At His Gates. Volume 1

Meanwhile Drummond strayed on he knew not where. He went back into the City, into the depths of those lanes and narrow streets which he had left so lately, losing himself in a bewildering maze of warehouse walls and echoing traffic. Great waggons jammed him up against the side, loads dangled over his head that would have crushed him in a moment, open cellars yawned for his unsteady feet; but he walked as safe through all those perils as if he had borne a charmed life, though he neither looked nor cared where he was going. His meeting with Burton was forced out of his mind in a few minutes as if it had not been. For the moment it had startled him into mad excitement; but so strong was the stupor of his despair, that in five minutes it was as if it had never been. For hours he kept wandering round and round the scene of his ruin, coming and going in a circle, as if his feet were fast and he could not escape. It had been morning when he left his house. It was late afternoon when he got back. Oh why was it summer and the days so long? if only that scorching sun would have set and darkness fallen over the place. He stole in under cover of the lilac trees, which had grown so big and leafy, and managed to glide down the side-way to the garden and get to the studio door, which he could open with his key. He had been doing nothing but think – think – all the time; but 'now, at least, I shall have time to think,' he said to himself, as he threw himself down on a chair close to the door – the nearest seat – it no longer mattered where he placed himself or how. He sat huddled up against the wall as sometimes a poor model did, waiting wistfully to know if he was wanted, – some poor wretch to whom a shilling was salvation. This fancy, with a thousand others equally inappropriate, flashed across his mind as he sat there, still with his hat pulled down on his brows in the sunny luxurious warmth of the afternoon. The mere atmosphere, air, and sky, and sunshine would have been paradise to the artist in the poorest time he had ever known before, but they did not affect him now. He sat there in his stupor for perhaps an hour, not even able to rouse himself so far as to shut the door of communication into the conservatory, through which he heard now and then the softened stir of the household. He might have been restored to the sense of life and its necessities, might have been brought back out of the delirium of his ruin at that moment, had any one in the house known he was there. Helen was in the drawing-room, separated from him only by that flowery passage which he had made for her, to tempt her to visit him at his work. She was writing notes, inviting some half-dozen people to dinner, as had been arranged between them, but with a heavy and anxious heart, full of misgiving. She had risen from her writing table three or four times to go to the window and look out for her husband, wondering why he should be so long of coming – while he sat so near her. Mrs Drummond's heart was very heavy. She did not understand what he said to her in the morning – could not imagine how it could be. It must be a temporary cloud, a failure of some speculation, something unconnected with the ordinary course of life, she said to herself. Money! – he was not a business man – it could not be money. If it was only money, why that was nothing. Such was the course of her thoughts. And she paused over her invitations, wondering was it right to give them if Robert had been losing money. But they were old friends whom she was inviting – only half a dozen people – and it was for his birthday. She had just finished the last note, when Norah came dancing into the room, claiming her mother's promise to go out with her; and after another long gaze from her window, Helen made up her mind to go. It was her voice speaking to the maid which roused Robert. 'If Mr Drummond comes in before I return,' he heard her say, 'tell him I shall not be long. I am going with Miss Norah to the gardens for an hour, and then to ask for Mr Haldane; but I shall be back by half-past six.' He heard the message – he for whom it was intended – and rose up softly and went to his studio window, and peeped stealthily out to watch them as they went away. Norah came first, with a skip and gambol, and then Helen. His wife gave a wistful look back at the house as she opened the little gate under the leafy dusty lilacs. Was it with some premonition of what she should find when she came back? He hid himself so that he could not be seen, and gazed at the two, feeling as if that moment was all that life had yet to give him. It was his farewell look. His wife and child disappeared, and he could hear their footsteps outside on the pavement going farther and farther away on their harmless, unimportant walk, while he – He woke up as if it had been out of sleep or out of a trance. She would return by half-past six, and it was now approaching five. For all he had to do there was so little, so very little time.

