THE FUTURE MIGHT BE DARKER.
George Greswold was not the kind of man to sit down in idle submission
to Fate under a great wrong or under a great loss. A feeling of blank
despair had come upon him after his interview with Mrs. Bell, in the
solitude of those deserted rooms where every object spoke to him of his
wife’s absence—where the influence of her mind and fancy was a part of
the very atmosphere: so much so that in spite of her farewell letter
in his breast-pocket he started every now and then from his reverie,
fancying he heard her footstep in the corridor, or her voice in an
adjoining room.
His conversation with Bell had brought him little comfort, but it had
not convinced him of the evil in which his wife so firmly believed.
There was little doubt in his mind that the woman he had married
eighteen years ago was identical with Mildred’s young companion and
John Fausset’s _protégée_. But whether that mysterious _protégée_
had been John Fausset’s daughter was a question open to doubt. The
suspicions of a jealous wife, the opinions of the servants’ hall, were
no conclusive proof.
On the other hand, the weight of evidence leaned to that one solution
of the mystery in Mr. Fausset’s conduct. That a man should charge
himself with the care of a child of whose parentage and belongings he
could give no satisfactory account—about whom, indeed, he seemed to
have given no account at all—was a strange thing. Stranger still was
his conduct in bringing that child into his own family, to the hazard
of his domestic peace. Stranger even yet that he should have gone down
to the grave without giving his daughter any explanation of his conduct
from first to last—that he should have left the story of his _protégée_
as dark at the end as it had been at the beginning.
Painfully conjuring back to life the phantom forms of a miserable
past, George Greswold recalled the few facts which he had ever known
of his first wife’s history. She was an orphan, without relations
or friends. At eighteen years of age she had been transferred from a
finishing-school at Brussels to the care of an English artist and his
wife, called Mortimer—middle-aged people, the husband with a small
talent, the wife with a small income, both of which went further in
Brussels than they would have gone in England. They had an apartment
on one of the new boulevards at Brussels and a summer retreat in the
Ardennes. When the artist and his wife travelled, Vivien went with
them, and it was on one of these occasions that George Greswold met
her at Florence. Mr. Mortimer had let his apartment at Brussels for
the winter, and had established himself in the Italian city, where he
worked assiduously at a classic style of art which nobody ever seemed
to buy, though a good many people pretended to admire.
Vivien Faux. It sounded like a _nom de fantasie_. She told him that
she was nobody, and that she belonged to nobody. She had no home, no
people, no surroundings, no history, no associations. She had been
educated at an expensive school, and her clothes had been made at a
fashionable dressmaker’s in the Rue Montagne de la Cour. Everything
that a schoolgirl’s fancy could desire had been provided for her.
“So far as such things go, I was as well off as the most fortunate of
my companions,” she told him; “but I was a friendless waif all the
same, and my schoolfellows despised me. I drank the cup of scorn to the
dregs.”
Seeing how painful this idea of her isolation was to her, George
Greswold had been careful to avoid all questioning that might gall
the open wound. In truth he had no keen curiosity about her past
existence. He had taken her for what she was—interesting, clever, and
in great need of a disinterested protector. It was enough for him to
know that she had been educated as a lady, and that her character was
spotless. His marriage had been one of those unions which are of all
unions the most fatal—a marriage for pity. A marriage for money, for
self-interest, ambition, or family pride may result happily. In a union
of mutual interests there is at least a sense of equality, and love
may grow with time and custom; but in a marriage for pity the chain
galls on both sides, the wife oppressed by a sense of obligation, the
husband burdened with a weight of duty.
Of his wife’s resources, all George Greswold knew was that she had
a life interest in thirty thousand pounds invested in Consols. The
dividends were sent her half-yearly by a firm of solicitors, Messrs.
Pergament & Pergament, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She had received a
letter from the firm a week before her last birthday, which was her
twenty-first, informing her of her life interest in this sum, over
which she would have no disposing power, nor the power to anticipate
any portion of the interest. The half-yearly dividends, she was
informed, would in future be sent directly to her at any address she
might appoint.
In acknowledging this communication she begged to be informed from whom
she had inherited this money, or whether it was the gift of a living
benefactor, and whether the benefactor was a relative. The reply from
Messrs. Pergament & Pergament was cold and formal. They regretted their
inability to give her any information as to the source of her income.
