NO LIGHT.
Miss Fausset—Gertrude Fausset—occupied a large house in Lewes
Crescent—with windows commanding all that there is of bold coast-line
and open sea within sight of Brighton. Her windows looked eastward, and
her large substantial mansion turned its back upon all the frivolities
of the popular watering-place—upon its Cockney visitors of summer and
its November smartness, its aquarium and theatre, its London stars and
Pavilion concerts, its carriages and horsemen—few of whom ever went
so far east as Lewes Crescent; its brazen bands and brazen faces—upon
everything except its church bells, which were borne up to Miss
Fausset’s windows by every west wind, and which sounded with but little
intermission from no less than three tabernacles within half a mile of
the crescent.
Happily Miss Fausset loved the sound of church bells, loved all
things connected with her own particular church with the ardour which
a woman who has few ties of kindred or friendship can afford to give
to clerical matters. Nothing except serious indisposition would have
prevented her attending matins at St. Edmund’s, the picturesque and
semi-fashionable Gothic temple in a narrow side street within ten
minutes’ walk of her house; nor was she often absent from afternoon
prayers, which were read daily at five o’clock to a small and select
congregation. The somewhat stately figure of the elderly spinster
was familiar to most of the worshippers at St. Edmund’s. All old
Brightonians knew the history of that tall, slim maiden lady, richly
clad after a style of her own, which succeeded in reconciling
Puritanism with the fashion of the day; very dignified in her carriage
and manners, with a touch of hauteur, as of a miserable sinner who
knew that she belonged to the salt of the earth. Brightonians knew
that she was Miss Fausset, sole survivor of the great house of Fausset
& Company, silk merchants and manufacturers, St. Paul’s Churchyard
and Lyons; that she had inherited a handsome fortune from her father
before she was twenty, that she had refused a good many advantageous
offers, had ranked as a beauty, and had been much admired in her
time, that she had occupied the house in Lewes Crescent for more than
a quarter of a century, and that she had taken a prominent part in
philanthropic associations and clerical matters during the greater
number of those years. No charity bazaar was considered in the way of
success until Miss Fausset had promised to hold a stall; no new light
in the ecclesiastical firmament of Brighton ranked as a veritable star
until Miss Fausset had taken notice of him. She received everybody
connected with Church and charitable matters. Afternoon tea in her
drawing-room was a social distinction, and strangers were taken to her
as to a Royal personage. Her occasional dinners—very rare, and never
large—were talked of as perfection in the way of dining.
“It is easy for her to do things well,” sighed an overweighted matron,
“with her means, and no family. She must be inordinately rich.”
“Did she come into a very large fortune at her father’s death?”
“O, I believe old Fausset was almost a millionaire, and he had only
a son and a daughter. But it is not so much the amount she inherited
as the amount she must have saved. Think how she must have nursed her
income, with her quiet way of living! Only four indoor servants and a
coachman; no garden, and one fat brougham horse. She must be rolling in
money.”
“She gives away a great deal.”
“Nothing compared with what other people spend. Money goes a long way
in charity. Ten pounds makes a good show on a subscription list; but
what is it in a butcher’s book? I daresay my three boys have spent
as much at Oxford in the last six years as Miss Fausset has given in
charity within the same time; and _we_ are poor people.”
It pleased Miss Fausset to live quietly, and to spend very little money
upon splendours of any kind. There was distinction enough for her in
the intellectual ascendency she had acquired among those church-going
Brightonians who thought exactly as she thought. Her spacious,
well-appointed house; her experienced servants—cook, housemaid,
lady’s-maid, and butler; her neat little brougham and perfect brougham
horse realised all her desires in the way of luxury. Her own diet was
of an almost ascetic simplicity, and her servants were on boardwages;
but she gave her visitors the best that the season or the fashion could
suggest to an experienced cook. Even her afternoon tea was considered
superior to everybody else’s tea, and her table was provided with
daintier cakes and biscuits than were to be seen elsewhere.
Her house had been decorated and furnished under her own direction,
and was marked in all particulars by that grain of Puritanism which
was noticeable in the lady’s attire. The carpets and curtains in the
two drawing-rooms were silver-gray; the furniture was French, and
belonged to the period of the Directory, when the graceful lightness of
the Louis Seize style was merging into the classicism of the Empire.
In Miss Fausset’s drawing-room there were none of those charming
futilities which cumber the tables of more frivolous women. Here Mr.
