Speechless and horror-stricken, Arthur Golding stood for full a minute, holding with his right hand the dead man upright in the chair, while the candle, still close to the pale features, trembled in his left. Involuntarily he had endeavoured to give utterance to a cry of pain and terror, but, though his lips were widely parted, no sound escaped them. The eyes of the corpse were still open, and seemed to gaze upon him with a resemblance to life which held him fixed as with a horrible charm. At length he forced himself to turn away and put down the light upon the table; then he once more leaned his ear close against the breathless lips, and, suddenly seized with terror at the dreadful silence, fled from the room out into the street. A minute brought him to the shop of John Pether, the umbrella mender, into which he burst with breathless haste.
John Pether was sitting in the little room which formed his shop, upon a low stool, closely engaged in divesting an old umbrella of its last strips of tattered silk. A small oil lamp stood upon a very ricketty table, and its light fell strongly upon his features, showing all their grim and sallow meagreness with hideous effect against the dark background of the rest of the shop. The wine-coloured stain upon his left cheek seemed more than usually distinct to-night, and as he sat working he bit his lips with a species of ferocity. His face was strongly smeared with grime, and his long, skeleton-like hands, which rent the silk as if they took a pleasure in destruction, were black and hairy like those of a gorilla. The effect of his eyes, as he turned them upon Arthur’s sudden entrance, was that of two very small black spots in the centre of two spheres of gleaming white. On hearing the young man’s stammered words of explanation, he rose from his stool, interlacing his long fingers, and stood leaning forward with an expression upon his face as if he not yet understood what had happened.
“Mr. Tollady ill, you say?” he asked, in the slow, hollow tones of one who is not accustomed to speak much.
“He is dead!” cried Arthur. “I can see no trace of life! Come with me and look!”
John Pether followed him immediately, and they entered the dark shop together. There in the back parlour they found the corpse sitting upright in the chair, the candle faintly illumining the room. The umbrella-mender took the light, and, as Arthur had done, approached it to Mr. Tollady’s face. In a moment he set it down again and faced his companion.
“Dead,” he remarked, with hollow emphasis. “How did it happen?”
Arthur recounted the events of the evening as far as Mr. Tollady was concerned, whilst John Pether still kept his eyes fixed upon the corpse.
“Heart-disease, no doubt,” added the latter, when the young man had finished. “I have expected it for years. Help me to lay him upon the bed.”
Together they lifted up the old man’s body and laid it down again upon the bed, which they previously opened out.
“He had an easy death,” said John Pether, gloomily, regarding the calm and noble countenance. “May we die as easily.”
Again he bent over the prostrate body, and Arthur, half awed at his gloomy impassibility, stood regarding him. As he watched he saw a change come over the seared features, passion seemed to convulse them and to pass over the man’s entire body, making him tremble in every limb. Then the hollow voice once more broke the silence, but speaking with a terrible concentration of energy which almost froze the hearer’s blood.
“Another gone,” it said. “Another trodden down into the grave in the struggle against the tyranny of kings and princes, of idle lords, and all the pestilent army of the rich, whose rank breath poisons the bitter crust they throw to us! How many more, how many more of us shall perish before we learn the courage of the dog which leaps at its tormentor’s throat? Year after year I have watched you, Samuel Tollady, starving yourself that half a dozen of us feeble wretches should creep on a few paces longer before we dropped into the gutter and died; year after year I have known you a friend to those of us whom hunger and despair had made worse than savage beasts, always bidding us remember we were men and hope that we should some day have our rights; year after year you have toiled without ceasing for others, and at last despair of helping all you could has killed you. How many more, how many more? You fought it out well to the end, Samuel Tollady, but you have lost. You were too kind, too good, too tender for a fight like this. Your voice was as little able to call back freedom or justice to the earth as this candle that lights up your dead face would be to take the place of the sun and light up the whole world! Your struggle against our tyrants was like a pebble thrown into the sea, it could make no more impression! Year after year I have told you the truth, but you refused to believe me. It is not gentleness and kindness and forgiving words that will end our miseries, but swords and cannon-balls and every river of the earth red with blood. It is good you are gone; the fight that is coming would have been too stern for you; your heart would have been moved to pity by the shrieks of dying wretches when the hour came for killing, and killing without mercy, man, woman and child. We will make the earth fat with their thick blood, and it will grow us better bread! We will pull down their palaces which shut out the air of heaven, and build houses out of the ruins, for we are tired of creeping into dens for our rest!”
