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

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  AT HIS GATES.

  A Novel.

  BY MRS OLIPHANT,

  AUTHOR OF 'CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,' ETC., ETC.

  IN THREE VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.

  LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 1872.

  [_All rights reserved_]

  JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.

  AT HIS GATES.

  CHAPTER I.

  Mr and Mrs Robert Drummond lived in a pretty house in the Kensingtondistrict; a house, the very external aspect of which informed thepasser-by who they were, or at least what the husband was. The house wasembowered in its little garden; and in spring, with its lilacs andlaburnums, looked like a great bouquet of bloom--as such houses oftendo. But built out from the house, and occupying a large slice of thegarden at the side, was a long room, lighted with sky windows, and notby any means charming to look at outside, though the creepers, which hadnot long been planted, were beginning to climb upon the walls. It wasconnected with the house by a passage which acted as a conservatory,and was full of flowers; and everything had been done that could bedone to render the new studio as beautiful in aspect as it was inmeaning. But it was new, and had scarcely yet begun, as its proprietorsaid, to 'compose' with its surroundings. Robert Drummond, accordingly,was a painter, a painter producing, in the mean time, pictures of theclass called _genre_; but intending to be historical, and to take to thehighest school of art as soon as life and fame would permit. He was avery good painter; his subjects were truly 'felt' and exquisitelymanipulated; but there was no energy of emotion, no originality ofgenius about them. A great many people admired them very much; otherpainters lingered over them lovingly, with that true professionaladmiration of 'good work' which counteracts the jealousy of trade inevery honest mind. They were very saleable articles, indeed, and hadprocured a considerable amount of prosperity for the young painter. Itwas almost certain that he would be made an Associate at the nextvacancy, and an Academician in time. But with all this, he was wellaware that he was no genius, and so was his wife.

  The knowledge of this fact acted upon them in very different ways; butthat its effect may be fully understood, the difference in theircharacters and training requires to be known. Robert Drummond had neverbeen anything but a painter; attempts had been made in his youth to fixhim to business, his father having been the senior clerk, much respectedand utterly respectable, of a great City house; and the attempt mighthave been successful but that accident had thrown him among artists, akind of society very captivating to a young man, especially when he hasa certain command of a pencil. He threw himself into art, accordingly,with all his soul. He was the sort of man who would have thrown himselfinto anything with all his soul; not for success or reward, but out ofan infinite satisfaction in doing good work, and seeing beautiful thingsgrow under his hand. He was of a very sanguine mind, a mind which seldomaccepted defeat, but which, with instinctive unconscious wisdom,hesitated to dare the highest flights, and to put itself in conflictwith those final powers which either vanquish a man or assure histriumph. Perhaps it was because there was some hidden possibility ofwild despair and downfall in the man's mind, of which only himself wasaware, that he was thus cautious of putting his final fortune to thetouch. But the fact was that he painted his pictures contentedly,conscientiously, doing everything well, and satisfied with theperfection of his work as work, though he was not unaware of the absencefrom it of any spark of divinity. He did not say it in so many words,but the sentiment of his mind was this:--'It is good work, work no manneed be ashamed of. I am not a Raphael, alas! and I cannot help it. Whatis the good of being unhappy about a thing I cannot mend? I am doing mybest; it is honest work, which I know I don't slight or do carelessly;and I can give her everything she wants except that. I should be toohappy myself if she were but content.' But she was not content, and thushis happiness was brought down to the moderate pitch allowed to mortalbliss.

