AS THE SANDS RUN DOWN.
Mildred was in Brighton upon the third day after she left Nice. She had
sent no intimation of her coming to her aunt, lest her visit should
be forbidden. A nervous invalid is apt to have fancies, and to resent
anything that looks like being taken care of. She arrived, therefore,
unannounced, left her luggage at the station, and drove straight to
Lewes Crescent, where the butler received her with every appearance of
surprise.
It was early in the afternoon, and Miss Fausset was sitting in her
accustomed chair in the back drawing-room, near the fire, with her
book-table on her right hand. The balmy spring-time which Mildred had
left at Nice had not yet visited Brighton, where the season had been
exceptionally cold, and where a jovial north-easter was holding his
revels all over Kemp Town, and enlivening the cold gray sea. A pleasant
bracing day for robust health and animal spirits; but not altogether
the kind of atmosphere to suit an elderly spinster suffering from
nervous depression.
Miss Fausset started up, flushed with surprise, at Mildred’s entrance.
Her niece had kept her acquainted with her movements, but had told her
nothing of the drama of her existence since she left Brighton.
“My dear child, I am very glad to see you back,” she said gently. “You
are come to stay with me for a little while, I hope, before—”
She hesitated, and looked at Mildred earnestly.
“Are you reconciled to your husband?” she asked abruptly, as if with
irrepressible anxiety.
“Reconciled?” echoed Mildred; “we have never quarrelled. He is as dear
to me to-day as he was the day I married him—dearer for all the years
we spent together. But we are parted for ever. You know that it must be
so, and you know why.”
“I hoped that time would have taught you common sense.”
“Time has only confirmed my resolution. Do not let us argue the point,
aunt. I know that you mean kindly, but I know that you are false to
your own principles—to all the teaching of your life—when you argue on
the side of wrong.”
Miss Fausset turned her head aside impatiently. She had sunk back into
her chair after greeting Mildred, and her niece perceived that she, who
used to sit erect as a dart, in the most uncompromising attitude, was
now propped up with cushions, against which her wasted figure leaned
heavily.
“How have you got through the winter, aunt?” Mildred asked presently.
“Not very well. It has tried me more than any other winter I can
remember. It has been a long weary winter. I have been obliged to give
up the greater part of my district work. I held on as long as ever I
could, till my strength failed me. And now I have to trust the work to
others. I have my lieutenants—Emily Newton and her sister—who work for
me. You remember them, perhaps. Earnest good girls. They keep me _en
rapport_ with my poor people; but it is not like personal intercourse.
I begin to feel what it is to be useless—to cumber the ground.”
“My dear aunt, how can you talk so? Your life has been so full of
usefulness that you may well afford to take rest now that your health
is not quite so good as it has been. Even in your drawing-room here
you are doing good. It is only right that young people should carry
out your instructions, and work for you. I have heard, too, of your
munificent gift to St. Edmund’s.”
“It is nothing, my dear. When all is counted, it is nothing. I have
tried to lead a righteous life. I have tried to do good; but now
sitting alone by this fire day after day, night after night, it all
seems vain and empty. There is no comfort in the thought of it all,
Mildred. I have had the praise of men, but never the approval of my own
conscience.”
There was a brief silence, Mildred feeling it vain to argue against
her aunt’s tone of self-upbraiding, unable to fathom the mind which
prompted the words.
“Then you are not going back to your husband?” Miss Fausset asked
abruptly, as if in utter forgetfulness of all that had been said; and
then suddenly recollecting herself, “you have made up your mind, you
say. Well, in that case you can stay with me—make this your home. You
may take up my work, perhaps—by and by.”
“Yes, aunt, I hope I may be able to do so. My life has been idle and
useless since my great sorrow. I want to learn to be of more use in the
world; and you can teach me, if you will.”
“I will, Mildred. I want you to be happy. I have made my will. You will
inherit the greater part of my fortune.”
