“HOW SHOULD I GREET THEE?”
The marble countenance scarcely changed as he looked up at her. He took
no notice of the outstretched hands.
“What brings you here, Mildred?” he asked coldly.
“I heard that you were ill; I wanted to see for myself,” she faltered.
“I am not ill, and I have not been ill. You were misinformed.”
“I was told you were unhappy.”
“Did you require to be told that? You did not expect to hear that I
was particularly happy, I suppose? At my age men have forgotten how to
forget.”
“It would be such a relief to my mind if you could find new
occupations, new interests, as I hope to do by and by—a wider horizon.
You are so clever. You have so many gifts, and it is a pity to bury
them all here.”
“My heart is buried here,” he answered, looking down at the grave.
“Your heart, yes; but you might find work for your mind—a noble career
before you—in politics, in philanthropy.”
“I am not ambitious, and I am too old to adapt myself to a new life.
I prefer to live as I am living. Enderby is my hermitage. It suits me
well enough.”
There was a silence after this—a silence of despair. Mildred knelt on
the dewy grass, and bent herself over the marble cross, and kissed the
cold stone. She could reach no nearer than that marble to the child she
loved. Her lips lingered there. Her heart ached with a dull pain, and
she felt the utter hopelessness of her life more keenly than she had
felt it yet. If she could but die there, at his feet, and make an end!
She rose after some minutes. Her husband’s attitude was unchanged; but
he looked at her now, for the first time, with a direct and earnest
gaze.
“What took you to Nice?” he asked.
“I wanted to know—all about my unhappy sister.”
“And you are satisfied—you know all; and you think as some of my
neighbours thought of me. You believe that I killed my wife.”
“George, can you think so meanly of me—your wife of fourteen years?”
“You spare me, then, so far, in spite of circumstantial evidence. You
do not think of me as a murderer?”
“I have never for a moment doubted your goodness to that unhappy girl,”
she answered, with a stifled sob. “I am sorry for her with all my
heart; but I cannot blame you.”
“There you are wrong. I was to blame. You know that I do not easily
lose my temper—to a woman, least of all; but that day I lost control
over myself—lost patience with her just when she was in greatest
need of my forbearance. She was nervous and hysterical. I forgot her
weakness. I spoke to her cruelly—lashed and goaded by her causeless
jealousies—so persistent, so irritating—like the continual dropping
of water. How I have suffered for that moment of anger God alone can
know. If remorse can be expiation, I have expiated that unpremeditated
sin!”
“Yes, yes, I know how you have suffered. Your dreams have told me.”
“Ah, those dreams! You can never imagine the agony of them. To fancy
her walking by my side, bright and happy, as she so seldom was upon
this earth, and to tell myself that I had never been unkind to her,
that her suicide was a dream and a delusion, and then to feel the dull
cold reality creep back into my brain, and to know that I was guilty
of her death. Yes, I have held myself guilty. I have never paltered
with my conscience. Had I been patient to the end, she might have
lived to be the happy mother of my child. Her whole life might have
been changed. I never loved her, Mildred. Fate and her own impulsive
nature flung her into my arms; but I accepted the charge; I made myself
responsible to God and my own conscience for her well-being.”
Mildred’s only answer was a sob. She stretched out her hand, and laid
it falteringly upon the hand that hung loose across the branch of the
yew, as if in token of trustfulness.
“Did you find out anything more in your retrospective gropings—at
Nice?” he asked, with a touch of bitterness.
She was silent.
“Did you hear that I was out of my mind after my wife’s death?”
“Yes.”
“Did that shock you? Did it horrify you to know you had lived fourteen
years with a _ci-devant_ lunatic?”
“George, how can you say such things! I could perfectly understand
how your mind was affected by that dreadful event—how the strongest
brain might be unhinged by such a sorrow. I can sympathise with you,
and understand you in the past as I can in the present. How can you
forget that I am your wife, a part of yourself, able to read all your
thoughts?”