They were pledged to absolute silence upon this point. In any other
matter they would be happy to be of service to her.
George Greswold had married without a settlement. The then state of the
law, and the conditions of his wife’s income, made her independent of
any husband whatever. He could not forestall or rob her of an income of
which the capital was in the custody of other people, and over which
she had no disposing power. He was a poor man himself at the time,
living upon an allowance made him by his mother, eked out by the labour
of his pen as a political and philosophical writer; but he had the
expectation of the Enderby estate, an expectation which was all but
certainty. One fact alone was known to him of his wife’s surroundings
which might help him to discover her history, and that was the name of
the firm in Lincoln’s Inn, Messrs. Pergament & Pergament, and to them
he made up his mind to apply without loss of time.
He went to London on the day after Mildred’s journey to Brighton,
taking Pamela and her dog with him to an hotel near Hanover Square
where he had occasionally stayed. Pamela had been much disturbed by
Mildred’s letter, and was full of wonderment, but very submissive, and
ready to do anything she was told.
“I don’t want to be inquisitive or troublesome, uncle,” she said, as
they sat opposite each other in the train, “but I am sure there is
something wrong.”
“Yes, Pamela, there is something wrong; but it is something which will
come right again in good time, I hope. All we can do is to be patient.”
His look of quiet pain, and the haggard lines which told of sleepless
nights and brooding thoughts, touched Pamela’s tender heart; but she
was wise enough to know that a sorrow big enough to part husband and
wife is not a sorrow to be intruded upon by an outsider.
Mr. Greswold drove with his niece to the hotel, established her there
with her maid and her terrier in a private sitting-room, and then
started for Lincoln’s Inn Fields in a hansom.
Messrs. Pergament’s office had a solid and old-established air, as
of an office that had only to do with wealth and respectability. The
clerks in the outer room seemed to have grown old on the premises.
“I should like to see the senior member of the firm, if he is at
liberty,” said Mr. Greswold.
“Mr. Champion Pergament is at Wiesbaden. He is a very old gentleman,
and seldom comes to the office.”
“The next partner, then—”
“Mr. Danvers Pergament is at his place in Yorkshire. If you would like
to see his son, Mr. Danvers jun.—”
“Yes, yes, he will do if there is no one else.”
“There is Mr. Maltby. The firm is now Pergament, Pergament, & Maltby.”
“Let me see Mr. Danvers Pergament, if you please. I don’t want to talk
to a new man.”
“Mr. Maltby was articled to us seventeen years ago, sir, and has been
in the firm ever since, but I believe Mr. Pergament is disengaged.
Shall I take him your name?”
George Greswold sent in his card. His name would be known to some
members of the firm, no doubt—possibly not to others. His married life
had been brief.
He was received in a handsome office by a baldheaded gentleman of
about five-and-forty, who smiled upon him blandly from a background of
oak wainscot and crimson cloth window-curtains, like an old-fashioned
portrait.
“Pray be seated, Mr. Greswold,” he said, with the visitor’s card in his
hand, and looking from the card to the visitor.
“Does my name tell you anything about me, Mr. Pergament?” asked
Greswold gravely.
“George Ransome Greswold,” read the lawyer slowly; “the name of
Greswold is unfamiliar to me.”
“But not that of Ransome. Sixteen years ago my name was George Ransome.
I assumed the name of Greswold on my mother’s death.”
The solicitor looked at him with renewed attention, as if there were
something to startle his professional equanimity in the former name.
“You remember the name of Ransome?” said Greswold interrogatively.
“Yes, it recalls certain events. Very sad circumstances connected
with a lady who was our client. You would not wish me to go over that
ground, I am sure, Mr. Greswold?”
“No, there is no occasion to do that. I hope you believe that I was
blameless—or as free from blame as any man can be in his domestic
conduct—in the matter to which you have alluded?”
“I have no reason to suppose otherwise. I have never been on the
scene of the event. I knew nothing of it until nearly a year after it
happened, and then my sources of information were of the slenderest,
and my knowledge of painful details never went beyond this office.
Pray be assured that I do not wish to say one word that can pain you;
I would only ask you to consider me as a totally uninformed person. I
have no charge to make—upon anybody’s account. I have no questions to
ask. The past is forgotten, so far as I and my firm are concerned.”
