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diff --git a/75411-0.txt b/75411-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2bd7148 --- /dev/null +++ b/75411-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5660 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75411 *** + + + + + + Transcriber’s Note + Italic text displayed as: _italic_ + + + + + THE FATAL THREE + + A Novel + + BY THE AUTHOR OF + + “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “VIXEN,” + “ISHMAEL,” “MOHAWKS,” + ETC. + + IN THREE VOLUMES + VOL. II. + + LONDON + SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. + STATIONERS’ HALL COURT + + [_All rights reserved_] + + + + + LONDON: + ROBSON AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. II. + + + Book the Second. + + LACHESIS; OR THE METER OF DESTINY. + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. A WIFE AND NO WIFE 3 + + II. THE SINS OF THE FATHERS 33 + + III. THE VERDICT OF HER CHURCH 45 + + IV. NO LIGHT 68 + + V. THE FUTURE MIGHT BE DARKER 108 + + VI. HIGHER VIEWS 142 + + VII. THE TIME HAS COME 174 + + VIII. NOT PROVEN 208 + + IX. LOOKING BACK 241 + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND. + +LACHESIS; OR THE METER OF DESTINY. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A WIFE AND NO WIFE. + + +Mr. Castellani’s existence was one of those social problems about +which the idle world loves to speculate. There are a good many people +in London to whom the idea of a fourth dimension is not half so +interesting as the notion of a man who lives by his wits, and yet +contrives to get himself dressed by a good tailor, and to obtain a +footing in some of the best houses at the smart end of the town. This +problem César Castellani had offered to the polite world of London for +the last three seasons. + +Who is Mr. Castellani? was a question still asked by a good many people +who invited the gentleman to their houses, and made much of him. He +had not forced his way into society; nobody had the right to describe +him as a pushing person. He had slipped so insidiously into his place +in the social orbit that people had not yet left off wondering how +he came there, or who had been his sponsors. This kind of speculation +always stimulates the invention of the clever people; and these +affected to know a good deal more about Mr. Castellani than he knew +about himself. + +“He came with magnificent credentials, and an account was opened for +him at Coutts’s before he arrived,” said Magnus Dudley, the society +poet, flinging back his long hair with a lazy movement of the large +languid head. “Of course, you know that he is a natural son of +Cavour’s?” + +“Indeed! No, I never heard _that_. He is not like Cavour.” + +“Of course not, but he is the image of his mother—one of the handsomest +women in Italy—a Duchess, and daughter of a Roman Prince, who could +trace his descent in an unbroken line from Germanicus. Castellani has +the blood of Caligula in his veins.” + +“He looks like it; but I have heard on pretty good authority that he is +the son of a Milanese music-master.” + +“There are people who will tell you his father wheeled a barrow and +sold penny ices in Whitechapel,” retorted Magnus. “People will say +anything.” + +Thus and in much otherwise did society speculate; and in the meantime +Mr. Castellani’s circle was always widening. His book had been just +audacious enough and just clever enough to hit the gold in the literary +target. _Nepenthe_ had been one of the successes of the season before +last: and Mr. Castellani was henceforth to be known as the author of +_Nepenthe_. He had touched upon many things below the stars, and some +things beyond them. He had written of other worlds with the confidence +of a man who had been there. He had written of women with the air of a +Café de Paris Solomon; and he had written of men as if he had never met +one. + +A man who could write a successful book, and could sing and play +divinely, was a person to be cultivated in feminine society. Very few +men cared to be intimate with Mr. Castellani, but among women his +influence was indisputable. He treated them with a courtly deference +which charmed them, and he made them his slaves. No Oriental despot +ever ruled more completely than César Castellani did in half-a-dozen +of those drawing-rooms which give the tone to scores of other drawing +rooms between Mayfair and Earl’s Court. He contrived to be in request +from the dawn to the close of the London season. He had made a favour +of going to Riverdale; and now, although it suited his purpose to be +there, he made a favour of staying. + +“If it were not for the delight of being here, I should be in one of +the remotest valleys in the Tyrol,” he told Mrs. Hillersdon. “I have +never stayed in England so long after the end of the season. A wild +longing to break loose from the bonds of Philistinism generally seizes +me at this time of the year. I want to go away, and away, and ever away +from my fellow-men. I should like to go and live in a tomb, like the +girl in Ouida’s _In Maremma_. My thirst for solitude is a disease.” + +This from a man who spent the greater part of his existence dawdling +in drawing-rooms and boudoirs sounded paradoxical; but paradoxes are +accepted graciously from a man who has written the book of the season. +Louise Hillersdon treated Castellani like a favourite son. At his +bidding she brought out the old guitar which had slumbered in its case +for nearly a decade, and sang the old Spanish songs, and struck the +strings with the old dashing sweep of a delicate hand, and graceful +curve of a rounded arm. + +“When you sing I could believe you as young as Helen when Paris stole +her,” said Castellani, lolling along the sofa beside the low chair in +which she was sitting; “I cease to envy the men who knew you when you +were a girl.” + +“My dear Castellani, I feel old enough to be your grandmother; unless +you are really the person I sometimes take you for—” + +“Who may that be?” + +“The Wandering Jew.” + +“No matter what my creed or where I have wandered, since I am so happy +as to find a haven here. Granted that I can remember Nero’s beautiful +Empress, and Faustina, and all that procession of fair women who +illumine the Dark Ages—and Mary of Scotland, and Emma Hamilton, blonde +and brunette, pathetic and _espiègle_, every type, and every variety. +It is enough for me to find perfection here.” + +“If you only knew how sick I am of that kind of nonsense!” said Mrs. +Hillersdon, smiling at him, half in amusement, half in scorn. + +“O, I know that you have drunk the wine of men’s worship to satiety! +Yet if you and I had lived upon the same plane, I would have taught +you that among a hundred adorers one could love you better than all +the rest. But it is too late. Our souls may meet and touch perhaps +thousands of years hence in a new incarnation.” + +“Do you talk this kind of nonsense to Mrs. Greswold or her niece?” + +“No; with them I am all dulness and propriety. Neither lady is +_simpatica_. Miss Ransome is a frank, good-natured girl—much too +frank—with all the faults of her species. I find the genus girl +universally detestable.” + +“Miss Ransome has about fifteen hundred a year. I suppose you know +that?” + +“Has she really? If ever I marry I hope to do better than that,” +answered César with easy insolence. “She would be a very nice match +for a country parson; that Mr. Rollinson, for instance, who is getting +up the concert.” + +“Then Miss Ransome is not your attraction at Enderby? It is Mrs. +Greswold who draws you.” + +“Why should I be drawn?” he asked, with his languid air. “I go there in +sheer idleness. They like me to make music for them; they fool me and +praise me; and it is pleasant to be fooled by two pretty women.” + +“Does Mrs. Greswold take any part in the fooling? She looks like +marble.” + +“There is fire under that marble. Mrs. Greswold is romantically in love +with her husband: but that is a complaint which is not incurable.” + +“He is not an agreeable man,” said Louise, remembering how long George +Greswold and his wife had kept aloof from her. “And he does not look a +happy man.” + +“He is not happy.” + +“You know something about him—more than we all know?” asked Louise, +with keen curiosity. + +“Not much. I met him at Nice before he came into his property. He was +not a very fortunate person at that time, and he doesn’t care to be +reminded of it now.” + +“Was he out-at-elbows, or in debt?” + +“Neither. His troubles did not take that form. But I am not a gossip. +Let the past be past, as Gœthe says. We can’t change it, and it is +charity to forget it. If we are not sure about what we touch and +hear and see—or fancy we hear and touch and see—in the present, how +much less can we be sure of any reality or external existence in the +past! It is all done away with—vanished. How can we know that it ever +was? A grave here and there is the only witness; and even the grave +and the name on the headstone may be only a projection of our own +consciousness. We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” + +“That is a politely circuitous manner of refusing to tell me anything +about Mr. Greswold when his name was Ransome. No matter. I shall find +other people who know the scandal, I have no doubt. Your prevarication +assures me that there was a scandal.” + +This was on the eve of the concert at Enderby, at about the same +hour when George Greswold showed Mildred his first wife’s portrait. +Castellani and his hostess were alone together in the lady’s +morning-room, while Hillersdon and his other guests were in the +billiard-room on the opposite side of a broad corridor. Mrs. Hillersdon +had a way of turning over her visitors to her husband when they bored +her. Gusts of loud talk and louder laughter came across the corridor +now and again as they played pool. There were times when Louise was +too tired of life to endure the burden of commonplace society. She +liked to dream over a novel. She liked to talk with a clever young man +like Castellani. His flatteries amused her, and brought back a faint +flavour of youth and a dim remembrance of the day when all men praised +her, when she had known herself without a rival. Now other women were +beautiful, and she was only a tradition. She had toiled hard to live +down her past, to make the world forget that she had ever been Louise +Lorraine: yet there were moments in which she felt angry to find that +old personality of hers so utterly forgotten, when she was tempted to +cry out, “What rubbish you talk about your Mrs. Egremont, your Mrs. +Linley Varden, your professional beauties and fine lady actresses. Have +you never heard of ME—Louise Lorraine?” + + * * * * * + +The drawing-rooms at Enderby Manor had been so transformed under Mr. +Castellani’s superintendence, and with the help of his own dexterous +hands, that there was a unanimous expression of surprise from the +county families as they entered that region of subdued light and +æsthetic draperies between three and half-past three o’clock on the +afternoon of the concert. + +The Broadwood grand stood on a platform in front of a large bay-window, +draped as no other hand could drape a piano, with embroidered Persian +curtains and many-hued Algerian stuffs, striped with gold; and against +the sweeping folds of drapery rose a group of tall golden lilies out +of a shallow yellow vase. A cluster of gloxinias were massed near the +end of the piano, and a few of the most artistic chairs in the house +were placed about for the performers. The platform, instead of being +as other platforms, in a straight line across one side of the room, +was placed diagonally, so as to present the picturesque effect of an +angle in the background, an angle lighted with clusters of wax-candles, +against a forest of palms. + +All the windows had been darkened save those in the further +drawing-room, which opened into the garden, and even these were shaded +by Spanish hoods, letting in coolness and the scent of flowers, with +but little daylight. Thus the only bright light was on the platform. + +The auditorium was arranged with a certain artistic carelessness: +the chairs in curved lines to accommodate the diagonal line of the +platform; and this fact, in conjunction with the prettiness of the +stage, put every one in good temper before the concert began. + +The concert was as other concerts: clever amateur singing, excellent +amateur playing, fine voices cultivated to a certain point, and +stopping just short of perfect training. + +César Castellani’s three little songs—words by Heine—music, Schubert +and Jensen—were the hit of the afternoon. There were few eyes that +were unclouded by tears, even among those listeners to whom the words +were in an unknown language. The pathos was in the voice of the singer. + +The duet was performed with _aplomb_, and elicited an encore, on which +Pamela and Castellani sang the old-fashioned “Flow on, thou shining +river,” which pleased elderly people, moving them like a reminiscence +of long-vanished youth. + +Pamela’s heart beat furiously as she heard the applause, and she +curtsied herself off the platform in a whirl of delight. She felt +that it was in her to be a great public singer—a second Patti—if—if +she could be taught and trained by Castellani. Her head was full of +vague ideas—a life devoted to music—three years’ hard study in Italy—a +_début_ at La Scala—a world-wide renown achieved in a single night. She +even wondered how to Italianise her name. Ransomini? No, that would +hardly do. Pamelani—Pameletta? What awkward names they were—christian +and surname both! + +And then, crimsoning at the mere thought, she saw in large letters, +“MADAME CASTELLANI.” + +How much easier to make a great name in the operatic world with a +husband to fight one’s battles and get the better of managers! + +“With an income of one’s own it ought to be easy to make one’s way,” +thought Pamela, as she stood behind the long table in the dining-room, +dispensing tea and coffee, with the assistance of maids and footmen. + +Her head was so full of these bewildering visions that she was a +little less on the alert than she ought to have been for shillings and +half-crowns, whereby a few elderly ladies got their tea and coffee for +nothing, not being asked for payment, and preferring to consider the +entertainment gratis. + +Mildred’s part of the concert was performed to perfection—not a false +note in an accompaniment, or a fault in the _tempo_. Lady Millborough, +a very exacting personage, declared she had never been so well +supported in her _cheval de bataille_, the finale to _La Cenerentola_. +But many among the audience remarked that they had never seen Mrs. +Greswold look so ill; and both Rollinson and Castellani were seriously +concerned about her. + +“You are as white as marble,” said the Italian. “I know you are +suffering.” + +“I assure you it is nothing. I have not been feeling very well lately, +and I had a sleepless night. There is nothing that need give any one +the slightest concern. You may be sure I shall not break down. I am +very much interested in the painted window,” she added, with a faint +smile. + +“It is not that I fear,” said Castellani, in a lower voice. “It is of +you and your suffering I am thinking.” + +George Greswold did not appear at the concert: he was engaged elsewhere. + +“I cannot think how Uncle George allowed himself to have an appointment +at Salisbury this afternoon,” said Pamela. “I know he doats on music.” + +“Perhaps he doesn’t doat upon it quite so well as to like to see his +house turned topsy-turvy,” said Lady Millborough, who would have +allowed every philanthropic scheme in the country to collapse for want +of cash rather than suffer her drawing-room to be pulled about by +amateur scene-shifters. + +Mrs. Hillersdon and her party occupied a prominent position near the +platform; but that lady was too clever to make herself conspicuous. She +talked to the people who were disposed to friendliness—their numbers +had increased with the advancing years—and she placidly ignored those +who still held themselves aloof from “that horrid woman.” Nor did she +in any way appropriate Castellani as her special _protégé_ when the +people round her were praising him. She took everything that happened +with the repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere, and may often +be found among women whom the Vere de Veres despise. + + * * * * * + +All was over: the last of the carriages had rolled away. Castellani had +been carried off in Mrs. Hillersdon’s barouche, no one inviting him +to stay at the Manor House. Rollinson lingered to repeat his effusive +thanks for Mrs. Greswold’s help. + +“It has been a glorious success,” he exclaimed; “glorious! Who would +have thought there was so much amateur talent available within thirty +miles? And Castellani was a grand acquisition. We shall clear at least +seventy pounds for the window. I don’t know how I can ever thank you +enough for giving us the use of your lovely rooms, Mrs. Greswold, and +for letting us pull them about as we liked.” + +“That did not matter—much,” Mildred said faintly, as she stood by +the drawing-room door in the evening light, the curate lingering to +reiterate the assurance of his gratitude. “Everything can be arranged +again—easily.” + +She was thinking, with a dull aching at her heart, that to her the +pulling about and disarrangement of those familiar rooms hardly +mattered at all. They were her rooms no longer. Enderby was never +more to be her home. It had been her happy home for thirteen gracious +years—years clouded with but one natural sorrow, in the loss of her +beloved father. And now that father’s ghost rose up before her, and +said, “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, and +because of my sin you must go forth from your happy home and forsake +the husband of your heart.” + +She gave the curate an icy hand, and turned from him without another +word. + +“Poor soul, she is dead-beat!” thought Rollinson, as he trudged home +to his lodgings over a joiner and builder’s shop: airy and comfortable +rooms enough, but odorous of sawdust, and a little too near the noises +of the workshop. + +He could but think it odd that he had not been asked to dine at the +Manor, as he would have been in the ordinary course of events. He had +told the builder’s wife that he should most likely dine out, whereupon +that friendly soul had answered, “Why, of course they’ll ask you, Mr. +Rollinson. You know they’re always glad to see you.” + +And now he had to return to solitude and a fresh-killed chop. + + * * * * * + +It was seven o’clock, and George Greswold had not yet come home from +Salisbury. Very few words had passed between him and his wife since +she fell fainting at his feet last night. He had summoned her maid, +and between them they had brought her back to consciousness, and +half carried her to her room. She would give no explanation of her +fainting-fit when the maid had left the room, and she was lying on her +bed, white and calm, with