“I cannot forget that you have been my wife; but your sympathy and your
affection seem very far off now—as remote almost as that tragedy which
darkened my youth. It is all past and done with—the sorrow and pain,
the hope and gladness. I have done with everything—except my regret for
my child.”
“Can you believe that I feel the parting less than you, George?” she
asked piteously.
“I don’t know. The parting is your work. You have the satisfaction
of self-sacrifice—the pride which women who go to church twice a day
have in renouncing earthly happiness. They school themselves first in
trifles—giving up this and that—theatres, fiction, cheerful society—and
then their ambition widens. These petty sacrifices are not enough,
and they renounce a husband and a home. If the husband cannot see the
necessity, and cannot kiss the rod, so much the worse for him. His
wife has the perverted pride of an Indian widow who flings her young
life upon the funeral pile, jubilant at the thought of her own exalted
virtue.”
“Would you not sacrifice your happiness to your conscience, George, if
conscience spoke plainly?” Mildred asked reproachfully.
“I don’t know. Human love might be too strong for conscience. God
knows I would not have sacrificed you to a scruple—to a law made by
man. God’s laws are different. There is no doubt about them.”
The evening was darkening. The nightingale burst out suddenly into loud
melody, more joyous than her reputation. Mildred could see the lights
in the house that had been her home. The lamp-light in the drawing-room
shone across the intervening space of lawn and shrubberies; the broad
window shone vividly at the end of a vista, like a star. O lovely room,
O happy life; so far off, so impossible for evermore!
“Good-night and good-bye,” Mildred sighed, holding out her hand.
“Good-bye,” he answered, taking the small cold hand, only to let it
drop again.
He made no inquiry as to how she had come there, or whither she was
going. She had appeared to him suddenly as a spirit in the soft
eventide, and he let her go from him unquestioned, as if she had been
a spirit. She felt the coldness of her dismissal, and yet felt that it
could be no otherwise. She must be all to him or nothing. After love
so perfect as theirs had been there could be no middle course.
She went across the meadow by the way she had come, and through the
village street, where all the doors were closed at this hour, and
paraffin-lamps glowed brightly in parlour-windows. Dear little humble
street, how her heart yearned over it as she went silently by like a
ghost, closely veiled, a slender figure dressed in black! She had been
very fond of her villagers, had entered into their lives and been a
brightening influence for most of them, she and her child. Lola had
been familiar with every creature in the place, from the humpbacked
cobbler at the corner to the gray-haired postmaster in the white
half-timbered cottage yonder, where the letter-boxes were approached
by a narrow path across a neat little garden. Lola had entered into
all their lives, and had been glad and sorry with them with a power of
sympathy which was the only precocious element in her nature. She had
been a child in all things except charity; there she had been a woman.
There was a train for Salisbury in half-an-hour, and there was a later
train at ten o’clock. Mildred had intended to travel at the earlier
hour, but she felt an irresistible inclination to linger in the beloved
place where her happiness was buried. She wanted to see some one who
would talk to her of her husband, and she knew that the curate could
be trusted; so she determined upon waiting for the later train, in the
event of her finding Mr. Rollinson at home.
The paraffin-lamp in the parlour over the carpenter’s shop was
brighter than any other in the village, and Mr. Rollinson’s shadow was
reflected on the blind, with the usual tendency towards caricature.
The carpenter’s wife, who opened the door, was an old friend of Mrs.
Greswold’s, and was not importunate in her expressions of surprise and
pleasure.
“Please do not mention to any one that I have been at Enderby, Mrs.
Mason,” Mildred said quietly. “I am only here for an hour or two on
my way to Salisbury. I should like to see Mr. Rollinson, if he is
disengaged.”
“Of course he is, ma’am, for you. He’ll be overjoyed to see you, I’m
sure.”
Mrs. Mason bustled up the steep little staircase, followed closely by
Mildred. She flung open the door with a flourish, and discovered Mr.
Rollinson enjoying a tea-dinner, with the _Times_ propped up between
his plate and the teapot.