Cancellor would have found room, and to spare, for his hat—room for a
committee meeting, or a mission service, indeed—on that ample expanse
of silvery velvet pile, a small arabesque pattern in different shades
of gray.
The grand piano was the principal feature of the larger room, but
it was not draped or disguised, sophisticated by flower-vases, or
made glorious with plush, after the manner of fashionable pianos. It
stood forth—a concert grand, in unsophisticated bulk of richly carved
rosewood, a Broadwood piano, and nothing more. The inner room was
lined with bookshelves, and had the air of a room that was meant for
usefulness rather than hospitality. A large, old-fashioned rosewood
secrétaire, of the Directory period, occupied the space at the side of
the wide single window, which commanded a view of dead walls covered
with Virginia creeper, and in the distance a glimpse of the crocketed
spire of St. Edmund’s, a reproduction in little of one of the turrets
of the Sainte Chapelle.
Two-thirds of the volumes in those tall bookcases were of a theological
character; the remaining third consisted of those standard works which
everybody likes to possess, but which only the superior few care to
read.
Mildred had telegraphed in the morning to announce her visit, and
she found her aunt’s confidential man-servant, a German Swiss, and
her aunt’s neat little brougham waiting for her at the station. Miss
Fausset herself was in the inner drawing-room ready to receive her.
There was something in the chastened colouring and perfect order
of that house in Lewes Crescent which always chilled Mildred upon
entering it after a long interval. It was more than three years since
she had visited her aunt, and this afternoon in the fading light the
silver-gray drawing-rooms looked colder and emptier than usual.
Miss Fausset rose to welcome her niece, and imprinted a stately kiss on
each cheek.
“My dear Mildred, you have given me a very agreeable surprise,” she
said; “but I hope it is no family trouble that has brought you to me—so
suddenly.”
She looked at her niece searchingly with her cold gray eyes. She was a
handsome woman still, at fifty-seven years of age. Her features were
faultless, and the oval of her face was nearly as perfect as it had
been at seven-and-twenty. Her abundant hair was silvery gray, and worn
_à la_ Marie Antoinette, a style which lent dignity to her appearance.
Her dinner-gown of dark gray silk fitted her tall, upright figure to
perfection, and her one ornament, an antique diamond cross, half hidden
by the folds of her lace fichu, was worthy of the rich Miss Fausset.
“Yes, aunt, it is trouble that has brought me to you—very bitter
trouble; but it is just possible that you can help me to conquer it. I
have come to you for help, if you can give it.”
“My dear child, you must know I would do anything in my power—” Miss
Fausset began, with gentle deliberation.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Mildred answered, almost impatiently. “I know that
you will be sorry for me, but you may not be able to do anything. It is
a forlorn hope. In such a strait as mine one catches at any hope.”
Her aunt’s measured accents jarred upon her overstrung nerves. Her
grief raged within her like a fever, and the grave placidity of the
elder woman tortured her. There seemed no capacity for sympathy in this
stately spinster who stood and scanned her with coldly inquisitive eyes.
“Can we be quite alone for a little while, aunt? Are you sure of no one
interrupting us while I am telling you my troubles?”
“I will give an order. It is only half-past six, and we do not dine
till eight. There is no reason we should be disturbed. Come and sit
over here, Mildred, on this sofa. Your maid can take your hat and
jacket to your room.”
Stray garments lying about in those orderly drawing-rooms would have
been agony to Miss Fausset. She rang the bell, and told the servant to
send Mrs. Greswold’s maid, and to take particular care that no visitor
was admitted.
“I can see nobody this evening,” she said. “If any one calls you will
say I have my niece with me, and cannot be disturbed.”
Franz, the Swiss butler, bowed with an air of understanding the
finest shades of feeling in that honoured mistress. He brought out a
tea-table, and placed it conveniently near the sofa on which Mildred
was sitting, and he placed upon it the neatest of salvers, with tiny
silver teapot and Worcester cup and saucer, and bread and butter such
as Titania herself might have eaten with an “apricock” or a bunch of
dewberries. Then he discreetly retired, and sent Louisa, who smelt of
tea and toast already, though she could not have been more than ten
minutes in the great stony basement, which would have accommodated
a company of infantry just as easily as the spinster’s small
establishment.
Louisa took the jacket and hat and her mistress’s keys, and withdrew
to finish her tea and to discuss the motive and meaning of this
extraordinary journey from Enderby to Brighton. The gossips over the
housekeeper’s tea-table inclined to the idea that Mrs. Greswold had
found a letter—a compromising letter—addressed to her husband by some
lady with whom he had been carrying on an intrigue, in all probability
Mrs. Hillersdon of Riverdale.