Here he turned suddenly and seized Arthur by the hand.
“Come,” he cried hoarsely, working himself with each utterance into fiercer excitement, “come and swear over the body of this good man! Swear that when the hour comes — and it may be nearer than you think — you will take a sword with the rest of us and kill without mercy! Swear that never till you lie stiff and cold, like this man, will you make peace with the tyrants of the earth! Swear that you will never be the friend of a rich man, that you will never enter the house of one but to destroy it! Swear all this, in the presence of Death, who shall be our only king!”
Despite himself, Arthur became imbued with a portion of the speaker’s enthusiasm as he listened to his fierce words; the touch of the man’s hands seemed to send a current of hot passion along all his veins. With face deadly pale and voice almost as hollow and ghostlike as that of John Pether himself, he solemnly pronounced the words: “I swear.” At the same moment he thought of Mr. Gresham, and felt capable of fulfilling his oath to the letter. His companion then pressed his hand with a force which seemed intended to crush every joint in it, and strode in silence out of the house.
Thus, left alone, Arthur first of all closed the shop in the usual manner, then returned to the parlour and lit the lamp. This illumined the room more completely and deprived it, in some degree, of its ghostly horrors. By this time he had shaken off the nervousness which hitherto possessed him, and he could now bend over the face of his dead benefactor with no feelings save of affection and sorrow. As he stood carefully perusing every lineament, as if he wished to impress the countenance firmly upon his mind for ever, a natural emotion at length got the better of his firmness, and, sinking on his knees by the side of the bed, he burst into a flood of tears. All the dead man’s unspeakable goodness to him passed through his mind, heightened by that intense light of sudden conviction which so frequently breaks upon us in similar situations. He saw himself coming into the printer’s shop eight years ago, a struggling, hard-worked child, trembling in doubt whether his services would be accepted; he saw again with perfect distinctness Mr. Tollady’s friendly smile of encouragement, that smile which for sweetness he had never seen equalled on the face of any other man, and heard his voice speaking in tones so different from those of harsh vulgarity with which alone he had been familiar. Then the many, many hours spent in delightful study by the old man’s side passed before his mind’s eye, each illumined with bright sunshine. He could not believe that any one of those hours had been otherwise than hours of sunshine. Then, still later, came the first serious awakening of the artist’s genius within him, and he remembered, with tearful gratitude, how Mr. Tollady had noticed its first manifestations and had fostered it by all the means in his power. Surely it was impossible for any man to excel this one in all perfection of tender virtues. In this moment of supreme grief Arthur felt the full grandeur of the dead man’s character, and experienced an ardent desire to emulate his goodness. Still kneeling by the bedside, he took a solemn, though a silent vow, henceforth to devote his whole energy, even as his friend had done, to rendering more happy the lives of others. Henceforth he would be dead to art, for it seemed to him useless labour, devoid of benefit to the struggling masses of mankind. He would work for his living, but only in his trade of printer; thus, he conceived, he would be benefiting the world even by the toil which brought him his daily bread. All his leisure hours he would devote to works of charity and goodwill, to the utmost that lay within his power. How much even a very poor man can do, if only actuated by a sincere spirit, Mr. Tollady’s memory would never fail to remind him.
But before he threw aside his pencil for ever it must perform for him one more service, secure to him one more everlasting pleasure. Once more lighting the candle, he went upstairs to his room and fetched a sheet of drawing-paper. With this he descended again to the parlour, and, having tenderly raised the dead man’s head into a suitable position, he commenced to draw the outlines of the high and noble forehead, the closed eyes, the lips even now wearing the half-smile which gave so much attractiveness to the face during life. Slowly and carefully he continued the portrait, lingering with affectionate hand over every trail, not omitting a wrinkle or the slightest gradation of shade. For three hours he bent over the drawing, never satisfied that he could not add yet another touch to render it more complete. When at length it was finished, Arthur wrote the date and his own initials in one corner, and laid the drawing aside. It was one o’clock. Turning the lamp out, he took the lighted candle in hand, and, bending over the corpse, tenderly kissed its forehead. Then he drew the counterpane of the bed carefully over the body, and went to his rest.