He started to his feet at sight of his visitor like a man distraught,
darted forward and shook hands with Mildred, then glanced despairingly
at the table. For such a guest he would have liked to have had turtle
and ortolans; but a tea-dinner, a vulgar tea-dinner—a dish of pig’s
trotters, a couple of new-laid eggs, and a pile of buttered toast! He
had thought it a luxurious meal when he sat down to it, five minutes
ago, very sharp set.
“My dear Mrs. Greswold, I am enchanted. You have been travelling? Yes.
If—if you would share my humble collation—but you are going to dine at
the Manor, no doubt.”
“No; I am not going to the Manor. I should be very glad of a cup of
tea, if I may have one with you.”
“Mrs. Mason, a fresh teapot, directly, if you please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And could you not get some dinner for Mrs. Greswold? A sole and a
chicken, a little asparagus. I saw a bundle in the village the day
before yesterday,” suggested the curate feebly.
“On no account. I could not eat any dinner. I will have an egg and
a little toast, if you please,” said Mildred, seeing the curate’s
distressed look, and not wishing to reject his hospitality.
“Will you really, now? Mrs. Mason’s eggs are excellent; and she
makes toast better than any one else in the world, I think,” replied
Rollinson, flinging his napkin artfully over the trotters, and with a
side glance at Mrs. Mason which implored their removal.
That admirable woman grasped the situation. She whisked off the dish,
and the curate’s plate with its litter of bones and mustard. She swept
away crumbs, tidied the tea-tray, brought a vase of spring flowers from
a cheffonier to adorn the table, lighted a pair of wax candles on the
mantelpiece, and gave a touch of elegance to the humble sitting-room,
while Mildred was taking off her mantle and bonnet, and sinking wearily
into Mr. Rollinson’s easy-chair by the hearth, where a basket of
fir-cones replaced the winter fire.
She felt glad to be with this old familiar friend—glad to breathe the
very air of Enderby after her six months’ exile.
“Your letter frightened me,” she said, when she was alone with the
curate. “I came to look at my husband. I could not help coming.”
“Ah, dear Mrs. Greswold, if you could only come back for good—nothing
else is of any use. Have you seen him?”
“Yes,” she sighed.
“And you find him sadly changed?”
“Sadly changed. I wish you would try to rouse him—to interest him in
farming—building—politics—anything. He is so clever; he ought to have
so many resources.”
“For his mind, perhaps; but not for his heart. You are doing all you
can to break that.”
Mildred turned her head aside with a weary movement, as of a creature
at bay.
“Don’t talk about it. You cannot understand. You look up to Clement
Cancellor, I think. You would respect his opinion.”
“Yes; he is a good man.”
“He is—and he approves the course I have taken. He is my confidant and
my counsellor.”
“You could have no better adviser in a case of conscience—yet I can but
regret my friend’s ruined life, all the same. But I will say no more,
Mrs. Greswold. I will respect your reserve.”
Mrs. Mason came bustling in with a tea-tray, on which her family
teapot—the silver teapot that had been handed down from generation to
generation since the days of King George the Third—and her very best
pink and gold china sparkled and glittered in the lamp-light. The toast
and eggs might have tempted an anchorite, and Mildred had eaten nothing
since her nine-o’clock breakfast. The strong tea revived her like
good old wine, and she sat resting and listening with interest to Mr.
Rollinson’s account of his parishioners, and the village chronicle of
the last six months. How sweet it was to hear the old familiar names,
to be in the old place, if only for a brief hour!
“I wonder if they miss me?” she speculated. “They never seemed quite
the same—after—after the fever.”
“Ah, but they know your value now. They have missed you sadly, and they
have missed your husband’s old friendly interest in their affairs. He
has given me _carte blanche_, and there has been no one neglected,
nothing left undone; but they miss the old personal relations, the
friendship of past days. You must not think that the poor care only for
creature comforts and substantial benefits.”
“I have never thought so. And now tell me all you can about my husband.
Does he receive no one?”
