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

by Mrs. Oliphant

'It is useless for you to resist or deny me,' she replied, 'you are in my power. I am willing to do everything to serve you, but I will have a full explanation. Write it how you please—but you shall not leave this place till you have given me the means, when I please, and how I please, of proving the truth.'

'What is the truth, as you call it?' he said sullenly; 'what have I to do with it? Drummond and the rest went into it with their eyes open; all the accounts of the concern were open to them.'

'I do not pretend to understand it,' said Helen. 'But you do. Here are pens and paper. I insist upon a full explanation—how it was that so flourishing a business perished in three years; where those books went to, which Robert was so falsely accused of destroying. Oh, are you not afraid to tire out my patience? Do you know that you are in my power?'

He gave an alarmed look at her. He had forgotten everything but those fables about feminine weakness which are current among such men, and had half laughed in his sleeve half an hour before at her readiness to help and serve him. But now all at once he perceived that laughter was out of place, and there was no time to lose. The reflection that ran through his mind was—All must come out in a week or two—it will do her no good; but it can do me no harm. 'If I am to give an account of the whole history it will take me hours,' he said. 'I may as well give up all thought of getting away to-night.' But he drew the blotting-book towards him. Helen did not relax nor falter. She lighted another candle; she left him to himself with a serious belief in his good faith which startled him. She moved about the kitchen while he wrote, filling a small flask with wine out of the solitary bottle which had been brought out for his refreshment, and which represented the entire cellar of the Gatehouse—even brushing the coat which he had thrown aside, that it might be ready for him. The man watched her with the wonder of an inferior nature. He had loved her once, and it had given him a true pleasure to humble her when the moment came. But now the ascendancy had returned into her hands. Had he been in her place how he would have triumphed! But Helen did not triumph. His misery did not please, it bowed her down to the ground. She was sad—suffering for him, ashamed, anxious. He did not understand it. Gradually, he could not have told how, her look affected him. He tore up the first statement he had commenced, a florid, apologetic narrative. He tore up the second, in which he threw the blame upon the ignorance of business of poor Drummond and his fellow-directors. Finally he was moved so strangely out of himself that he wrote the simple truth, and no more, without a word of apology or explanation. Half-a-dozen lines were enough for that. The apology would, as he said, have taken hours.

And then Susan came back. By this time he had written not only the explanation required of him, but a letter to his wife, and was ready to try his fate once more. Helen herself went with him to the garden door; the path through the woods was dark, hidden from the moonlight by the close copses and high fence, which it skirted for many a mile. And there would not be daylight to betray him for at least an hour. He stood on the verge of the dark wood, and took her hand. 'Helen, you have saved me: God bless you,' he said. And in a moment this strange episode was over, as though it had never been. She stood under the rustling trees, and listened to his footsteps. The night wind blew chill in her face, the dark boughs swayed round her as if catching at her garments. A hundred little crackling sounds, echoes, movements among the copse, all the jars and broken tones of nature that startle the fugitive, made her heart beat with terror. If she had felt a hand on her shoulder, seizing her instead of him, Helen would not have been surprised. But while she stood and listened all the sounds seemed to die away again in the stillness of the night. And the broad moonlight shone, silvering the black trees, out of which all individuality had fled, and the music from Dura came back in a gust, and the roll of the carriages slowly moving about the avenue, waiting for the dancers. And but that Helen stood in so unusual a spot, with that garden door half open behind her, and the big key in her hand, she might have thought that all this was nothing more than a dream.

She went in, and locked the door; and then returned to Susan's kitchen. It was her turn now to feel the cold, after her excitement was over; she went in shivering, and drew close to the fire. She put her head down into her hands. The tears came to her eyes unawares; weariness had come upon her all at once, when the necessity of exertion was over. She held in her hand the paper she had made Burton write, but she had not energy enough to look at it. Would it ever be of any use to her? Would he whom it concerned ever return? Or was all this—the picture, the visit to the Exhibition, the sudden conviction which had seized upon her—were these all so many delusions in her dream? After a while Miss Jane, all unconscious, excited with her unusual pleasure, and full of everything she had seen, came and sat by her and talked. 'I told Susan to go to bed,' said Miss Jane; 'and I wish you would go too, Mrs Drummond. I will sit up for Norah. Oh, how proud I was of that child to-night! I suppose it's very wrong, you know—so my mother says—but I can't help it. It is just as well I am a single woman, and have no children of my own; for I should have been a fool about them. The worst of all is that we shan't keep her long. She will marry, and then what shall we do? I am sure to lose her would break Stephen's heart.'

'She is very young,' said Helen, who answered for civility's sake alone, and who with all the heavy thoughts in her heart and apprehensions for the fugitive, would have given much to be left to herself.

'Yes, she is young; but not too young to do a great deal of mischief. When I saw all those men on their knees before her!' cried Miss Jane, with a laugh of triumph. She had never been an object of much admiration or homage herself; men had not gone on their knees to her, though no doubt she was more worthy than many of the foolish creatures who have been so worshipped; but the result of this was that Miss Jane enjoyed heartily the revenge which other women had it in their power to take for all the slights and scorns to which she and her homely sisters had been subjected. She liked to see 'them' punished, though 'they' were an innocent, new generation, blameless, so far as she was concerned. She would not have injured a fly; but her face beamed all over with delight at the thought that it was Norah's mission to break hearts.

Thus the good soul sat and talked, while Helen listened to every sound, and wondered where was he now? what might be happening? She did not even hear what was being said to her until Miss Jane fell into a moralising vein. 'The Burtons are at the height of their splendour now,' she said. 'I never saw anything so grand as it was. I don't think anything could be grander. But oh, Mrs Drummond, people's sins find them out. There's Clara getting bewitched by that man; everybody could see it. A man old enough to be her father, without a scrap of character, and no money even, I suppose. Think of that! and oh, what will all their grandeur do for them, with Ned at the other end of the world, and Clara throwing herself away?'

'Oh, hush, hush!' cried Helen. 'Don't prophesy any more misfortune; there is enough without that.'