“We all know who _she_ was before Mr. Hillersdon married her,” said
Louisa; “and don’t tell me that a woman who has behaved liked that
while she was young would ever be really prudent. Mrs. Hillersdon must
be fifty if she’s a day; but she is a handsome woman still, and who
knows?—she may have been an old flame of my master’s.”
“That’s it,” sighed Franz assentingly. “It’s generally an old flame
that does the mischief. _Wir sind armer Thieren._”
* * * * *
“And now, my dear, tell me what has gone wrong with you,” said Miss
Fausset, seating herself on the capacious sofa—low, broad, luxurious,
one of Crunden’s masterpieces—beside her niece.
The rooms were growing shadowy. A small fire burned in the bright steel
grate, and made the one cheerful spot in the room, touching the rich
bindings of the books with gleams of light.
“O, it is a long story, aunt! I must begin at the beginning. I have a
question to ask you, and your answer means life or death to me.”
“A question—to—ask—me?”
Miss Fausset uttered the words slowly, spacing them out, one by one, in
her clear, calm voice—the voice that had spoken at committee meetings,
and had laid down the law in matters charitable and ecclesiastical
many times in that good town of Brighton.
“I must go back to my childhood, aunt, in the first place,” began
Mildred, in her low, earnest voice, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed
upon her aunt’s coldly correct profile, between her and the light of
the fire, the wide window behind her, with the day gradually darkening
after the autumnal sunset. The three eastward-looking windows in the
large room beyond had a ghostly look, with their long guipure curtains
closely drawn against the dying light.
“I must go back to the time when I was seven years old, and my dear
father,” falteringly, and with tears in her voice, “brought home his
adopted daughter, Fay—Fay Fausset, he called her. She was fourteen and
I was only seven, but I was very fond of her all the same. We took to
each other from the beginning. When we left London and went to The
Hook, Fay went with us. I was ill there, and she helped to nurse me.
She was very good to me—kinder than I can say, and I loved her as if
she had been my sister. But when I got well she was sent away—sent to
a finishing-school at Brussels, and I never saw her again. She had
only lived with us one short summer. Yet it seemed as if she and I had
been together all my life. I missed her sorely. I missed her for years
afterwards.”
“My tender-hearted Mildred!” said Miss Fausset gently. “It was like you
to give your love to a stranger, and to be so faithful to her memory!”
“O, but she was not a stranger! she was something nearer and dearer. I
could hardly have been so fond of her if there had not been some link
between us.”
“Nonsense, Mildred! A warm-hearted child will take to any one near her
own age who is kind to her. Why should this girl have been anything
more than an orphan, whom your father adopted out of the generosity of
his heart?”
“O, she was something more! There was a mystery. Did you ever see her,
aunt? I don’t remember your coming to Parchment Street or to The Hook
while she was with us.”
“No. I was away from England part of that year. I spent the autumn at
Baden with my friends the Templemores.”
“Ah, then you knew nothing of the trouble Fay made in our home—most
innocently? It is such a sad story, aunt. I can hardly bear to touch
upon it, even to you, for it cast a shadow upon my father’s character.
You know how I loved and honoured him, and how it must pain me to say
one word that reflects upon him.”
“Yes, I know you loved him. You could not love him too well, Mildred.
He was a good man—a large-hearted, large-minded man.”
“And yet that one act of his, bringing poor Fay into his home, brought
unhappiness upon us all. My mother seemed set against her from the
very first; and on her death-bed she told me that Fay was my father’s
daughter. She gave me no proof—she told me nothing beyond that one
cruel fact. Fay was the offspring of hidden sin. She told me this,
and told me to remember it all my life. Do you think, aunt, she was
justified in this accusation against my father?”
“How can I tell, Mildred?” Miss Fausset answered coldly. “My brother
may have had secrets from me.”
“But did you never hear anything—any hint of this mystery? Did you
never know anything about your brother’s life in the years before his
marriage which would serve as a clue? He could hardly have cared for
any one—been associated with any one—and you not hear something—”
“If you mean did I ever hear that my brother had a mistress, I can
answer no,” replied Miss Fausset, in a very unsympathetic voice. “But
men do not usually allow such things to be known to their sisters,
especially to a younger sister, as I was by a good many years. He may
have been—like other men. Few of them seem free from the stain of sin.