“No one. People used to call upon him for a month or two after you
left, but he never returned their visits, he declined all invitations,
and he made his friends understand pretty clearly that he had done
with the outside world. He rarely comes to the eleven-o’clock service
on Sundays, but he comes to the early services, and I believe he walks
into Romsey sometimes for the evening service. He has not hardened his
heart against his God.”
“Do you see him often?”
“About once a week. I take him my report of the sick and poor. I
believe he is as much interested in that as he can be in anything;
but I always feel that my society is a burden to him, in spite of his
courteousness. I borrow a book from him sometimes, so as to have an
excuse for spending a few minutes with him when I return it.”
“You are a good man, Mr. Rollinson, a true friend,” said Mildred, in a
low voice.
“Would to God that my friendship could do more for him! Unhappily it
can do so little.”
The fly came back for Mildred at nine o’clock. She had telegraphed from
Brighton to the inn at Salisbury where she was to spend the night,
and her room was ready for her when she arrived there at half-past
ten: a spacious bedroom with a four-post bed, in which she lay broad
awake all night, living over and over again that scene beside the
grave, and seeing her husband’s gloomy face, and its mute reproach.
She knew that she had done wrong in breaking in upon his solitude, she
who renounced the tie that bound her to him; and yet there had been
something gained. He knew now that under no stress of evidence could
she ever believe him guilty of his wife’s death. He knew that his last
and saddest secret was revealed to her, and that she was loyal to him
still—loyal although divided.
She went to the morning service at the Cathedral. She lingered about
the grave old Close, looking dreamily in at the gardens which had such
an air of old-world peace. She was reluctant to leave Salisbury. It was
near all that she had loved and lost. The place had the familiar air of
the district in which she had lived so long—different in somewise from
all other places, or seeming different by fond association.
She telegraphed to her aunt that she might be late in returning, and
lingered on till three o’clock in the afternoon, and then took the
train, which dawdled at three or four stations before it came to
Bishopstoke—the familiar junction where the station-master and the
superintendents knew her, and asked after her husband’s health, giving
her a pain at her heart with each inquiry. She would have been glad to
pass to the Portsmouth train unrecognised, but it was not to be.
“You have been in the South all the winter, I hear, ma’am. I hope it
was not on account of your health?”
“Yes,” she faltered, “partly on that account,” as she hurried on to the
carriage which the station-master opened for her with his own hand.
His face was among her home faces. She had travelled up and down the
line very often in the good days that were gone—with her husband and
Lola, and their comfort had been cared for almost as if they had been
royal personages.
It was night when she reached Brighton, and Franz was on the platform
waiting for her, and the irreproachable brougham was drawn up close
by, the brown horse snorting, and with eyes of fire, not brooking the
vicinity of the engine, though too grand a creature to know fear.
She found Miss Fausset in low spirits.
“I have missed you terribly,” she said. “I am a poor creature. I used
to think myself independent of sympathy or companionship—but that is
all over now. When I am alone for two days at a stretch I feel like a
child in the dark.”
“You have lived too long in this house, aunt, I think,” Mildred
answered gently. “Forgive me if I say that it is a dull house.”
“A dull house? Nonsense, Mildred! It is one of the best houses in
Brighton.”
“Yes, yes, aunt, but it is dull, all the same. The sun does not shine
into it; the colouring of the furniture is gray and cold—”
“I hate gaudy colours.”
“Yes, but there are beautiful colours that are not gaudy—beautiful
things that warm and gladden one. The next room,” glancing back at the
front drawing-room and its single lamp, “is full of ghosts. Those long
white curtains, those faint gray walls, are enough to kill you.”
“I am not so fanciful as that.”
“Ah, but you are fanciful, perhaps without knowing it. The influence
of this dull gray house may have crept into your veins and depressed
you unawares. Will you go to the Italian Lakes with me next September,
aunt? Or, better, will you go to the West of England with me next
week—to the north coast of Cornwall, which will be lovely at this
season? I am sure you want change. This monotonous life is killing you.”
