a Dissenting minister--sprung of a poor family, and adheringto all their shabby habits--and lived in Victoria Villas. The veryaddress of itself was enough to condemn a man; no one who had anyres
pect for his friends would have retained it for an hour. Yet it wasthis man whom Robert had gone to consult at the greatest crisis of hislife.

  The other friend upon whom poor Drummond relied was less objectionablein a social point of view. He was a physician, and not in very greatpractice, being a crotchety man given to inventions and investigations,but emphatically 'a gentleman' according to Helen's own sense of theword. This was so far satisfactory; but if he was less objectionable, hewas also much less interesting than Stephen Haldane. He was a shy man,knowing little about women and caring less. He lived all by himself in agreat house in one of the streets near Berkeley Square, a house twiceas big as the Drummonds', which he inhabited in solitary state, in whatseemed to Helen the coldest, dreariest loneliness. She was half sorryfor, half contemptuous of him in his big, solemn, doubly-respectablehermitage. He was rich, and had nothing to do with his money. He had fewfriends and no relations. He was as unlike the painter as could beconceived; and yet in him too Robert believed. Their acquaintance datedback to the same anatomical lectures which had brought Haldane andDrummond together, but Dr Maurice was a lover of art, and had boughtRobert's first picture, and thus occupied a different ground with him.Perhaps the irritating influence he had upon Helen was greater than thatexercised by Haldane, because it was an irritation produced by hischaracter, not by his circumstances. Haldane paid her a certain shyhomage, feeling her to be different from all the women who surroundedhimself; but Maurice treated her with formal civility and that kind ofconventional deference which old-fashioned people show to the wishes andtastes of an inferior, that he may be set at his ease among them. Therewere times when she all but hated the doctor, with his courtesy and hissilent air of criticism--but the minister she could not hate.

  At the same time it must be allowed that to see her husband set out withhis new gloves to ask the opinion of these two men, after all theprofound thought she had herself given to the subject, and thepassionate feeling it had roused within her, was hard upon Helen. Tothem it would be nothing more than a wise or unwise investment of money,but to her it was a measure affecting life and honour. Perhaps sheexaggerated, she was willing to allow--but they would not fail tounderrate its importance; they could not--Heaven forbid they evershould!--feel as she did, that Robert, though an R.A., had failed in hisprofession. They would advise him to hold fast by that profession andleave business alone, which was as much as condemning him to a constantrepetition of the despairs and discontents of the past; or they wouldadvise him to accept the new opening held out to him and sever himselffrom art, which would be as good as a confession of failure. Thus it isevident, whatever his friends might happen to advise, Helen was preparedto resent.

  At this moment Mrs Drummond's character was the strangest mixture of twokinds of being. She was, though a mature woman, like a flower burstingout of a rough husk. The old conventional nature, the habits andprejudices of the rich _bourgeois_ existence to which she had been born,had survived all that had as yet happened to her in life. The want of adining-room, which has been already noted, had been not a trivialaccident but a real humiliation to her. She sighed when she thought ofthe great dinner-parties with mountains of silver on table andsideboard, and many men in black or more gorgeous beings in livery towait, which she had been accustomed to in her youth; and when she wasobliged to furnish a supper for a group of painters who had been smokinghalf the night in the studio, and who were not in evening dress, shefelt almost disgraced. Robert enjoyed that impromptu festivity more thanall the dinner-parties; but Helen felt that if any of her old friends oreven the higher class of her present acquaintances were to look in andsee her, seated at the head of the table, where half a dozen bearded menin morning coats were devouring cold beef and salad, she must have sunkthrough the floor in shame and dismay. Robert was strangely, sadlywithout feeling in such matters. It never occurred to him that theycould be a criterion of what his wife called 'position;' and he wouldonly laugh in the most hearty way when Helen insisted upon the habitsproper to 'people of our class.' But her pride, such as it was, wasterribly wounded by all such irregular proceedings. The middle-classcustom of dining early and making a meal of 'tea,' a custom in full andundisturbed operation round the corner in Victoria Villas, affected herwith a certain horror as if it had been a crime. Had she yielded to itshe would have felt that she had 'given in,' and voluntarily descendedin the social scale. 'Late dinners' were to her as a bulwark againstthat social downfall which in her early married life had seemed alwaysimminent. This curious raising up of details into the place ofprinciples had given Helen many an unnecessary prick. It had made herput up with much really inferior society in the shape of people ofgentility whose minds were all absorbed in the hard struggle to keep upappearances, and live as people lived with ten times their income, whileit cut her off from a great many to whom appearances were lessimportant, and who lived as happened to be most convenient to them,without asking at what hour dukes dined or millionnaires. The dukesprobably would have been as indifferent, but not the millionnaires, andit was from the latter class that Helen came. But in the midst of allthese all-important details and the trouble they caused her, had risenup, she knew not how, a passionate, obstinately ideal soul. Perhaps atfirst her thirst for fame had been but another word for socialadvancement and distinction in the world, but that feeling had changedby means of the silent anguish which had crept on her as bit by bit sheunderstood her husband's real weakness. Love in her opened, it did notblind, her eyes. Her heart cried out for excellence, for power, forgenius in the man she loved; and with this longing there came a hundredsubtle sentiments which she did not understand, and which worked andfermented in her without any will of hers. Along with the sense that hewas no genius, there rose an unspeakable remorse and hatred of herselfwho had found it out; and along with her discontent came a sense of herown weakness--a growing humility which was a pain to her, and againstwhich her pride fought stoutly, keeping, up to this time, the upperhand--and a regretful, self-reproachful, half-adoration of her husbandand his goodness, produced by the very consciousness that he was not sostrong nor so great as she had hoped. These mingled elements of the oldand the new in Helen's mind made it hard to understand her, hard torealise and follow her motives; yet they explained the irritabilitywhich possessed her, her impatience of any suggestion from outside,along with her longing for something new, some change which might bringa new tide into the life which had fallen into such dreary, stagnant,unreal ways.