her husband sitting by her side. She told him +that she was tired, and that a sudden giddiness had come upon her. That +was all he could get from her. + +“If you will ask me no questions, and leave me quite alone, I will try +to sleep, so that I may be fit for my work in the concert to-morrow,” +she pleaded. “I would not disappoint them for worlds.” + +“I don’t think you need be over-anxious about them,” said her husband +bitterly. “There is more at stake than a painted window: there is your +peace and mine. Answer me only one question,” he said, with intensity +of purpose: “had your fainting-fit anything to do with the portrait of +my first wife?” + +“I will tell you everything—after the concert to-morrow,” she answered; +“for God’s sake leave me to myself till then.” + +“Let it be as you will,” he answered, rising suddenly, wounded by her +reticence. + +He left the room without another word. She sprang up from her bed +directly he was gone, ran to the door and locked it, and then flung +herself on her knees upon the prie-dieu chair at the foot of a large +ivory crucifix which hung in a deep recess beside the old-fashioned +fireplace. + +Here she knelt, in tears and prayer, deep into the night. Then for an +hour or more she walked up and down the room, absorbed in thought, by +the dim light of the night-lamp. + +When the morning light came she went to a bookcase in a little closet +of a room opening out of the spacious old bedroom—a case containing +only devotional books, and of these she took out volume after +volume—Taylor’s _Rule of Conscience_, Hooker’s _Religious Polity_, +Butler, Paley—one after another, turning over the leaves, looking +through the indexes—searching for something which she seemed unable to +find anywhere. + +“What need have I to see what others have thought?” she said to herself +at last, after repeated failure; “Clement Cancellor knows the right. I +could have no better guide than his opinion, and he has spoken. What +other law do I need? His law is the law of God.” + +Not once did her eyes close in sleep all through that night, or in the +morning hours before breakfast. She made an excuse for breakfasting in +her dressing-room, a large, airy apartment, half boudoir. She was told +that Mr. Greswold had gone out early to see some horses at Salisbury, +and would not be back till dinner-time. He was to be met at the station +at half-past seven. + +She had her morning to herself. Pamela was rehearsing her part in the +duet, and in “Flow on, thou shining river,” which was to be sung in +the event of an encore. That occupation, and the arrangement of her +toilet, occupied the young lady till luncheon—allowing for half-hourly +rushes about the lawn and shrubberies with Box, whose health required +activity, and whose social instincts yearned for companionship. + +“He can’t get on with only Kassandra; she hasn’t intellect enough for +him,” said Pamela. + +It was only ten minutes before the arrival of the performers that Mrs. +Greswold went down-stairs, pale as ashes, but ready for the ordeal. She +had put on a white gown with a little scarlet ribbon about it, lest +black should make her pallor too conspicuous. + +And now it was seven o’clock, and she was alone. The curate had been +right in pronouncing her dead-beat; but she had some work before her +yet. She had been writing letters in the morning. Two of these she now +placed on the mantelpiece in her bedroom: one addressed to her husband, +the other to Pamela. + +She had a bag packed—not one of those formidable dressing-bags which +weigh fifteen to twenty pounds—but a light Russia-leather bag, just +large enough to contain the essentials of the toilet. She put on a +neat little black bonnet and a travelling-cloak, and took her bag and +umbrella, and went down to the hall. She had given orders that the +carriage should call for her before going to the station, and she was +at the door ready to step into it when it came round. + +She told the groom that she was to be put down at Ivy Cottage, and +was driven off unseen by the household, who were all indulging in a +prolonged tea-drinking after the excitement of the concert. + +Ivy Cottage was within five minutes’ walk of Romsey Station: a little +red cottage, newly built, with three or four ivy plants languishing +upon a slack-baked brick wall, and just enough garden for the +proverbial cat to disport himself in at his ease—the swinging of cats +being no longer a popular English sport. There was nothing strange in +Mrs. Greswold alighting at Ivy Cottage—unless it were the hour of her +visit—for the small brick box was occupied by two maiden ladies of +small means: one a confirmed invalid; the other her patient nurse; whom +the lady of Enderby Manor often visited, and in whom she was known to +be warmly interested. + +The coachman concluded that his mistress was going to spend a quarter +of an hour with the two old ladies, while he went on and waited for his +master at the station, and that he was to call for her on his return. +He did not even ask for her orders upon this point, taking them for +granted. + +He was ten minutes too soon at the station, as every well-conducted +coachman ought to be. + +“I’m to call for my mistress, sir,” he said, as Mr. Greswold stepped +into the brougham. + +“Where?” + +“At Ivy Cottage, sir: Miss Fisher’s.” + +“Very good.” + +The brougham pulled up at Ivy Cottage; and the groom got down and +knocked a resounding peal upon the Queen Anne knocker, it being hardly +possible nowadays to find a knocker that is not after the style of +Queen Anne, or a newly-built twenty-five pound a year cottage in any +part of rural England that does not offer a faint reminiscence of +Bedford Park. + +The groom made his inquiry of the startled little maid-of-all-work, +fourteen years old last birthday, and already aspiring to better +herself as a vegetable-maid in a nobleman’s family. + +Mrs. Greswold had not been at Ivy Cottage that evening. + +George Greswold was out of the brougham by this time, hearing the +girl’s answer. + +“Stop where you are,” he said to the coachman, and ran back to the +station, an evil augury in his mind. + +He went to the up-platform, the platform at which he had alighted ten +minutes before. + +“Did you see Mrs. Greswold here just now?” he asked the +station-master, with as natural an air as he could command. + +“Yes, sir. She got into the up-train, sir; the train by which you came. +She came out of the waiting-room, sir, the minute after you left the +platform. You must just have missed her.” + +“Yes, I have just missed her.” + +He walked up and down the length of the platform two or three times in +the thickening dusk. Yes, he had missed her. She had left him. Such +a departure could mean only severance—some deep wound—which it might +take long to heal. It would all come right by and by. There could be no +such thing as parting between man and wife who loved each other as they +loved—who were incapable of falsehood or wrong. + +What was this jealous fancy that had taken possession of her? This +unappeasable jealousy of the dead past—a passion so strong that it +had prompted her to rush away from him in this clandestine fashion, +to torture him by all the evidences of an inconsolable grief. His +heart was sick to death as he went back to the carriage, helpless to +do anything except go to his deserted home, and see what explanation +awaited him there. + +It was half-past eight when the carriage drove up to the Manor House. +Pamela ran out into the hall to receive him. + +“How late you are, uncle!” she cried, “and I can’t find aunt. +Everything is at sixes and sevens. The concert was a stupendous +success—and—only think!—_I_ was encored.” + +“Indeed, dear!” + +“Yes, my duet with him: and then we sang the other. They would have +liked a third, only we pretended not to understand. It would have made +all the others so fearfully savage if we had taken it.” + +This speech was not a model of lucidity, but it might have been much +clearer and yet unintelligible to George Greswold. + +“Do you mind dining alone to-night, my dear Pamela?” he said, trying +to speak cheerily. “Your aunt is out—and I—I have some letters to +write—and I lunched heavily at Salisbury.” + +His heavy luncheon had consisted of a biscuit and a glass of beer +at the station. His important business had been a long ramble on +Salisbury Plain, alone with his troubled thoughts. + +“Did your mistress leave any message for me?” he asked the butler. + +“No, sir. Nobody saw my mistress go out. When Louisa went up to dress +her for dinner she was gone, sir—but Louisa said there was a letter for +you on the bedroom mantelpiece. Shall I send for it, sir?” + +“No, no—I will go myself. Serve dinner at once. Miss Ransome will dine +alone.” + +George Greswold went to the bedroom—that fine old room, the real Queen +Anne room, with thick walls and deep-set windows, and old window-seats, +and capacious recesses on each side of the high oak chimneypiece, +and richly-moulded wainscot, and massive panelled doors, a sober +eighteenth-century atmosphere in which it is a privilege to exist—a +spacious old room, with old Dutch furniture, of the pre-Chippendale +era, and early English china, Worcester simulating Oriental, Chelsea +striving after Dresden: a glorious old room, solemn and mysterious as a +church in the dim light of a pair of wax-candles which Louisa the maid +had lighted on the mantelpiece. + +There, between the candles, appeared two letters: “George Greswold, +Esq.,” “Miss Ransome.” + +The husband’s letter was a thick one, and the style of the penmanship +showed how the pen had hurried along, driven by the electric forces of +excitement and despair: + + “MY BELOVED,—You asked me last night if the photograph which you + showed me had anything to do with my fainting-fit. It had everything + to do with it. That photograph is a portrait of my unhappy sister, my + cruelly-used, unacknowledged sister; and I, who have been your wife + fourteen years, know now that our marriage was against the law of God + and man—that I have never been legally your wife—that our union from + the first has been an unholy union, and for that unlawful marriage the + hand of God has been laid upon us—heavily—heavily—in chastisement, and + the darling of our hearts has been taken from us. + + “‘Whom He loveth He chasteneth.’ He has chastened us, George—perhaps + to draw us nearer to Him. We were too happy, it may be, in this + temporal life—too much absorbed by our own happiness, living in a + charmed circle of love and gladness, till that awful chastisement came. + + “There is but one course possible to me, my dear and honoured husband, + and that course lies in life-long separation. I am running away from + my dear home like a criminal, because I am not strong enough to stand + face to face with you and tell you what must be. We must do our best + to live out our lives asunder, George; we must never meet again as + wedded lovers, such as we have been for fourteen years. God knows, my + affection for you has grown and strengthened with every year of union, + and yet it seems to me on looking back that my heart went out to you + in all the fulness of an infinite love when first we stood, hand + clasped in hand, beside the river. If you are angry with me, George—if + you harden your heart against me because I do that which I know to be + my duty, at least believe that I never loved you better than in this + bitter hour of parting. I spent last night in prayer and thought. + If there were any way of escape—any possibility of living my own old + happy life with a clear conscience—I think God would have shown it to + me in answer to my prayers; but there was no ray of light, no gleam of + hope. Conscience answers sternly and plainly. By the law of God I have + never been your wife, and His law commands me to break an unhallowed + tie, although my heart may break with it. + + “Do you remember your argument with Mr. Cancellor? I never saw you + so vehement in any such dispute, and you took the side which I can + but think the side of the Evil One. That conversation now seems to me + like a strange foreshadowing of sorrow—a lesson meant for my guidance. + Little did I then think that this question could ever have any bearing + on my own life; but I recall every word now, and I remember how + earnestly my old master spoke—how ruthlessly he maintained the right. + Can I doubt his wisdom, from whose lips I first learnt the Christian + law, and in whom I first saw the true Christian life? + + “I have written to Pamela, begging her to stay with you, to take my + place in the household, and to be to you as an adopted daughter. May + God be merciful to us both in this heavy trial, George! Be sure He + will deal with us mercifully if we do our duty according to the light + that is given to us. + + “I shall stay to-night in Queen Anne’s Gate with Mrs. Tomkison. + Please send Louisa to me to-morrow with luggage for a considerable + absence from home. She will know what to bring. You can tell her that + I am going abroad for my health. My intention is to go to some small + watering-place in Germany, where I can vegetate, away from all beaten + tracks, and from the people who know us. You may rely upon me to bear + my own burden, and to seek sympathy and consolation from no earthly + comforter. + + “Do not follow me, George—should your heart urge you to do so. Respect + my solemn resolution, the result of many prayers.—Your ever loving + + “MILDRED.” + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +THE SINS OF THE FATHERS. + + +George Greswold read his wife’s letter a second time with increasing +perplexity and trouble of mind. Her sister! What could this mean? She +had never told him of the existence of a sister. She had been described +by her father, by every one, as an only child. She had inherited the +whole of her father’s fortune. + +“Her cruelly-used, unacknowledged sister.” + +Those words indicated a social mystery, and as he read and re-read +those opening lines of his wife’s letter he remembered her reticence +about that girl-companion from whom she had been parted so early. He +remembered her blushing embarrassment when he questioned her about the +girl she called Fay. + +The girl had been sent to a finishing-school at Brussels, and Mildred +had seen her no more. + +His first wife had finished her education at Brussels. She had talked +to him often of the fashionable boarding-school in the quaint old +street near the Cathedral; and the slights she had endured there from +other girls because of her isolation. There was no stint in the expense +of her education. She had as many masters as she cared to have. She was +as well dressed as the richest of her companions. But she was nobody, +and belonged to nobody, could give no account of herself that would +satisfy those merciless inquisitors. + +His wife, Vivien Faux, the young English lady whom he had met at +Florence. She was travelling in the care of an English artist and +his wife, who spent their lives on the Continent. She submitted to +no authority, had ample means, and was thoroughly independent. She +did not get on very well with either the artist or his wife. She had +a knack of saying disagreeable things, and a tongue of exceeding +bitterness. A difficult subject the painter called her, and imparted +to his particular friends in confidence that his wife and Miss Faux +were always quarrelling. Vivien Faux, that was the name borne by +the girl whom he met nineteen years ago at an evening-party in +Florence; that was the name of the girl he had married, after briefest +acquaintance, knowing no more about her than that she had a fortune of +thirty thousand pounds when she came of age, and that the trustee and +custodian of that fortune was a lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn, who affected +no authority over her, and put no difficulties in the way of her +marrying. + +He remembered now when he first saw Mildred Fausset something in her +fresh young beauty, some indefinable peculiarity of expression or +contour, had evolved the image of his dead wife, that image which never +recurred to him without keenest pain. He remembered how strange that +vague, indescribable resemblance had seemed to him, and how he had +asked himself if it had any real existence, or were only the outcome of +his own troubled mind, reverting involuntarily to an agonising memory. + +“Her face may come back to me in the faces of other women, as it comes +back to me in my miserable dreams,” he told himself. + +But as the years went by he became convinced that the likeness was not +imaginary. There were points of resemblance—the delicate tracing of +the eyebrows, the form of the brow, the way the hair grew above the +temples, were curiously alike. He came to accept the likeness as one of +those chance resemblances which are common enough in life. It suggested +to him nothing more than that. + +He went to the library with the letter still in his hand. His lamp was +ready lighted, and, the September evening being chilly, there was a +wood fire on the low hearth, which gave an air of cheerfulness to the +sombre room. + +He rang and told the footman to send Mrs. Bell to him. + +Bell appeared, erect and severe of aspect as she had been +four-and-twenty years before; neatly dressed in black silk, with +braided gray hair, and a white lace cap. + +“Sit down, Mrs. Bell, I have a good many questions to ask you,” said +Greswold, motioning her to a chair on the further side of his desk. + +He was sitting with his eyes fixed, looking at the spot where Mildred +had fallen senseless at his feet. He sat for some moments in a reverie, +and then turned suddenly, unlocked his desk, and took out the +photograph which he had shown Mildred last night. + +“Did you ever see that face before, Bell?” he asked, handing her the +open case. + +“Good gracious, sir, yes, indeed, I should think I did! but Miss Fay +was younger than that when she came to Parchment Street.” + +“Did you see much of her in Parchment Street?” + +“Yes, sir, a good deal, and at The Hook, too; a good deal more than I +wanted to. _I_ didn’t hold with her being brought into our house, sir.” + +“Why not?” + +“I didn’t think it was fair to my mistress.” + +“But how was it unfair?” + +“Well, sir, _I_ don’t wish to say anything against the dead, and Mr. +Fausset was a liberal master to me, and I make no doubt that he died a +penitent man. He was a regular church-goer, and an upright man in all +his ways while _I_ lived with him; but right is right; and _I_ shall +always maintain that it was a cruel thing to a young wife like Mrs. +Fausset, who doted on the ground he walked upon, to bring his natural +daughter into the house.” + +“Mrs. Bell, do you know that this is a serious accusation you are +bringing against a dead man?” said George Greswold solemnly. “Now, what +grounds have you for saying that this girl”—with his hand upon the +photograph—“was Mr. Fausset’s daughter?” + +“What grounds, sir? _I_ don’t want any grounds. I’m not a lawyer to put +things in