But however that may have been, I know nothing about the matter.”
“And you do not know the secret of Fay’s parentage—you, my father’s
only sister—his only surviving relation. Can you help me to find any
one who knew more about his youth—any confidential friend—any one who
can tell me whether that girl was really my sister?”
“No, Mildred. I have no knowledge of your father’s friends. They are
all dead and gone, perhaps. But what can it matter to you who this girl
was? She is dead. Let the secret of her existence die with her. It is
wisest, most charitable to do so.”
“Ah, you know she is dead!” cried Mildred quickly. “Where and when did
she die? How did you hear of her?”
“From your father. She died abroad. I do not remember the year.”
“Was it before my marriage?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Long before?”
“Two or three years, perhaps. I cannot tell you anything precisely. The
matter was of no moment to me.”
“O aunt, it is life and death to _me_. She was my husband’s first
wife. She and I—daughters of one father—as I, alas! can but believe we
were—married the same man.”
“I never heard your husband was a widower.”
“No, nor did I know it until a few weeks ago;” and then, as clearly as
her distress of mind would allow, Mildred told how the discovery had
been made.
“The evidence of a photograph—which may be a good or a bad likeness—is
a small thing to go upon, Mildred,” said her aunt. “I think you have
been very foolish to make up your mind upon such evidence.”
“O, but there are other facts—coincidences! And nothing would make
me doubt the identity of the original of that photograph with Fay
Fausset. I recognised it at the first glance; and Bell, who saw it
afterwards, knew the face immediately. There could be no error in that.
The only question is about her parentage. I thought, if there were
room for doubt in the face of my mother’s death-bed statement, you
could help me. But it is all over. You were my last hope,” said Mildred
despairingly.
She let her face sink forward upon her clasped hands. Only in this
moment did she know how she had clung to the hope that her aunt would
be able to assure her she was mistaken in her theory of Fay’s parentage.
“My dear Mildred,” began Miss Fausset, after a pause, “the words
you have just used—‘death-bed statement’—seem to mean something very
solemn, indisputable, irrevocable; but I must beg you to remember that
your poor mother was a very weak woman and a very exacting wife. She
was offended with my brother for his adoption of an orphan girl. I have
heard her hold forth about her wrongs many a time, vaguely, not daring
to accuse him before me; but still I could understand the drift of her
thoughts. She may have nursed these vague suspicions of hers until they
seemed to her like positive facts; and on her death-bed, her brain
enfeebled by illness, she may have made direct assertions upon no other
ground than those long-cherished suspicions and the silent jealousies
of years. I do not think, Mildred, you ought to take any decisive step
upon the evidence of your mother’s jealousy.”
“My mother spoke with conviction. She must have known something—she
must have had some proof. But even if it were possible she could have
spoken so positively without any other ground than jealous feeling,
there are other facts that cry aloud to me, evidences to which I
dare not shut my eyes. Fay must have belonged to some one, aunt,”
pursued Mildred, with growing earnestness, clasping her hands upon
Miss Fausset’s arm as they sat side by side in the gathering darkness.
“There must have been some reason—and a strong one—for her presence
in our house. My father was not a man to act upon caprice. I never
remember any foolish or frivolous act of his in all the years of my
girlhood. He was a man of thought and purpose; he did nothing without
a motive. He would not have charged himself with the care of that poor
girl unless he had considered it his duty to protect her.”
“Perhaps not.”
“I am sure not. Then comes the question, who was she if she was not my
father’s daughter? He had no near relations, he had no bosom friend
that I ever heard of—no friend so dear that he would deem it his duty
to adopt that friend’s orphan child. There is no other clue to the
mystery that I can imagine. Can you, aunt, suggest any other solution?”
“No, Mildred, I cannot.”
“If there were no other evidence within my knowledge, my father’s
manner alone would have given me a clue to his secret. He so studiously
evaded my inquiries about Fay—there was such a settled melancholy in
his manner when he spoke of her.”
“Poor John! he had a heart of gold, Mildred. There never was a truer
man than your father. Be sure of that, come what may.”
“I have never doubted that.”
There was a pause of some minutes after this. The two women sat in
silence looking at the fire, which had burned red and hollow since
Franz had last attended to it. Mildred sat with her head leaning
against her aunt’s shoulder, her hand clasping her aunt’s hand. Miss
Fausset sat erect as a dart, looking steadily at the fire, her lips
compressed and resolute, the image of unfaltering purpose.