“No, no, Mildred. There is nothing amiss with my life. It suits me well
enough, and I am able to do good.”
“Your lieutenants could carry on all that while you were away.”
“No; I like to be here; I like to organise, to arrange. I can feel that
my life is not useless, that my talent is placed at interest.”
“It could all go on, aunt; it could indeed. The change to new scenes
would revive you.”
“No. I am satisfied where I am. I am among people whom I like, and who
like and respect me.”
She dwelt upon the last words with unction, as if there were tangible
comfort in them.
Mildred sighed and was silent. She had felt it her duty to try and
rouse her aunt from the dull apathy into which she seemed gradually
sinking, and she thought that the only chance of revival was to remove
her from the monotony of her present existence.
Later on in the evening the fire had been lighted in the inner
drawing-room, Miss Fausset feeling chilly, in spite of the approach of
summer, and aunt and niece drew near the hearth for cheerfulness and
comfort. The low reading-lamp spread its light only over Miss Fausset’s
book-table and the circle in which it stood. The faces of both women
were in shadow, and the lofty room with its walls of books was full of
shadows.
“You talk so despondently of life sometimes, aunt, as if it had been
all disappointment,” said Mildred, after a long silence, in which they
had both sat watching the fire, each absorbed by her own thoughts;
“yet your girlhood must have been bright. I have heard my dear father
say how indulgent his father was, how he gave way to his children in
everything.”
“Yes, he was very indulgent; too indulgent perhaps. I had my own way
in everything; only—one’s own way does not always lead to happiness.
Mine did not. I might have been a happier woman if my father had been a
tyrant.”
“You would have married, perhaps, in that case, to escape from an
unhappy home. I wish you would tell me more about your girlish years,
aunt. You must have had many admirers when you were young, and amongst
them all there must have been some one for whom you cared—just a
little. Would it hurt you to talk to me about that old time?”
“Yes, Mildred. There are some women who can talk about such
things—women who can prose for hours to their granddaughters or their
nieces—simpering over the silliness of the past—boasting of conquests
which nobody believes in; for it is very difficult to realise the fact
that an old woman was ever young and lovely. I am not of that temper,
Mildred. The memory of my girlhood is hateful to me.”
“Ah, then there was some sad story—some unhappy attachment. I was sure
it must have been so,” said Mildred, in a low voice. “But tell me of
that happier time before you went into society—the time when you were
in Italy with your governess, studying at the Conservatoire at Milan. I
thought of you so much when I was at Milan the other day.”
“I have nothing to tell about that time. I was a foreigner in a strange
city, with an elderly woman who was paid to take care of me, and whose
chief occupation was to take care of herself: a solicitor’s widow,
whose health required that she should winter in the South, and who
contrived to make my father pay handsomely for her benefit.”
“And you were not happy at Milan?”
“Happy! no. I got on with my musical education—that was all I cared
for.”
“Had you no friends—no introductions to nice people?”
“No. My chaperon made my father believe that she knew all the best
families in Milan, but her circle resolved itself into a few third-rate
musical people who gave shabby little evening-parties. You bore me to
death, Mildred, when you force me to talk of that time, and of that
woman, whom I hated.”
“Forgive me, aunt, I will ask no more questions,” said Mildred, with a
sigh.
She had been trying to get nearer to her kinswoman, to familiarise
herself with that dim past when this fading life was fresh and full
of hope. It seemed to her as if there was a dead wall between her
and Miss Fausset—a barrier of reserve which should not exist between
those who were so near in blood. She had made up her mind to stay with
her aunt to the end, to do all that duty and affection could suggest,
and it troubled her that they should still be strangers. After this
severe repulse she could make no further attempt. There was evidently
no softening influence in the memory of the past. Miss Fausset’s
character, as revealed by that which she concealed rather than by that
which she told, was not beautiful. Mildred could but think that she had
been a proud, cold-hearted young woman, valuing herself too highly to
inspire love or sympathy in others; electing to be alone and unloved.