that way; but I know what I know. First and foremost, she was +the image of him; and next, why did he bring her home and want her to +be made one of the family, and treated as a sister by Miss Mildred?” + +“She may have been the daughter of a friend.” + +“People don’t do that kind of thing—don’t run the risk of making a wife +miserable to oblige a friend,” retorted Bell scornfully. “Besides, I +say again, if she wasn’t his own flesh and blood, why was she so like +him?” + +“She may have been the daughter of a near relation.” + +“He had but one near relation in the world: his only sister, a young +lady who was so difficult to please that she refused no end of good +offers, and of such a pious turn that she has devoted her life to doing +good for the last five-and-twenty years, to my certain knowledge. I +hope, sir, you would not insinuate that _she_ had a natural daughter?” + +“She may have made a secret marriage, perhaps, known only to her +brother.” + +“She couldn’t have done any such thing without my knowledge, sir. She +was a girl at school at the time of Miss Fay’s birth. Don’t mix Miss +Fausset up in it, pray, sir.” + +“Was it you only who suspected Mr. Fausset to be Miss Fay’s father?” + +“Only me, sir? Why, it was everybody: and, what was worst of all, my +poor mistress knew it, and fretted over it to her dying day.” + +“But you never heard Mr. Fausset acknowledge the parentage?” + +“No, sir, not to me; but I have no doubt he acknowledged it to his poor +dear lady. He was an affectionate husband, and he must have been very +much wrapped up in that girl, or he wouldn’t have made his wife unhappy +about her.” + +With but the slightest encouragement from Mr. Greswold, Bell expatiated +on the subject of Fay’s residence in the two houses, and the misery +she had wrought there. She unconsciously exaggerated the general +conviction about the master’s relationship to his _protégée_, nor did +she hint that it was she who first mooted the notion in the Parchment +Street household. She left George Greswold with the belief that this +relationship had been known for a fact to a great many people—that the +tie between protector and protected was an open secret. + +She dwelt much upon the child Mildred’s love for the elder girl, which +she seemed to think in itself an evidence of their sisterhood. She +gave a graphic account of Mildred’s illness, and described how Fay had +watched beside her bed night after night. + +“I saw her sitting there in her nightgown many a time when I went in +the middle of the night to see if Mildred was asleep. I never liked +Miss Fay, but justice is justice, and I must say, looking back upon +all things,” said Mrs. Bell, with a virtuous air, “that there was no +deception about her love for Miss Mildred. I may have thought it put on +then; but looking back upon it now, I know that it was real.” + +“I can quite understand that my wife must have been very fond of such +a companion—sister or no sister—but she was so young that no doubt she +soon forgot her friend. Memory is not tenacious at seven years old,” +said Greswold, with an air of quiet thoughtfulness, cutting the leaves +of a new book which had lain on his desk, the paper-knife marking the +page where he had thrown it down yesterday afternoon. + +“Indeed, she didn’t forget, sir. You must not judge Miss Mildred by +other girls of seven. She was—she was like Miss Lola, sir”—Bell’s +elderly voice faltered here. “She was all love and thoughtfulness. She +doted on Miss Fay, and I never saw such grief as she felt when she came +back from the sea-side and found her gone. It was done for the best, +and it was the only thing my mistress could do with any regard for her +own self-respect; but even I felt very sorry Miss Fay had been sent +away, when I saw what a blow it was to Miss Mildred. She didn’t get +over it for years; and though she was a good and dutiful daughter, I +know that she and her mother had words about Miss Fay more than once.” + +“She was very fond of her, was she?” murmured George Greswold, in an +absent way, steadily cutting the leaves of his book. “Very fond of her. +And you have no doubt in your own mind, Mrs. Bell, that the two were +sisters?” + +“Not the least doubt, sir. I never had,” answered Bell resolutely. + +She waited for him to speak again, but he sat silent, cutting his way +slowly through the big volume, without making one jagged edge, so +steady was the movement of the hand that grasped the paper-knife. His +eyes were bent upon the book; his face was in shadow. + +“Is that all, sir?” Bell asked at last, when she had grown tired of his +silence. + +“Yes, Mrs. Bell, that will do. Good-night.” + +When the door closed upon her, he flung the book away from him, sprang +to his feet, and began to pace the room, up and down its length of +forty feet, from hearth to door. + +“Sisters!—and so fond of each other!” he muttered. “My God, this is +fatality! In this, as in the death of my child, I am helpless. The +wanton neglect of my servants cost me the idol of my heart. It was +not my fault—not mine—but I lost her. And now I am again the victim +of fatality—blind, impotent—groping in the dark web—caught in the +inexorable net.” + +He went back to his desk, and re-read Mildred’s letter in the light of +the lamp. + +“She leaves me because our marriage is unholy in her eyes,” he said to +himself. “What will she think when she knows all—as she must know, I +suppose, sooner or later? Sooner or later all things are known, says +one of the wise ones of the earth. Sooner or later! She is on the track +now. Sooner or later she must know—everything.” + +He flung himself into a low chair in front of the hearth, and sat with +his elbows on his knees staring at the fire. + +“If it were that question of legality only,” he said to himself, “if +it were a question of Church, law, bigotry, prejudice, I should not +fear the issue. My love for her, and hers for me, ought to be stronger +than any such prejudice. It would need but the first sharp pain of +severance to bring her back to me, my fond and faithful wife, willing +to submit her judgment to mine, willing to believe, as I believe, that +such marriages are just and holy, such bonds pure and true, all over +the world, even though one country may allow and another disallow, one +colony tie the knot and another loosen it. If it were _that_ alone +which parts us, I should not fear. But it is the past, the spectral +past, which rises up to thrust us asunder. Her sister! And they loved +each other as David and Jonathan loved, with the love whose inheritance +is a life-long regret.” + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE VERDICT OF HER CHURCH. + + +It was nearly eleven o’clock when Mrs. Greswold arrived at Waterloo. +There had been half-an-hour’s delay at Bishopstoke, where she changed +trains, and the journey had seemed interminable to the over-strained +brain of that solitary traveller. Never before had she so journeyed, +never during the fourteen years of her married life had she sat behind +an engine that was carrying her away from her husband. No words +could speak that agony of severance, or express the gloom of the +future—stretching before her in one dead-level of desolation—which was +to be spent away from him. + +“If I were a Roman Catholic I would go into a convent to-morrow; I +would lock myself for ever from the outer world,” she thought, feeling +that the world could be nothing to her without her husband. + +And then she began to ponder seriously upon those sisterhoods in which +the Anglican Church is now almost as rich as the Roman. She thought of +those women with whom she had been occasionally brought in contact, +whom she had been able to help sometimes with her purse and with her +sympathy, and she knew that when the hour came for her to renounce the +world there would be many homes open to receive her, many a good work +worthy of her labour. + +“I am not like those good women,” she thought; “the prospect seems to +me so dreary. I have loved the world too well. I love it still, even +after all that I have lost.” + +She had telegraphed to her friend Mrs. Tomkison, and that lady was at +the terminus, with her neat little brougham, and with an enthusiastic +welcome. + +“It is so sweet of you to come to me!” she exclaimed; “but I hope +it is not any worrying business that has brought you up to town so +suddenly—papers to sign, or anything of that kind.” + +Mrs. Tomkison was literary and æsthetic, and had the vaguest notions +upon all business details. She was an ardent champion of woman’s +rights, sent Mr. Tomkison off to the City every morning to earn money +for her milliners, decorators, fads, and _protégés_ of every kind, +and reminded him every evening of his intellectual inferiority. She +had an idea that women of property were inevitably plundered by their +husbands, and that it was one of the conditions of their existence +to be wheedled into signing away their fortunes for the benefit of +spendthrift partners, she herself being in the impregnable position of +never having brought her husband a sixpence. + +“No, it is hardly a business matter, Cecilia. I am only in town _en +passant_. I am going to my aunt at Brighton to-morrow. I knew you would +give me a night’s shelter; and it is much nicer to be with you than to +go to an hotel.” + +The fact was, that of two evils Mildred had chosen the lesser. She had +shrunk from the idea of meeting her lively friend, and being subjected +to the ordeal of that lady’s curiosity; but it had seemed still more +terrible to her to enter a strange hotel at night, and alone. She +who had never travelled alone, who had been so closely guarded by a +husband’s thoughtful love, felt herself helpless as a child in that +beginning of widowhood. + +“I should have thought it simply detestable of you if you had gone to +an hotel,” protested Cecilia, who affected strong language. “We can +have a delicious hour of confidential talk. I sent Adam to bed before I +came out. He is an excellent devoted creature—has just made what _he_ +calls a pot of money on Mexican Street Railways; but he is a dreadful +bore when one wants to be alone with one’s dearest friend. I have +ordered a cosy little supper—a few natives, only just in, a brace of +grouse, and a bottle of the only champagne which smart people will hear +of nowadays.” + +“I am so sorry you troubled about supper,” said Mildred, not at all +curious about the latest fashion in champagne. “I could not take +anything, unless it were a cup of tea.” + +“But you must have dined early, or hurriedly, at any rate. I hate that +kind of dinner—everything huddled over—and the carriage announced +before the _pièce de résistance_. And so you’re going to your aunt. Is +she ill? Has she sent for you at a moment’s notice? You will come into +all her money, no doubt; and I am told she is immensely rich.” + +“I have never thought about her money.” + +“I suppose not, you lucky creature. It will be sending coals to +Newcastle in your case. Your father left you so rich. I am told Miss +Fausset gives no end of money to her church people. She has put in two +painted windows at St. Edmund’s: a magnificent rose window over the +porch, and a window in the south transept by Burne Jones—a delicious +design—St. Cecilia sitting at an organ, with a cloud of cherubs. By the +bye, talking of St. Cecilia, how did you like my friend Castellani? He +wrote me a dear little note of gratitude for my introduction, so I am +sure you were very good to him.” + +“I could not dishonour any introduction of yours; besides, Mr. +Castellani’s grandfather and my father had been friends. That was a +link. He was very obliging in helping us with an amateur concert.” + +“How do you like him? But here we are at home. You shall tell me more +while we are at supper.” + +Mildred had to sit down to the oysters and grouse, whether she would or +not. The dining-room was charming in the day-time, with its view of the +Park. At night it might have been a room excavated from Vesuvian lava, +so strictly classic were its terra-cotta draperies, its butter-boat +lamps, and curule chairs. + +“How sad to see you unable to eat anything!” protested Mrs. Tomkison, +snapping up the natives with gusto; for it may be observed that the +people who wait up for travellers, or for friends coming home from the +play, are always hungrier than those who so return. “You shall have +your tea directly.” + +Mildred had eaten nothing since her apology for a breakfast. She was +faint with fasting, but had no appetite, and the odour of grouse, fried +bread-crumbs, and gravy sickened her. She withdrew to a chair by the +fire, and had a dainty little tea-table placed at her side, while Mrs. +Tomkison demolished one of the birds, talking all the time. + +“Isn’t he a gifted creature?” she asked, helping herself to the second +half of the bird. + +Mildred almost thought she was speaking of the grouse. + +“I mean Castellani,” said Cecilia, in answer to her interrogative +look. “Isn’t he a heap of talent? You heard him play, of course, and +you heard his divine voice? When I think of his genius for music, and +remember that he wrote _that_ book, I am actually wonderstruck.” + +“The book is clever, no doubt,” answered Mildred thoughtfully, “almost +too clever to be quite sincere. And as for genius—well, I suppose his +musical talent does almost reach genius; and yet what more can one say +of Mozart, Beethoven, or Chopin? I think genius is too large a word for +any one less than they.” + +“But I say he is a genius,” cried Mrs. Tomkison, elated by grouse and +dry sherry (the champagne had been put aside when Mildred refused it). +“Does he not carry one out of oneself by his playing? Does not his +singing open the floodgates of our hard, battered old hearts? No one +ever interested me so much.” + +“Have you known him long?” + +“For the last three seasons. He is with me three or four times a week +when he is in town. He is like a son of the house.” + +“And does Mr. Tomkison like him?” + +“O, you know Adam,” said Cecilia, with an expressive shrug. “You know +Adam’s way. _He_ doesn’t mind. ‘You always must have somebody hanging +about you,’ he said, ‘so you may as well have that French fool as +any one else.’ Adam calls all foreigners Frenchmen, if they are not +obtrusively German. Castellani has been devoted to me; and I daresay +I may have got myself talked about on his account,” pursued Cecilia, +with the pious resignation of a blameless matron of five-and-forty, who +rather likes to be suspected of an intrigue; “but I can’t help _that_. +He is one of the few young men I have ever met who understands me. And +then we are such near neighbours, and it is easy for him to run in at +any hour. ‘You ought to give him a latchkey,’ says Adam; ‘it would +save the servants a lot of trouble.’” + +“Yes, I remember; he lives in Queen Anne’s Mansions,” Mildred answered +listlessly. + +“He has a suite of rooms near the top, looking over half London, and +exquisitely furnished. He gives afternoon tea to a few chosen friends +who don’t mind the lift; and we have had a Materialisation in his +rooms, but it wasn’t a particularly good one,” added Mrs. Tomkison, as +if she were talking of something to eat. + + * * * * * + +The maid Louisa arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate a little before luncheon +on the following day. She brought a considerable portion of Mrs. +Greswold’s belongings in two large basket-trunks, a portmanteau, and a +dressing-bag. These were at once sent on to Victoria in the cab that +had brought the young person and the luggage from Waterloo, while the +young person herself was accommodated with dinner, table-beer, and +gossip in the housekeeper’s room. She also brought a letter for her +mistress, a letter written by George Greswold late on the night before. + +Mildred could hardly tear open the envelope for the trembling of her +hands. How would he write to her? Would he plead against her decision? +would he try to make her waver? Would he set love against law, in such +irresistible words as love alone can use? She knew her own weakness +and his strength, and she opened his letter full of fear for her own +resolution: but there was no passionate pleading. + +The letter was measured almost to coldness: + + “I need not say that your departure, together with your explanation of + that departure, has come upon me as a crushing blow. Your reasons in + your own mind are doubtless unanswerable. I cannot even endeavour to + gainsay them. I could only seem to you as a special pleader, making + the worse appear the better reason, for my own selfish ends. You know + my opinion upon this hard-fought question of marriage with a deceased + wife’s sister; and you know how widely it differs from Mr. Cancellor’s + view and yours—which, to my mind, is the view of the bigot, and not + the Christian. There is no word in Christ’s teaching to forbid such + marriages. Your friend and master, Clement Cancellor, is of the school + which sets the law-making of a mediæval Church above the wisdom + of Christ. Am I to lose my wife because Mr. Cancellor is a better + Christian than his Master? + + “But granted that you are fixed in this way of thinking, that you + deem it your duty to break your husband’s heart, and make his home + desolate, rather than tolerate the idea of union with one who was + once married to your half-sister, let me ask you at least to consider + whether you have sufficient ground for believing that my first wife + was verily your father’s daughter. In the first place, your only + evidence of the identity between my wife and the girl you call Fay + consists of a photograph which bears a striking likeness to the girl + you knew, a likeness which I am bound to say Bell saw as instantly as + you yourself had seen it. Remember, that the strongest resemblances + have been found between those who were of no kin to each other; and + that more than one judicial murder has been committed on the strength + of just such a likeness. + + “The main point at issue, however, is not so much the question of + identity as the question whether the girl Fay was actually your + father’s daughter; and from my interrogation of Bell, it appears to + me that the evidence against your father in this matter is one of + impressions only, and, even as circumstantial evidence, too feeble to + establish any case against the accused. Is it impossible for a man + to be interested in an orphan girl, and to be anxious to establish + her in his own home, as a companion for his only child, unless that + so-called orphan were his own daughter, the offspring of a hidden + intrigue? There may be stronger evidence as to Fay’s parentage than + the suspicions of servants or your mother’s jealousy; but as yet I + have arrived at none. You possibly may know much more than Bell knows, + more than your letter implies. If it is not so, if you are acting on + casual suspicions only, I can but say that you are prompt to strike a + man whose heart has been sorely tried of late, and who had a special + claim upon your tenderness by reason of that recent loss. + + “I can write no more, Mildred. My heart is too heavy for many words. + I do not reproach you. I only ask you to consider what you are doing + before you make our parting irrevocable. You have entreated me not + to follow you, and I will obey you, so far as to give you time for + reflection before I force myself upon your presence; but I must see + you before you leave England. I ask no answer to this letter until we + meet.