“And now, Mildred,” she began at last, in those measured accents which
Mildred remembered in her childhood as an association of awe, “take an
old woman’s advice, and profit by an old woman’s experience of life if
you can. Put this suspicion of yours on one side—forget it as if it
had never been, and go back to your good and faithful husband. This
suspicion of yours is but a suspicion at most, founded on the jealous
fancy of one of the most fanciful women I ever knew. Why should George
Greswold’s life be made desolate because your mother was a bundle of
nerves? Forget all you have ever thought about that orphan girl, and go
back to your duty as a wife.”
Mildred started away from her aunt, and left the sofa as if she had
suddenly discovered herself in contact with the Evil One.
“Aunt, you astound, you horrify me!” she exclaimed. “Can _you_ be so
false to the conduct and principles of your whole life—can _you_ put
duty to a husband before duty to God? Have I not sworn to honour Him
with all my heart, with all my strength; and am I to yield to the weak
counsel of my heart, which would put my love of the creature above my
honour of the Creator? Would you counsel me to persist in an unholy
union—you whose life has been given up to the service of God—you who
have put His service far above all earthly affections; you who have
shown yourself so strong: can you counsel me to be so weak: and to let
my love—my fond true love for my dear one—conquer my knowledge of the
right? Who knows if my darling’s death may not have been God’s judgment
upon iniquity—God’s judgment—”
She had burst into sudden tears at the mention of her husband’s name,
with all that tenderness his image evolved; but at that word judgment
she stopped abruptly with a half-hysterical cry, as a vision of the
past flashed into her mind.
She remembered the afternoon of the return to Enderby, and how her
husband had knelt by his daughter’s grave, believing himself alone, and
how there had come up from that prostrate figure a bitter cry:
“Judgment! judgment!”
Did he know? Was that the remorseful ejaculation of one who knew
himself a deliberate sinner?
Miss Fausset endured this storm of reproof without a word. She never
altered her attitude, or wavered in her quiet contemplation of the
fading fire. She waited while Mildred paced up and down the room in a
tempest of passionate feeling, and then she said, even more quietly
than she had spoken before,
“My dear Mildred, I have given you my advice, conscientiously. If
you refuse to be guided by the wisdom of one who is your senior by a
quarter of a century, the consequences of your obstinacy must be upon
your own head. I only know that if _I_ had as good a man as George
Greswold for my husband”—with a little catch in her voice that sounded
almost like a sob—“it would take a great deal more than a suspicion to
part me from him. And now, Mildred, if you mean to dress for dinner, it
is time you went to your room.”
In any other house, and with any other hostess, Mildred would have
asked to be excused from sitting down to a formal dinner, and to spend
the rest of the evening in her own room; but she knew her aunt’s
dislike of any domestic irregularity, so she went away meekly, and put
on the black lace gown which Louisa had laid out for her, and returned
to the drawing-room at five minutes before eight.
She had been absent half an hour, but it seemed to her as if Miss
Fausset had not stirred since she left her. The lamps were lighted,
the fire had been made up, and the silver-gray brocade curtains were
drawn; but the mistress of the house was sitting in exactly the same
attitude on the sofa near the fire, erect, motionless, with her
thoughtful gaze fixed upon the burning coals in the bright steel grate.
Aunt and niece dined _tête-à-tête_, ministered to by the experienced
Franz, who was thorough master of his calling. All the details of that
quiet dinner were of an elegant simplicity, but everything was perfect
after its fashion, from the soup to the dessert, from the Irish damask
to the old English silver—everything such as befitted the station of a
lady who was often spoken of as the rich Miss Fausset.
The evening passed in mournful quiet. Mildred played two of Mozart’s
sonatas at her aunt’s request—sonatas which she had played in her
girlhood before the advent of her first and only lover, the lover who
was now left widowed and desolate in that time which should have been
the golden afternoon of life. As her fingers played those familiar
movements, her mind was at Enderby with the husband she had deserted.
How was he bearing his solitude? Would he shut his heart against her
in anger, teach himself to live without her? She pictured him in his
accustomed corner of the drawing-room, with his lamp-lit table, and
pile of books and papers, and Pamela seated on the other side of the
room, and the dogs lying on the hearth, and the room all aglow with
flowers in the subdued light of the shaded lamps; so different from
these colourless rooms of Miss Fausset’s, with their look as of vaulted
halls, in which voices echo with hollow reverberations amidst empty
space.