“Mr. Pergament, for me the past is still living, and it is exercising
a baneful influence over my present existence. It may blight the rest
of my life. You, perhaps, may help to extricate me from a labyrinth of
perplexity. I want to know who my first wife was. What was the real
name of the young lady who called herself Vivien Faux, and whom I
married under that name before the British Consul at Florence? Who were
her parents?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Do you mean that you cannot, or that you will not?”
“I mean both. I do not know that unfortunate lady’s parentage. I
have no positive knowledge on the subject, though I may have my own
theory. I know that certain persons were interested in the young
lady’s welfare, and that certain funds were placed in our charge for
her maintenance. After her death, the capital for which we had been
trustees reverted to those persons. _That_ is the sum-total of the
lady’s history so far as it is known to us.”
“Will you tell me the name of the person who gave my wife her income,
who placed her at the school at Brussels, by whose instructions she was
transferred to the care of Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer? I want to know that
man’s name, for that man must have been her father.”
“When my father and I undertook that business for my client, we pledged
ourselves to absolute secrecy. The facts of the case are not known
even to the other members of the firm. The person in question was our
client, and the secret was lodged with us. There is not a priest of the
Church of Rome who holds the secrets of the confessional more sacred
than we hold that secret.”
“Even if by keeping it you blight and ruin an innocent man’s life?”
“I cannot imagine any such consequence of our silence.”
“You cannot? No! Fact is stranger than any man’s imagination. Do you
happen to know the name of my second wife?”
“I did not even know that you had married again. You were known to our
firm as Mr. Ransome. We lost sight of you when you changed your name to
Greswold.”
“I have been married—happily married—for fourteen years; and the name
of my wife was Fausset, Mildred Fausset, daughter of John Fausset, your
client.”
Mr. Pergament had taken up a penknife in a casual manner, and was
trifling with a well-kept thumb-nail, a fine specimen of the filbert
tribe, with his eyelids lowered in an imperturbable thoughtfulness,
as of a man who was rock. But, cool as he was, George Greswold noticed
that at the name of Fausset the penknife gave a little jerk, and the
outskirts of the filbert were in momentary danger. Mr. Pergament
was too wary to look up, however. He sat placid, attentive, with
flabby eyelids lowered over washed-out gray eyes. Mr. Pergament at
five-and-forty was still in the chrysalis or money-making stage, and
worked hard nearly all the year round. His father, at sixty-seven, was
on the Yorkshire moors, pretending to shoot grouse, and just beginning
to enjoy the butterfly career of a man who had made enough to live upon.
“Vivien Faux. Does not that sound to your ear like an assumed name, Mr.
Pergament?” pursued Greswold. “Faux: the first three letters are the
same as in Fausset.”
And then George Greswold told the solicitor how his second wife had
recognised his first wife’s photograph, as the likeness of a girl whom
she believed to have been her half-sister, and how this act threatened
to divide husband and wife for ever.
“Surely Mrs. Greswold cannot be one of those bigoted persons who pin
their faith upon a prohibition of the Canon Law as if it were the
teaching of Christ—a prohibition which the Roman Church was always
ready to cancel in favour of its elect?” said the lawyer.
“Unhappily my wife was taught in a very rigid school. She would perish
rather than violate a principle.”
“But if your first wife were John Fausset’s natural daughter—what then?
The law does not recognise such affinities.”
“No, but the Church does. The Roman Church could create a prohibitive
affinity in the case of a cast-off mistress; and it is the privilege
of our Anglican theology in its highest development to adopt the most
recondite theories of Rome. For God’s sake be plain with me, Mr.
Pergament! Was the girl who called herself Vivien Faux, John Fausset’s
daughter, or was she not?”
“I regret that I cannot answer your question. My promise to my client
was of the nature of an oath. I cannot violate that promise upon any
consideration whatever. I must ask you, Mr. Greswold, as a gentleman,
not to urge the matter any farther.”
“I submit,” said Greswold hopelessly. “If it is a point of honour with
you, I can say no more.”
Mr. Pergament accompanied him to the threshold of the outer office, and
the elderly clerk ushered him to the wide old landing-place beyond.