So he said to himself, and yet when he said it he had no clear idea what he was going to do. He had not only to do it, whatever it was, but to make up his mind, all in an hour and a half; and for the first five minutes of that little interval he was like a man dreaming, stretching out his hands to catch any straw, trying to believe he might yet be saved. Could he leave them – those two who had just left the door – to struggle through the rest of life by themselves? Helen was just over thirty, and her daughter nearly twelve. It was a mature age for a woman; but yet for a woman who has been protected and taken care of all her life, how bitter a moment to be left alone! – the moment when life is at its fullest, demands most, feels most warmly, and has as yet given up nothing. Helen had had no training to teach her that happiness was not her right. She had felt it to be her right, and her whole soul rose up in rebellion against any infringement of that great necessity of being. How was she to live when all was taken from her, even the support of her husband's arm? Robert had never known so much of his wife's character before, but in this awful moment it became clear to him as by an inspiration. How was she to bear it? Credit, honour, money, living – and her husband, too, who could still work for her, shield her. He went to his easel and uncovered the half-finished picture on it, and gazed at it with something that was in reality a dumb appeal to the dumb canvas to help him. But it did not help him. On the contrary, it brought suddenly up before him his work of the past, his imperfect successes, and Helen's kind, veiled, hidden, but unconcealable dissatisfaction. The look of suppressed pain in her face, the subdued tone, the soft languid praise of some detail or accessory, the very look of her figure when she turned away from it, came all before him. Her habit was, when she turned away, to talk to him of other things. How clearly that oft-repeated scene came before him in his despair! She was dutiful, giving him her attention conscientiously as long as was needful; but when he fell back into the fond babble of the maker, and tried to interest her in some bit of drapery, or effect of light, or peculiarity of grouping, she would listen to him sweetly, and – change the subject as soon as possible. It all returned to him – he remembered even the trivial little words she had spoken, the languid air of half fatigue which would come over her. That – along with the meagrest poverty, the hardest homely struggles for daily bread. Could she bear to go back to it? She would lose everything, the house and all that was in it, everything that could be called hers or supposed hers. The only thing that could not be taken from her would be her £100 a year, her little fortune which was settled on her. 'They could live on that,' poor Drummond went on in his dreary miserable thoughts. 'They could exist, it is possible, better without me than with me. Would they be happier to have me in prison, disgraced, and dishonoured, a drag hanging about their neck – or to hear the worst at once, to know that everything was over, that at least their pittance would be theirs, and their peace respected? Everything would be over. Nobody could have any pretext for annoying her about it. They would be sorry for her – even they would be sorry for me. My policies would go to make up something – to clear my name a little. And they would let her alone. She could go to the country. She is so simple in her real tastes. They could live on what she has, if they were only rid of me.' A sigh that was almost a sob interrupted him in his musing. He was so worn out; and was it the grave-chill that was invading him already and making him shiver? He took the canvas on the easel and held it up to the light. 'The drawing is good enough,' he said to himself, 'it is not the drawing. She always owns that. It is – something else. And how can I tell after this that I could even draw? I could not now, if I were to try. My hand shakes like an old man's. I might fall ill like poor Haldane! Ah, my God!' The canvas fell out of his hands upon the floor – a sudden spasm contracted his heart. Haldane! It was the first time that day that he had thought of him. His ruin would be the ruin of his friend too – his friend who was helpless, sick, and yet the support of others. 'Oh, my God, my God!' he wailed with a cry of despair.