“My dear aunt, I don’t want—”
“No, you are rich enough already, I know; but I should like you to have
still larger means, to profit by my death. You will use your wealth
for the good of others, as I have tried—feebly tried—to use mine. You
will be rich enough to found a sisterhood, if you like—the Sisters of
St. Edmund. I have done all I mean to do for the Church. Mr. Maltravers
knows that.”
“Dear aunt, why should we talk of these things? You have many years of
life before you, I hope.”
“No, Mildred, the end is not far off. I feel worn out and broken. I am
a doomed woman.”
“But you have had no serious illness since I was here?”
“No, no, nothing specific; only languor and shattered nerves, want of
appetite, want of sleep: the sure indications of decay. My doctor can
find no name for my malady. He tries one remedy after another, until I
weary of his experiments. I am glad you have come to me, Mildred; but I
should be gladder if you were going back to your husband.”
“O, aunt, why do you say things which you know must torture me?”
“Because I am worried by your folly. Well, I will say no more. You
will stay with me and comfort me, if you can. What have you done with
Pamela?”
Mildred told her aunt about Lady Lochinvar’s invitation.
“Ah! she is with Lady Lochinvar. A very frivolous person, I suppose.
Your husband’s niece is a well-meaning silly girl; sure to get into
mischief of some kind. Is she still in love with César Castellani?”
“I think not—I hope not. I believe she is cured of that folly.”
“You call it a folly? Well, perhaps you are right. It may be
foolishness for a girl to follow the blind instinct of her heart.”
“For an impulsive girl like Pamela.”
“Yes, no doubt she is impulsive, generous, and uncalculating; a girl
hardly to be trusted with her own fate,” said Miss Fausset, with a
sigh, and then she lapsed into silence.
Mr. Maltravers had not exaggerated the change in her. It was only too
painfully evident. Her manner and bearing had altered since Mildred
had seen her last. Physically and mentally her nature seemed to have
relaxed and broken down. It was as if the springs that sustained the
human machine had snapped. The whole mechanism was out of gear. She who
had been so firm of speech and meaning, who had been wont to express
herself with a cold and cutting decisiveness, was now feeble and
wailing, repeating herself, harping upon the same old string, obviously
forgetful of that which had gone before.
Mildred felt that she would be only doing her duty in taking up her
abode in the great dull house, and trying to soothe the tedium of
decay. She could do very little, perhaps, but the fact of near kindred
would be in itself a solace, and for her own part she would have the
sense of duty done.
“I will stay with you as long as you will have me, aunt,” she said
gently. “Albrecht is below. May I send to the station for my luggage?”
“Of course, and your rooms shall be got ready immediately. The house
will be yours before very long, perhaps. It would be strange if you
could not make it your home!”
She touched a spring on her book-table, which communicated with the
electric-bell, and Franz appeared promptly.
“Tell them to get Mrs. Greswold’s old rooms ready at once, and send
Albrecht to the station for the luggage,” ordered Miss Fausset, with
something of her old decisiveness. “Louisa is with you, I suppose?” she
added to her niece.
“Louisa is at the station, looking after my things. Albrecht leaves me
to-day. He has been a good servant, and I think he has had an easy
place. I have not been an eager traveller.”
“No; you seem to have taken life at a slow pace. What took you to Nice?
It is not a place I should have chosen if I wanted quiet.”
Mildred hesitated for some moments before she replied to this question.
“You know one part of my sorrow, aunt; and I think I might trust you
with the whole of that sad story. I went to Nice because it was the
place where my husband lived with his first wife—where my unhappy
sister died.”
“She died at Nice?” repeated Miss Fausset, with an abstracted air, as
if her power of attention, which had revived for a little just now,
were beginning to flag.
“She died there, under the saddest circumstances. I am heart-broken
when I think of her and that sad fate. My own dear Fay, how hard that
your loving heart should be an instrument of self-torture! She was
jealous of her husband—causelessly, unreasonably jealous—and she killed
herself in a paroxysm of despair!”