—Your unhappy husband + + “GEORGE GRESWOLD.” + +The letter chilled her by its calm logic—its absence of passion. There +seemed very little of the lover left in a husband who could so write. +His contempt for a law which to her was sacred shocked her almost as +if it had been an open declaration of infidelity. His sneer at Clement +Cancellor wounded her to the quick. + +She answered her husband’s letter immediately: + + “Alas! my beloved,” she wrote, “my reason for believing Fay to have + been my sister is unanswerable. My mother on her death-bed told me + of the relationship; told me the sad secret with bitter tears. Her + knowledge of that story had cast a shadow on the latter years of her + married life. I had seen her unhappy, without knowing the cause. On + her death-bed she confided in me. I was almost a woman then, and old + enough to understand what she told me. Women are so jealous where they + love, George. I suffered many a sharp pang after my discovery of your + previous marriage; jealous of that unknown rival who had gone before + me, little dreaming that fatal marriage was to cancel my own. + + “My mother’s evidence is indisputable. She must have known. As I grew + older I saw that there was that in my father’s manner when Fay was + mentioned which indicated some painful secret. The time came when I + was careful to avoid the slightest allusion to my lost sister; but in + my own mind and in my own heart I cherished her image as the image of + a sister. + + “I am grieved that you should despise Mr. Cancellor and his opinions. + My religious education was derived entirely from him. My father and + mother were both careless, though neither was unbelieving. He taught + me to care for spiritual things. He taught me to look to a better life + than the best we can lead here; and in this dark hour I thank and + bless him for having so taught me. What should I be now, adrift on a + sea of trouble, without the compass of faith? I will steer by that, + George, even though it carry me away from him I shall always devotedly + love.—Ever, in severance as in union, your own + + MILDRED.” + +She had written to Mr. Cancellor early that morning, asking him to call +upon her before three o’clock. He was announced a few minutes after she +finished her letter, and she went to the drawing-room to receive him. + +His rusty black coat and slouched hat, crumpled carelessly in his +ungloved hand, looked curiously out of harmony with Mrs. Tomkison’s +drawing-room, which was the passion of her life, the shrine to which +she carried gold and frankincense and myrrh, in the shape of _rose du +Barri_ and _bleue du Roi_ Sèvres, veritable old Sherraton tables and +chairs, and commodes and cabinets from the boudoir of Marie Antoinette, +a lady who must assuredly have sat at more tables and written at more +escritoires than any other woman in the world. Give her Majesty only +five minutes for every table and ten for every _bonheur du jour_ +attributed to her possession, and her married life must have been a +good deal longer than the span which she was granted of joy and grief +between the passing of the ring and the fall of the axe. + +Unsightly as that dark figure showed amidst the delicate tertiaries of +Lyons brocade and the bright colouring of satin-wood tables and Sèvres +porcelain, Mr. Cancellor was perfectly at his ease in Mrs. Tomkison’s +drawing-room. He wasted very few of his hours in such rooms, albeit +there were many such in which his presence was courted; but seldom as +he appeared amidst such surroundings he was never disconcerted by them. +He was not easily impressed by externals. The filth and squalor of a +London slum troubled him no more than the artistic intricacies of a +West End drawing-room, in which the _culte_ of beauty left him no room +to put down his hat. It was humanity for which he cared—persons, not +things. His soul went straight to the souls he was anxious to save. He +was narrow, perhaps; but in that narrowness there was a concentrative +power that could work wonders. + +One glance at Mildred’s face showed him that she was distressed, and +that her trouble was no small thing. He held her hand in his long lean +fingers, and looked at her earnestly as he said: + +“You have something to tell me—some sorrow?” + +“Yes,” she answered, “an incurable sorrow.” + +She burst into tears, the first she had shed since she left her home, +and sobbed passionately for some moments, leaning against the Trianon +spinet, raining her tears upon the _Vernis Martin_ in a way that would +have made Mrs. Tomkison’s blood run cold. + +“How weak I am!” she said impatiently, as she dried her eyes and choked +back her sobs. “I thought I was accustomed to my sorrow by this time. +God knows it is no new thing! It seems a century old already.” + +“Sit down, and tell me all about it,” said Clement Cancellor quietly, +drawing forward a chair for her, and then seating himself by her side. +“I cannot help you till you have told me all your trouble; and you +know I shall help you if I can. I can sympathise with you, in any case.” + +“Yes, I am sure of that,” she answered sadly; and then, falteringly +but clearly, she told him the whole story, from its beginning in the +days of her childhood till the end yesterday. She held back nothing, +she spared no one. Freely, as to her father confessor, she told all. “I +have left him for ever,” she concluded. “Have I done right?” + +“Yes, you have done right. Anything less than that would have been less +than right. If you are sure of your facts as to the relationship—if Mr. +Greswold’s first wife was your father’s daughter—there was no other +course open to you. There was no alternative.” + +“And my marriage is invalid in law?” questioned Mildred. + +“I do not think so. Law does not always mean justice. If this young +lady was your father’s natural daughter she had no status in the eye of +the law. She was not your sister—she belonged to no one, in the eye of +the law. She had no right to bear your father’s name. So, if you accept +the civil law for your guide, you may still be George Greswold’s +wife—you may ignore the tie between you and his first wife. Legally it +has no existence.” + +Mildred crimsoned, and then grew deadly pale. In the eye of the law her +marriage was valid. She was not a dishonoured woman—a wife and no wife. +She might still stand by her husband’s side—go down to the grave as +his companion and sweetheart. They who so short a time ago were wedded +lovers might be lovers again, all clouds dispersed, the sunshine of +domestic peace upon their pathway—if she were content to be guided by +the law. + +“Should you think me justified if I were to accept my legal position, +and shut my eyes to all the rest?” she asked, knowing but too well what +the answer would be. + +“Should _I_ so think! O Mildred, do you know me so little that you +need ask such a question? When have I ever taken the law for my guide? +Have I not defied that law when it stood between me and my faith? Am +I not ready to defy it again were the choice between conscience and +law forced upon me? To my mind your half-sister’s position makes not +one jot of difference. She was not the less your sister because of her +parent’s sin, and your marriage with the man who was her husband is not +the less an incestuous marriage.” + +The word struck Mildred like a whip—stung the wounded heart like the +sharp cut of a lash. + +“Not one word more,” she cried, holding up her hands as if to ward off +a blow. “If my union with my—very dear—husband was a sinful union, I +was an unconscious sinner. The bond is broken for ever. I shall sin no +more.” + +Her tears came again; but this time they gathered slowly on the heavy +lids, and rolled slowly down the pale cheeks, while she sat with her +eyes fixed, looking straight before her, in dumb despair. + +“Be sure all will be well with you if you cleave to the right,” said +the priest, with grave tenderness, feeling for her as acutely as an +ascetic can feel for the grief that springs from earthly passions and +temporal loves, sympathising as a mother sympathises with a child that +sobs over a broken toy. The toy is a futile thing, but to the child +priceless. + +“What are you going to do with your life?” he asked gently, +after a long pause, in which he had given her time to recover her +self-possession. + +“I hardly know. I shall go to the Tyrol next month, I think, and +choose some out-of-the-way nook, where I can live quietly; and then +for the winter I may go to Italy or the south of France. A year hence +perhaps I may enter a sisterhood; but I do not want to take such a step +hurriedly.” + +“No, not hurriedly,” said Mr. Cancellor, his face lighting up suddenly +as that pale, thin, irregular-featured face could lighten with the +divine radiance from within; “not hurriedly, not too soon; but I feel +assured that it would be a good thing for you to do—the sovereign cure +for a broken life. You think now that happiness would be impossible +for you, anywhere, anyhow. Believe me, my dear Mildred, you would find +it in doing good to others. A vulgar remedy, an old woman’s recipe, +perhaps, but infallible. A life lived for the good of others is +always a happy life. You know the glory of the sky at sunset—there is +nothing like it, no such splendour, no such beauty—and yet it is only +a reflected light. So it is with the human heart, Mildred. The sun of +individual love has sunk below life’s horizon, but the reflected glory +of the Christian’s love for sinners brightens that horizon with a far +lovelier light.” + +“If I could feel like you; if I were as unselfish as you—” faltered +Mildred. + +“You have seen Louise Hillersdon—a frivolous, pleasure-loving woman, +you think, perhaps; one who was once an abject sinner, whom you are +tempted to despise. I have seen that woman kneeling by the bed of +death; I have seen her ministering with unflinching courage to the +sufferers from the most loathsome diseases humanity knows; and I firmly +believe that those hours of unselfish love have been the brightest +spots in her chequered life. Believe me, Mildred, self-sacrifice is +the shortest road to happiness. No, I would not urge you to make your +election hurriedly. Give yourself leisure for thought and prayer, and +then, if you decide on devoting your life to good works, command my +help, my counsel—all that is mine to give.” + +“I know, I know that I have a sure friend in you, and that under heaven +I have no better friend,” she answered quietly, glancing at the clock +as she spoke. “I am going to Brighton this afternoon, to spend a few +days with my aunt, and to—tell her what has happened. She must know all +about Fay. If there is any room for doubt she will tell me. My last +hope is there.” + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +NO LIGHT. + + +Miss Fausset—Gertrude Fausset—occupied a large house in Lewes +Crescent—with windows commanding all that there is of bold coast-line +and open sea within sight of Brighton. Her windows looked eastward, and +her large substantial mansion turned its back upon all the frivolities +of the popular watering-place—upon its Cockney visitors of summer and +its November smartness, its aquarium and theatre, its London stars and +Pavilion concerts, its carriages and horsemen—few of whom ever went +so far east as Lewes Crescent; its brazen bands and brazen faces—upon +everything except its church bells, which were borne up to Miss +Fausset’s windows by every west wind, and which sounded with but little +intermission from no less than three tabernacles within half a mile of +the crescent. + +Happily Miss Fausset loved the sound of church bells, loved all +things connected with her own particular church with the ardour which +a woman who has few ties of kindred or friendship can afford to give +to clerical matters. Nothing except serious indisposition would have +prevented her attending matins at St. Edmund’s, the picturesque and +semi-fashionable Gothic temple in a narrow side street within ten +minutes’ walk of her house; nor was she often absent from afternoon +prayers, which were read daily at five o’clock to a small and select +congregation. The somewhat stately figure of the elderly spinster +was familiar to most of the worshippers at St. Edmund’s. All old +Brightonians knew the history of that tall, slim maiden lady, richly +clad after a style of her own, which succeeded in reconciling +Puritanism with the fashion of the day; very dignified in her carriage +and manners, with a touch of hauteur, as of a miserable sinner who +knew that she belonged to the salt of the earth. Brightonians knew +that she was Miss Fausset, sole survivor of the great house of Fausset +& Company, silk merchants and manufacturers, St. Paul’s Churchyard +and Lyons; that she had inherited a handsome fortune from her father +before she was twenty, that she had refused a good many advantageous +offers, had ranked as a beauty, and had been much admired in her +time, that she had occupied the house in Lewes Crescent for more than +a quarter of a century, and that she had taken a prominent part in +philanthropic associations and clerical matters during the greater +number of those years. No charity bazaar was considered in the way of +success until Miss Fausset had promised to hold a stall; no new light +in the ecclesiastical firmament of Brighton ranked as a veritable star +until Miss Fausset had taken notice of him. She received everybody +connected with Church and charitable matters. Afternoon tea in her +drawing-room was a social distinction, and strangers were taken to her +as to a Royal personage. Her occasional dinners—very rare, and never +large—were talked of as perfection in the way of dining. + +“It is easy for her to do things well,” sighed an overweighted matron, +“with her means, and no family. She must be inordinately rich.” + +“Did she come into a very large fortune at her father’s death?” + +“O, I believe old Fausset was almost a millionaire, and he had only +a son and a daughter. But it is not so much the amount she inherited +as the amount she must have saved. Think how she must have nursed her +income, with her quiet way of living! Only four indoor servants and a +coachman; no garden, and one fat brougham horse. She must be rolling in +money.” + +“She gives away a great deal.” + +“Nothing compared with what other people spend. Money goes a long way +in charity. Ten pounds makes a good show on a subscription list; but +what is it in a butcher’s book? I daresay my three boys have spent +as much at Oxford in the last six years as Miss Fausset has given in +charity within the same time; and _we_ are poor people.” + +It pleased Miss Fausset to live quietly, and to spend very little money +upon splendours of any kind. There was distinction enough for her in +the intellectual ascendency she had acquired among those church-going +Brightonians who thought exactly as she thought. Her spacious, +well-appointed house; her experienced servants—cook, housemaid, +lady’s-maid, and butler; her neat little brougham and perfect brougham +horse realised all her desires in the way of luxury. Her own diet was +of an almost ascetic simplicity, and her servants were on boardwages; +but she gave her visitors the best that the season or the fashion could +suggest to an experienced cook. Even her afternoon tea was considered +superior to everybody else’s tea, and her table was provided with +daintier cakes and biscuits than were to be seen elsewhere. + +Her house had been decorated and furnished under her own direction, +and was marked in all particulars by that grain of Puritanism which +was noticeable in the lady’s attire. The carpets and curtains in the +two drawing-rooms were silver-gray; the furniture was French, and +belonged to the period of the Directory, when the graceful lightness of +the Louis Seize style was merging into the classicism of the Empire. +In Miss Fausset’s drawing-room there were none of those charming +futilities which cumber the tables of more frivolous women. Here Mr. +Cancellor would have found room, and to spare, for his hat—room for a +committee meeting, or a mission service, indeed—on that ample expanse +of silvery velvet pile, a small arabesque pattern in different shades +of gray. + +The grand piano was the principal feature of the larger room, but +it was not draped or disguised, sophisticated by flower-vases, or +made glorious with plush, after the manner of fashionable pianos. It +stood forth—a concert grand, in unsophisticated bulk of richly carved +rosewood, a Broadwood piano, and nothing more. The inner room was +lined with bookshelves, and had the air of a room that was meant for +usefulness rather than hospitality. A large, old-fashioned rosewood +secrétaire, of the Directory period, occupied the space at the side of +the wide single window, which commanded a view of dead walls covered +with Virginia creeper, and in the distance a glimpse of the crocketed +spire of St. Edmund’s, a reproduction in little of one of the turrets +of the Sainte Chapelle. + +Two-thirds of the volumes in those tall bookcases were of a theological +character; the remaining third consisted of those standard works which +everybody likes to possess, but which only the superior few care to +read. + +Mildred had telegraphed in the morning to announce her visit, and +she found her aunt’s confidential man-servant, a German Swiss, and +her aunt’s neat little brougham waiting for her at the station. Miss +Fausset herself was in the inner drawing-room ready to receive her. + +There was something in the chastened colouring and perfect order +of that house in Lewes Crescent which always chilled Mildred upon +entering it after a long interval. It was more than three years since +she had visited her aunt, and this afternoon in the fading light the +silver-gray drawing-rooms looked colder and emptier than usual. + +Miss Fausset rose to welcome her niece, and imprinted a stately kiss on +each cheek. + +“My dear Mildred, you have given me a very agreeable surprise,” she +said; “but I hope it is no family trouble that has brought you to me—so +suddenly.” + +She looked at her niece searchingly with her cold gray eyes. She was a +handsome woman still, at fifty-seven years of age. Her features were +faultless, and the oval of her face was nearly as perfect as it had +been at seven-and-twenty. Her abundant hair was silvery gray, and worn +_à la_ Marie Antoinette, a style which lent dignity to her appearance. +Her dinner-gown of dark gray silk fitted her tall, upright figure to +perfection, and her one ornament, an antique diamond