  She was very different from her Robert. She had been a young lady ofvery good connections when she first met the rising young artist. I donot say that her connections were splendid, or that she made an absolute_m?salliance_, for that would be untrue. Her people, however, had beenrich people for several generations. They had begun in merchandise, andby merchandise they had kept themselves up; but to have been rich fromthe time of your great-grandfather, with never any downfall or evenbreak in the wealth, has perhaps more effect on the mind than thatpride which springs from family. Well-descended people are aware thatevery family now and then gets into trouble, and may even fall intopoverty without sacrificing any of its pretensions. But well-off peoplehave not that source of enlightenment. When they cease to be very welloff, they lose the great point of eminence on which they have takentheir stand; and, consequently, success is more absolutely necessary tothem than it is to any other class in the community. Helen Burtonbesides was very proud, very ambitious, and possessed of that notunusual form of _amour propre_ which claims distinction as aright--though she had not anything particular in herself to justify herclaim. She had, or believed she had, an utter contempt for that moneywhich was the foundation of her family pride; and she was, at the sametime, too well endowed in mind, and too generous in temper, to be ableto give herself up sincerely to worship of that rank, which, as theironly perpetual superior, tantalizes the imagination of the plebeianrich, and thrusts itself constantly before them. Helen could havemarried the son of a poor lord, and become the Honourable Mrs Somebody,with her mother's blessing, had she so willed. But as her will took atotally different direction, she had defied and alienated her mother,who was also a woman of high spirit, and only some seventeen years olderthan her only child; the consequence was that when Mrs Burton foundherself abandoned and left alone in the world, she married too, as trulyout of pique as a girl sometimes does when deserted by her lover; and ather death left everything she had to her husband and the two smallbabies, one of them younger than Helen's little Norah, whom she leftbehind. So that a little tragedy, of a kind not much noted by the world,had woven itself around the beginning of her married life. The mother'ssecond marriage had not been a success, but was Helen to blame for that?Nobody said she was, no one around her; but sometimes in the silence ofthe night, when she alone was awake, and all her household slept sopeacefully--Robert, good Robert, was not a success either, not such aman as she had hoped. She loved him sincerely, was grateful to him forhis love, and for his constant regard to her wishes. But yet, in thedepths of her heart,--no, not despised him, the expression is toostrong,--but felt a minute shade of indignation mingled in herdisappointment with him for not being a great genius. _Why_ was he not aRaphael, a Titian? She had married him with the full understanding thathe was such, that he would bring her sweet fame and distinction. And whyhad not he done it? Every time she looked at his pictures she found outthe want of inspiration in them. She did not say anything. She was verykind, praising the pretty bits of detail, the wonderful perfection ofpainting; but Robert felt that he would rather have the President andall the Hanging Committee to pass judgment on his pictures than hiswife. Her sense that he had somehow defrauded her by not mounting atonce to the very height of his profession, seemed to endow her with apower of judgment a hundred-fold more than was justified by herknowledge of art. She saw the want of any soul in them at the firstglance, from under her half-closed eyelids--and it seemed to Robert thatin her heart she sa
id: 'Another pretty piece of mediocrity, a thing tosell, not to live--with no genius, no genius in it.' These were thewords Robert seemed to himself to hear, but they were not the real wordswhich, in her heart, Helen uttered. These were rather as follows:--'Itis just the same as the last. It is no better, no better. And noweverybody says he is at his best. Oh! when his worst begins to come,what will become of us?' But she never said an uncivil word. Shepraised what she could, and she went her way languidly into thedrawing-room. She had come down out of her sphere to give herself tohim, and he had not repaid her as she expected. He had given herlove--oh, yes; but not fame. She was Mrs Drummond only; she was notpointed out where she went as the wife of the great painter. 'Herhusband is an artist' was all that anybody ever said.

  The effect of this upon poor Robert, however, was much worse even thanit was upon his wife. Some time elapsed, it is true, before hediscovered it. It took him even years to make out what it was thatshadowed his little household over and diminished its brightness. Butgradually a sense of the absence of that sympathetic backing up which aman expects in his own house, and without which both men and women whohave work to do are so apt to pine and faint, stole over him like achill. When anything was said against his pictures outside, a gloom inhis wife's face would show him that worse was thought within. He had nodomestic shield from adverse criticism. It was not kept in the outercircle of his mind, but was allowed to penetrate down to his heart, andenvelop him in a heavy discouragement. Even applause did not exhilaratehim. '_She_ does not think I deserve it,' was what he would say tohimself; and the sense of this criticism which never uttered a wordweighed upon the poor fellow's soul. It made his hand unsteady many aday when his work depended on a firm touch--and blurred the coloursbefore his eyes, and dulled his thoughts. Two or three times he made aspasmodic effort to break through his mediocrity, and then the critics(who were very well pleased on the whole with his mediocrity) shooktheir heads, and warned him against the sensational. But Helen neitherapproved nor condemned the change. To her it was all alike, alwayssecond-rate. She did her very best to applaud, but she could notbrighten up into genuine admiration the blank composure in her eyes.What could she do? There was something to be said for her, as well asfor him. She could not affect to admire what she felt to be commonplace.Nature had given her a good eye, and intense feeling had strengthenedand corrected it. She saw all the weakness, the flatness, with fatalcertainty. What, then, could she say? But poor Robert, though he was nota great artist, was the most tender-hearted, amiable, affectionate ofmen; and this mode of criticism stole the very heart out of him. Thereis no such want in the world as that want of backing up. It is thesecret of weakness and failure, just as strong moral support andsympathy is the very secret of strength. He stood steady and robust tothe external eye, painting many pictures every year, getting verytolerable prices, keeping his household very comfortable, a man stillunder forty, healthy, cheerful, and vigorous; but all the time he wassapped at the foundations. He had lost his confidence in himself, and itwas impossible to predict how he would have borne any sudden blow.