He slept soundly till six o’clock, for the violent emotions of the evening, so various and succeeding each other in such quick succession, had resulted in deadly fatigue. Though still longing to sleep, he resolutely rose from his bed and dressed. At eight o’clock the man whom Mr. Tollady had employed in the printing-office would come, and it would be necessary to apprise him of what had happened, to pay and dismiss him. There was moreover one task which must be performed before Arthur could have peace of mind. As soon as he had risen he took a sheet of paper and an envelope and addressed himself to its fulfilment. After some reflection he succeeded in penning the following letter, directed to Mr. Gresham: —
“Sir,
“I grieve to have to inform you that Mr. Tollady died suddenly last night. I found him lifeless in his chair on returning home from my interview with you.
“This event confirms a resolution I had all but determined upon when I left your house last night — never to enter it again. I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Tollady’s death was hastened by trouble consequent upon the circumstances you learned from me; and though we now see that even your assent to my request would have been powerless to save him, yet it would be impossible for me to continue to feel myself indebted for the slightest favour to one who would not open his lips in behalf of a man he knew so worthy.
“I am altogether unaware what can have caused the strong signs of disfavour which you have shown to me during the last few days; but as I have already once begged an explanation and been refused, it is needless to express any regret at having offended you. It only remains for me to say that I shall, of course, cease from this day to receive the money which you last night told me I could not really claim. I sincerely regret even having accepted a penny of it. If I live to my twenty-first birthday it is possible I may then address you again on the subject, but till then I trust I may never be compelled to intrude upon your leisure.
“Arthur Golding.”
This letter was despatched at once, after which Arthur breathed freely once more. He could not conceal from himself that he had a double object in writing it, however. Whilst his main wish was doubtless to express to Mr. Gresham that righteous indignation which took irresistible possession of him whenever he thought of the latter’s manner during their last interview, and also to free himself from what he now regarded as merely an encumbrance in entering upon his life of labour and self-denial, viz., the money he was to receive quarterly; there was a second impulse, likewise very powerful, the desire that Helen Norman should become acquainted with his loss. For he felt sure that as soon as she heard of it, her first thought would be to visit the shop. It would be hard to say how much of the sincerest love is pure egotism, and Arthur, though he would never have acknowledged it to himself, had even some degree of pleasure in thinking that his sad position would be sure to create the strongest sympathy in Helen’s heart. To be regarded by her with tenderness of any kind was, however much he might endeavour to suppress the feeling, still one of the strongest desires in the young man’s breast.
Having completed this task, and having concluded his business with the man when he arrived, Arthur secured all the doors and went once more to John Pether’s to consult with him on the necessary steps to be taken with regard to Mr. Tollady’s burial and the settlement of his business affairs. Finding that Pether was altogether unacquainted with the story of the mortgage, Arthur related it to him, whilst the former sat and listened with an ever-dispersing gloom upon his forbidding features.
“Has he left a will?” he asked, when at length the story was finished.
“I have no idea,” replied Arthur.
“Then I think you should look. There is pretty sure to be one.”
“Come with me, Mr. Pether,” said Arthur. “Can you spare the time?”
The umbrella-mender shrugged his shoulders, and, rising without a word, left the shop, locking the door behind him. Arrived once more in the parlour where the corpse lay, they went at once to the desk where it was known that Mr. Tollady kept all his important papers. Among the first they turned over was a sheet of foolscap, at the head of which was written, “My Will.” It was dated April 3rd, 1870, and was signed and witnessed quite formally. The document ran thus: —
“As I have been warned repeatedly of late by signs which I cannot mistake that I am suffering from an affection of the heart, which I fully believe may result in my death any moment, I esteem it prudent, now that I am in possession of unimpaired faculties, to make known my last will with regard to the disposal of such property as I may own at my death.
“All property that I die possessed of I bequeath, without exception, to Arthur Golding, who has grown up from childhood in my house, and for whom I cherish the affection of a father. Should he be in a position to afford it, I trust that he will continue to bestow small gifts, from time to time, on such poor people as he knows I should like to have assisted. I beg, moreover, that he will never fail to confer any benefit in his power upon my friends John Pether and Mark Challenger. Had I been rich, both of these should have received bequests from me, but as I know that I shall die poor they will forgive my inability to do all that I gladly would. I should like them, however, to choose some book or other slight article out of what I leave behind me, and preserve it as a memento of my friendship.
“To Arthur Golding I leave, moreover, my most fervent good wishes for his future happiness, and my gratitude for the pleasure his true affection has ever afforded me. I trust that he will never forget what was the main object of my life, and that he will do his best to continue that work as long as he lives.”