The awfulness of this fact roused Miss Fausset from her apathy. She
started up from amongst her cushions, staring at Mildred in mute
horror, and her wasted hands trembled as they grasped the arm of her
chair.
“Surely, surely that can’t be true!” she faltered. “It is too dreadful!
People tell such lies—an accident, perhaps, exaggerated into a suicide.
An overdose of an opiate!”
“No, no; it was nothing like that. There is no doubt. I heard it from
those who knew. She flung herself over the edge of the cliff; she
was walking with her husband—my husband, George Greswold—then George
Ransome; they were walking together; they quarrelled; he said something
that stung her to the quick, and she threw herself over the cliff. It
was the wild impulse of a moment, for which an all-merciful God would
not hold her accountable. She was in very delicate health, nervous,
hysterical, and she fancied herself unloved, betrayed, perhaps. Ah,
aunt, think how hardly she had been used—cast off, disowned, sent out
alone into the world—by those who should have loved and protected her.
Poor, poor Fay! My mother sent her away from The Hook where she was so
happy. My mother’s jealousy drove her out—a young girl, so friendless,
so lonely, so much in need of love. It was my mother’s doing; but my
father ought not to have allowed it. If she was weak he was strong, and
Fay was his daughter. It was his duty to protect her against all the
world. You know how I loved my father; you know that I reverence his
memory; but he played a coward’s part when he sent Fay out of his house
to please my mother.”
She was carried away by her passionate regret for that ill-used girl
whose image had never lost its hold upon her heart.
“Not a word against your father, Mildred. He was a good man. He never
failed in affection or in duty. He acted for the best according to his
lights in relation to that unhappy girl—unhappy—ill-used—yes, yes, yes.
He did his best, Mildred. He must not be blamed. But it is dreadful to
think that she killed herself.”
“Had you heard nothing of her fate, aunt? My father must have been
told, surely. There must have been some means of communication. He
must have kept himself informed about her fate, although she was
banished, given over to the care of strangers. If he had owned a dog
which other people took care of for him he would have been told when
the dog died.”
Miss Fausset felt the unspeakable bitterness of this comparison.
“You must not speak like that of your father, Mildred. You ought to
know that he was a good man. Yes, he knew, of course, when that poor
girl died, but it was not his business to tell other people. I only
heard incidentally that she had married, and that she died within a
year of her marriage. I heard no more. It was the end of a sad story.”
Again there was an interval of silence. It was six o’clock; the sun was
going down over the sea beyond the West Pier, and the lawn, and the
fashionable garden where the gay world congregates; and this eastern
end of the long white seafront was lapsing into grayness, through
which a star shone dimly here and there. It looked a cold, dull world
after the pink hotel and the green shutters, the dusty palms and the
turquoise sea of the Promenade des Anglais; but Mildred was glad to
be in England, glad to be so much nearer him whose life companion she
could never be again.
Franz brought her some tea presently, and informed her that her rooms
were ready, and that Louisa had arrived with the luggage. Albrecht had
left his humble duty for his honoured mistress, and was gone.
“When your father died, you looked through his papers and letters, no
doubt?” said Miss Fausset presently, after a pause in the conversation.
“Yes, aunt, I looked through my dear father’s letters, and arranged
everything with our old family solicitor, Mr. Cresswell,” answered
Mildred, surprised at a question which seemed to have no bearing upon
anything that had gone before.
“And you found no documents relating to—that unhappy girl?”
“Not a line—not a word. But I had not expected to find anything. The
history of her birth was the one dark secret of my father’s life—he
would naturally leave no trace of the story.”
“Naturally, if he were wiser than most people. But I have observed
that men of business have a passion for preserving documents, even
when they are worthless. People keep compromising papers with the idea
of destroying them on their death-beds, or when they feel the end is
near; and then death comes without warning, and the papers remain. Your
father’s end was somewhat sudden.”