cross, half hidden +by the folds of her lace fichu, was worthy of the rich Miss Fausset. + +“Yes, aunt, it is trouble that has brought me to you—very bitter +trouble; but it is just possible that you can help me to conquer it. I +have come to you for help, if you can give it.” + +“My dear child, you must know I would do anything in my power—” Miss +Fausset began, with gentle deliberation. + +“Yes, yes, I know,” Mildred answered, almost impatiently. “I know that +you will be sorry for me, but you may not be able to do anything. It is +a forlorn hope. In such a strait as mine one catches at any hope.” + +Her aunt’s measured accents jarred upon her overstrung nerves. Her +grief raged within her like a fever, and the grave placidity of the +elder woman tortured her. There seemed no capacity for sympathy in this +stately spinster who stood and scanned her with coldly inquisitive eyes. + +“Can we be quite alone for a little while, aunt? Are you sure of no one +interrupting us while I am telling you my troubles?” + +“I will give an order. It is only half-past six, and we do not dine +till eight. There is no reason we should be disturbed. Come and sit +over here, Mildred, on this sofa. Your maid can take your hat and +jacket to your room.” + +Stray garments lying about in those orderly drawing-rooms would have +been agony to Miss Fausset. She rang the bell, and told the servant to +send Mrs. Greswold’s maid, and to take particular care that no visitor +was admitted. + +“I can see nobody this evening,” she said. “If any one calls you will +say I have my niece with me, and cannot be disturbed.” + +Franz, the Swiss butler, bowed with an air of understanding the +finest shades of feeling in that honoured mistress. He brought out a +tea-table, and placed it conveniently near the sofa on which Mildred +was sitting, and he placed upon it the neatest of salvers, with tiny +silver teapot and Worcester cup and saucer, and bread and butter such +as Titania herself might have eaten with an “apricock” or a bunch of +dewberries. Then he discreetly retired, and sent Louisa, who smelt of +tea and toast already, though she could not have been more than ten +minutes in the great stony basement, which would have accommodated +a company of infantry just as easily as the spinster’s small +establishment. + +Louisa took the jacket and hat and her mistress’s keys, and withdrew +to finish her tea and to discuss the motive and meaning of this +extraordinary journey from Enderby to Brighton. The gossips over the +housekeeper’s tea-table inclined to the idea that Mrs. Greswold had +found a letter—a compromising letter—addressed to her husband by some +lady with whom he had been carrying on an intrigue, in all probability +Mrs. Hillersdon of Riverdale. + +“We all know who _she_ was before Mr. Hillersdon married her,” said +Louisa; “and don’t tell me that a woman who has behaved liked that +while she was young would ever be really prudent. Mrs. Hillersdon must +be fifty if she’s a day; but she is a handsome woman still, and who +knows?—she may have been an old flame of my master’s.” + +“That’s it,” sighed Franz assentingly. “It’s generally an old flame +that does the mischief. _Wir sind armer Thieren._” + + * * * * * + +“And now, my dear, tell me what has gone wrong with you,” said Miss +Fausset, seating herself on the capacious sofa—low, broad, luxurious, +one of Crunden’s masterpieces—beside her niece. + +The rooms were growing shadowy. A small fire burned in the bright steel +grate, and made the one cheerful spot in the room, touching the rich +bindings of the books with gleams of light. + +“O, it is a long story, aunt! I must begin at the beginning. I have a +question to ask you, and your answer means life or death to me.” + +“A question—to—ask—me?” + +Miss Fausset uttered the words slowly, spacing them out, one by one, in +her clear, calm voice—the voice that had spoken at committee meetings, +and had laid down the law in matters charitable and ecclesiastical +many times in that good town of Brighton. + +“I must go back to my childhood, aunt, in the first place,” began +Mildred, in her low, earnest voice, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed +upon her aunt’s coldly correct profile, between her and the light of +the fire, the wide window behind her, with the day gradually darkening +after the autumnal sunset. The three eastward-looking windows in the +large room beyond had a ghostly look, with their long guipure curtains +closely drawn against the dying light. + +“I must go back to the time when I was seven years old, and my dear +father,” falteringly, and with tears in her voice, “brought home his +adopted daughter, Fay—Fay Fausset, he called her. She was fourteen and +I was only seven, but I was very fond of her all the same. We took to +each other from the beginning. When we left London and went to The +Hook, Fay went with us. I was ill there, and she helped to nurse me. +She was very good to me—kinder than I can say, and I loved her as if +she had been my sister. But when I got well she was sent away—sent to +a finishing-school at Brussels, and I never saw her again. She had +only lived with us one short summer. Yet it seemed as if she and I had +been together all my life. I missed her sorely. I missed her for years +afterwards.” + +“My tender-hearted Mildred!” said Miss Fausset gently. “It was like you +to give your love to a stranger, and to be so faithful to her memory!” + +“O, but she was not a stranger! she was something nearer and dearer. I +could hardly have been so fond of her if there had not been some link +between us.” + +“Nonsense, Mildred! A warm-hearted child will take to any one near her +own age who is kind to her. Why should this girl have been anything +more than an orphan, whom your father adopted out of the generosity of +his heart?” + +“O, she was something more! There was a mystery. Did you ever see her, +aunt? I don’t remember your coming to Parchment Street or to The Hook +while she was with us.” + +“No. I was away from England part of that year. I spent the autumn at +Baden with my friends the Templemores.” + +“Ah, then you knew nothing of the trouble Fay made in our home—most +innocently? It is such a sad story, aunt. I can hardly bear to touch +upon it, even to you, for it cast a shadow upon my father’s character. +You know how I loved and honoured him, and how it must pain me to say +one word that reflects upon him.” + +“Yes, I know you loved him. You could not love him too well, Mildred. +He was a good man—a large-hearted, large-minded man.” + +“And yet that one act of his, bringing poor Fay into his home, brought +unhappiness upon us all. My mother seemed set against her from the +very first; and on her death-bed she told me that Fay was my father’s +daughter. She gave me no proof—she told me nothing beyond that one +cruel fact. Fay was the offspring of hidden sin. She told me this, +and told me to remember it all my life. Do you think, aunt, she was +justified in this accusation against my father?” + +“How can I tell, Mildred?” Miss Fausset answered coldly. “My brother +may have had secrets from me.” + +“But did you never hear anything—any hint of this mystery? Did you +never know anything about your brother’s life in the years before his +marriage which would serve as a clue? He could hardly have cared for +any one—been associated with any one—and you not hear something—” + +“If you mean did I ever hear that my brother had a mistress, I can +answer no,” replied Miss Fausset, in a very unsympathetic voice. “But +men do not usually allow such things to be known to their sisters, +especially to a younger sister, as I was by a good many years. He may +have been—like other men. Few of them seem free from the stain of sin. +But however that may have been, I know nothing about the matter.” + +“And you do not know the secret of Fay’s parentage—you, my father’s +only sister—his only surviving relation. Can you help me to find any +one who knew more about his youth—any confidential friend—any one who +can tell me whether that girl was really my sister?” + +“No, Mildred. I have no knowledge of your father’s friends. They are +all dead and gone, perhaps. But what can it matter to you who this girl +was? She is dead. Let the secret of her existence die with her. It is +wisest, most charitable to do so.” + +“Ah, you know she is dead!” cried Mildred quickly. “Where and when did +she die? How did you hear of her?” + +“From your father. She died abroad. I do not remember the year.” + +“Was it before my marriage?” + +“Yes, I believe so.” + +“Long before?” + +“Two or three years, perhaps. I cannot tell you anything precisely. The +matter was of no moment to me.” + +“O aunt, it is life and death to _me_. She was my husband’s first +wife. She and I—daughters of one father—as I, alas! can but believe we +were—married the same man.” + +“I never heard your husband was a widower.” + +“No, nor did I know it until a few weeks ago;” and then, as clearly as +her distress of mind would allow, Mildred told how the discovery had +been made. + +“The evidence of a photograph—which may be a good or a bad likeness—is +a small thing to go upon, Mildred,” said her aunt. “I think you have +been very foolish to make up your mind upon such evidence.” + +“O, but there are other facts—coincidences! And nothing would make +me doubt the identity of the original of that photograph with Fay +Fausset. I recognised it at the first glance; and Bell, who saw it +afterwards, knew the face immediately. There could be no error in that. +The only question is about her parentage. I thought, if there were +room for doubt in the face of my mother’s death-bed statement, you +could help me. But it is all over. You were my last hope,” said Mildred +despairingly. + +She let her face sink forward upon her clasped hands. Only in this +moment did she know how she had clung to the hope that her aunt would +be able to assure her she was mistaken in her theory of Fay’s parentage. + +“My dear Mildred,” began Miss Fausset, after a pause, “the words +you have just used—‘death-bed statement’—seem to mean something very +solemn, indisputable, irrevocable; but I must beg you to remember that +your poor mother was a very weak woman and a very exacting wife. She +was offended with my brother for his adoption of an orphan girl. I have +heard her hold forth about her wrongs many a time, vaguely, not daring +to accuse him before me; but still I could understand the drift of her +thoughts. She may have nursed these vague suspicions of hers until they +seemed to her like positive facts; and on her death-bed, her brain +enfeebled by illness, she may have made direct assertions upon no other +ground than those long-cherished suspicions and the silent jealousies +of years. I do not think, Mildred, you ought to take any decisive step +upon the evidence of your mother’s jealousy.” + +“My mother spoke with conviction. She must have known something—she +must have had some proof. But even if it were possible she could have +spoken so positively without any other ground than jealous feeling, +there are other facts that cry aloud to me, evidences to which I +dare not shut my eyes. Fay must have belonged to some one, aunt,” +pursued Mildred, with growing earnestness, clasping her hands upon +Miss Fausset’s arm as they sat side by side in the gathering darkness. +“There must have been some reason—and a strong one—for her presence +in our house. My father was not a man to act upon caprice. I never +remember any foolish or frivolous act of his in all the years of my +girlhood. He was a man of thought and purpose; he did nothing without +a motive. He would not have charged himself with the care of that poor +girl unless he had considered it his duty to protect her.” + +“Perhaps not.” + +“I am sure not. Then comes the question, who was she if she was not my +father’s daughter? He had no near relations, he had no bosom friend +that I ever heard of—no friend so dear that he would deem it his duty +to adopt that friend’s orphan child. There is no other clue to the +mystery that I can imagine. Can you, aunt, suggest any other solution?” + +“No, Mildred, I cannot.” + +“If there were no other evidence within my knowledge, my father’s +manner alone would have given me a clue to his secret. He so studiously +evaded my inquiries about Fay—there was such a settled melancholy in +his manner when he spoke of her.” + +“Poor John! he had a heart of gold, Mildred. There never was a truer +man than your father. Be sure of that, come what may.” + +“I have never doubted that.” + +There was a pause of some minutes after this. The two women sat in +silence looking at the fire, which had burned red and hollow since +Franz had last attended to it. Mildred sat with her head leaning +against her aunt’s shoulder, her hand clasping her aunt’s hand. Miss +Fausset sat erect as a dart, looking steadily at the fire, her lips +compressed and resolute, the image of unfaltering purpose. + +“And now, Mildred,” she began at last, in those measured accents which +Mildred remembered in her childhood as an association of awe, “take an +old woman’s advice, and profit by an old woman’s experience of life if +you can. Put this suspicion of yours on one side—forget it as if it +had never been, and go back to your good and faithful husband. This +suspicion of yours is but a suspicion at most, founded on the jealous +fancy of one of the most fanciful women I ever knew. Why should George +Greswold’s life be made desolate because your mother was a bundle of +nerves? Forget all you have ever thought about that orphan girl, and go +back to your duty as a wife.” + +Mildred started away from her aunt, and left the sofa as if she had +suddenly discovered herself in contact with the Evil One. + +“Aunt, you astound, you horrify me!” she exclaimed. “Can _you_ be so +false to the conduct and principles of your whole life—can _you_ put +duty to a husband before duty to God? Have I not sworn to honour Him +with all my heart, with all my strength; and am I to yield to the weak +counsel of my heart, which would put my love of the creature above my +honour of the Creator? Would you counsel me to persist in an unholy +union—you whose life has been given up to the service of God—you who +have put His service far above all earthly affections; you who have +shown yourself so strong: can you counsel me to be so weak: and to let +my love—my fond true love for my dear one—conquer my knowledge of the +right? Who knows if my darling’s death may not have been God’s judgment +upon iniquity—God’s judgment—” + +She had burst into sudden tears at the mention of her husband’s name, +with all that tenderness his image evolved; but at that word judgment +she stopped abruptly with a half-hysterical cry, as a vision of the +past flashed into her mind. + +She remembered the afternoon of the return to Enderby, and how her +husband had knelt by his daughter’s grave, believing himself alone, and +how there had come up from that prostrate figure a bitter cry: + +“Judgment! judgment!” + +Did he know? Was that the remorseful ejaculation of one who knew +himself a deliberate sinner? + +Miss Fausset endured this storm of reproof without a word. She never +altered her attitude, or wavered in her quiet contemplation of the +fading fire. She waited while Mildred paced up and down the room in a +tempest of passionate feeling, and then she said, even more quietly +than she had spoken before, + +“My dear Mildred, I have given you my advice, conscientiously. If +you refuse to be guided by the wisdom of one who is your senior by a +quarter of a century, the consequences of your obstinacy must be upon +your own head. I only know that if _I_ had as good a man as George +Greswold for my husband”—with a little catch in her voice that sounded +almost like a sob—“it would take a great deal more than a suspicion to +part me from him. And now, Mildred, if you mean to dress for dinner, it +is time you went to your room.” + +In any other house, and with any other hostess, Mildred would have +asked to be excused from sitting down to a formal dinner, and to spend +the rest of the evening in her own room; but she knew her aunt’s +dislike of any domestic irregularity, so she went away meekly, and put +on the black lace gown which Louisa had laid out for her, and returned +to the drawing-room at five minutes before eight. + +She had been absent half an hour, but it seemed to her as if Miss +Fausset had not stirred since she left her. The lamps were lighted, +the fire had been made up, and the silver-gray brocade curtains were +drawn; but the mistress of the house was sitting in exactly the same +attitude on the sofa near the fire, erect, motionless, with her +thoughtful gaze fixed upon the burning coals in the bright steel grate. + +Aunt and niece dined _tête-à-tête_, ministered to by the experienced +Franz, who was thorough master of his calling. All the details of that +quiet dinner were of an elegant simplicity, but everything was perfect +after its fashion, from the soup to the dessert, from the Irish damask +to the old English silver—everything such as befitted the station of a +lady who was often spoken of as the rich Miss Fausset. + +The evening passed in mournful quiet. Mildred played two of Mozart’s +sonatas at her aunt’s request—sonatas which she had played in her +girlhood before the advent of her first and only lover, the lover who +was now left widowed and desolate in that time which should have been +the golden afternoon of life. As her fingers played those familiar +movements, her mind was at Enderby with the husband she had deserted. +How was he bearing his solitude? Would he shut his heart against her +in anger, teach himself to live without her? She pictured him in his +accustomed corner of the drawing-room, with his lamp-lit table, and +pile of books and papers, and Pamela seated on the other side of the +room, and the dogs lying on the hearth, and the room all aglow with +flowers in the subdued light of the shaded lamps; so different from +these colourless rooms of Miss Fausset’s, with their look as of vaulted +halls, in which voices echo with hollow reverberations amidst empty +space. + +And then she thought of her own desolate life, and wondered what it +was to be. She felt as if she had no strength of mind to chalk out +a path for herself—to create for herself a mission. That sublime +idea of living for others, of a life devoted to finding the lost +ones of Israel—or nursing the sick—or teaching children the way of +righteousness—left her cold. Her thoughts dwelt persistently upon her +own loves, her own losses, her own ideal of happiness. + +“I am of the earth earthy,” she thought despairingly, as her fingers +lingered over a slow movement. “If I were like Clement Cancellor, my +own individual sorrow would seem as nothing compared with that vast sum +of human suffering which he is always trying to lessen.” + +“May I ask what your plans are for the future, Mildred?” said Miss +Fausset, laying aside a memoir of Bishop Selwyn, which she had been +reading while her niece played. “I