Arthur read this with difficulty, on account of tears which filled his eyes, and even John Pether’s hard countenance betrayed signs of emotion. After a short pause they continued the work of examining the papers in the desk. There was very little of importance, the chief articles being several bundles of letters neatly tied up and docketed, and one or two old manuscript volumes, which appeared to be a diary kept abroad many years ago. Having fastened up the desk again, the two went out together and spent the rest of the day in the transaction of necessary business.
On the third day after his death Mr. Tollady was buried. A very favourite walk of the old man’s, on Sunday evenings, had been by Highgate Cemetery, and here Arthur resolved that he should have his last resting-place. Arthur still possessed sufficient money to cover the expenses of the funeral. In consultation between John Pether, Mark Challenger and himself, it was determined that the ceremony should be of the simplest nature, or rather that there should be no ceremony at all. The deceased had never made any secret of his religious opinions, though no man could have been less fond of making a display of them, and the three friends knew well that a simple burial, devoid of the affectation of a service which could have had no significance for him, would be the best way of testifying their deep respect for his memory.
The news of Mr. Tollady’s death had spread rapidly throughout the neighbourhood. So very little was he known by the more well-to-do of his neighbours, that the majority of them had long thought him mad. There was a very general opinion, too, among these worthy people, that he was immensely rich, in short an absolute miser, and some little conversation now arose with regard to the manner in which his money would be disposed of, if anyone should be so lucky as to find it. Most of them, however, heard of his death with a shrug of the shoulders, and some such exclamation as, “Poor old bloke! I wonder he lived so long. Never left his ’ouse for ten years, have he?” But there were great numbers of the miserably poor round about to whom the news of the printer’s death was a veritable affliction. It meant to them the sudden loss of frequent kindly assistance, of help and advice in sickness, of consolation in trouble, of a friend in the best sense of the word. Many was the boy and girl, the children of drunken or criminal parents, who had to thank Mr. Tollady for getting them a situation, when they could find no one else who would “speak for them” to employers. Many an ill-used wife remembered him gratefully for services performed on her behalf with a brutal husband, words spoken in scorn which went with forcible directness to the wretch’s heart and made him either ashamed of his cowardice, or at least afraid to repeat it. Many an honest workingman had found in him an earnest friend whose advice was invaluable in restoring something like domestic quietness to a home which was threatened with destruction. How often had he paid a trifling fine for some pennyless victim of drunken folly, and so saved him from the imprisonment which would, in all probability, have proved his ruin. Not a few families there were with whom it had become quite a custom to seek out Mr. Tollady if a boy or girl had shown signs of going the wrong way, trusting implicitly to his influence to check them while yet there was time, and seldom disappointed in their hopes. With such poor people as these, victims of the world’s vices much more than of their own, the good old man had stood on terms of the most intimate familiarity. He, a man who had been at great pains to provide himself with a good education, had the completest sympathy with the most brutal forms of ignorance; he who was to the day of his death absolutely pure and chaste, did not feel himself repelled from the vilest of the vile if he felt that he could do them good. And all this good work had been performed so quietly, so unpretentiously, with such an extreme regard for the feelings of those who were its objects, that now when their benefactor’s death became the subject of common talk, the people were surprised at the revelations in which the talk resulted. “Why, and did you know him, Mary?” one woman would ask of a neighbour, as they stood gossipping on their respective door-steps. “Know him! Sure I did,” would be the reply. “Why, when my Billy were down wi’ fever six weeks after Chris’mas who else paid the doctor as come and give him medicine?” Many such little sentences were exchanged during the day when Mr. Tollady lay in his coffin in the back parlour. And when at length the day of the funeral arrived a very large crowd of women and children had assembled round the shop door to see the coffin brought out. Many were there who wept unrestrainedly, perhaps even then they lacked their dead friend’s assistance or advice, and when at length the simple coffin was borne out and deposited in the plain hearse, it was in the midst of an absolute silence, only broken by a sob here and there.