  It was about this time that Mr Reginald Burton, a cousin of Helen's, whohad once, it was supposed, desired to be something nearer to her, foundout the house in Kensington, and began to pay them visits. Thecircumstances of her marriage had separated her from her own people. Theelder among them had thought Helen unkind to her mother; the youngerones had felt that nothing had come of it to justify so romantic astory. So that when Reginald Burton met the pair in society it was thereopening of an altogether closed chapter of her life. Mr Burton was aman in the City in very extensive business. He was chairman of ever somany boards, and his name, at the head of one company or another, wasnever out of the newspapers. He had married since his cousin did, andhad a very fine place in the country, and was more well off still thanit was natural for the Burtons to be. Helen, who had never liked himvery much, and had not even been grateful to him for loving her,received his visits now without enthusiasm; but Drummond, who wasopen-hearted like his kind, and who had no sort of jealousy about'Helen's friends,' received him with a cordiality which seemed to hiswife much too effusive. She would not accept the invitation which MrsBurton sent to pay a long visit to Dura, their country place; but shecould not be less than civil to her cousin when he insisted uponcalling, nor could she openly resist when he carried off her husband toCity dinners, or unfolded to him the benefits of this or that newsociety. Drummond had done very well in his profession, notwithstandingHelen's dissatisfaction with his work; and also notwithstanding herdissatisfaction, she was a good housewife, doing her duty wisely. Shehad a hundred a year of her own, which Drummond had taken care to havesettled upon herself; but since they had grown richer he had insistedupon letting this accumulate as 'a portion for Norah,' and the two hadlaid by something besides. For painter-folk it will be readily seenthey were at the very height of comfort--a pretty house, one prettychild, a little reserve of money, slowly but pleasantly accumulating.And money, though it is an ignoble thing, has so much to do withhappiness! Drummond, who had been quite content to think that there wasa portion saving up for Norah, and to whom it had not occurred that hislittle capital could be made use of, and produce twenty and ahundred-fold, gradually grew interested, without being aware of it, inthe proceedings of Mr Burton. He began to talk, half laughingly, halfwith intention, of the wonderful difference between the slowly-earnedgains of labour and those dazzling results of speculation. 'Thesefellows seem simply to coin money,' he said, 'half in jest and whole inearnest;' 'everything they touch seems to become gold. It looksincredible----' and he wound up with a nervous laugh, in which there wassome agitation. Helen had all a woman's conservatism on this point.

  'It _is_ incredible, you may be sure,' she said. 'How can they inventmoney? Some one will have to pay for it somewhere;' which was a sentenceof profound wisdom, much deeper than she thought.

  'So one would say,' said Drummond, still laughing; 'but nobody seems tosuffer. By Jove! as much as--not to say I, who am one of the rank andfile--but as Welby or Hartwell Home get for one of their best pictures,your cousin will clear in five minutes, without taking the slightesttrouble. When one sees it, one feels hugely tempted'--he added, lookingat her. He was one of those men who like to carry their people'ssympathy with them. He wanted not acquiescence simply, but approval; andnotwithstanding that he was very well used to the absence of it, soughtit still. She would not--could not, perhaps--enter warmly into thesubject of his pictures; but here was a new matter. He looked up at herwith a certain longing--ready, poor fellow, to plunge into anything ifshe would but approve.

  'I hope you won't let yourself be tempted to anything, Robert, that youdon't see the end of,' she said; but so gently that her husband's heartrose.

  'Trust me for that,' he said joyously, 'and you shall have the firstfruits, my darling. I have not as fine a house for you as your cousincan give to his wife, but for all that----'

  'For all that,' she said, laughing, 'I would not change with MrsReginald Burton. I am not tempted by the fine house.'