And then she thought of her own desolate life, and wondered what it
was to be. She felt as if she had no strength of mind to chalk out
a path for herself—to create for herself a mission. That sublime
idea of living for others, of a life devoted to finding the lost
ones of Israel—or nursing the sick—or teaching children the way of
righteousness—left her cold. Her thoughts dwelt persistently upon her
own loves, her own losses, her own ideal of happiness.
“I am of the earth earthy,” she thought despairingly, as her fingers
lingered over a slow movement. “If I were like Clement Cancellor, my
own individual sorrow would seem as nothing compared with that vast sum
of human suffering which he is always trying to lessen.”
“May I ask what your plans are for the future, Mildred?” said Miss
Fausset, laying aside a memoir of Bishop Selwyn, which she had been
reading while her niece played. “I need hardly tell you that I shall
be pleased to have you here as long as you care to stay; but I should
like to know your scheme of life—in the event of your persistence in a
separation from your husband.”
“I have made no definite plan, aunt; I shall spend the autumn in some
quiet watering-place in Germany, and perhaps go to Italy for the
winter.”
“Why to Italy?”
“It is the dream of my life to see that country, and my husband always
refused to take me there.”
“For some good reason, no doubt.”
“I believe he had a dread of fever. I know of no other reason.”
“You are prompt to take advantage of your independence.”
“Indeed, aunt, I have no idea of that kind. God help me! my
independence is a sorry privilege. But if any country could help me to
forget my sorrows, that country would be Italy.”
“And after the winter? Do you mean to live abroad altogether?”
“I don’t know what I may do. I have thoughts of entering a sisterhood
by and by.”
“Well, you must follow your own course, Mildred. I can say no more than
I have said already. If you make up your mind to renounce the world
there are sisterhoods all over England, and there is plenty of good
work to be done. Perhaps after all it is the best life, and that those
are happiest who shut their minds against earthly affections.”
“As you have done, aunt,” said Mildred, with respect. “I know how full
of good works your life has been.”
“I have tried to do my duty according to my lights,” answered the
spinster gravely.
The next day was cold and stormy, autumn with a foretaste of winter.
Mildred went to the morning service with her aunt, in the bright new
Gothic church which Miss Fausset’s liberality had helped to create:
a picturesque temple with clustered columns and richly floriated
capitals, diapered roof, and encaustic pavement, and over all things
the glow of many-coloured lights from painted windows. Miss Fausset
spent the morning in visiting among the poor. She had a large district
out in the London Road, in a part of Brighton of which the fashionable
Brightonian hardly knoweth the existence.
Mildred sat in the back drawing-room all the morning, pretending to
read. She took volume after volume out of the bookcase, turned over the
leaves, or sat staring at a page for a quarter of an hour at a time, in
hopeless vacuity of mind. She had brooded upon her trouble until her
brain seemed benumbed, and nothing was left of that sharp sorrow but a
dull aching pain.
After luncheon she went out for a solitary walk on the cliff-road that
leads eastward. It was a relief to find herself alone upon that barren
down, with the great stormy sea in front of her, and the busy world
left behind. She walked all the way to Rottingdean, rejoicing in her
solitude, dreading the return to the stately silver-gray drawing-room
and her aunt’s society. Looking down at the village nestling in the
hollow of the hills, it seemed to her that she might hide her sorrows
almost as well in that quiet nook as in the remotest valley in Europe;
and it seemed to her also that this place of all others was best fitted
for the establishment of any charitable foundation in a small way—for a
home for the aged poor, for instance, or for orphan children. Her own
fortune would amply suffice for any such modest foundation. The means
were at her disposal. Only the will was wanting.
It was growing dusk when she went back to Lewes Crescent, so she
went straight to her room and dressed for dinner before going to the
drawing-room. The wind, with its odour of the sea, had refreshed her.
She felt less depressed, better able to face a life-long sorrow, than
before she went out, but physically she was exhausted by the six-mile
walk, and she looked pale as ashes in her black gown, with its evening
bodice, showing the alabaster throat and a large black enamel locket
set with a monogram in diamonds—L. G., Laura Greswold.
She entered the inner room. Her aunt was not there, and there was only
one large reading-lamp burning on a table near the fire. The front
drawing-room was in shadow. She went towards the piano, intending
to play to herself in the twilight, but as she moved slowly in the
direction of the instrument a strong hand played the closing bars of
a fugue by Sebastian Bach, a chain of solemn chords that faded slowly
into silence.