The three friends were the only mourners who followed the coffin to the grave. They rode together in a cab behind the hearse, all along the noisy thoroughfare of Tottenham Court Road, and its continuation, Hampstead Road, and so out to the Cemetery. Here in a retired corner, which they had previously visited together, they stood around the open grave whilst the body of their friend was lowered into it. Not a word broke the solemn silence. Only when the hollow sound of the first sods falling in made itself heard did Arthur’s tears refuse any longer to be withheld, whilst Mark Challenger, who stood close by his side, broke into unrestrained weeping. He was a good and tender-hearted fellow, who had suffered much from wrong of many kinds, and it was his wont, as we have seen, to rail on all occasions with unsparing bitterness against the injustice of his oppressors, but had the occasion presented itself he could not have found it in his heart to hurt one of them. As he walked away with his companions from the grave, he recited to them in inarticulate tones the long story of Mr. Tollady’s many kindnesses to himself personally, charging himself with all sorts of ingratitude, of which he had never been guilty, and protesting that he had lost in the printer his best and only friend. Arthur and John Pether maintained silence, the former so sad that he was unable to utter a word, the latter seeming to brood with a savage intensity, which had already become in him a species of madness, over the wrongs and sufferings which afflict the world.
Very shortly they parted, Challenger and Pether going back to their day’s work, whilst Arthur, seeming to derive consolation from the bright, warm sunshine, continued to linger about the walks of the Cemetery, pausing here and there to read an inscription half-mechanically, and ever returning in the direction of the grave, which the men were still at work filling up. At last he saw their labour completed, and with a deep sigh he walked up the hill-side to the highest point of the graveyard. It was a perfect day, just at that period of the year when summer is gently fading into autumn. One or two white clouds alone flecked the deep blue above, and the intense clearness of the atmosphere rendered the colours of the trees, the grass, the flowers, and the whiteness of the marble monuments almost painfully brilliant. Reaching the top of the hill, he turned and beheld the view over distant London. At this moment it seemed to him that the dim, smoke-capped city was a veritable abode of misery, and that only here, in the midst of those who had left it for ever, was true peace to be found. A weight of melancholy, a suffering distinct from that of sorrow, pressed upon his heart, filling him with a sense of dreary and hopeless misery which he had never hitherto experienced. The future seemed dull and hopeless, the past bright with a gladness which could never return. In vain he endeavoured to shake off the intolerable load, to breathe in fresh hope from the breeze and the sunlight, to look forward to the life of energy and usefulness which he had promised himself, and in which action would be its own reward; he could not succeed in freeing himself from a gloomy presentiment that his period of gladness had gone by for ever. His thoughts, wandering at will over the whole field of his past existence, frequently rested upon the image of Helen Norman. She had never called at the shop, though she must know that Mr. Tollady was dead; and this omission on her part added to his misery. Then he burst into an exclamation of self-scorn, asking himself what reason he had to expect that Helen would take any interest in his loss. There was a whole world between them. It had only been as a promising artist that Helen had ever taken any interest in him, and now that he had done with art for ever he had at the same time done with her and all recollection of her. What business had he — the foundling of a London slum, henceforth to work hard for his living as a common journeyman — what business had he to be thinking of a wealthy and beautiful young lady who might one day not improbably become a striking ornament of the fashionable world? And, at this last thought, his blood worked itself into a very whirl of democratic ferocity. The world, forsooth! And he, and such as he, were of no account in this “world,” formed no fraction of it! He thought of the insults he had received from Mr. Gresham; and all the lessons which life had taught him concerning the relations between rich and poor, seemed all at once to bear fruit within his heart and to make him another man. He looked back with scorn at the calm life he had hitherto led with double scorn upon the art which had absorbed his energies and kept his mind from troubling itself with all-important questions. But he assured himself that that period of his life was at an end. The hours of grief following upon his old friend’s death had wrought a development in his moral being. When at length he turned from the Cemetery the west was already beginning to glow with the hues of evening, he walked with a firmer step, saying to himself that he was no longer a boy.
It is not improbable that the constant companionship of John Pether during the last few days had been not a little effectual in bringing about this mood of mind. That gloomy fanatic never allowed the sense of his wrongs to sink to rest for a moment; all his waking hours were spent in exciting himself to fresh passion; and during many years of such perpetual brooding he had at length fanned the fire of wrath within his breast to such an intense glow that it only lacked some special accession of fuel to make it burst forth in all the violence of raging insanity. John had always shown a marked inclination for Arthur, and, but for Mr. Tollady’s careful and judicious interference, would have long ago made the youth a confidant of his gloomy imaginations. During the past year his visits to the printer’s shop had not been as frequent as before. He had contracted increased habits of solitude, and continual privation at once added to his sense of unmerited suffering and the brooding passions aroused by it. His trade had fallen off by degrees till he had scarcely the means of livelihood, for in the neighbourhood his terrible aspect had confirmed the impression that he was a lunatic, and most people had some fear in approaching his shop. Amidst the congenial occupations of happy days Arthur had had but little leisure or inclination to busy his thoughts much with this strange man and his eccentricities, but now that grief and mortification had rendered his mind susceptible to gloomy impressions he found a decided pleasure in the umbrella-mender’s society. Each evening since Mr. Tollady’s death they had spent in company, Arthur sitting a silent listener whilst John Pether, with unwonted fluency, had recounted circumstances in his life, at times working himself into paroxysms of passion terrible to witness.