need hardly tell you that I shall +be pleased to have you here as long as you care to stay; but I should +like to know your scheme of life—in the event of your persistence in a +separation from your husband.” + +“I have made no definite plan, aunt; I shall spend the autumn in some +quiet watering-place in Germany, and perhaps go to Italy for the +winter.” + +“Why to Italy?” + +“It is the dream of my life to see that country, and my husband always +refused to take me there.” + +“For some good reason, no doubt.” + +“I believe he had a dread of fever. I know of no other reason.” + +“You are prompt to take advantage of your independence.” + +“Indeed, aunt, I have no idea of that kind. God help me! my +independence is a sorry privilege. But if any country could help me to +forget my sorrows, that country would be Italy.” + +“And after the winter? Do you mean to live abroad altogether?” + +“I don’t know what I may do. I have thoughts of entering a sisterhood +by and by.” + +“Well, you must follow your own course, Mildred. I can say no more than +I have said already. If you make up your mind to renounce the world +there are sisterhoods all over England, and there is plenty of good +work to be done. Perhaps after all it is the best life, and that those +are happiest who shut their minds against earthly affections.” + +“As you have done, aunt,” said Mildred, with respect. “I know how full +of good works your life has been.” + +“I have tried to do my duty according to my lights,” answered the +spinster gravely. + +The next day was cold and stormy, autumn with a foretaste of winter. +Mildred went to the morning service with her aunt, in the bright new +Gothic church which Miss Fausset’s liberality had helped to create: +a picturesque temple with clustered columns and richly floriated +capitals, diapered roof, and encaustic pavement, and over all things +the glow of many-coloured lights from painted windows. Miss Fausset +spent the morning in visiting among the poor. She had a large district +out in the London Road, in a part of Brighton of which the fashionable +Brightonian hardly knoweth the existence. + +Mildred sat in the back drawing-room all the morning, pretending to +read. She took volume after volume out of the bookcase, turned over the +leaves, or sat staring at a page for a quarter of an hour at a time, in +hopeless vacuity of mind. She had brooded upon her trouble until her +brain seemed benumbed, and nothing was left of that sharp sorrow but a +dull aching pain. + +After luncheon she went out for a solitary walk on the cliff-road that +leads eastward. It was a relief to find herself alone upon that barren +down, with the great stormy sea in front of her, and the busy world +left behind. She walked all the way to Rottingdean, rejoicing in her +solitude, dreading the return to the stately silver-gray drawing-room +and her aunt’s society. Looking down at the village nestling in the +hollow of the hills, it seemed to her that she might hide her sorrows +almost as well in that quiet nook as in the remotest valley in Europe; +and it seemed to her also that this place of all others was best fitted +for the establishment of any charitable foundation in a small way—for a +home for the aged poor, for instance, or for orphan children. Her own +fortune would amply suffice for any such modest foundation. The means +were at her disposal. Only the will was wanting. + +It was growing dusk when she went back to Lewes Crescent, so she +went straight to her room and dressed for dinner before going to the +drawing-room. The wind, with its odour of the sea, had refreshed her. +She felt less depressed, better able to face a life-long sorrow, than +before she went out, but physically she was exhausted by the six-mile +walk, and she looked pale as ashes in her black gown, with its evening +bodice, showing the alabaster throat and a large black enamel locket +set with a monogram in diamonds—L. G., Laura Greswold. + +She entered the inner room. Her aunt was not there, and there was only +one large reading-lamp burning on a table near the fire. The front +drawing-room was in shadow. She went towards the piano, intending +to play to herself in the twilight, but as she moved slowly in the +direction of the instrument a strong hand played the closing bars of +a fugue by Sebastian Bach, a chain of solemn chords that faded slowly +into silence. + +The hands that played those chords were the hands of a master. It was +hardly a surprise to Mildred when a tall figure rose from the piano, +and César Castellani stood before her in the dim light. + +His hat and gloves were upon the piano, as if he had just entered the +room. + +“My dear Mrs. Greswold, how delightful to find you here! I came to +make a late call upon your aunt—she is always indulgent to my Bohemian +indifference to etiquette—and had not the least idea that I should see +you.” + +“I did not know that you and my aunt were friends.” + +“No?” interrogatively. “That is very odd, for we are quite old friends. +Miss Fausset was all goodness to me when I was an idle undergraduate.” + +“Yet when you came to Enderby you brought an introduction from Mrs. +Tomkison. Surely my aunt would have been a better person—” + +“No doubt; but it is just like me to take the first sponsor who came +to hand. When I am in London I half live at Mrs. Tomkison’s, and I had +heard her rave about you until I became feverishly anxious to make your +acquaintance. I ought perhaps to have referred to Miss Fausset for my +credentials—but I am _volage_ by nature: and then I knew Mrs. Tomkison +would exaggerate my virtues and ignore my errors.” + +Mildred went back to the inner room, and seated herself by the +reading-lamp. Castellani followed her, and placed himself on the other +side of the small octagon table, leaving only a narrow space between +them. + +“How pale you are!” he said, with a look of concern. “I hope you are +not ill?” + +“No, I am only tired after a long walk.” + +“I had no idea you had left Enderby.” + +“Indeed!” + +“You said nothing of your intention of leaving the neighbourhood the +day before yesterday.” + +“There was no occasion to talk of my plans,” Mildred answered coldly. +“We were all too anxious about the concert to think of any other +matter.” + +“Did you leave soon after the concert?” + +“The same evening. I did not know you were leaving Riverdale.” + +“O, I only stayed for the concert. I had protracted my visit +unconscionably, but Mrs. Hillersdon was good enough not to seem tired +of me. I am in nobody’s way, and I contrived to please her with my +music. Did you not find her delightfully artistic?” + +“I thought her manners charming; and she seems fond of music, if that +is what you mean by being artistic.” + +“O, I mean worlds more than that. Mrs. Hillersdon is artistic to her +fingers’ ends. In everything she does one feels the artist. Her dress, +her air, her way of ordering a dinner or arranging a room—her feeling +for literature—she seldom reads—her feeling for form and colour—she +cannot draw a line—her personality is the very essence of modern art. +She is as a woman what Ruskin is as a man. Is Miss Ransome with you?” + +“No, I have left her to keep house for me.” + +It seemed a futile thing to make believe that all was well at Enderby, +to ward off explanations, when before long the world must know that +George Greswold and his wife were parted for ever. Some reason would +have to be given. That thirst for information about the inner life of +one’s neighbours which is the ruling passion of this waning century +must be slaked somehow. It was partly on this account, perhaps, that +Mildred fancied it would be a good thing for her to enter a Sisterhood. +The curious could be satisfied then. It would be said that Mrs. +Greswold had given up the world. + +“She is a very sweet girl,” said Castellani thoughtfully; “pretty +too, a delicious complexion, hair that suggests Sabrina after a visit +from the hairdresser, a delightful figure, and very nice manners—but +she leaves me as cold as ice. Why is it that only a few women in the +world have magnetic power? They are so few, and their influence is so +stupendous. Think of the multitude of women of all nations, colours, +and languages that go to make up one Cleopatra or one Mary Stuart.” + +Miss Fausset came into the room while he was talking, and was surprised +at seeing him in such earnest conversation with her niece. + +“One would suppose you had known each other for years,” she said, as +she shook hands with Castellani, looking from one to the other. + +“And so we have,” he answered gaily. “In some lives weeks mean years. I +sometimes catch myself wondering what the world was like before I knew +Mrs. Greswold.” + +“How long have you known her—without rodomontade?” + +“For about a month, aunt,” replied Mildred. “I have been asking Mr. +Castellani why he came to me with an introduction from my friend Mrs. +Tomkison, when it would have been more natural to present himself as a +friend of yours.” + +“O, he has always a motive for what he does,” Miss Fausset said coldly. +“You will stay to dinner, of course?” she added to Castellani. + +“I am free for this evening, and I should like to stay, if you can +forgive my morning coat.” + +“I am used to irregularities from you. Give Mrs. Greswold your arm.” + +Franz was at the door, announcing the evening meal, and presently +Mildred found herself seated at the small round table in the sombre +spacious dining-room—a room with a bayed front, commanding an +illimitable extent of sea—with César Castellani sitting opposite +her. The meal was livelier than the dinner of last night. Castellani +appeared unconscious that Mildred was out of spirits. He was full +of life and gaiety, and had an air of happiness which was almost +contagious. His conversation was purely intellectual, ranging through +the world of mind and of fancy, scarcely touching things earthly and +human; and thus he struck no jarring chord in Mildred’s weary heart. +So far as she could be distracted from the ever-present thought of loss +and sorrow, his conversation served to distract her. + +He went up to the drawing-room with the two ladies, and at Miss +Fausset’s request sat down to the piano. The larger room was still in +shadow, the smaller bright with fire and lamplight. + +He played as only the gifted few can play—played as one in whom music +is a sixth sense, but to-night his music was new to Mildred. He played +none of those classic numbers which had been familiar to her ever +since she had known what music meant. His muse to-night was full of +airy caprices, quips and cranks and wreathed smiles. It was operatic +music, of the stage stagey; a music which seemed on a level with +Watteau or Tissot in the sister art—gay to audacity, and sentimental to +affectation. It was charming music all the same—charged with melody, +gracious, complacent, uncertain, like an April day. + +Whatever it was, every movement was familiar to Gertrude Fausset. She +sat with her long ivory knitting-needles at rest on her lap—sat in +a dreamy attitude, gazing at the fire and listening intently. Some +melodies seemed to touch her almost to tears. The love of music ran +in the Fausset family, and it was no surprise to Mildred to see her +aunt so absorbed. What had an elderly spinster to live for if it were +not philanthropy and art? And for the plastic arts—for pictures and +porcelain, statuary or high-art furniture—Miss Fausset cared not a +jot, as those barren drawing-rooms, with their empty walls and pallid +colour, bore witness. Music she loved with unaffected devotion, and +it was in nowise strange to find her the friend and patroness of +César Castellani, opposite as were the opinions of the man who wrote +_Nepenthe_ and the woman who had helped to found the church of St. +Edmund the Confessor. + +“Play the duet at the end of the second act,” she said, when he paused +after a brilliant six-eight movement which suggested a joyous chorus. + +He played a cantabile accompaniment, like the flow of summer seas, and +then a plaintive melody for two voices—following, answering, echoing +each other with tearful emphasis—a broken phrase here and there, as if +the singer were choked by a despairing sob. + +“What is the name of the opera, aunt?” asked Mildred; “I never heard +any of that music before.” + +“He has been playing selections from different operas. That last melody +is a duet in an opera called _La Donna del Pittore_.” + +“By what composer? It sounded like Flotow.” + +“It is not Flotow’s. That opera was written by Mr. Castellani’s father.” + +“I remember he told me his father had written operas. It is a pity his +music was never known in England.” + +“You had better say it was a pity his music was never fashionable in +Paris. Had it been recognised there, English connoisseurs would have +speedily discovered its merits. We are not a musical nation, Mildred. +We find new planets, but we never discover new musicians. We took up +Weber only to neglect him and break his heart. We had not taste enough +to understand Mendelssohn’s _Melusine_.” + +“Mr. Castellani’s operas were popular in Italy, were they not?” + +“For a time, yes; but the Italians are as capricious as we are dull. +César tells me that his father’s operas have not held the stage.” + +“Were they fashionable in your time, aunt, when you were studying music +at Milan?” + +“Yes, they were often performed at that time. I used to hear them +occasionally.” + +“And you like them now. They are associated with your girlhood. I can +understand that they must have a peculiar charm for you.” + +“Yes, they are full of old memories.” + +“Do you never play or sing yourself, aunt?” + +“I play a little sometimes, when I am quite alone.” + +“But never to give pleasure to other people? That seems unkind. I +remember how proud my father was of your musical talent; but you would +never let us hear you either at The Hook or in Parchment Street.” + +“I have never cared to play or sing before an audience—since I was +a girl. You need not wonder at me, Mildred. Different people have +different ways of thinking. My pleasure in music of late years has been +the pleasure of a listener. Mr. Castellani is good enough to gratify +me sometimes, as he has done to-night, when he has nothing better to +do.” + +“Do not say that,” exclaimed Castellani, coming into the glow of the +hearth, and seating himself beside Miss Fausset’s armchair. “What can I +have better to do than to commune with a sympathetic mind like yours—in +the language of the dead? It is almost as if my father’s vanished voice +were speaking to you,” he said, in caressing tones, bending down to +kiss the thin pale hand which lay idle on the arm of the chair. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +HIGHER VIEWS. + + +After that interview with her husband, which in her own mind meant +finality, Mildred Greswold’s strength succumbed suddenly, and for more +than a week she remained in a state of health for which Miss Fausset’s +doctor could find no name more specific than low fever. She was not +very feverish, he told her aunt. The pulse was rapid and intermittent, +but the temperature was not much above the normal limit. She was very +weak and low, and she wanted care. He had evidently not quite made +up his mind whether she wanted rousing or letting alone—whether he +would recommend her to spend the winter at Chamounix and do a little +mountaineering, or to vegetate at Nice or Algiers. “We must watch her,” +he said gravely. “She must not be allowed to go into a decline.” + +Miss Fausset looked alarmed at this, but her doctor, an acquaintance +of fifteen years, assured her that there was no cause for alarm; there +was only need of care and watchfulness. + +“Her mother died at six-and-thirty,” said Miss Fausset—“faded away +gradually, without any ostensible disease. My brother did everything +that care and forethought could do, but he could not save her.” + +“Mrs. Greswold must not be allowed to fade away,” replied the doctor, +with an air of being infallible. + +Directly she was well enough to go down to the drawing-room again, +Mildred began to talk of starting for Switzerland or Germany. She +had inflicted herself and her surroundings upon Lewes Crescent too +long already, she told her aunt; and although Miss Fausset expressed +herself delighted to have her niece, and reconciled even to Pamela’s +frivolity and the existence of Box in the lower regions, Mildred felt +somehow that her presence interfered with the even tenor of life in +that orderly mansion. The only person who made light of Miss Fausset’s +idiosyncrasies, came to the house at all hours, stayed as late as he +chose, disturbed the symmetry of the bookshelves, left Miss Fausset’s +cherished books lying about on chairs and sofas, and acted in all +things after his own fancy, was César Castellani. His manner towards +Miss Fausset was unalterably deferential; he never wavered in his +respect for her as a superior being; he was full of subtle flatteries +and delicate attentions; yet in somewise his ways were the ways of a +spoiled child, sure of indulgence and favour. He never stayed in the +house, but had his room at an hotel on the cliff, and came to Lewes +Crescent whenever fancy prompted, for two or three days at a stretch, +then went back to London, and was seen no more for a week or so. + +Mildred found that Pamela and Mr. Castellani had seen a great deal of +each other during her illness. They had sung and played together, they +had walked on the cliff—in sight of the drawing-room windows the whole +time, Pamela explained, and with Miss Fausset’s severe eye upon them. +They had devoted themselves together to the education of Box, who had +learnt at least three new tricks under their joint instruction, and +who, possibly from over-pressure, had acquired a habit of trying to +bite Mr. Castellani whenever he had an opportunity. + +“It is because he is such a horribly unmusical dog,” explained Pamela. +“He managed to creep up to the drawing-room the other day when Miss +Fausset was at church, and Mr. Castellani came in and began to play, +and that dreadful Box planted himself near the piano and howled +piteously till I carried him out.” + +“My dearest Pamela, I don’t think Box’s opinion of Mr. Castellani or +his music matters much,” said Mildred, with gentle gravity, as she lay +on the sofa in the back drawing-room, with Pamela’s hand clasped in +hers; “but it matters a great deal what you think of him, and I fear +you are beginning to think too much about him.” + +“Why should I not think of him, aunt, if I like—and he likes? I am +my own mistress; there are few girls so independent of all ties; +for really nobody cares a straw for me except you and Uncle George. +Rosalind is wrapped up in her baby, and Henry is devoted to pigeons, +guns, and fishing-tackle. Do you think it can matter to them whom I +marry? Why should I be sordid, and say to myself, ‘I have fifteen +hundred a year, and I mustn’t marry a man with less than three +thousand’? Why should I not marry genius if I like—genius even