After this, time went by in a dull monotony. The same people came to
see Miss Fausset day after day, and she absorbed the same flatteries,
accepted the same adulation, always with an air of deepest humility.
She organised her charities, she listened to every detail about the
circumstances, and even the mental condition and spiritual views of
her poor. Mildred discovered before long that there was a leaven of
hardness in her benevolence. She could not tolerate sin, she weighed
every life in the same balance, she expected exceptional purity amidst
foulest surroundings. She was liberal of her worldly goods; but her
mind was as narrow as if she had lived in a remote village a hundred
years ago. Mildred found herself continually pleading for wrong-doers.
The only event or excitement which the bright June days brought with
them was the arrival of Pamela Ransome, who was escorted to Brighton by
Lady Lochinvar herself, and who had been engaged for the space of three
weeks to Malcolm Stuart, with everybody’s consent and approval.
“I wrote to Uncle George the very day I was engaged, aunt, as well as
to you; and he answered my letter in the sweetest way, and he is going
to give me a grand piano,” said Pamela, all in a breath.
Lady Lochinvar explained that, much as she detested London, she
had felt it her solemn duty to establish herself there during her
nephew’s engagement, in order that she might become acquainted with
Pamela’s people, and assist her dear boy in all his arrangements for
the future. When a young man marries a nice girl with an estate
worth fifteen hundred a year—allowing for the poor return made by
land nowadays—everything ought to go upon velvet. Lady Lochinvar was
prepared to make sacrifices, or, in other words, to contribute a
handsome portion of that fortune which she intended to bequeath to her
nephew. She could afford to be generous, having a surplus far beyond
her possible needs, and she was very fond of Malcolm Stuart, who had
been to her as a son.
“I was quite alone in the world when my husband died,” she told
Mildred. “My father and my own people were all gone, and I should
have been a wretched creature without Malcolm. He was the only son of
Lochinvar’s favourite sister, who went off in a decline when he was
eight years old, and he had been brought up at the Castle. So it is
natural, you see, that I should be fond of him and interested in his
welfare.”
Pamela kissed her, by way of commentary.
“I think you are quite the dearest thing in the world,” she said,
“except Aunt Mildred.”
It may be seen from this remark that the elder and younger lady
were now on very easy terms. Mildred had stayed in Paris with Lady
Lochinvar, and a considerable part of her trousseau, the outward and
visible part, had been chosen in the _ateliers_ of fashionable Parisian
dressmakers and man milliners. The more humdrum portion of the bride’s
raiment was to be obtained at Brighton, where Pamela was to spend a
week or two with her aunt before she went to London to stay with the
Mountfords, who had taken a house in Grosvenor Gardens, from which
Pamela was to be married.
“And where do you think we are to be married, aunt?” exclaimed Pamela
excitedly.
“At St. George’s?”
“Nothing so humdrum. We are going to be married in the Abbey—in
Westminster Abbey—the burial-place of heroes and poets. I happened
to say one day when Malcolm and I were almost strangers—it was at
Rumpelmeyer’s, sitting outside in the sun, eating ices—that I had
never seen a wedding in the Abbey, and that I should love to see one;
and Malcolm said we must try and manage it some day—meaning anybody’s
wedding, of course, though he pretends now that he always meant to
marry me there himself.”
“Presumptious on his part,” said Mildred, smiling.
“O, young men are horribly presumptious; they know they are in a
minority—there is so little competition—and a plain young man, too,
like Malcolm. But I suppose he knows he is nice,” added Pamela
conclusively.
“Don’t you think it will be lovely for me to be married in the Abbey?”
she asked presently.
“I think, dear, in your case I would rather have been married from my
own house, and in a village church.”
“What, in that poky little church at Mapledown? I believe it is one
of the oldest in England, and it is certainly one of the ugliest. Sir
Henry Mountford suggested making a family business of it; but Rosalind
and I were both in favour of the Abbey. We shall get much better
notices in the society papers,” added Pamela, with a business-like air,
as if she had been talking about the production of a new play.