“Sadly sudden. When he left Enderby in the autumn he was in excellent
health. The shooting had been better than usual that year, and I think
he had enjoyed it as much as the youngest of our party. And then
he went back to London, and the London fogs—caught cold, neglected
himself, and we were summoned to Parchment Street to find him dying of
inflammation of the lungs. It was terrible—such a brief farewell, such
an irreparable loss.”
“I was not sent for,” said Miss Fausset severely. “And yet I loved your
father dearly.”
“It was wrong, aunt; but we hoped against hope almost to the last.
It was only within a few hours of the end that we knew the case was
hopeless, and to summon you would have been to give him the idea
that he was dying. George and I pretended that our going to him was
accidental. We were so fearful of alarming him.”
“Well, I daresay you acted for the best; but it was a heavy blow for me
to be told that he was gone—my only brother—almost my only friend.”
“Pray don’t say that, aunt. I hope you know that I love you.”
“My dear, you love me because I am your father’s sister. You consider
it your duty to love me. My brother loved me for my own sake. He was a
noble-hearted man.”
Miss Fausset and her niece dined together _tête-à-tête_, and spent
the evening quietly on each side of the hearth, with their books and
work, the kind of work which encourages pensive brooding, as the needle
travels slowly over the fabric.
“I wonder you have no pets, aunt—no favourite dog.”
“I have never cared for that kind of affection, Mildred. I am of too
hard a nature, perhaps. My heart does not open itself to dogs and cats,
and parrots are my abomination. I am not like the typical spinster.
My only solace in the long weary years has been in going among people
who are more unhappy than myself. I have put myself face to face with
sordid miseries, with heavy life-long burdens; and I have asked myself,
What is _your_ trouble compared with these?”
“Dear aunt, it seems to me that your life must have been particularly
free from trouble and care.”
“Perhaps, in its outward aspect. I am rich, and I have been looked
up to. But do you think those long years of loneliness—the aimless,
monotonous pilgrimage through life—have not been a burden? Do you think
I have not—sometimes, at any rate—envied other women their children and
their husbands—the atmosphere of domestic love, even with its attendant
cares and sorrows? Do you suppose that I could live for a quarter of
a century as I have lived, and not feel the burden of my isolation? I
have made people care for me through their self-interest. I have made
people honour me, because I have the means of helping them. But who is
there who cares for me, Gertrude Fausset?”
“You cannot have done so much for others without being sincerely loved
in return.”
“With a kind of love, perhaps—a love that has been bought.”
“Why did you never marry, aunt?”
“Because I was an heiress and a good match, and distrusted every man
who wanted to marry me. I made a vow to myself, before my twentieth
birthday, that I would never listen to words of love or give
encouragement to a lover; and I most scrupulously kept that vow. I was
called a handsome woman in those days; but I was not an attractive
woman at any time. Nature had made me of too hard a clay.”
“It was a pity that you should keep love at arm’s length.”
“Far better than to have been fooled by shams, as I might have been.
Don’t say any more about it, Mildred. I made my vow, and I kept it.”
Mildred resigned herself quietly to the idea of the dull slow life in
Lewes Crescent. This duty of solacing her aunt’s declining days was the
only duty that remained to her, except that wider duty of caring for
the helpless and the wretched. And she told herself that there could be
no better school in which to learn how to help others than the house of
Miss Fausset, who had given so much of her life to the poor.
She had been told to consider her aunt’s house as her own, and that
she was at liberty to receive Pamela there as much and as often as she
liked. She did not think that Pamela would be long without a settled
home. Mr. Stuart’s admiration and Lady Lochinvar’s wishes had been
obvious; and Mildred daily expected a gushing letter from the fickle
damsel, announcing her engagement to the Scotchman.
At four o’clock on the day after Mildred’s arrival, Miss Fausset’s
friends began to drop in for afternoon tea and talk, and Mildred was
surprised to see how her aunt rallied in that long-familiar society.