without +a penny?” + +“If you could meet with genius, Pamela.” + +“You think that Mr. Castellani is not a genius?” + +“I think not. He is too versatile and too showy. All his gifts are +on the surface. Genius is single-minded, aiming at one great thing. +Genius is like still water and runs deep. I admit that Mr. Castellani +is highly gifted as a musician of the lighter sort; not a man who will +leave music behind him to live for ever. I admit that he has written a +strangely attractive book. But I should be sorry to call him a genius. +I should be very sorry to see you throw yourself away, as I believe you +would if you were to marry him.” + +“That is what a girl’s friends always say to her,” exclaimed Pamela. +“To marry the man one loves is to throw oneself away.” And then +blushing furiously, she added, “Pray don’t suppose that I am in love +with Mr. Castellani. There has never been one word of love between +us—except in the clouds, by way of philosophical discussion. But, as a +fatherless and motherless girl of advanced opinions, I claim the right +to marry genius, if I choose.” + +“My dear girl, I cannot dispute your independence; but I think the +sooner we leave this house the better. The first thing is to make up +our minds where we are to go.” + +“I don’t care a bit, aunt; only you must not leave Brighton till you +are much stronger. You will want at least three weeks before you will +be able to stand the fatigue of travelling,” said Pamela, surveying the +invalid with a critical air. + +“We can travel by easy stages. I am not afraid of fatigue. Where shall +we go, Pamela—Schwalbach, Wiesbaden, Vevay, Montreux?” + +“O, not Schwalbach, aunt. They took me there for iron five years ago, +when I had outgrown my strength. Switzerland is always lovely, of +course; but I went there with Rosalind after her baby was born, and +endured the dreariest six weeks of my existence. Brighton is absolutely +delicious at this time of the year. It would be absurd to rush away +from the place just when people are beginning to come here.” + +Mildred saw that the case was hopeless, and she began to think +seriously about her responsibilities in this matter: a frank impetuous +girl, her husband’s niece, eager to cast in her lot with a man who was +obviously an adventurer, living sumptuously with hardly any obvious +means, and who might be a scoundrel. She remembered her impression of +the face in the church, the Judas face, as she had called it in her +own mind: a foolish impression, perhaps, and it might be baseless; yet +such first impressions are sometimes warnings not to be lightly set at +naught. As yet nothing had come of that warning: no act of Castellani’s +had shown him a villain; but his advent had begun the misery of her +life. Had she never seen him she never might have known this great +sorrow. His presence was a constant source of irritation, tempting +her to questioning that might lead to further misery. Fay’s image had +been constantly in her mind of late. She had brooded over that wedded +life of which she knew nothing—over that early death which for her was +shrouded in mystery. + +“And he could tell me so much, perhaps,” she said to herself one +evening, sitting by the fire in the inner room, while Castellani played +in the distance yonder between the tall windows that let in the gray +eastern light. + +“Her death was infinitely sad.” + +Those were the words which he had spoken of George Greswold’s first +wife: of Fay, her Fay, the one warm love of her childish years, the +love that had stayed with her so long after its object had vanished +from her life. That there was something underlying those words, some +secret which might add a new bitterness to her sorrow, was the doubt +that tortured Mildred as she sat and brooded by the fire, while those +lovely strains of Mendelssohn’s “I waited for the Lord” rose in slow +solemnity from the distant piano, breathing sounds of peacefulness +where there was no peace. + +Mr. Castellani had behaved admirably since her convalescence. He had +asked no questions about her husband, had taken her presence and +Pamela’s for granted, never hinting a curiosity about this sudden +change of quarters. Mildred thought that her aunt had told him +something about her separation from her husband. It was hardly possible +that she could have withheld all information, seeing the familiar +terms upon which those two were; and it might be, therefore, that his +discretion was the result of knowledge. He had nothing to learn, and +could easily seem incurious. + +Mildred now discovered that one source of Castellani’s influence with +her aunt was the work he had done for the choir of St. Edmund’s. It +was to his exertions that the choral services owed their excellence. +The Vicar loved music only as a child or a savage loves it, without +knowledge or capacity; and it was Castellani who chose the voices for +the choir, and helped to train the singers. It was Castellani who +assisted the organist in the selection of recondite music, which gave +an air of originality to the services at St. Edmund’s, and brought the +odour of mediævalism and the fumes of incense into the Gothic chancel. +Castellani’s knowledge of music, ancient and modern, was of the widest. +It was his musical erudition which gave variety to his improvisations. +He could delight an admiring circle with meandering reminiscences of +Lully, Corelli, Dussek, Spohr, Clementi, Cherubini, and Hummel, in +which only the modulations were his own. + +In this interval of convalescence Mrs. Greswold’s life fell into a +mechanical monotony which suited her as well as any other kind of +life would have done. For the greater part of the day she sat in the +low armchair by the fire, a table with books at her side, and her +work-basket at her feet. Those who cared to observe her saw that she +neither worked nor read. She took up a volume now and again, opened it, +looked at a page with dreamy eyes for a little while, and then laid +it aside. She took up the frame with the azaleas, worked half-a-dozen +stitches, and put the frame down again. Her days were given to long +and melancholy reveries. She lived over her married life, with all its +happiness, with its one great pain. She contemplated her husband’s +character—such a perfect character it had always seemed to her; and yet +his one weak act, his one suppression of truth, had wrought misery for +them both. And then with ever-recurring persistency she thought of Fay, +and Fay’s unexplained fate. + +“I know him so well, his wife of fourteen years,” she said to herself. +“Can I doubt for an instant that he did his duty to her; that he was +loyal and kind; that whatever sadness there was in her fate it could +have been brought about by no act of his?” + +Pamela behaved admirably all this time. She respected Mildred’s +silence, and was not overpoweringly gay. She would sit at her +aunt’s feet working, wrapped in her own thoughts, or poring over a +well-thumbed Shelley, which seemed to her to express all her emotions +for her without any trouble on her part. She found her feelings about +César Castellani made to measure, as it were, in those mystic pages, +and wondered that she and Shelley could be so exactly alike. + +When Mildred was well enough to go out of doors Miss Fausset suggested +a morning with her poor. + +“It will brace your nerves,” she said, “and help you to make up your +mind. If you have really a vocation for the higher life, the life of +self-abnegation and wide usefulness, the sooner you enter upon it +the better. Mind, I say _if_. You know I have given you my advice +conscientiously as a Christian woman, and my advice is that you go back +to your husband, and forget everything but your duty to him.” + +“Yes, aunt, I know; but you and I think differently upon that point.” + +“Very well,” with an impatient sigh. “You are obstinate enough there: +you have made up your mind so far. You had better make it up a little +further. At present you are halting between two opinions.” + +Mildred obeyed with meekness and indifference. She was not interested +in Miss Fausset’s district; she had given no thought yet to the merits +of life in a Christian community, among a handful of pious women +working diligently for the suffering masses. Her only thought had been +of that which she had lost, not of what she might gain. + +Miss Fausset came in from the morning service at half-past eight, +breakfasted sparingly, and at nine the _ne plus ultra_ brougham, the +perfection of severity in coach-building, was at the door, and the +perfect brown horse was champing his bit and rattling his brazen +headgear in over-fed impatience to be off. It seemed to be the one +aim of this powerful creature’s life to run away with Miss Fausset’s +brougham, but up to this point his driver had circumvented him. He made +very light of the distance between the aristocratic East Cliff and the +shabbiest outlying district of Brighton, at the fag end of the London +Road, and here Mildred saw her aunt in active work as a ministering +angel to the sick and the wretched. + +It was only the old, old story of human misery which she saw repeated +under various forms; the old, old evidence of the unequal lots that +fall from the urn of Fate—Margaret in her sky-blue boudoir, Peggy +staggering under her basket of roses—for some only the flowers, for +others only the thorns. She saw that changeless background of sordid +poverty which makes every other sorrow harder to bear; and she told +herself that the troubles of the poor were heavier than the troubles +of the rich. Upon her life sorrow had come, like a thunderbolt out of +a summer sky; but sorrow was the warp and woof of these lives; joy or +good luck of any kind would have been the thunderclap. + +She saw that her aunt knew how to deal with these people, and that +underneath Miss Fausset’s hardness there was a great power of sympathy. +Her presence seemed everywhere welcome; and people talked freely to +her, unbosoming themselves of every trouble, confident in her power to +understand. + +“Me and my poor husband calls your aunt our father confessor, ma’am,” +said a consumptive tailor’s wife to Mildred. “We’re never afraid to +tell her anything—even if it seems foolish like—and she always gives us +rare good advice—don’t she, Joe?” + +The invalid nodded approvingly over his basin of beef-tea, Miss +Fausset’s beef-tea, which was as comforting as strong wine. + +In one of the houses they found an Anglican Sister, an elderly woman, +in a black hood, to whom Miss Fausset introduced her niece. There +was an old man dying by inches in the next room; and the Sister had +been sitting up with him all night, and was now going home to the +performance of other duties. Mildred talked with her for some time +about her life, and heard a great many details of that existence which +seemed to her still so far off, almost impossible, like a cold pale +life beyond the grave. How different from that warm domestic life at +Enderby! amidst fairest surroundings, in those fine old rooms, where +every detail bore the impress of one’s own fancy, one’s own pursuits: +a selfish life, perhaps, albeit tempered with beneficence to one’s +immediate surroundings; selfish inasmuch as it was happy and luxurious, +while true unselfishness must needs surrender everything, must refuse +to wear purple and fine linen and to fare sumptuously, so long as +Lazarus lies at the gate shivering and hungry. + +Her aunt almost echoed her thoughts presently when she spoke of her +goodness to the poor. + +“Yes, yes, Mildred, I do some little good,” she said, almost +impatiently; “but not enough—not nearly enough. It is only women like +that Sister who do enough. What the rich give must count for very +little in the eyes of the Great Auditor. But I do my best to make up +for a wasted girlhood. I was as foolish and as frivolous as your young +friend Pamela once.” + +“That reminds me, aunt, I want so much to talk to you about Pamela.” + +“What of her?” + +“I am afraid that she admires Mr. Castellani.” + +“Why should she not admire him?” + +“But I suspect she is in danger of falling in love with him.” + +“Let her fall in love with him—let her marry him—let her be happy with +him if she can.” + +There was a recklessness in this counsel which shocked Mildred, coming +from such a person as Miss Fausset. + +“My dear aunt, it is a very serious matter. George gave Pamela to me +for my companion. I feel myself responsible for her happiness.” + +“Then don’t interfere with her happiness. Let her marry the man she +loves.” + +“With all my heart, if he were a good man, and if her uncle had +no objection. But I know so little about Mr. Castellani and his +surroundings.” + +“He has no surroundings—his mother and father are dead. He has no near +relatives.” + +“And his character, aunt; his conduct? What do you know of those?” + +“Only so much as you can see that I know of them. He comes to my house, +and makes himself agreeable to me and my friends. He has given valuable +help in the formation and management of the choir. If I am interested +in a concert for a charity he sings for me, and works for me like a +slave. All his talents are at my service always. I suppose I like him +as well as I should like a favourite nephew, if I had nephews from +whom to choose a favourite. Of his character—outside my house—I know +nothing. I do not believe he has a wife hidden away anywhere; and if +Pamela marries him, she can make her intention public in good time to +prevent any fiasco of that kind.” + +“You speak very scornfully, aunt, as if you had a poor opinion of Mr. +Castellani.” + +“Perhaps I have a poor opinion of mankind in general, Mildred. Your +father was a good man, and your husband is another. We ought to think +ourselves lucky to have known two such men in our lives. As to César +Castellani, I tell you again I know no more of him than you—or very +little more—though I have known him so much longer.” + +“How long have you known him?” + +“About fifteen years.” + +“And how was he introduced to you?” + +“O, he introduced himself, on the strength of the old connection +between the Faussets and the Felixes. It was just before he went to +the University. He was very handsome, very elegant, and very much in +advance of his years in manners and accomplishments. He amused and +interested me, and I allowed him to come to my house as often as he +liked.” + +“Do you know anything about his means?” + +“Nothing definite. He came into a small fortune upon his mother’s +death, and ran through it. He has earned money by literary work, but I +cannot tell you to what extent. If Miss Ransome marry him, I think she +may as well make up her mind to keep him. He belongs to the butterfly +species.” + +“That is rather a humiliating prospect for a wife—rather like buying a +husband.” + +“That is a point for Miss Ransome to consider. I don’t think she is +the kind of girl to care much what her whim costs her.” + +The brown horse, panting for more work, drew up in front of Miss +Fausset’s house at this juncture, fidgeted impatiently while the two +ladies alighted, and then tore round to his mews. + +“You’ve had a handful with him to-day, I guess, mate,” said a humble +hanger-on, as Miss Fausset’s coachman stretched his aching arms. “He’s +a fine ’oss, but I’d rather you drove ’im than me.” + +“I’ll tell you what he is,” replied the coachman: “he’s too good for +his work. That’s his complaint. Dodging in and out of narrer streets, +and makin’ mornin’ calls upon work’ouse paupers, don’t suit _him_.” + + * * * * * + +The time had come when Mildred had to make up her mind where she would +go, and having all the world to choose from, and just the same hopeless +feeling that Eve may have had on leaving Eden, the choice was a matter +of no small difficulty. She sat with a Continental “Bradshaw” in her +hand, turning the leaves and looking at the maps, irresolute and +miserable. Pamela, who might have decided for her, clearly hankered +after no paradise but Brighton. Her idea of Eden was a house in which +Castellani was a frequent visitor. + +It was too late for most of the summer places, too early for Algiers +or the Riviera. Pamela would not hear of the Rhine or any German +watering-place. Montreux might do, perhaps, or the Engadine; but Pamela +hated Switzerland. + +“Would it not do to spend the winter in Bath?” she said. “There is very +nice society in Bath, I am told.” + +“My dear Pamela, I want to get away from society if I can; and I want +to be very far from Enderby.” + +“Of course. It was thoughtless of me to suggest a society place. +Bath, too, within a stone’s throw. Dearest aunt, I will offer no more +suggestions. I will go anywhere you like.” + +“Then let us decide at once. We will go to Pallanza, on Lago Maggiore. +I have heard that it is a lovely spot, and later we can go on to Milan +or Florence.” + +“To Italy! That is like the fulfilment of a dream,” said Pamela with +a sigh, feeling that Italy without César Castellani would be like a +playhouse when the curtain has gone down and all the lights are out. + +She was resigned, however, and not without hope. Castellani might +propose before they left Brighton, when he found that parting was +inevitable. He had said some very tender things, but of that vaguely +tender strain which leaves a man uncommitted. His words had been full +of poetry, but they might have applied to some absent mistress, or to +love in the abstract. Pamela felt that she had no ground for exultation. + +It was in vain that Mildred warned her against the danger of such an +alliance. + +“Consider what a wretched match it would be for you, Pamela,” she said. +“Think how different from your sister Rosalind’s marriage.” + +“Different! I should hope so, indeed! Can you imagine, Aunt Mildred, +that _I_ would marry such a man as Sir Henry Mountford, a man who has +hardly a thought outside his stable and his gunroom? Do you know that +he spends quite a quarter of every day in the saddle-room, allowing +for the wet days, on which he almost lives there? I asked him once why +he didn’t have his lunch sent over to the stables, instead of keeping +us waiting a quarter of an hour, and coming in at last smelling like a +saddler’s shop.” + +“He is a gentleman, notwithstanding, Pamela, and Rosalind seems to get +on very well with him.” + +“‘As the husband is the wife is,’ don’t you know, aunt. You and Uncle +George suit each other because you are both intellectual. I should +be miserable if I married a man who had done nothing to distinguish +himself from the common herd.” + +“Perhaps. But do you think you could be very happy married to an +accomplished idler who would live upon your fortune—who would have +everything to gain, from the most sordid point of view, by marrying +you, and of whose fidelity you could never be sure?” + +“But I should be sure of him. My instinct would tell me if he were +really in love with me. You must think me very silly, Aunt Mildred, if +you think I could be deceived in such a matter as that.” + + * * * * * + +In spite of Pamela’s confidence