And there was no one near to hear him, no one to defend him from himself and from the devil, to lay hands upon him, to bid him live and hope and work, and help them to exist whom he had helped to ruin. He was left all alone in that moment of his agony. God, to whom he had appealed, was beyond the clouds, beyond that which is more unfathomable than any cloud, the serene, immeasurable, impenetrable blue, and held out no hand, sent no voice of comfort. The man fell down where his work had fallen, prone upon the ground, realising in a moment all the misery of the years that were to come. And it was his doing, his doing! – though consciously he would have given himself to be cut to pieces, would have toiled his life out, to make it up now to his friend, – how much more to his wife! What passed in his mind in that awful interval is not to be told. It was the supreme struggle between life and despair, and it was despair that won. When he rose up his face was like the face of an old man, haggard and furrowed with deep lines. He stood still for a moment, looking round him vaguely, and then made a little pilgrimage round the room, looking at everything, with a motive, without a motive, who can tell? his whole faculties absorbed in the exaltation, and bewildering, sombre excitement of such a crisis as can come but once to any man. Then he sat down at his writing-table, and sought out some letter-paper (there were so many scraps of drawing-paper that came first to hand), and slowly wrote a few lines. He had to search for a long time before he could find an envelope to enclose this, and his time was getting short. At last he put it up, and, after another pause, stole through the conservatory, walking stealthily like a thief, and placed the white envelope on a little crimson table, where it shone conspicuous to everybody who should enter. He did more than that; he went and bent over the chair which Helen had pushed away when she rose from it – the chair she always sat on – and kissed it. There was a little bright-coloured handkerchief lying on the sofa, which was Norah's. He took that up and kissed it too, and thrust it into his breast. Did he mean to carry it with him into the dark and silent country where he was going? God knows what was the thought in his mind. The pretty clock on the mantelpiece softly chimed the quarter as he did this, and he started like a thief. Then he took an old great-coat from the wall, an old travelling hat, which hung beside it, and went back to the studio. There was no more time for thought. He went out, leaving the door unlocked, brushing stealthily through the lilacs. The broad daylight played all around him, revealing him to every one, showing to the world how he stole away out of his own house. He had put up the collar of his coat and drawn his hat down over his brows to disguise himself in case he met any one he knew. Any one he knew! It was in case he met his wife, to whom he had just said farewell for ever, and his child, whose little kerchief he was going to take with him into this dismal ruin, into the undiscovered world.

All this might have been changed had he met them; and they were crossing the next street coming home, Helen growing more and more anxious as they approached the door. Had he been going out about some simple everyday business, of course they would have met; but not now, when it might have saved one life from destruction and another from despair. He had watched for a moment to make sure they were not in sight before he went out; and the servants had caught a glimpse of a man whom they did not recognise hiding among the bushes, and were frightened; so, it turned out afterwards, had various other passers-by. But Drummond saw no one – no one. The multitudes in the noisier streets upon which he emerged after a while, were nothing to him. They pushed against him, but he did not see them; the only two figures he could have seen were henceforward to be invisible to him for ever.

For ever! for ever! Was it for ever? Would this crime he was about to commit, this last act of supreme rebellion against the will of that God to whom he seemed to have appealed in vain, would it sever him from them not only in this world, but in the world to come? Should he have to gaze upward, like poor Dives, and see, in the far serene above him, these two walking in glory and splendour, who were no longer his? perhaps surrounded by angels, stately figures of the blessed, without a thought to spare in the midst of that glory for the poor soul who perished for love of them. Could that be true? Was it damnation as well as death he was going to face? Was it farewell for ever, and ever, and ever?

So the awful strain ran on, buzzing in his ears, drowning for him the voices of the crowd – for ever, for ever, for ever. Dives forlorn and far away – and up, up high in the heavens, blazing above him, like a star —

Like that star in the soft sky of the evening which came out first and shone down direct upon him in his wretchedness. How it shone! How she shone! – was it she? – as it grew darker drawing a silver line for him upon the face of the darkening water. Was that to be the spot? But it took years to get dark that night. He lived and grew old while he was waiting thus to die. At last there was gloom enough. He got a boat, and rowed it out to that white glistening line, the line that looked like a silver arrow, shining where the spot was —

The boat drifted ashore that night as the tide fell. In that last act, at least, Nature helped him to be honest, poor soul!

CHAPTER XI

'The studio door is open, mamma,' said little Norah dancing in before her mother, through the lilac bushes. The words seemed to take a weight off Helen's heart.

'Then papa must have come in,' she said, and ran up the steps to the door, which was opened before she could knock by an anxious, half-frightened maid. 'Mr Drummond has come in?' she said, in her anxiety, hasting to pass Jane, who held fast by the door.