The lawyer had been courteous, but not cordial. There was a shade of
distrustfulness in his manner, and he had pretended to no sympathy
with Mr. Greswold in his difficulties; but George Greswold felt that
among those who knew the history of his former marriage there was not
much likelihood of friendly feeling towards him. To them he was a man
outside the pale.
He left the office sick at heart. This had been his only means of
coming at the knowledge of his first wife’s parentage, and this means
had failed him utterly. The surprise indicated by that slight movement
of the lawyer’s hand at the first mention of John Fausset’s name went
far to convince him that Mildred’s conviction was based on truth. Yet
if John Fausset were Mr. Pergament’s client, it was very odd that
Mr. Pergament should be ignorant of the circumstances of Mildred’s
marriage, and the name and surroundings of her husband. Odd assuredly,
but not impossible. On reflection, it seemed by no means unnatural that
Mr. Fausset should confide his secret to a stranger, and establish
a trust with a stranger, rather than admit his family lawyer to his
confidence. This provision for an illegitimate daughter would be an
isolated transaction in his life. He would select a firm of approved
respectability, who were unconcerned in his family affairs, with whom
there was no possibility of his wife or daughter being brought into
contact.
George Greswold drove from Lincoln’s Inn to Queen Anne’s Gate, where he
spent ten minutes with Mrs. Tomkison, and learned all that lady could
tell him about his wife’s movements: how she had had a long interview
with Mr. Cancellor before she started for Brighton, and how she was
looking very ill and very unhappy. Provided with this small stock of
information, he went back to the hotel and dined _tête-à-tête_ with
Pamela, who had the good sense not to talk to him, and who devoted all
her attentions to the scion of Brockenhurst Joe.
When the waiters had left the room for good, and uncle and niece were
alone over their coffee, Greswold became more communicative.
“Pamela, you are a good, warm-hearted girl, and I believe you would go
some way to serve me,” he said quietly, as he sat looking at Box, who
had folded his delicately-pencilled legs in a graceful attitude upon
the fender, and was amiably blinking at the fire.
“My dear uncle, I would cut off my head for you—”
“I don’t quite want that; but I want your loyal and loving help in this
saddest period of my life—yes, the saddest; sadder even than the sorrow
of last year; and yet I thought there could be no greater grief than
that.”
“Poor Uncle George!” sighed Pamela, bending over the table to take his
hand, and clasping it affectionately; “command me in anything. You
know how fond I have always been of you—almost fonder than of my poor
father. Perhaps,” she added gravely, “it is because I always respected
you more than I did him.”
“I cannot confide in you wholly, Pamela—not yet; but I may tell you
this much. Something has happened to part my wife and me—perhaps for
life. It is her wish, not mine, that we should live the rest of our
lives apart. There has been no wrong-doing on either side, mark you.
There is no blame; there has been no angry feeling; there is no falling
off in love. We are both the victims of an intolerable fatality. I
would willingly struggle against my doom—defy Fate; but my wife has
another way of thinking. She deems it her duty to make her own life
desolate and to condemn me to a life-long widowhood.”
“Poor Uncle George!”
“She is now at Brighton with her aunt, Miss Fausset. I am going there
to-morrow morning to see her, if she will let me—perhaps for the last
time. I want to take you with me; and if Mildred carries out her
intention of spending the winter abroad, I want you to go with her. I
want you to wind yourself into her confidence and into her heart, to
cheer and comfort her, and to shield her from the malice of the world.
Her position will be at best a painful one—a wife and no wife—separated
from her husband for a reason which she will hardly care to tell the
world, perhaps will hardly confide to her dearest friend.”
“I will do anything you wish, uncle—go anywhere, to the end of the
world. You know how fond I am of Aunt Mildred. I’m afraid I like her
better than I do my sister, who is so wrapped up in that absurd baby
that she is sometimes unendurable. But it seems so awfully strange that
you and aunt should be parted,” continued Pamela, with a puzzled brow.
“I can’t make it out one little bit. I—I don’t want to ask questions,
Uncle George—at least only just one question: has all this mysterious
trouble anything to do with Mr. Castellani?”
She turned crimson as she pronounced the name, but Greswold was too
absorbed to notice her embarrassment.
“With Castellani? No. How should it concern him?” he exclaimed; and
then, remembering the beginning of evil, he added, “Mr. Castellani has
nothing to do with our difficulty in a direct manner; but indirectly
his presence at Enderby began the mischief.”