“Well, dear, as I hope you are only to be married once in your life,
you have a right to choose your church.”
Pamela was bitterly disappointed presently when her aunt refused to be
present at her wedding.
“I will spend an hour with you on your wedding morning, and see you in
your wedding-gown, if you like, Pamela; but I cannot go among a crowd
of gay people, or share in any festivity. I have done with all those
things, dear, for ever and ever.”
Pamela’s candid eyes filled with tears. She felt all the more sorry for
her aunt, because her own cup of happiness was overflowing. She looked
round the silver-gray drawing-room, and her eyes fixed themselves on
the piano which _he_ had played, so often, so often, in the tender
twilight, in the shadowy evening when that larger room was left almost
without any light save that which came through the undraped archway
yonder. But Castellani was no longer a person to be thought of in
italics. From the moment Pamela’s eyes had opened to the excellence of
Mr. Stuart’s manly and straightforward character, they had also become
aware of the Italian’s deficiencies. She had realised the fact that he
was a charlatan; and now she looked wonderingly at the piano, at a loss
to understand the intensity of bygone emotions, and inclined to excuse
herself upon the ground of youthful foolishness.
“What a silly romantic wretch I must have been!” she thought; “a
regular Rosa Matilda! As if the happiness of life depended upon one’s
husband having an ear for music!”
Mildred was by no means unsympathetic about the trousseau, although
she herself had done with all interest in fashion and finery. She
drove about to the pretty Brighton shops with Pamela, and exercised
a restraining influence upon that young lady’s taste, which inclined
to the florid. She sympathised with the young lady’s anxiety about
her wedding-gown, which was to be made by a certain Mr. Smithson, a
_faiseur_ who held potent sway over the ladies of fashionable London,
and who gave himself more airs than a Prime Minister. Mr. Smithson
had consented to make Miss Ransome a wedding-gown—despite her social
insignificance and the pressure of the season—provided that he were
not worried about the affair.
“If I have too many people calling upon me, or am pestered with
letters, I shall throw the thing up,” he told Lady Mountford one
morning, when she took him some fine old rose-point for the petticoat.
“Yes, this lace is pretty good. I suppose you got it in Venice. I have
seen Miss Ransome, and I know what kind of gown she can wear. It will
be sent home the day before the wedding.”
With this assurance, haughtily given, Lady Mountford and her sister had
to be contented.
“If I were your sister I would let a woman in Tottenham Court Road make
my gowns rather than I would stand such treatment,” said Sir Henry;
at which his wife shrugged her shoulders and told him he knew nothing
about it.
“The cut is everything,” she said. “It is worth putting up with
Smithson’s insolence to know that one is the best-dressed woman in the
room.”
“But if Smithson dresses all the other women—”
“He doesn’t. There are very few who have the courage to go to him. His
manners are so humiliating—he as good as told me I had a hump—and his
prices are enormous.”
“And yet you call me extravagant for giving seventy pounds for a barb!”
cried Sir Henry; “a bird that might bring me a pot of money in prizes.”
* * * * *
The grand question of trousseau and wedding-gown being settled, there
remained only a point of minor importance—the honeymoon. Pamela was in
favour of that silly season being spent in some rustic spot, far from
the madding crowd, and Pamela’s lover was of her opinion in everything.
“We have both seen the best part of the Continent,” said Pamela, taking
tea in Mildred’s upstairs sitting-room, which had assumed a brighter
and more home-like aspect in her occupation than any other room in
Miss Fausset’s house; “we don’t want to rush off to Switzerland or the
Pyrenees; we want just to enjoy each other’s society and to make our
plans for the future. Besides, travelling is so hideously unbecoming.
I have seen brides with dusty hats and smuts on their faces who would
have been miserable if they had only known what objects they were.”
“I think you and Mr. Stuart are very wise in your choice, dear,”
answered Mildred. “England in July is delicious. Have you decided where
to go?”