'No, ma'am, please, ma'am; but Rebecca and me see a man about not five minutes ago, and I can't find master's topcoat as was a-hanging in the hall – Rebecca says, ma'am, as she thought she see – '

'Papa has not been home after all,' Helen said to her little daughter; 'perhaps Mr Drummond wore his great-coat last night, Jane. Never mind just now; he will tell us when he comes in.'

'But I see the man, and George was out, as he always is when he's wanted. Me and Rebecca – ' said Jane.

'Never mind just now,' said Helen languidly. She went into the drawing-room with the load heavier than ever on her heart. What could have kept him so long? What could be making him so miserable? Oh, how cruel, cruel it was not to know! She sat down with a heart like lead on that chair which poor Robert had kissed – not fifteen minutes since, and he was scarcely out of reach now.

'Oh, mamma,' cried Norah, moving about with a child's curiosity; 'here is a letter for you on the little red table. It is so funny, and blurred, and uneven. I can write better than that – look! isn't it from papa?'

Helen had not paid much attention to what the child said, but now she started up and stretched out her hand. The name on the outside was scarcely legible, it was blurred and uneven, as Norah said; and it was very clear to see, could only be a message of woe. But her worst fears, miserable as she felt, had not approached the very skirts of the misery that now awaited her. She tore the envelope open, with her heart beating loud in her ears, and her whole body tingling with agitation. And this was what she read: —

'My Helen, my own Helen, – I have nothing in the world to do now but to bid you good-bye. I have ruined you, and more than you. If I lived I should only be a disgrace and a burden, and your little money that you have will support you by yourself. Oh, my love, to think I should leave you like this! I who have loved you so. But I have never been good enough for you. When you are an angel in heaven, if you see me among the lost, oh, bestow a little pity upon me, my Helen! I shall never see you again, but as Dives saw Lazarus. Oh, my wife, my baby, my own, you will be mine no longer; but have a little pity upon me! Give me one look, Helen, out of heaven.

'I am not mad, dear. I am doing it knowing it will be for the best. God forgive me if I take it upon me to know better than Him. It is not presumption, and perhaps He may know what I mean, though even you don't know. Oh my own, my darlings, my only ones – good-bye, good-bye!'

There was no name signed, no stops to make the sense plain. It was written as wildly as it had been conceived; and Helen, in her terrible excitement, did not make out at first what it could mean. What could it mean? where was he going? The words about Dives and Lazarus threw no light upon it at first. He had gone away. She gave a cry, and dropped her hands upon her lap, with the letter in them, and looked round her – looked at her child, to make sure to herself that she was not dreaming. Gone away! But where, where, and why this parting? 'I don't understand it – he has gone and left us,' she said feebly, when Norah, in her curiosity, came rushing to her to know what it was. 'I don't know what it means. O God, help us!' she said, with an outburst of miserable tears. She was confused to the very centre of her being. Where had he gone?'

'May I read it, mamma?' little Norah asked, with her arms round her mother's neck.

But Helen had the feeling that it was not fit for the child. 'Run and ask who brought it,' she said, glad to be alone; and then read over again, with a mind slowly awakening to its reality, that outburst of love and despair. The letter shook in her hands, salt tears fell upon it as she read. 'If I lived: —I am doing it, knowing.' God, God, what was it he had gone to do? Just then she heard a noise in the studio, and starting to her feet rushed to the conservatory door, crying, 'Robert! Robert!' She was met by Jane and Norah, coming from it; the child was carrying her father's hat in her arms, with a strange look of wonder and dismay on her face.

'Mamma, no one brought the letter,' she said in a subdued, horror-struck tone; 'and here is papa's hat – and the picture is lying dashed down on the floor with its face against the carpet. It is all spoiled, mamma,' sobbed little Norah – 'papa's picture! and here is his hat. Oh, mamma, mamma!'

Norah was frightened at her mother's face. She had grown ghastly pale. 'Get me a cab,' she said to the maid, whose curiosity was profoundly excited. Then she sat down and took her child in her arms. 'Norah, my darling,' she said, making a pause between every two words, 'something dreadful has happened. I don't know what. I must go – and see. I must go – and find him – O my God, where am I to go?'