  'I have thought how we can make this one a great deal better,' he said,as he stooped to kiss her before he went out. He looked back upon herfondly as he left the room, and said to himself that if he wished forgain it was for her sake--his beautiful Helen! He had painted herfurtively over and over again, though she never would sit to him. Acertain shadow of her was in all his pictures, showing with more or lessdistinctness according as he loved or did not love his temporaryheroine: but he knew that when this was pointed out to her she did notlike it. She was anxious that everybody should know she did not sit tohim. She was very indignant at the idea that a painter's wife mightserve her husband as a model. 'Why should a painter's profession, whichought to be one of the noblest in the world, be obtruded upon the outerworld at every step?' she said. But yet as he was a painter, every inchof him, his eye caught the _pose_ of her head as she moved, and made amental note of it. And yet she was not, strictly speaking, a beautifulwoman. She was n
ot the large Juno, who is our present type of beauty;she was not blazing with colour--red, and white, and golden--like theRubens-heroines of the studio; nor was she of the low-browed,sleepy-eyed, sensuous, classic type. She was rather colourless on thecontrary. Her hair was olive brown, which is so harmonious with a palecomplexion; her eyes hazel-grey; her colour evanescent, coming andgoing, and rarely at any time more than a rose tint; her very lips,though beautifully formed, were only rose--not scarlet--and her figurewas slight and deficient in 'grand curves.' Her great characteristic waswhat the French call _distinction_; a quality to which in point of truthshe had no claim--for Helen, it must be remembered, was nolong-descended lady. She was the produce of three generations of money,and a race which could be called nothing but Philistine; and from whencecame her highbred look, her fanciful pride, her unrealisable ambition,it would be difficult to say.

  She went over the house with a little sigh after Robert was gone,professedly in the ordinary way of a housewife's duty, but really withreference to his last words. Yes, the house might be made a great dealbetter. The drawing-room was a very pretty one--quite enough for alltheir wants--but the dining-room was occupied by Drummond as his studio,according to an arrangement very common among painters. This, it will beperceived, was before the day of the new studio. The dining-room wasthus occupied, and a smaller room, such as in most suburban houses isappropriated generally to the often scanty books of the family, was theeating-room of the Drummonds. It was one of those things which madeHelen's pride wince--a very petty subject for pride, you will say--but,then, pride is not above petty things; and it wounded her to be obligedto say apologetically to her cousin--'The real dining-room of the houseis Mr Drummond's studio. We content ourselves with this in the meantime.' 'Oh, yes; I see; of course he must want space and light,'Reginald Burton had replied with patronising complacency, and arecollection of his own banqueting-hall at Dura. How Helen hated him atthat moment, and how much aggravated she felt with poor Robert smilingopposite to her, and feeling quite comfortable on the subject! 'Wepainters are troublesome things,' he even said, as if it was a thing tosmile at. Helen went and looked in at the studio on this particularmorning, and made a rapid calculation how it could be 'made better.' Itwould have to be improved off the face of the earth, in the first place,as a studio; and then carpeted, and tabled, and mirrored, and ornamentedto suit its new destination. It would take a good deal of money to doit, but that was not the first consideration. The thing was, where wasRobert to go? She, for her part, would have been reconciled to iteasily, could he have made up his mind to have a studio apart from thehouse, and come home when his work was done. That would be an advantagein every way. It would secure that in the evening, at least, hisprofession should be banished. He would have to spend the evening asgentlemen usually do, yawning his head off if he pleased, but notprofessional for ever. It would no longer be possible for him to put onan old coat, and steal away into that atmosphere of paint, and moon overhis effects, as he loved to do now. He liked Helen to go with him, andshe did so often, and was tried almost beyond her strength by hisaffectionate lingerings over the canvas, which, in her soul, she feltwould never be any better, and his appeals to her to suggest and toapprove. Nothing would teach him not to appeal to her. Though he divinedwhat she felt, though it had eaten into his very life, yet still hewould try again. Perhaps this time she might like it better--perhaps----

  'If he would only have his studio out of doors,' Helen reflected. Shewas too sure of him to be checked by the thought that his heart mightperhaps learn to live out of doors too as well as his pictures, did shesucceed in driving them out. No such doubt ever crossed her mind. Heloved her, and nobody else, she knew. His mind had never admittedanother idea but hers. She was a woman who would have scorned to bejealous in any circumstances--but she had no temptation to be jealous.He was only a moderate painter. He would never be as splendid as Titian,with a prince to pick up his pencil--which is what Helen'ssemi-Philistine pride would have prized. But he loved her so as no manhad ever surpassed. She knew that, and was vaguely pleased by it; yetnot as she might have been had there ever been any doubt about thematter. She was utterly sure of him, and it did not excite her one wayor another. But his words had put a little gentle agitation in her mind.She put down her calculation on paper when she went back to thedrawing-room after her morning occupations were over, and called Norahto her music. Sideboard so much, old carved oak, to please him, thoughfor herself she thought it gloomy; curtains, for these luxuries he hadnot admitted to spoil his light; a much larger carpet--she made her listwith some pleasure while Norah played her scales. And that was the dayon which the painter's commercial career began.