“O, uncle, you were not jealous of him, surely?”
“Jealous of him? I jealous of Castellani or any man living? You must
know very little of my wife or of me, Pamela, when you can ask such a
question.”
“No, no; of course not. It was absurd of me to suggest such a thing,
when I know how my aunt adores you,” Pamela said hastily.
In spite of this disavowal, she lay awake half through the night,
tormenting herself with all manner of speculations and wild imaginings
as to the cause of the separation between George Greswold and his wife
and Castellani’s connection with that catastrophe.
She went to Brighton with her uncle next day, Box and the maid
accompanying them in a second-class compartment. They put up at an
hotel upon the East Cliff, which was more domestic and exclusive than
the caravansaries towards the setting sun, and conveniently near Lewes
Crescent.
“Shall I go with you at once, uncle?” asked Pamela, as Greswold was
leaving the house. “I hope Miss Fausset is not a stern old thing, who
will freeze me with a single look.”
“She is not so bad as that, but I will break the ice for you. I am
going to see my wife alone before I take you to Lewes Crescent. You can
go on the Madeira Walk with Peterson, and give Box an airing.”
* * * * *
George Greswold found his wife sitting alone near the open piano at
which Castellani had made such exquisite music the night before. She
had been playing a little, trying to find comfort in that grand music
of Beethoven, which was to her as the prophecies of Isaiah, or the
loftiest passages in the Apocalypse—seeking comfort and hope, but
finding none. And now she was gazing sadly at the waste of waters, and
thinking that her own future life resembled that barren sea—a wide and
sunless waste, with neither haven nor ship in sight.
At the sound of her husband’s footsteps entering unannounced at the
further door she started up, with her heart beating vehemently,
speechless and trembling. She felt as if they were meeting after years
of absence—felt as if she must fling herself upon his breast and claim
him as her own again, confessing herself too earthly a creature to live
without that sweet human love.
She had to steel herself by the thought of obedience to a higher law
than that of human passion. She stood before him deathly pale, but firm
as a rock.
He came close up to her, laid his hand upon her shoulder, and looked
her in the face, earnestly, solemnly even.
“Mildred, is it irrevocable? Can you sacrifice me for a scruple?”
“It is more than a scruple: it is the certainty that there is but one
right course, and that I must hold by it to the end.”
“That certainty does not come out of your own heart or your own mind.
It is Cancellor who has made this law for you—Cancellor, a fanatic,
who knows nothing of domestic love—Cancellor, a man without a wife and
without a home. Is he to judge between you and me? Is he, who knows
nothing of the sacredness of wedded ties, to be allowed to break them,
only because he wears a cassock and has an eloquent tongue?”
“It was he who taught me my duty when I was a child. I accept his
teaching now as implicitly as I accepted it then.”
“And you do not mind breaking my heart: that does not hurt you,” said
Greswold.
His face was pallid as hers, and his lips trembled, half in anger, half
in scorn.
“O, George, you know my own heart is breaking. There can be no greater
pain possible to humanity than I have suffered since I left you.”
“And you will inflict this agony, and bear this agony? You will break
two hearts because of an anomaly in the marriage law—a rag of Rome—a
source of profit to Pope and priest—a prohibition made to be annulled—a
trap to fill the coffers of the Church! Do you know how foolish a law
it is, child, for which you show this blind reverence? Do you know
that it is only a bigoted minority among the nations that still abides
by it? Do you know that in that great new world across the seas a woman
may be a wife in one colony, and not a wife in another—honourable here,
despised there? It is all too foolish. What is it to either of us if my
first wife was your half-sister—a fact which neither of us can prove or
disprove?”
“God help me! it is proved only too clearly to me. We bear the mark
of our birthright in our faces. You must have seen that, George, long
before I saw Fay’s portrait in your hands. Are we not alike?”
“Not with the likeness of sisters. There is a look which might be a
family likeness—a look which puzzled me like the faint memory of a
dream when first I knew you. It was long before I discovered what the
likeness was, and where it lay. At most it was but a line here and
there. The arch of the brow, the form of the eyelid, an expression
about the mouth when you smile. Such accidental resemblances are common
enough. She was as much like César Castellani as she is like you. I
have seen a look in his face that curiously recalls an expression of
hers.”