'And me, too,' said the child, clinging to her fast; 'me, too – let us go to the City, mamma!'

'Not you, Norah. It will soon be your bedtime. Oh, my pet, go and kneel down and pray – pray for poor papa.'

'I can pray just as well in the cab,' said Norah; 'God hears all the same. I am nearly twelve – I am almost grown up. You shall not, shall not go without me. I will never move nor say a word. I will run up and get your cloak and mine. We'll easily find him. He never would have the heart to go far away from you and me.'

'He never would have the heart,' Helen murmured the words over after her. Surely not. Surely, surely, he would not have the heart! His resolution would fail. How could he go and leave the two whom he loved best – the two whom alone he loved in this world. 'Run, then, dear, and get your cloak,' she said faintly. The child seemed a kind of anchor to her, holding her to something, to some grasp of solid earth. They drove off in a few minutes, Norah holding fast her mother's hand. They overtook, if they had but known it, and passed in the crowd, the despairing man they sought; and he with his dim eyes saw the cab driving past, and wondered even who was in it – some other sufferer, in the madness of excitement or despair. How was he to know it was his wife and child? They drove to the City, but found no one there. They went to his club, to one friend's house after another, to the picture-dealers, to the railway stations. There, two or three bystanders had seen such a man, and he had gone to Brighton, to Scotland, to Paris, they said. Coming home, they drove over the very bridge where he had been standing waiting for the dark. It was dark by that time, and Helen's eye caught the line of light on the water, with that intuitive wish so common to a painter's wife, that Robert had seen it. Ah, good Lord! he had seen and more than seen. The summer night was quite dark when they got home. Those gleams of starlight were lost in clouds, and all was gloom about the pretty house. Instead of the usual kindly gleam from the windows, nothing was visible as they drew up to the door but the light of a single candle which showed its solitary flame through the bare window of the dining-room. No blind was drawn, or curtain closed, and like the taper of a watcher shone this little miserable light. It chilled Helen in her profound discouragement and fatigue, and yet it gave her a forlorn hope that perhaps he had come. Norah had fallen fast asleep leaning against her. It was all she could do to wake the child as they approached the door; and Jane came out to open the gate with a scared face. 'No, ma'am, master's never been back,' she answered to Helen's eager question; but Dr Maurice, he's here.'

Mrs Drummond put Norah into the woman's arms, and rushed into the house. Dr Maurice met her with a face almost as white as her own, and took her hands compassionately. 'You have heard from him? What have you heard? where is he?' said poor Helen.

'Hush, hush!' he said, 'perhaps it is not so bad as it appears. I don't understand it. Rest a little, and I will show you what he has written to me.'

'I cannot rest,' she said; 'how can I rest when Robert – Let me see it. Let me see it. I am sure to understand what he means. He never had any secrets before. Oh, show it me – show it me! – am not I his wife?'

'Poor wife, poor wife!' said the compassionate doctor, and then he put her into an easy-chair and went and asked for some wine. 'I will show it you only when you have drank this,' he said; 'only when you have heard what I have to say. Drummond is very impulsive you know. He might not do really as he said. A hundred things would come in to stop him when he had time to think. His heart has been broken by this bank business; but when he felt that it was understood he was not to blame – '

'Give me your letter,' she said, holding out her hand to him. She was capable of no more.

'He would soon find that out,' said the doctor. 'Who could possibly blame him? My dear Mrs Drummond, you must take this into account. You must not give him up at once. I have set on foot all sorts of inquiries – '

'The letter, the letter!' she said hoarsely, holding out her hand.

He was obliged to yield to her at last, but not without the consciousness which comforted him that she had heard a great deal of what he had to say. She had not listened voluntarily; but still she had not been able to keep herself from hearing. This was not much comfort to poor Helen, but it was to him. He had made her swallow the wine too; he had done his best for her; and now he could but stand by mournfully while she read her sentence, the words which might be death.