The hands that played those chords were the hands of a master. It was
hardly a surprise to Mildred when a tall figure rose from the piano,
and César Castellani stood before her in the dim light.
His hat and gloves were upon the piano, as if he had just entered the
room.
“My dear Mrs. Greswold, how delightful to find you here! I came to
make a late call upon your aunt—she is always indulgent to my Bohemian
indifference to etiquette—and had not the least idea that I should see
you.”
“I did not know that you and my aunt were friends.”
“No?” interrogatively. “That is very odd, for we are quite old friends.
Miss Fausset was all goodness to me when I was an idle undergraduate.”
“Yet when you came to Enderby you brought an introduction from Mrs.
Tomkison. Surely my aunt would have been a better person—”
“No doubt; but it is just like me to take the first sponsor who came
to hand. When I am in London I half live at Mrs. Tomkison’s, and I had
heard her rave about you until I became feverishly anxious to make your
acquaintance. I ought perhaps to have referred to Miss Fausset for my
credentials—but I am _volage_ by nature: and then I knew Mrs. Tomkison
would exaggerate my virtues and ignore my errors.”
Mildred went back to the inner room, and seated herself by the
reading-lamp. Castellani followed her, and placed himself on the other
side of the small octagon table, leaving only a narrow space between
them.
“How pale you are!” he said, with a look of concern. “I hope you are
not ill?”
“No, I am only tired after a long walk.”
“I had no idea you had left Enderby.”
“Indeed!”
“You said nothing of your intention of leaving the neighbourhood the
day before yesterday.”
“There was no occasion to talk of my plans,” Mildred answered coldly.
“We were all too anxious about the concert to think of any other
matter.”
“Did you leave soon after the concert?”
“The same evening. I did not know you were leaving Riverdale.”
“O, I only stayed for the concert. I had protracted my visit
unconscionably, but Mrs. Hillersdon was good enough not to seem tired
of me. I am in nobody’s way, and I contrived to please her with my
music. Did you not find her delightfully artistic?”
“I thought her manners charming; and she seems fond of music, if that
is what you mean by being artistic.”
“O, I mean worlds more than that. Mrs. Hillersdon is artistic to her
fingers’ ends. In everything she does one feels the artist. Her dress,
her air, her way of ordering a dinner or arranging a room—her feeling
for literature—she seldom reads—her feeling for form and colour—she
cannot draw a line—her personality is the very essence of modern art.
She is as a woman what Ruskin is as a man. Is Miss Ransome with you?”
“No, I have left her to keep house for me.”
It seemed a futile thing to make believe that all was well at Enderby,
to ward off explanations, when before long the world must know that
George Greswold and his wife were parted for ever. Some reason would
have to be given. That thirst for information about the inner life of
one’s neighbours which is the ruling passion of this waning century
must be slaked somehow. It was partly on this account, perhaps, that
Mildred fancied it would be a good thing for her to enter a Sisterhood.
The curious could be satisfied then. It would be said that Mrs.
Greswold had given up the world.
“She is a very sweet girl,” said Castellani thoughtfully; “pretty
too, a delicious complexion, hair that suggests Sabrina after a visit
from the hairdresser, a delightful figure, and very nice manners—but
she leaves me as cold as ice. Why is it that only a few women in the
world have magnetic power? They are so few, and their influence is so
stupendous. Think of the multitude of women of all nations, colours,
and languages that go to make up one Cleopatra or one Mary Stuart.”
Miss Fausset came into the room while he was talking, and was surprised
at seeing him in such earnest conversation with her niece.
“One would suppose you had known each other for years,” she said, as
she shook hands with Castellani, looking from one to the other.
“And so we have,” he answered gaily. “In some lives weeks mean years. I
sometimes catch myself wondering what the world was like before I knew
Mrs. Greswold.”
“How long have you known her—without rodomontade?”
“For about a month, aunt,” replied Mildred. “I have been asking Mr.
Castellani why he came to me with an introduction from my friend Mrs.
Tomkison, when it would have been more natural to present himself as a
friend of yours.”
“O, he has always a motive for what he does,” Miss Fausset said coldly.
“You will stay to dinner, of course?” she added to Castellani.
“I am free for this evening, and I should like to stay, if you can
forgive my morning coat.”
“I am used to irregularities from you. Give Mrs. Greswold your arm.”
