'If you trust anything to me personally, of course I shall take care of it,' answered the merchant. 'But what we were talking of was Rivers's—business, not personal friendship. And business cannot afford such risks. You must examine into it, and judge of its claims for yourself. Come, let us dismiss the subject. I will tell Mr Baldwin I found you looking a great deal better than I hoped.'
'But I don't want to dismiss the subject,' said Haldane. 'I am satisfied. I am anxious——'
'Think it over once more, at least,' said the other hastily; and he went away with but scant leave-taking. Mrs Haldane, who was a wise woman, and, without knowing it, a physiognomist, shook her head.
'That man means what he says,' she said with some emphasis. 'He is telling you his real principles. If I were you, Stephen, I would take him at his word.'
'My dear mother, he is one of the men who take pleasure in putting the worst face on human nature, and attributing everything to selfish motives,' said the sick man. 'I very seldom believe those who put such sentiments so boldly forth.'
'But I do,' said his mother, shaking her head with that obstinate conviction which takes up its position at once and defies all reason. Her son made no answer. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The momentary excitement was over, the friends were gone, and the new and terrible Life settled down upon him. He did not say a word to indicate what was passing through his mind, but he thought of the ship which drifted between the sunset and the mariner, and the nightmare Life-in-Death casting her dies with the less appalling skeleton. It was she who had won.
In the mean time the two directors of Rivers's bank walked out together; one of them recovering all his self-confidence the moment he left the house, the other possessed by a certain tremulous excitement. The idea of risk was new to the painter. He felt a certain half-delightful, half-alarming agitation when he made his first ventures, but that had soon yielded to his absolute confidence in the man who now, with his own lips, had named the fatal word. Robert's imagination, the temperament of the artist, which is so often fantastically moved by trifles, while strong to resist the presence of fact and certainty, had sustained a shock. He did not say anything while they walked up the road under the faded autumnal leaves which kept dropping through the still air upon their heads. In this interval he had gone over within himself all the solid guarantees, all the prestige, all the infallibility (for had it not attained that point?) of Rivers's. Sure as the Bank of England! Such were the words that rose continually to everybody's lips on hearing of it. Robert propped himself up as he went along with one support or another, till he felt ashamed that he could be capable of entertaining a shadow of doubt. But the impression made upon his nerves was not to be overcome by simple self-argument. Time was wanted to calm it down. He felt a certain thrill and jar communicated through all the lines of life. The sensation ran to his very finger-points, and gave a sharp electric shock about the roots of his hair. And it set his heart and his pulse beating, more likely organs to be affected. Loss! That was to say, Helen and the child deprived of the surroundings that made their life so fair; driven back to the poor little lodgings, perhaps, in which his career began, or to something poorer still. Perhaps to want, perhaps to——'What a fool I am!' he said to himself.
'Do you really object to Haldane as one of our shareholders?' he said, with a certain hesitation, at last.
'Object—the idiot!' said Mr Burton. 'I beg your pardon, Drummond, I know he's a great friend of yours; but all that nonsense exasperates me. Why, God bless me, his body is sick, but his mind is as clear as yours or mine. Why can't he judge for himself? I am quite ready to give him, or you, or any one that interests me, the benefit of my experience; but to take you on my shoulders, Drummond, you know, would be simply absurd. I can't foresee what may happen. I am ready to run the risk myself. That's the best guarantee I can give, don't you think? but I won't run any sentimental risks. You may, if you like; they are out of my line.'
'I don't know what you mean by sentimental risks.'