It seemed as if the praises and flatteries of these people acted upon
her like strong wine. The languid attitude, the weary expression of
the pale drawn face, were put aside. She sat erect again; her eyes
brightened, her ear was alert to follow three or four conversations
at a time; nothing escaped her. Mildred began to think that she
had lived upon the praises of men rather than upon the approval of
conscience—that these assiduities and flatteries of a very commonplace
circle were essential to her happiness.
Mr. Maltravers came after the vesper service, full of life and
conversation, vigorous, self-satisfied, with an air of Papal dominion
and Papal infallibility, so implicitly believed in by his flock that
he had learned to believe as implicitly in himself. The flock was
chiefly feminine, and worshipped without limit or reservation. There
were husbands and sons, brothers and nephews, who went to church with
their womenkind on Sunday; but these were for the most part without
enthusiasm for Mr. Maltravers. Their idea of public worship went
scarcely beyond considering Sunday morning service a respectable
institution, not to be dispensed with lightly.
Mr. Maltravers welcomed Mildred with touching friendliness.
“I knew you would not fail your aunt in the hour of need,” he said;
“and now I hope you are going to stay with her, and to take up her
work when she lays it down, so that the golden thread of womanly
charity may be unbroken.”
“I hope I may be able to take up her work. I shall stay with her as
long as she needs me.”
“That is well. You found her sadly changed, did you not?”
“Yes, she is much changed. Yet how bright she looks this afternoon!
what interest she takes in the conversation!”
“The flash of the falchion in the worn-out scabbard,” said Mr.
Maltravers.
A layman might have said sword, but Mr. Maltravers preferred falchion,
as a more picturesque word. Half the success of his preaching had lain
in the choice of picturesque words. There were sceptics among his
masculine congregation who said there were no ideas in his sermons;
only fine words, romantic similes—a perpetual recurrence of fountains
and groves, sunset splendours and roseate dawns, golden gates and
starry canopies, seas of glass, harps of gold. But if his female
worshippers felt better and holier after listening to him, what could
one ask more?—and they all declared that it was so. They came out of
church spiritualised, overflowing with Christian love, and gave their
pence eagerly to the crossing-sweepers on their way home.
The dropping in and the tea-drinking went on for nearly two hours.
Mr. Maltravers took four cups of tea, and consumed a good deal of
bread-and-butter, abstaining from the chocolate biscuits and the
poundcake which the ladies of the party affected; abstaining on
principle, as saints and eremites of old abstained from high living.
He allowed himself to enjoy the delicate aroma of the tea and the
delicately-cut bread-and-butter. He was a bachelor, and lived poorly
upon badly-cooked food at his vicarage. His only personal indulgence
was in the accumulation of a theological library, in which all the
books were of a High Church cast.
When the visitors were all gone Miss Fausset sank back into her chair,
white and weary-looking, and Mildred left her to take a little nap
while she went up to her own room, half boudoir, half dressing-room, a
spacious apartment, with a fine seaview. Here she sat in a reverie,
and watched the fading sky and the slow dim stars creeping out one by
one.
Was she really to take up her aunt’s work, to live in a luxurious
home, a lonely loveless woman, and to go out in a methodical, almost
mechanical way so many times a week, to visit among the poor? Would
such a life as that satisfy her in all the long slow years?
The time would come, perhaps, when she would find peace in such a
life—when her heart would know no grief except the griefs of others;
when she would have cast off the fetters of selfish cares and selfish
yearnings, and would stand alone, as saints and martyrs and holy
women of old had stood—alone with God and His poor. There were women
she knew, even in these degenerate days, who so lived and so worked,
seeking no guerdon but the knowledge of good done in this world, and
the hope of the crown immortal. Her day of sacrifice had not yet
come. She had not been able to dissever her soul from the hopes and
sorrows of earth. She had not been able to forget the husband she had
forsaken—even for a single hour. When she knelt down to pray at night,
when she awoke in the morning, her thoughts were with him. “How does he
bear his solitude? Has he learnt to forget me and to be happy?” Those
questions were ever present to her mind.