“George, if I were not convinced, do you think I would grieve you, and
sacrifice all I have of earthly happiness? I cannot reason upon this
question. My conscience has answered it for me.”
“So be it. Let conscience be your guide, and not love. I have done.”
He took both her hands in his, and held them long, looking in her face
as he went on with what he had to say to her, gravely, without anger,
but with a touch of coldness that placed her very far away from him,
and marked the beginning of a life-long strangeness.
“It is settled, then,” he said; “we part for ever; but we are not going
to air our story in the law-courts, or fill latest editions of evening
papers with the details of our misery. We don’t want the law to annul
our marriage upon the ground of a forbidden affinity, and to cast a
slur upon our child in her grave.”
“No, no, no!”
“Then, though we are to spend our lives apart henceforward, in the
eyes of the world you will still be my wife; and I would not have the
lady who was once my wife placed in a false position. You cannot wander
about the Continent alone, Mildred—you are too young and too attractive
to travel without companionship. I have brought Pamela to be your
companion. The presence of my niece at your side will tell the world
that you have done no wrong to me or my name. It may be fairly supposed
that we part from some incompatibility of temper. You need give no
explanations; and you may be assured I shall answer no questions.”
“You are very good,” she faltered. “I shall be glad to have your niece
with me, only I am afraid the life will be a dreary one for her.”
“She does not think that. She is much attached to you. She is a frank
warm-hearted girl, with some common sense under a surface of frivolity.
She is at my hotel near at hand. If you think your aunt will give her
hospitality, she can come to you at once, and you and she can discuss
all your plans together. If there is anything in the way of business or
money matters that I can arrange for you—”
“No, there is nothing,” she said in a low voice; and then, suddenly,
she knelt at his feet, and clasped his hand, and cried over it.
“George, tell me that you forgive me, before we part for ever,” she
pleaded; “pity me, dear; pity and pardon!”
“Yes, I forgive you,” he said, gently raising her in his arms, and
leading her to the sofa. “Yes, child, I pity you. It is not your fault
that we are miserable. It may be better that we should part thus. The
future might be still darker for us if we did not so part. Good-bye.”
He bent over her as she sat in a drooping attitude, with her forehead
leaning against the end of the sofa, her hand and arm hanging lax
and motionless at her side. He laid his hand upon her head as if in
blessing, and then left her without another word.
“The future might be still darker if we did not part.” She repeated the
sentence slowly, pondering it as if it had been an enigma.
* * * * *
Miss Fausset expressed herself pleased to receive Miss Ransome as long
as it might suit Mildred’s convenience to stay in Lewes Crescent.
“Mr. Greswold has acted like a gentleman,” she said, after Mildred had
explained that it was her husband’s wish his niece should accompany her
abroad. “He is altogether superior to the common run of men. This young
lady belongs to the Anglican Church, I conclude?”
“Decidedly.”
“Then she cannot fail to appreciate the services at St. Edmund’s,” said
Miss Fausset; and thereupon gave orders that the second-best spare room
should be made ready for Miss Ransome.
Pamela arrived before afternoon tea, bringing Box, who was immediately
relegated to the care of the maids in the basement, and the information
that her uncle had gone back to Romsey _viâ_ Portsmouth, and was likely
to arrive at Enderby some time before midnight. Pamela was somewhat
embarrassed for the first quarter of an hour, and was evidently
afraid of Miss Fausset; but with her usual adaptability she was soon
at home in that chilly and colourless drawing-room. She was even
reconciled to the banishment of Box, feeling that it was a privilege
to have him anywhere in that orderly mansion, and intending to get him
clandestinely introduced into her bedroom when the household retired
for the night.
She pictured him as pining with grief in his exile, and it would have
disillusioned her could she have seen him basking in the glow of the
fire in the housekeeper’s room, snapping up pieces of muffin thrown him
by Franz, and beaming with intelligence upon the company.
A larger tea-table than usual had been set out in the inner
drawing-room, with two teapots, and a tempting array of dainty biscuits
and tea-cakes, such as the idle mind loveth. It was Miss Fausset’s
afternoon for receiving her friends, and from four o’clock upwards
carriages were heard to draw up below, and loquacious matrons with
silent daughters dribbled into the room and talked afternoon tea-talk,
chiefly matters connected with the church of St. Edmund’s and the
various charities and institutions associated with that edifice.