To-night they met again in the back-parlour, and sat there till it was very late. Pether was not much disposed for conversation this evening, but Arthur was unusually talkative. He related to his companion many events of past years which he had hitherto told to no one but Mr. Tollady, and passed on to an account of his relations with Mr. Gresham, of which his hearer as yet knew nothing beyond that he had been receiving instruction from the artist. Arthur spoke of Helen Norman, too. John Pether was a somewhat strange confidant for such topics, but the young man had no other acquaintance with whom he could speak, and at present the abnormal activity of his mind rendered it absolutely necessary that he should give utterance to what he thought. He spoke of her as any stranger might have done, making mention of her kindness to the poor, and the reciprocal friendliness which had at once grown up between her and Mr. Tollady.
“Tollady was always too ready to trust to appearance,” put in John Pether, gloomily.
Arthur bit his lip and paused. Even now he could not bear to hear Helen spoken of slightingly.
“She has not been here since his death,” he said, after a moment’s silence, as if speaking to himself. “And yet she knows of it.”
“How could you expect it from a woman?” returned the other, sitting with his elbows resting upon his knees, and his face between his long, hairy hands.
There was a long silence, and then John Pether suddenly raised his face, and asked —
“Did you ever know your mother?”
“She died before I was old enough to really know her,” replied Arthur.
“So did mine,” said Pether, speaking in slow, deep tones, and as if he had a grim pleasure in the recollection to which his thoughts were turning. “Did I ever tell you of my mother?”
Arthur looked into the speaker’s eyes, which were blood-shot to-night, and almost shuddered at their expression. He shook his head.
“She murdered a man she had lived with — perhaps my father — and she was sentenced to be hung for it. But at that time she was on the point of giving birth to me, so that her execution was put off for a month. Then they hung her, and I was brought up in the workhouse.”
Even before he had ceased speaking, he had relapsed into abstractedness, and was apparently forgetful of what he had said But his words had thrilled Arthur with horror. During the hour that followed neither spoke a word, and at the end of that time Pether rose in his usual manner and left the house in silence.
The next day but one was Sunday. During the morning Arthur went out to keep an appointment with a man to whom he had offered his services as compositor, and in his absence John Pether sat before the counter in the shop. The door was slightly ajar, admitting a long streak of sunlight, which also made its way through two round holes in the shutters. The umbrella-mender was meditating as usual, his eyes watching the moats which were making merry in the sloping shafts of light. He was in a quiet mood this morning, influenced doubtless by the cheerful weather, and beyond an occasional twitching of the fingers, as they rested upon his knees, he exhibited no sign of internal agitation. All at once the shop door was pushed open, and the veiled figure of a lady entered. Raising her veil, she stood for a moment unable to discern objects in the gloom. When at length she became aware of John Pether sitting close in front of her, she started slightly and gazed at him with surprise.
“Is Mr. Tollady at home?” she asked.
Pether regarded her countenance closely before replying, and for a moment something like a grim smile rested on his lips.
“He is,” was his answer.
“Is he at liberty? Can I see him?”
“Scarcely.”
“How am I to understand your answer?” repeated the visitor, shrinking a little before Pether’s ill-omened eye.
“He is at home,” said the man, sternly, “but neither you nor anyone else can see him — unless you take a spade and a mattock to Highgate Cemetery and disturb the dead,” he added, with a slight shrug of the shoulders.
“Do you — do you mean he is dead?” stammered the lady, with the utmost astonishment depicted on her face.
“I do. Are not the dead at home? What better home can a man have than the grave? There no tax-gatherer comes to trouble you, no hunger, no oppression. You look surprised. Your home is not so poor and comfortless as to make you look forward with pleasure to the grave.”
“I look surprised because I had no idea that Mr. Tollady was dead, that he had even been ill. When did it happen?”