And now at Brighton, knowing herself so near him, her heart yearned
more than ever for the sight of the familiar face, for the sound of
the beloved voice. She pored over the time-table, and calculated the
length of the journey—the time lost at Portsmouth and Bishopstoke—every
minute until the arrival at Romsey; and then the drive to Enderby. She
pictured the lanes in the early May—the hedgerows bursting into leaf,
the banks where the primroses were opening, the tender young ferns
just beginning to uncurl their feathery fronds, the spearpoints of the
hartstongue shooting up amidst rank broad docks, and lords and ladies,
and the flower on the leafless blackthorn making patches of white
amongst the green.
How easy it was to reach him! how natural it would seem to hasten to
him after half a year of exile! and yet she must not. She had pledged
herself to honour the law; to obey the letter and the spirit of that
harsh law which decreed that her sister’s husband could not be hers.
She knew that he was at Enderby, and she had some ground for supposing
that he was well, and even contented. She had seen the letters which
he had written to his niece. He had written about the shooting, his
horses, his dogs; and there had been no word to indicate that he was
out of health, or in low spirits. Mildred had pored over those brief
letters, forgetting to return them to their rightful owner, cherishing
them as if they made a kind of link between her and the love she had
resigned.
How firm the hand was!—that fine and individual penmanship which she
had so admired in the past—the hand in which her first love-letter
had been written. It was but little altered in fifteen years. She
recalled the happy hour when she received that first letter from her
affianced husband. He had gone to London a day or two after their
betrothal, eager to make all arrangements for their marriage, impatient
for settlements and legal machinery which should make their union
irrevocable, full of plans for immediate improvements at Enderby.
She remembered how she ran out into the garden to read that first
letter—a long letter, though they had been parted less than a day when
it was written. She had gone to the remotest nook in that picturesque
riverside garden, a rustic bower by the water’s edge, an osier arbour
over which her own hands had trained the Céline Forestieri roses.
They were in flower on that happy day—clusters of pale yellow bloom,
breathing perfume round her as she sat beneath the blossoming arch and
devoured her lover’s fond words. O, how bright life had been then for
both of them!—for her without a cloud.
He was well—that was something to know; but it was not enough. Her
heart yearned for fuller knowledge of his life than those letters gave.
Wounded pride might have prompted that cheerful tone. He might wish her
to think him happy and at ease without her. He thought that she had
used him ill. It was natural, perhaps, that he should think so, since
he could not see things as she saw them. He had not her deep-rooted
convictions. She thought of him and wondered about him till the desire
for further knowledge grew into an aching pain. She must write to
some one; she must do something to quiet this gnawing anxiety. In her
trouble she thought of all her friends in the neighbourhood of Enderby;
but there was none in whom she could bring herself to confide except
Rollinson, the curate. She had thought first of writing to the doctor,
but he was something of a gossip, and would be likely to prattle to
his patients about her letter, and her folly in forsaking so good a
husband. Rollinson she felt she might trust. He was a thoughtful young
man, despite his cheery manners and some inclination to facetiousness
of a strictly clerical order. He was one of a large family, and had
known trouble, and Mildred had been especially kind to him and to
the sisters who from time to time had shared his apartments at the
carpenter’s, and had revelled in the gaieties of Enderby parish, the
penny-reading at the schoolhouse, the sale of work for the benefit of
the choir, and an occasional afternoon for tea and tennis at the Manor.
Those maiden sisters of the curate’s had known and admired Lola, and
Mr. Rollinson had been devoted to her from his first coming to the
parish, when she was a lovely child of seven.
Mildred wrote fully and frankly to the curate.
