'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.'