Why do we stop in this record of trouble to babble about sunset skies and running waters? Is it not natural? The 'sound as of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June' comes in, by right, among all weird, mysterious harmonies of every tragical fate. 'The oaten pipe and pastoral reed' have their share even in the hurly-burly of cities and noisy discord of modern existence. Robert Drummond had his good things as well as his evil things. For these two summers never man had been more happy—and it is but few who can say so much. His wife was happy with him, her old ghosts exorcised, and a new light suffusing her life. It seemed a new life altogether, a life without discontents, full of happiness, and tranquillity, and hope.
But this autumn Robert was not happy at Southlees. He could not stay there peaceably as he had done before. He had to go to town 'on business,' he said, sometimes twice a week. He took no pleasure in his old delights. Though he could not help seeing still, his 'Look, Helen!' was no longer said in a tone of enthusiasm; and when he had uttered the familiar exclamation he would turn away and sigh. Sometimes she found him with his face hidden in his hands, and pressed against the warm greensward. It was as if he were knocking for admission at the gates of the grave, Helen thought, in that fancifulness which comes of fear as much as of hope. When she questioned him he would deny everything, and work with pretended gaiety. Every time he went to town it seemed to her that five years additional of line and cloud had been added to the lines on his forehead. His hair began to get grey; perhaps that was no wonder, for he was forty, a pilgrim already in the sober paths of middle age, but Helen was nearly ten years younger, and this sign of advancing years seemed unnatural to her. Besides, he was a young man in his heart, a man who would be always young; yet he was growing old before his time. But notwithstanding his want of enjoyment in it he was reluctant that his wife should leave Southlees sooner than usual. He would go into town himself, he declared. He would do well enough—what did it matter for a few weeks? 'For the sake of business it is better that I should go—but the winter is long enough if you come in the end of the month. No, Helen, take the good of it as long as you can—this year.'
'What good shall I get of it alone, and how can I let you live for weeks by yourself?' said Helen. 'You may think it is fine to be independent; but you could not get on without Norah and me.'
'No,' he said, with a shudder. 'God knows life would be a poor thing without Norah and you! but when it is a question of three weeks—I'll go and see my friends; I'll live a jovial bachelor life——'
'Did you see the Haldanes,' she asked, 'when you were in town last?'
It was the most innocent, unmeaning question; but it made him grow pale to the very lips. Did he tremble? Helen was so startled that she did not even realise how it was he looked.
'How cold the wind blows,' he said, with a shiver. 'I must have caught cold, I suppose, last night. The Haldanes? No; I had no time.'
'Robert, something worries you,' she said earnestly. 'Tell me what it is. Whatever it is, it will not be so heavy when you have told me. You have always said so—since ever we have been together.'
'And truly, my darling,' he said. He took her hand and held it tenderly, but he did not look at her. 'I cannot tell you of worries that don't exist, can I?' he added, with an exaggerated cheerfulness. 'I have to pay a little attention to business now the other men are out of town. And business bores me. I don't understand it. I am not clever at it. But it is not worth while to call it a worry. By-and-by they will come back, and I shall be free.'
When he said this he really believed it, not being then fully aware of the tormenting power of the destruction which was about to overwhelm him. He thought the other directors would come back from their holidays, and that he himself would be able to plunge back into that abyss of ignorance which was bliss. But Helen did not believe it: not from any true perception of the state of affairs, but because she could not believe it was business at all that troubled him. Was Robert the kind of man to be disturbed about business? He who cared nothing for it but as a means, who liked money's worth, not money, whose mind was diametrically opposite to all the habits and traditions of trade? She would as soon have believed that her cousin Reginald Burton would be disturbed by a criticism or troubled to get a true balance of light and shade. No, it was not that. It was some real trouble which she did not know of, something that struck deeper than business, and was more important than anything that belonged to bank or market. Such were Helen's thoughts,—they are the thoughts that come most natural to a woman,—that he had been betrayed into some wrong-doing or inadvertent vice—that he had been tempted, and somehow gone astray. This, because it was so much more terrible than anything about business, was the bugbear that haunted her. It was to save her pain, as he thought, that poor Robert kept his secret from her. He did as so many men do, thinking it kindness; and thus left her with a host of horrible surmises to fight against, any one of which was (to her) harder than the truth. There is no way in which men, in their ignorance, inflict more harm upon women than this way. Helen watched in her fear and ignorance with a zealous eagerness that never lost a word, and gave exaggerated importance to many an idle incident. She was doubly roused by her fear of the something coming, against which her defences would not stand, and by her absolute uncertainty what this something was. The three weeks her husband was in town by himself were like three years to her. Not that a shade of jealousy or doubt of his love to herself ever crossed her mind. She was too pure-minded, too proud, to be jealous. But something had come on him, some old trouble out of the past—some sudden horrible temptation; something, in short, which he feared to tell her. That money could be the cause of it, never crossed her thoughts.