“I cannot enter upon the motive of our separation,” she wrote, “except
so far as to tell you that it is a question of principle which
has parted us. My husband has been blameless in all his domestic
relations, the best of husbands, the noblest of men. Loving him with
all my heart, trusting and honouring him as much as on my wedding-day,
I yet felt it my duty to leave him. I should not make this explanation
to any one else at Enderby, but I wish you to know the truth. If
people ever question you about my reasons you can tell them that it
is my intention ultimately to enter an Anglican Sisterhood, or it
may be to found a Sisterhood, and to devote my declining years to
my sorrowing fellow-creatures. This is my fixed intention, but my
vocation is yet weak. My heart cleaves to the old home and all that I
lost in leaving it.
“And now, my kind friend, I want you to tell me how my husband fares
in his solitude. If he were ill and unhappy he would be too generous
to complain to me. Tell me how he is in health and spirits. Tell me
of his daily life, his amusements, occupations. There is not the
smallest detail which will not interest me. You see him, I hope,
often; certainly you are likely to see him oftener than any one else
in the parish. Tell me all you can, and be assured of my undying
gratitude.—Ever sincerely yours,
MILDRED GRESWOLD.”
Mr. Rollinson’s reply came by return of post:
“I am very glad you have written to me, dear Mrs. Greswold. Had I
known your address, I think I should have taken the initiative,
and written to you. Believe me, I respect your motive for the act
which has, I fear, cast a blight upon a good man’s life; and I will
venture to say no more than that the motive should be a very strong
one which forces you to persevere in a course that has wrecked your
husband’s happiness, and desolated one of the most delightful and most
thoroughly Christian homes I had ever the privilege of entering. I
look back and recall what Enderby Manor was, and I think what it is
now, and I can hardly compare those two pictures without tears.
“You ask me to tell you frankly all I can tell about your husband’s
mode of life, his health and spirits. All I can tell is summed up
in four words: his heart is broken. In my deep concern about his
desolate position, in my heartfelt regard for him, I have ventured
to force my society upon him sometimes when I could not doubt it was
unwelcome. He received me with all his old kindness of manner; but
I am sympathetic enough to know when a man only endures my company,
and I know that his feeling was at best endurance. But I believe
that he trusts me, and that he was less upon his guard with me than
he is with other acquaintances. I have seen him put on an appearance
of cheerfulness with other people. I have heard him talk to other
people as if life had in nowise lost its interest for him. With me
he dropped the mask. I saw him brooding by his hearth, as he broods
when he is alone. I heard his involuntary sighs. I saw the image of a
shipwrecked existence. Indeed, Mrs. Greswold, there is nothing else
that I can tell you if you would have me truthful. You have broken
his heart. You have sacrificed your love to a principle, you say. You
should be very sure of your principle. You ask me as to his habits
and occupations. I believe they are about as monotonous as those of
a galley-slave. He walks a great deal—in all weathers and at all
hours—but rarely beyond his own land. I don’t think he often rides;
and he has not hunted once during the season. He did a little shooting
in October and November, quite alone. He has had no staying visitor
within his doors since you left him.
“I have reason to know that he goes to the churchyard every evening
at dusk, and spends some time beside your daughter’s grave. I have
seen him there several times when it was nearly dark, and he had no
apprehension of being observed. You know how rarely any one enters our
quiet little burial-ground, and how complete a solitude it is at that
twilight hour. I am about the only passer-by, and even I do not pass
within sight of the old yew-tree above your darling’s resting-place,
unless I go a little out of my way between the vestry-door and the
lych-gate. I have often gone out of my way to note that lonely figure
by the grave. Be assured, dear Mrs. Greswold, that in sending you this
gloomy picture of a widowed life I have had no wish to distress you. I
have exaggerated nothing. I wish you to know the truth; and if it lies
within your power—without going against your conscience—to undo that
which you have done, I entreat you to do so without delay. There may
not be much time to be lost.—Believe me, devotedly and gratefully your
friend,
FREDERICK ROLLINSON.”