It seemed very slow, dull talk to the ears of Pamela, who had been
vitiated by sporting society, in which afternoon tea generally smelt of
cartridges or pigskin, and where conversation was sometimes enlivened
by the handing round of a new gun, or a patent rat-trap, for general
inspection. She tried to make talk with one of the youngest ladies
present, by asking her if she was fond of tennis: but she felt herself
snubbed when the damsel told her she had one of the worst districts in
Brighton, and no time for amusements of any kind.
Everybody had taken tea, and it was nearly six o’clock when the
feminine assembly became suddenly fluttered and alert at the
announcement of two gentlemen of clerical aspect: one tall, bulky,
shabby, and clumsy-looking, with a large pallid face, heavy features,
heavier brows; the other small and dapper, dressed to perfection in a
strictly clerical fashion, with fair complexion and neat auburn beard.
The first was Mr. Maltravers, Vicar of St. Edmund’s; the second was his
curate, the Honourable and Reverend Percival Cromer, fourth son of Lord
Lowestoft. It was considered a grand thing for St. Edmund’s that it had
a man of acknowledged power and eloquence for its vicar, and a peer’s
son for its curate.
Mr. Cromer was at once absorbed by a voluble matron who, with her three
daughters, had lingered in the hope of his dropping in after vespers;
but he contrived somehow to release himself from the sirens, and to
draw Miss Ransome into the conversation. Miss Fausset in the meantime
made the Vicar known to Mildred.
“You have often heard me speak of my niece,” she said, when the
introduction had been made.
Mildred was sitting apart from the rest, in the bay-window of the inner
room. She had withdrawn herself there on pretence of wanting light for
her needlework, the same group of azaleas she had been working upon at
Enderby, but really in order to be alone with her troubled thoughts;
and now Miss Fausset approached her with the tall, ponderous figure of
the priest, in his long threadbare coat.
She looked up, and found him scrutinising her intently under his
heavy brows. It was a clever face that so looked at her, but it did
not engage her sympathy, or convince her of the owner’s goodness, as
Clement Cancellor’s face had always done.
“Yes, I have heard you speak of Mrs. Greswold, your only near relative,
I think,” he said, addressing Miss Fausset, but never taking his eyes
off Mildred.
He dropped into a chair near Mildred, and Miss Fausset went back to her
duty at the tea-table, and to join in the conversation started by Mr.
Cromer, which had more animation than any previous talk that afternoon.
“You find your aunt looking well, I hope, Mrs. Greswold?” began the
Vicar, not very brilliantly, but what his speech wanted in meaning was
made up by the earnestness of his dark gray eyes, under beetling brows,
which seemed to penetrate Mildred’s inmost thoughts.
“Yes, she looks—as she has always done since I can remember—like a
person superior to all mortal feebleness.”
“She is superior to all other women I have ever met, a woman of truly
remarkable power and steadfastness; but with natures like hers the
sword is sometimes stronger than the scabbard. That slender, upright
form has an appearance of physical delicacy, as well as natural
refinement. Your aunt’s mind is a tower of strength, Mrs. Greswold. She
has been my strong rock from the beginning of my ministry here; but I
tremble for the hour when her health may break down under the task-work
she exacts from herself.”
“I know that she has a district, but I do not know the details of her
work,” said Mildred. “Is it very hard?”
“It is very hard, and very continuous. She labours unremittingly
among the poor, and she does a great deal of work of a wider and more
comprehensive kind. She is deaf to no appeal to her charity. The most
distant claims receive her thoughtful attention, even where she does
not feel it within the boundary-line of her duty to give substantial
aid. She writes more letters than many a private secretary; and, O Mrs.
Greswold—to you as very near and dear to her—I may say what I would
say to no other creature living. It has been my blessed office to be
brought face to face with her in the sacrament of confession. I have
seen the veil lifted from that white and spotless soul; spotless, yes,
in a world of sinners! I know what a woman your aunt is.”
His low searching tones fell distinctly upon Mildred’s ear, yet hardly
rose above a whisper. The babble, lay and clerical, went on in the
other drawing-room, and these two were as much alone in the shadow of
the window-curtains and the gray light of the fading day as if they had
been priest and penitent in a confessional.