“Last Tuesday night. What is your interest in him? Are you Miss Norman?”
“I am. How is it you know me?”
“I have been warned of you.”
“Warned? By whom?”
“It is no matter. You have asked for Mr. Tollady, and I tell you he is dead. What more do you want?”
“Is Mr. Golding still living here?” asked Helen, after a slight pause, and with some hesitation.
“He is.”
“Is he at present in the house?”
“It is unnecessary to say whether he is or not. He warned me of your coming. You cannot see him.”
“Do I understand you to say that he has determined not to see me in case I call?”
“You may do so. He has taken an oath never again to speak to you. Are you satisfied?”
Helen stood for almost a minute regarding the speaker’s face. Not a muscle on his seared countenance moved, but his eyes spoke a struggle with inward emotion. Helen was turning to leave the shop when he suddenly rose and caught her by the arm. Her nerves were firm, and she looked into his face undismayed.
“I have been told,” he said, speaking in hollow tones and more calmly than usual, “that you try to do good to the poor, to satisfy their hunger, and to clothe their nakedness. Stop, if you are wise, and don’t trouble yourself with what does not concern you. What are the miseries of the poor to you? You have your great house to live in, and your fine clothes to wear; what do you know of suffering? Do you lack amusements? Haven’t you your theatres and your balls, your carriages and horses to show yourself with in the park; can’t you eat and drink of the best from morning to night? Isn’t this enough, but you must look for new excitement in gaols and hospitals and the holes which such as we call homes? You help the poor! Do you know that every penny you give in charity, as you call it, is poison to the poor, killing their independence and that sense of liberty which is the only possession they can hope to boast of? Do you know that you accustom them to think of you rich as the lawful holders of all the fruits of the earth, from whom they must be glad to receive what scanty crumbs it pleases you to throw to them, when they ought rather to rise as one man and demand as an eternal right what you pride yourself in giving them as a boon? Go home, go home!” he added, in a softer voice, “you have a pretty face, and perhaps a good heart, but you are only a woman. The work that you make your play, the amusement of your leisure hours, is not for women’s hands. Men will set to it before long, and you will see then how it ought to be done. I should be sorry to see you, or such as you, suffer for the faults of your fathers, but it is the curse of wealth that you are born under, and it will prove your destruction. Don’t you know some far-off country where there are fewer people and happier, where you can play with your toys all day long and wrong no one? If you do, go there, go there quickly. Who can tell what morning you may wake and see these streets of London running with the blood of your friends and relatives. There are knives sharpening now that will before long set right the injustice of centuries, set it right far more quickly than all your gold, if you scattered it all day long about the slums and alleys. Have you studied history? Did you ever read of the French Revolution? Take warning by it, and see to your safety while you have time.”
Helen stood for a few moments uncertain whether to speak in reply, but seeing that the man had resumed his seat and was apparently lost in gloomy meditation, she again drew her veil over her face and left the shop in silence. Grieving and wondering much at what she had just seen and heard, she took her way homewards. As she entered the house and was going upstairs to her own room Mr. Gresham called her into the library.
“Are you busy this afternoon, Helen?” he asked.
“Not at all,” she replied.
“Then you can give me a sitting?”
“Yes,” said Helen, absently. Then she suddenly asked, “Have you heard that Mr. Tollady is dead, Mr. Gresham?”
The artist looked up at her for a moment, then replied in the negative.
“He died last Tuesday,” she resumed. “That will account for Mr. Golding’s continued absence.”
“In part, possibly,” said her guardian, looking at her askance.
“Do you know any other reason?”
“Oh dear, yes,” he replied, with a slight shrug, “but I did not imagine the matter of sufficient interest to you to be worth talking about. I think I told you that he had shown signs of a spirit of independence which was not very promising for his progress. Eventually he became impertinent, and one morning wrote me an indignant letter which opened with the statement that he had resolved never to enter my house again, and went on to say that he had no present need of the money I offered him, but could well afford to wait till it became legally his!”
Helen looked at him in astonishment.
“But did you not reason with him, Mr. Gresham?” she asked. “Did you not try to show him the folly of acting so?”
“You know, Helen, that I am but a poor hand at moral dissertation.”
“But in so sad a case! Mr. Golding cannot have known what he was writing. Perhaps it was immediately after Mr. Tollady’s death, and he was distressed with grief. You certainly answered his letter?”