Mildred shed bitter tears over the curate’s letter. How different the
picture it offered from that afforded by George Greswold’s own letters,
in which he had written cheerily of the shooting, the dogs and horses,
the changes in the seasons, and the events of the outer world! That
frank easy tone had been part of his armour of pride. He would not
abase himself by the admission of his misery. He had guessed, no doubt,
that his wife would read those letters, and he would not have her know
the extent of the ruin she had wrought.
She thought of him in his solitude, pictured him beside their child’s
grave, and the longing to look upon him once more—unseen by him, if it
could be so—became irresistible. She determined to see with her own
eyes if he were as unhappy as Mr. Rollinson supposed. She, who knew him
so well, would be better able to judge by his manner and bearing—better
able to divine the inner workings of his heart and mind. It had been a
habit of her life to read his face, to guess his thoughts before they
found expression in words. He had never been able to keep a secret from
her, except that one long-hidden story of the past; and even there she
had known that there was something. She had seen the shadow of that
abiding remorse.
“I am going to leave you for two days, aunt,” she said rather abruptly,
on the morning after she received Rollinson’s letter. “I want to look
at Lola’s grave. I shall go from here to Enderby as fast as the train
will take me; spend an hour in the churchyard; go on to Salisbury for
the night; and come back to you to-morrow afternoon.”
“You mean that you are going back to your husband?”
“No, no. I may see him, perhaps, by accident. I shall not enter the
Manor House. I am going to the churchyard—nowhere else.”
“You would be wiser if you went straight home. Remember, years hence,
when I am dead and gone, that I told you as much. You must do as you
like—stay at an inn at Salisbury, while your own beautiful home is
empty, or anything else that is foolish and wrong-headed. You had
better let Franz go with you.”
“Thanks, aunt; I would not take him away on any account. I can get on
quite well by myself.”
She left Brighton at midday, lost a good deal of time at the two
junctions, and drove to within a few hundred yards of Enderby Church
just as the bright May day was melting into evening. There was a
path across some meadows at the back of the village that led to the
churchyard. She stopped the fly by the meadow-gate, and told the man
to drive round to Mr. Rollinson’s lodgings, and wait for her there;
and then she walked slowly along the narrow footpath, between the long
grass, golden with buttercups in the golden evening.
It was a lovely evening. There was a little wood of oaks and chestnuts
on her left hand as she approached the churchyard, and the shrubberies
of Enderby Manor were on her right. The trees she knew so well—her own
trees—the tall mountain-ash and the clump of beeches, rose above the
lower level of lilacs and laburnums, acacia and rose maple. There was
a nightingale singing in the thick foliage yonder—there was always a
nightingale at this season somewhere in the shrubbery. She had lingered
many a time with her husband to listen to that unmistakable melody.
The dark foliage of the churchyard made an inky blot midst all that
vernal greenery. Those immemorial yews, which knew no change with the
changing years, spread their broad shadows over the lowly graves, and
made night in God’s acre while it was yet day in the world outside.
Mildred went into the churchyard as if into the realm of death. The
shadows closed round her on every side, and the change from light to
gloom chilled her as she walked slowly towards the place where her
child was lying.
Yes, he was there, just as the curate had told her. He stood leaning
against the long horizontal branch of the old yew, looking down at the
marble which bore his daughter’s name. He was very pale, and his sunken
eyes and hollow cheeks told of failing health. He stood motionless, in
a gloomy reverie. His wife watched him from a little way off; she stood
motionless as himself—stood and watched him till the beating of her
heart sounded so loud in her own ears that she thought he too must hear
that passionate throbbing.
She had thought when she set out on her journey that it would be
sufficient for her just to see him, and that having seen him she would
go away and leave him without his ever knowing that she had looked upon
him. But now the time had come it was not enough. The impulse to draw
nearer and to speak to him was too strong to be denied: she went with
tottering footsteps to the side of the grave, and called him by his
name:
“George! George!” holding out her hands to him piteously.