'Maurice, I want you to go to my wife. Before you get this, or at least before you have got to her, I shall be dead. It's a curious thing to say, but it's true. There has been a great crash at the bank, and I am ruined and all I care for. If I lived I could do no good, only harm; but they will be sorry for her if I die. I have written to her, poor darling, to tell her; but I want you to go and stand by her. She'll want some one; and kiss the child for me. If they find me, bury me anywhere. I hope they will never find me, though, for Helen's sake. And poor Haldane. Tell him I knew nothing of it; nothing, nothing! I would have died sooner than let them risk his money. God help us, and God forgive me! Maurice, you are a good fellow; be kind to my poor wife.'

There was a postscript which nobody read or paid any attention to: that is to say, they read it and it died from their minds for the moment as if it meant nothing. It was this, written obliquely like an after-thought —

'The bank was ruined from the first; there was never a chance for us. I found this out only to-day. Burton and Golden have done it all.'

These were the words that Helen read, with Dr Maurice standing mournfully behind watching her every movement. She kept staring at the letter for a long time, and then fell back with a hysterical sob, but without any relief of tears. Dr Maurice stood by her as his friend had asked him. He soothed her, adding every possible reason he could think of (none of which he himself believed in the smallest degree) to show that 'poor Drummond' might change his mind. This was written in the first impulse of despair, but when he came to think – Helen did not listen; but she heard what Dr Maurice said vaguely, and she heard his account of what he had done; he had given information at once to the police; he had engaged people everywhere to search and watch. News would be heard of him to-morrow certainly, if not to-night. Helen rose while he was speaking. She collected herself and restrained herself, exerting all the strength she possessed. 'Will you come with me?' she said.

'Where? where? Mrs Drummond, I entreat you to believe I have done everything – '

'Oh, I am sure of it!' she said faintly; 'but I must go. I cannot – cannot rest. I must go somewhere – anywhere – where he may have gone – '

'But, Mrs Drummond – '

'You are going to say I have been everywhere. So we have, Norah and I – she fell asleep at last, poor child – she does not need me – I must go – '

'It is getting late,' he said; 'it is just ten; if news were to come you would not like to be out of the way. Stay here and rest, and I will go to-morrow; you will want all your strength.'

'I want it all now,' she said, with a strange smile. 'Who thinks of to-morrow? it may never, never come. It may – You are very kind – but I cannot rest.'

She was in the cab again before he could say another word. But fortunately at that moment one of his messengers came in hot haste to say that they thought they had found some trace of 'the gentleman.' He had come off to bring the news, and probably by this time the others were on their way bringing him home. This intelligence furnished Maurice with a weapon against Helen. She allowed herself to be led into the house again, not believing it, feeling in her heart that her husband would never be brought back, yet unable to resist the reasonable conclusion that she must stay to receive him. The short summer darkness passed over her thus; the awful dawn came and looked her in the face. One of the maids sat up, or rather dozed in her chair in the kitchen, keeping a fire alight in case anything might be wanted. And Helen sat and listened to every sound; sat at the window gazing out, hearing carriage wheels and footsteps miles off, as it seemed to her, and now and then almost deceived into hope by the sound of some one returning from a dance or late party. How strange it seemed to her that life should be going on in its ordinary routine, and people enjoying themselves, while she sat thus frozen into desperation, listening for him who would never come again! Her mind was wandering after him through every kind of dreadful scene; and yet it was so difficult, so impossible to associate him with anything terrible. He, always so reasonable, so tender of others, so free from selfish folly. The waking of the new day stole upon the watcher before she was aware; those sounds which are so awful in their power, which show how long it is since last night, how life has gone on, casting aside old burdens, taking on new ones. It was just about ten o'clock, when the morning was at its busiest outside, and Helen, refusing to acknowledge the needs of the new day, still sat at the window watching, with eyes that were dry and hot and bloodshot, with the room all in mournful disorder round her, when Dr Maurice's brougham drew up to the door. He sprang out of it, carrying a coat on his arm; a rough fellow in a blue Jersey and sailor's hat followed him. Maurice came in with that look so different from the look of anxiety, that fatal air, subdued and still and certain, which comes only from knowledge. Whatever might have happened he was in doubt no more.