Franz was at the door, announcing the evening meal, and presently
Mildred found herself seated at the small round table in the sombre
spacious dining-room—a room with a bayed front, commanding an
illimitable extent of sea—with César Castellani sitting opposite
her. The meal was livelier than the dinner of last night. Castellani
appeared unconscious that Mildred was out of spirits. He was full
of life and gaiety, and had an air of happiness which was almost
contagious. His conversation was purely intellectual, ranging through
the world of mind and of fancy, scarcely touching things earthly and
human; and thus he struck no jarring chord in Mildred’s weary heart.
So far as she could be distracted from the ever-present thought of loss
and sorrow, his conversation served to distract her.
He went up to the drawing-room with the two ladies, and at Miss
Fausset’s request sat down to the piano. The larger room was still in
shadow, the smaller bright with fire and lamplight.
He played as only the gifted few can play—played as one in whom music
is a sixth sense, but to-night his music was new to Mildred. He played
none of those classic numbers which had been familiar to her ever
since she had known what music meant. His muse to-night was full of
airy caprices, quips and cranks and wreathed smiles. It was operatic
music, of the stage stagey; a music which seemed on a level with
Watteau or Tissot in the sister art—gay to audacity, and sentimental to
affectation. It was charming music all the same—charged with melody,
gracious, complacent, uncertain, like an April day.
Whatever it was, every movement was familiar to Gertrude Fausset. She
sat with her long ivory knitting-needles at rest on her lap—sat in
a dreamy attitude, gazing at the fire and listening intently. Some
melodies seemed to touch her almost to tears. The love of music ran
in the Fausset family, and it was no surprise to Mildred to see her
aunt so absorbed. What had an elderly spinster to live for if it were
not philanthropy and art? And for the plastic arts—for pictures and
porcelain, statuary or high-art furniture—Miss Fausset cared not a
jot, as those barren drawing-rooms, with their empty walls and pallid
colour, bore witness. Music she loved with unaffected devotion, and
it was in nowise strange to find her the friend and patroness of
César Castellani, opposite as were the opinions of the man who wrote
_Nepenthe_ and the woman who had helped to found the church of St.
Edmund the Confessor.
“Play the duet at the end of the second act,” she said, when he paused
after a brilliant six-eight movement which suggested a joyous chorus.
He played a cantabile accompaniment, like the flow of summer seas, and
then a plaintive melody for two voices—following, answering, echoing
each other with tearful emphasis—a broken phrase here and there, as if
the singer were choked by a despairing sob.
“What is the name of the opera, aunt?” asked Mildred; “I never heard
any of that music before.”
“He has been playing selections from different operas. That last melody
is a duet in an opera called _La Donna del Pittore_.”
“By what composer? It sounded like Flotow.”
“It is not Flotow’s. That opera was written by Mr. Castellani’s father.”
“I remember he told me his father had written operas. It is a pity his
music was never known in England.”
“You had better say it was a pity his music was never fashionable in
Paris. Had it been recognised there, English connoisseurs would have
speedily discovered its merits. We are not a musical nation, Mildred.
We find new planets, but we never discover new musicians. We took up
Weber only to neglect him and break his heart. We had not taste enough
to understand Mendelssohn’s _Melusine_.”
“Mr. Castellani’s operas were popular in Italy, were they not?”
“For a time, yes; but the Italians are as capricious as we are dull.
César tells me that his father’s operas have not held the stage.”
“Were they fashionable in your time, aunt, when you were studying music
at Milan?”
“Yes, they were often performed at that time. I used to hear them
occasionally.”
“And you like them now. They are associated with your girlhood. I can
understand that they must have a peculiar charm for you.”
“Yes, they are full of old memories.”
“Do you never play or sing yourself, aunt?”
“I play a little sometimes, when I am quite alone.”
“But never to give pleasure to other people? That seems unkind. I
remember how proud my father was of your musical talent; but you would
never let us hear you either at The Hook or in Parchment Street.”
“I have never cared to play or sing before an audience—since I was
a girl. You need not wonder at me, Mildred. Different people have
different ways of thinking. My pleasure in music of late years has been
the pleasure of a listener. Mr. Castellani is good enough to gratify
me sometimes, as he has done to-night, when he has nothing better to
do.”
“Do not say that,” exclaimed Castellani, coming into the glow of the
hearth, and seating himself beside Miss Fausset’s armchair. “What can I
have better to do than to commune with a sympathetic mind like yours—in
the language of the dead? It is almost as if my father’s vanished voice
were speaking to you,” he said, in caressing tones, bending down to
kiss the thin pale hand which lay idle on the arm of the chair.