  While she waited at home with all these thoughts whirling about her,Robert went out cheerfully seeking advice. He did it in the spirit whichis habitual to men who consult their friends on any important matter. Hemade up his mind first. As he turned lightly round the corner, swinginghis cane, instead of wondering what his friend would say to him, he wasmaking up his mind what he himself would do with all the unusual powerand wealth which would come to him through the bank. For instance, atonce, there was poor Chance, the sculptor, whose son he could find aplace for without more ado. Poor Chance had ten children, and was nogenius, but an honest, good fellow, who would have made quite a superiorstonemason had he understood his own gifts. Here was one immediateadvantage of that bank-directorship. He went in cheerful and confidentin this thought to the little house in Victoria Villas. Haldane hadbeen ill; he had spent the previous winter in Italy, and his friends hadbeen in some anxiety about his health; but he had improved again, andRobert went in without any apprehensions into the sitting-room at theback, which looked into the little garden. He had scarcely opened thedoor before he saw that something had happened. The writing-table wasdeserted, and a large sofa drawn near the window had become, it was easyto perceive, the centre of the room and of all the interests of itsinhabitants. Mrs Haldane, a homely old woman in a black dress and awidow's cap, rose hastily as he came in, with her hand extended, as ifto forbid his approach. She was very pale and tremulous; the arm whichshe raised shook as she held it out, and fell down feebly by her sidewhen she saw who it was. 'Oh, come in, Mr Drummond, he wi
ll like to see_you_,' she said in a whisper. Robert went forward with a pang of alarm.His friend was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, with an ashypaleness on his face, and the features slightly, very slightly,distorted. He was not moved by the sound of Robert's welcome nor by hismother's movements. His eyes were closed, and yet he did not seem to beasleep. His chest heaved regularly and faintly, or the terrifiedbystander would have thought he was dead.

  Robert clutched at the hand which the old lady stretched out to himagain. 'Has he fainted?' he cried in a whisper. 'Have you had thedoctor? Let me go for the doctor. Do you know what it is?'

  Poor Mrs Haldane looked down silently and cried. Two tears fell out ofher old eyes as if they were full and had overflowed. 'I thought hewould notice you,' she said. 'He always was so fond of you. Oh, MrDrummond, my boy's had a stroke!'

  'A stroke!' said Drummond under his breath. All his own visions flittedout of his mind like a shadow. His friend lay before him like a fallentower, motionless, speechless. 'Good God!' he said, as men do unawares,with involuntary appeal to Him who (surely) has to do with those wildcontradictions of nature. 'When did it happen? Who has seen him?' heasked, growing almost as pale as was the sufferer, and feeling faint andill in the sense of his own powerlessness to help.

  'It was last night, late,' said the mother. Oh, Mr Drummond, this hasbeen what was working on him. I knew it was never the lungs. Not one ofus, either his father's family or mine, was ever touched in the lungs.Dr Mixwell saw him directly. He said not to disturb him, or I would havehad him in bed. I know he ought to be in bed.'

  'I'll go and fetch Maurice,' cried Robert. 'I shall be back directly,'and he rushed out of the room which he had entered so jauntily. As heflew along the street, and jumped into the first cab he could find, thebank and his directorship went as completely out of his mind as if theyhad been a hundred years off. He dashed at the great solemn door of DrMaurice's house when he reached it and rushed in, upsetting the decorousservant. He seized the doctor by the shoulder, who was seated calmly atbreakfast. 'Come along with me directly,' he said. 'I have a cab at thedoor.'

  'What is the matter?' said Dr Maurice. He had no idea of being disturbedso unceremoniously. 'Is Mrs Drummond ill? Sit down and tell me what iswrong.'

  'I can't sit down. I want you to come with me. There is a cab at thedoor,' said Robert panting. 'It is poor Haldane. He has had a fit--comeat once.'

  'A fit! I knew that was what it was,' said Dr Maurice calmly. He wavedhis hand to the importunate petitioner, and swallowed the rest of hisbreakfast in great mouthfuls. 'I'm coming; hold your tongue, Drummond. Iknew the lungs was all nonsense--of course that is what it was.'

  'Come then,' cried Robert. 'Good heavens, come! don't let him lie thereand die.'

  'He will not die. More's the pity, poor fellow!' said the doctor. 'Isaid so from the beginning. John, my hat. Lungs, nonsense! He was assound in the lungs as either you or I.'

  'For God's sake, come then,' said the impatient painter, and he rushedto the door and pushed the calm physician into his cab. He had come toconsult him about something? Yes, to be sure, about poor Haldane--not toconsult him--to carry him off, to compel, to drag that other back fromthe verge of the grave. If there was anything more in his mind when hestarted Drummond had clean forgotten it. He did not remember it againtill two hours later, when, having helped to carry poor Haldaneup-stairs, and rushed here and there for medicines and conveniences, heat last went home, weary with excitement and sympathetic pain. 'I havesurely forgotten something,' he said, when he had given an account ofall his doings to his wife. 'Good heavens! I forgot altogether that Iwent to ask somebody's advice.'