“No, we can’t make up our minds. We want to find a place that is
exquisitely pretty—yet not too far from London, so that we may run up
to town occasionally and see about our furnishing. Sir Henry offered
us Rainham, but as it is both ugly and inconvenient I unhesitatingly
refused. I don’t want to spend my honeymoon in a place pervaded by
prize pigeons.”
“What do you think of the neighbourhood of the Thames, Pamela?” asked
Mildred thoughtfully. “Are you fond of boating?”
“Fond! I adore it. I could live all my life upon the river.”
“Really! I have been thinking that if you and Mr. Stuart would like to
spend your honeymoon at The Hook it is just the kind of place to suit
you. The house is bright and pretty, and the gardens are exquisite.”
Pamela’s face kindled with pleasure.
“But, dear aunt, you would never think—” she began.
“The place is at your service, my dear girl. It will be a pleasure
for me to prepare everything for you. I cannot tell you how dearly I
love that house, or how full of memories it is for me. The lease of my
father’s house in Parchment Street was sold after his death, and I only
kept a few special things out of the furniture, but at The Hook nothing
has been altered since I was a child.”
Pamela accepted the offer with rapture, and wrote an eight-page letter
to her lover upon the subject, although he was coming to Brighton next
day, and was to dine in Lewes Crescent. Mildred was pleased at being
able to give so much pleasure to her husband’s niece. It may be also
that she snatched at an excuse for revisiting a spot she fondly loved.
She offered to take Pamela with her, to explore the house and gardens,
and discuss any small arrangements for the bride’s comfort, but
against this Miss Ransome protested.
“I want everything to be new to us,” she said, “all untrodden ground,
a delicious surprise. I am sure the place is lovely; and I want to
know no more about it than I know of fairyland. I haven’t the faintest
notion what a Hook can be in connection with the Thames. It may be a
mountain or a glacier, for anything I know to the contrary; but I am
assured it is delightful. Please let me know nothing more, dearest
aunt, till I go there with Malcolm. It is adorable of you to hit
upon such a splendid idea. And it will look very well in the society
papers,” added Pamela, waxing business-like. “‘Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm
Stuart!’ (O, how queer that sounds!) ‘are to spend their honeymoon
at The Hook, the riverside residence of the bride’s aunt.’ I wonder
whether they will say ‘the well-known residence’?” mused Pamela.
Mildred went up to town with Miss Ransome and her betrothed at the
end of the young lady’s visit. Miss Fausset had been coldly gracious,
after her manner, had allowed Mr. Stuart to come to her house whenever
he pleased, and had given up the rarely-used front drawing-room to
the lovers, who sat and whispered and tittered over their own little
witticisms, by the distant piano, and behaved altogether like those
proverbial children of whom we are told in our childhood, who are
seen but not heard. Mildred lunched in Grosvenor Gardens, and went to
Chertsey by an afternoon train. The housekeeper who had once ruled over
both Mr. Fausset’s houses, subject to interference from Bell, was now
caretaker at The Hook, with a housemaid under her. She was an elderly
woman, but considerably Bell’s junior, and she was an admirable cook
and manager. A telegram two days before had told her to expect her
mistress, and the house was in perfect order when Mrs. Greswold arrived
in the summer twilight. All things had been made to look as if the
place were in family occupation, though no one but the two servants had
been living there since Mr. Fausset’s death. The familiar aspect of the
rooms smote Mildred with a sudden unexpected pain. There were the old
lamps burning on the tables, the well-remembered vases—her mother’s
choice, and always artistic in form and colour—filled with the old June
flowers from garden and hothouse. Her father’s chair stood in its old
place in the bay-window in front of the table at which he used to write
his letters sometimes, looking out at the river between whiles. Mrs.
Dawson had put a lamp in his study, a small room opening out of the
drawing-room, and with windows on two sides, and both looking towards
the river, which he had loved so well. The windows were open in the
twilight, and the rose-garden was like a sea of bloom.
In her father’s room nothing was altered. As it had been in the last
days he had lived there, so it was now.
“I haven’t moved so much as a penholder, ma’am,” said Dawson tearfully.