“A quoi bon?”
“Surely it is worth an effort to keep a young man of such talent from throwing away his best chances, perhaps before he knows the value of them? Have you no intention of trying to bring him back?”
“Do you think my efforts would be successful? What is the result of your own visit this morning, Helen?”
He spoke with a slight bitterness of tone, though still with a smile on his face.
“My visit was not originally meant for Mr. Golding, but on hearing of Mr. Tollady’s death from a strange man in the shop, I naturally asked for him. I was told that he refused to see me.”
“Indeed,” exclaimed the artist, with a short laugh of pleasure. “Then you have experienced his mettle. And what is your opinion of his politeness?”
“I am wholly at a loss to understand why he has taken this course. I sincerely hope he may yet see his true interests and continue to be as before. It is altogether so extraordinary, this sudden change of character.”
“You are very much interested in him,” said Mr. Gresham, with an unpleasant look from beneath his eyebrows.
“It is natural I should feel interested in his welfare,” replied Helen. “When he was a child my father brought him home with the intention of educating him as his own son, only to be disappointed. Now that he has been so strangely discovered again, and has given promise of such a bright future, I think it would be unkindness in those more experienced than himself if they did not do their best to show him his errors.”
“My studio is open to him if he chooses to return,” said the artist, half averting his face.
“But will you not write and tell him so, Mr. Gresham? Write a note and let me take it to him.”
“Helen,” said her guardian, with some sternness, “you occasionally go too far in your disregard of conventionalities. It would be entirely improper for you to do any such thing.”
“I am at a loss to see why,” replied the girl, surprised at the most unusual tone and sentiment of Mr. Gresham’s speech.
“If you don’t see why, I can hardly explain it to you. I beg, however, Helen, that you will on no account visit that place again, or hold any kind of conversation with this Mr. Golding if you should meet him. His behaviour has not been at all such as I can approve.”
An observer of manners would have been amused to hear Mr. Gresham speak these words. To hear the habitual polite mocker at everything, which others esteem serious in this life of ours, adopting the emphatic tones and language of a martinet of the first water, was indeed singular. Mr. Gresham himself, moreover, was painfully conscious of the unreality of his utterances. The very sound of his own voice made him angry.
“Do you intend to pay attention to this request of mine, Helen?” he asked, after a brief silence.
“What other request have I neglected, Mr. Gresham?” asked his ward, justly hurt at the tone in which she was addressed.
“I do not at all approve of the manner in which you spend your days, and I have frequently intimated as much.”
This unkindness following upon the previous agitation of the morning, proved too much for Helen. As she stood facing her guardian, he saw great tears well to her eyes and fall upon her cheeks. These, and the expression of sorrowful astonishment which her countenance had assumed, touched him profoundly. In his heart he cursed his precipitance.
“Why, Helen, do you think I meant what I said?” he exclaimed, taking one of her hands in his own. “Pooh, pooh! I must have acted uncommonly well. That would get me a fellowship in ‘a cry of players,’ as Hamlet says. I would give a fortune if your face could remain just as it is now till I had conveyed it to canvas. Such a picture would make an artist’s reputation. But you do not bear malice for the joke?”
“There are some subjects, in my opinion, too serious for joking on,” replied the girl, hastily passing a handkerchief over her eyes. “Must I understand your injunctions with regard to Mr. Golding as also a jest, sir?”
“No, not that part of our scene,” replied the artist. “There I was in earnest. You forget that I am responsible for you, Helen. If you err, I am blamed. Do you think I would lay any injunction upon you that was not for your good?”
“I am sure you would not bid me do anything that you did not think for my good.”
“Which is as much as to say that I am an old fool and had better mind my own business?”
“I am sorry you should attribute such a thought to me. You are unusually severe today, Mr. Gresham.”
“Only because I mean to be unusually kind.”
“May I go?”
The artist still held her hand in his, though he did not venture to exert the least pressure on it. He found it an impossible task to retain it, however, and made no reply.
“Have you further business with me?” Helen asked, looking into his face with perfect ingenuousness.
“You will give me the sitting this afternoon?”
“I have promised.”
“You have forgiven my ill-timed jest?”
“Entirely, though it grieves me that you should insist upon the other prohibition.”
With a muttered exclamation the artist loosed her hand, and Helen left the room.
“Damnation!” exclaimed Mr. Gresham, as she closed the door behind her; and for the next hour he paced the library in the worst possible temper.