in her own instinct, or, in other +words, in her own wisdom, Mildred was full of anxiety about her, +and was very eager to place her charge beyond the reach of César +Castellani’s daily visits and musical talent. She felt responsible +to her husband for his niece’s peace of mind; doubly responsible in +that Pamela’s interest had been subordinated to her own comfort and +well-being. + +She had other reasons for wishing to escape from Mr. Castellani’s +society. That instinctive aversion she had felt at sight of the unknown +face in the church was not altogether a sentiment of the past, a +prejudice overcome and forgotten. There were occasions when she shrank +from the Italian’s gentle touch, a delicate white hand hovering for a +moment above her own as he offered her a book or a newspaper; there +were times when his low sympathetic voice was a horror to her; there +were times when she told herself that her self-respect as a wife +hardly permitted of her breathing the same air that he breathed. + +Innocent and simple-minded as her closely-sheltered life had kept her, +in all thoughts, ways, and works unlike the average woman of society, +Mildred Greswold was a woman, and she could not but see that César +Castellani’s feelings for her were of a deeper kind than any sentiment +with which Pamela Ransome’s charms had inspired him. There were moments +when his voice, his face, his manner told his secret only too plainly; +but these were but glimpses of the truth, hurried liftings of the +curtain, which the man of society let drop again before he had too +plainly betrayed himself. He had been careful to keep his secret from +Pamela. It was only to the object of his worship that he had revealed +those presumptuous dreams of his, and to her only in such wise as +she must needs ignore. It would have seemed self-conscious prudery +to rebuke indications so subtle and so casual; but Mildred could not +ignore them in her own mind, and she waited anxiously for the hour in +which she would be well enough to travel. She had all her plans made, +had engaged a courier—a friend of Miss Fausset’s Franz—and had arranged +her route with him: first Northern Italy, and then the South. She +wanted to make Pamela’s exile as bright and as profitable to her as she +could. The life she was arranging was by no means the kind of life that +Clement Cancellor would have counselled. It would have seemed to that +stern labourer a life of self-indulgence and frivolity. But the time +for the higher ideal would come by and by, perhaps, when this sense of +misery, this benumbed feeling of indifference to all things, had worn +off, and she should be strong enough to think a little more about other +people’s sorrows and a little less about her own. + +Mr. Maltravers urged upon her the duty of staying in Brighton, and +working as her aunt worked. He had been told that Mrs. Greswold was a +woman of independent fortune, and that she had separated herself from +a husband she fondly loved, upon a question of principle. It was just +such a woman as this that Samuel Maltravers liked to see in his church. +Such women were the elect of the earth, predestined to contribute to +the advancement of clerics and the building of chancels and transepts. +The chancel at St. Edmund’s was a noble one, needing no extension, +its only fault being that it was too big for the church. But there +was room for a transept. The church had been so planned as to allow +of its ultimate cruciform shape, and that transept was the dream of +Mr. Maltravers’ life. Scarcely had Mrs. Greswold’s story dropped in +measured syllables from Miss Fausset’s lips than Mr. Maltravers said to +himself, “This lady will build my transept.” A woman who could leave a +beloved husband on a question of principle was just the kind of woman +to sink a few superfluous thousands upon the improvement of such a fane +as St. Edmund’s. Every seat in that fashionable temple was occupied. +More seat-room was a necessity. The hour had come, and the—woman. + +Mr. Maltravers endeavoured to convince Mrs. Greswold that Brighton +was the one most fitting sphere for an enlightened woman’s labours. +Brighton cried aloud for a Christian sister’s aid. It had all the +elements in which the heaven-born missionary delights. Phenomenal +wealth on the one side, abject poverty on the other; fashion in +the foreground, sin and misery behind the curtain. Brighton was +Pagan Rome in little. Together with the advanced civilisation, the +over-refinement, the occult pleasures, the art, the luxury, the beauty, +the burning of the Seven-hilled City, Brighton had all the corrupting +influences of her Pagan sister. Brighton was rotten to the core—a +lovely simulacrum—a Dead Sea apple—shining, golden, doomed, damned. + +As he uttered that last terrific word Mr. Maltravers sank his voice +to that bass depth some of us can remember in Bishop Wilberforce’s +climatic syllables; and so spoken, the word seemed permissible in any +serious drawing-room, awful rather than profane. + +It was in vain, however, that the Vicar of St. Edmund’s strove to +convince Mildred that her mission was immediate, and in Brighton; that +in his parish, and there alone, could her loftiest dreams find their +fulfilment. + +“I hope to do some little good to my fellow-creatures by and by,” +she said meekly, “but I do not feel that the time has come yet. I am +incapable of anything except just existing. I believe my aunt has told +you that I have had a great sorrow—” + +“Yes, yes, poor wounded heart, I know, I know.” + +“I mean to work by and bye—when I have learned to forget myself a +little. Sorrow is so selfish. Just now I feel stupid and helpless. I +could do no good to any one.” + +“You could build my transept,” thought Mr. Maltravers, but he only +sighed, and shook his head, and murmured gently, “Well, well, we must +wait; we must hope. There is but one _earthly_ consolation for a great +grief—I will say nothing of heavenly comfort—and that consolation +is to be found in labouring for the good of our sinning, sorrowing +fellow-creatures, and for the glory of God—for the glory of God,” +repeated Mr. Maltravers, harping on his transept. “There are mourners +who have left imperishable monuments of their grief, and of their +piety, in some of the finest churches of this land.” + + * * * * * + +Upon the evening on which Mr. Maltravers had pleaded for Brighton, Miss +Fausset and her _protégé_ were alone together during the half-hour +before dinner; the lady resting after a long day in her district: +a composed, quiet figure, in fawn-coloured silk gown and point lace +kerchief, seated erect in the high-backed chair, with folded hands, and +eyes gazing thoughtfully at the fire; the gentleman lounging in a low +chair on the other side of the hearth in luxurious self-abandonment, +his red-brown eyes shining in the fire-glow, and his red-brown hair +throwing off glints of light. + +They had been talking, and had lapsed into silence; and it was after a +long pause that Miss Fausset said, + +“I wonder you have not made the young lady an offer before now.” + +“Suppose I am not in love with the young lady?” + +“You have been too assiduous for that supposition to occur to me. You +have haunted this house ever since Miss Ransome has been here.” + +“And yet I am not in love with her.” + +“She is a pretty and attractive girl, and disposed to think highly of +you.” + +“And yet I am not in love with her,” he repeated, with a smile which +made Miss Fausset angry. “To think that you should turn matchmaker, +you who have said so many bitter things of the fools who fall in love, +and the still greater fools who marry; _you_ who stand alone like +a granite monolith, like Cleopatra’s Needle, or the Matterhorn, or +anything grand and solitary and unapproachable; you to counsel the +civilised slavery we call marriage!” + +“My dear César, I can afford to stand alone; but you cannot afford to +surrender your chance of winning an amiable wife with fifteen hundred a +year.” + +“That for fifteen hundred a year!” exclaimed Castellani, wafting an +imaginary fortune from the tips of his fingers with airy insolence. “Do +you think I will sell myself—for so little?” + +“That high-flown tone is all very well; but there is one fact you seem +to ignore.” + +“What is that, my kindest and best?” + +“The fact that you are a very expensive person, and that you have to be +maintained somehow.” + +“That fact shall never force me to marry where I cannot love. At the +worst, art shall maintain me. When other and dearer friends prove +unkind, I will call upon my maiden aunts the Muses.” + +“The Muses hitherto have hardly paid for the gardenias in your +buttonhole.” + +“O, I know I am not a man of business. I lack the faculty of pounds, +shillings, and pence, which is an attribute of some minds. I have +scattered my flowers of art upon all the highways instead of nailing +the blossoms against a wall and waiting for them to bear fruit. I have +been reckless, improvident—granted; and you, out of your abundance, +have been kind. Your words imply a threat. You wish to remind me that +your kindness cannot go on for ever.” + +“There are limits to everything.” + +“Hardly to your generosity; certainly not to your wealth. As you garner +it, that must be inexhaustible. I cannot think that you would ever turn +your back upon me. The link between us is too tender a bond.” + +Miss Fausset’s face darkened to deepest night. + +“Tender do you call it?” she exclaimed. “If the memory of an +unpardonable wrong is tender—” and then, interrupting herself, she +cried passionately, “César Castellani, I have warned you against the +slightest reference to the past. As for my generosity, as you call it, +you might be wiser if you gave it a lower name—caprice; caprice which +may weary at any moment. You have a chance of making an excellent +match, and I strongly advise you to take advantage of it.” + +“Forgive me if I disregard your advice, much as I respect your judgment +upon all other subjects.” + +“You have other views, I suppose, then?” + +“Yes, I have other views.” + +“You look higher?” + +“Infinitely higher,” he answered, with his hands locked above his head +in a carelessly graceful attitude, and with his eyes gazing at the fire. + +He looked like a dreaming fawn: the large, full eyes, the small peaked +beard, and close-cut hair upon the arched forehead were all suggestive +of the satyr tribe. + +The door opened, and Pamela came smiling in, self-conscious, yet happy, +delighted at seeing that picturesque figure by the hearth. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE TIME HAS COME. + + +Three days later Mildred and her young companion started for Italy. +The doctor declared that the departure was premature—Mrs. Greswold was +not strong enough to undertake such a fatiguing journey. But modern +civilisation has smoothed the roads that lead over the civilised world, +and for a lady who travels with a maid and a courier, journeys are +rendered very easy; besides, Mildred had made up her mind to leave +Brighton at any hazard. + +The hour of parting came for Pamela and Castellani, and although the +young lady took care to remind him at least a dozen times a day of that +impending severance, not one word of the future, or of any cherished +hope on his part, fell from his lips. And yet it had seemed to Pamela +that he was devoted to her, that he only waited for the opportunity to +speak. It seemed to her also that he felt the pain of parting, for he +had an air of deepest melancholy daring these farewell days, and talked +only of saddest themes. He was in Lewes Crescent nearly all day long—he +played the mournfullest strains—he behaved like a man oppressed with a +secret sorrow; but never a word of love or marriage did he breathe to +Pamela. He pressed her hand gently, with an almost paternal affection, +as she leant out of the carriage which was to take her to the station, +and bade him a last good-bye. + +“Good-bye!” she half sang, half sobbed, in the darkness at the back +of the hired landau, as they drove bumping down St. James’s street. +“Good-bye, summer; good-bye, everything!” + +She did not even glance at Hannington’s autumn fashions as they drove +up the hill. She felt that life was no longer worth dressing for. + +“He never could have cared for me,” she thought, as she dropped her +silent tears upon Box’s thoroughbred neck, “and yet he seemed—he +seemed! Does he seem like that to every girl, I wonder? Is he all +seeming?” + +After this came a leisurely journey, and then long, slow weeks of a +luxurious repose amidst fairest surroundings—a life which to those who +have lived and fought the great battle, and come wounded but yet alive +out of the fray, is the life paradisaic; but for the fresh, strong soul +panting for emotions and excitements, like a young bird that yearns to +try the strength of his wings, this kind of languid existence seems +like a foretaste of death and nothingness. Mountains and lakes were not +enough for Pamela—the azure of an Italian sky, the infinite variety of +sunset splendours, the brightness of a morning heralded by a roseate +flush on snow-capped hills—all these were futile where the heart +was empty. Mildred’s maturer grief found some consolation in these +exquisite surroundings; but Pamela wanted to live, and those encircling +mountains seemed to her as the walls of a gigantic prison. + +“It was so nice at Brighton,” she said, looking along the burnished +mirror of the lake with despondent eyes, tired of the mystery of those +reflected mountains, descending into infinite depths, a world inverted: +“so gay, so cheery—always something going on. Don’t you think, aunt, +that the air of this place is very relaxing?” + +That word relaxing is the keynote of discontent. It is a word that can +blight the loveliest spots the sun ever shone upon. It is the speck +upon the peach. Be sure that before ever he mentioned the apple, Satan +told Eve that Eden was very relaxing. + +“I hope you are not unhappy here, my dear Pamela?” said Mildred, +evading the question. + +“Unhappy? O, no, indeed, dear aunt! I could not be otherwise than happy +with you anywhere. There are lots of people who would envy me living on +the shore of Lago Maggiore, and seeing those delightful mountains all +day long; but I did so enjoy Brighton—the theatre, the Pavilion; always +something going on.” + +The two ladies had their own suite of apartments in the hotel, and +lived in that genteel seclusion which is the privilege of wealth as +well as of rank all over the world. Pamela envied the tourists of +Cook and Gaze, as she saw them trooping into the _table d’hôte_, or +heard their clatter in the public drawing-room. It was all very well +to sit in one’s own balcony, gazing at the placid lake, while the +rabble amused themselves below. One felt one’s superior status, and +the advantage of being somebody instead of nobody; but when the rabble +danced or acted charades, or played dumb crambo, or squabbled over a +game at nap, they seemed to have the best of it somehow. + +“I almost wish I had been born a vulgarian,” sighed Pamela one evening, +when the tourists were revolving to the “Myosotis Waltz” banged out on +a cast-iron grand in the salon below. + +Mildred did all she could in the way of excursionising to enliven the +dulness of their solitary life; but the beauties of Nature palled upon +Pamela’s lively mind. However the day might be occupied in drives to +distant scenes of surpassing loveliness, the ever-lengthening evenings +had to be spent in the Louis Quatorze salon, where no visitors dropped +in to disturb the monotony of books and work, piano and pet-dog. + +For Mildred, too, those evening hours seemed unutterably long, and as +autumn deepened into winter, her burden seemed heavier to bear. Time +brought no consolation, offered no hope. She had lost all that had +made life worth living. First, the child who represented all that was +brightest and fairest and gayest and most hopeful in her life; next, +the husband who was her life itself, the prop and staff, the column +around which every tendril of her being was entwined. There was nothing +for her in the future but a life of self-abnegation, of working and +living for others. The prospect seemed dark and dreary, and she knew +now how small a margin of her life had been devoted to God. The idea of +devoting herself wholly was too repellent. She knew now that she was +very human, wedded to earthly loves and earthly happiness, needing a +long purgation before she could attain the saintly attitude. + +She thought of Enderby every night as she sat in silent melancholy +beside the hearth, where a solitary log crumbled slowly to white +ashes on the marble, and where the faint warmth had a perfume of +distant pine-woods; she thought of Enderby and its widowed master. +Was he living there still, or was he, too, a wanderer? She had heard +but little of his movements since she left England. Pamela had +written to him, and he had replied, but had said very little about +himself. The only news in Rosalind’s letters was of the extraordinary +development—intellectual and otherwise—of the baby, and the magnitude +of Sir Henry’s bag. Beyond the baby and the bag, Lady Mountford’s pen +rarely travelled. + +Mildred thought of that absent husband with an aching heart. There +were times when she asked herself if she had done well—when she was +tempted to total surrender—when the pen was in her hand ready to write +a telegram imploring him to come to her—or when she was on the point +of giving her orders for an immediate return to England. But pride and +principle alike restrained her. She had taken her own course, she had +made up her mind deliberately, after long thought and many prayers. She +could not tread the backward way, the primrose path of sin. She could +but pray for greater strength, for loftier purpose, for that grand +power of self-forgetfulness which makes for heaven. + +Christmas came and found her in this frame of mind. There were very +few tourists now, and the long corridors had a sepulchral air, the +snowy mountain-tops were blotted out by mist and rain. For Pamela, +Christmastide had been a season of much gaiety hitherto—a season of +new frocks and many dances, hunting and hunt-balls, and the change +was a severe test of that young lady’s temper. She came through the +ordeal admirably, never forgot that she had promised her uncle to be +his wife’s faithful companion, and amused herself as best she could +with Italian music and desultory studies. She read Mr. Sinnett’s books, +studied Bohn’s edition of Plato’s Dialogues, addled her youthful brain +with various theories of a far-reaching kind, and fancied herself +decidedly mediumistic. That word mediumistic possessed a peculiar +fascination for her. She had looked at César Castellani’s eyeballs, +which were markedly globular—seeming, as it were, reflecting surfaces +for the spirit world, a sure indication of the mediumistic temperament. +She had seen other signs; and now in this romantic solitude, sauntering +by the lake in the misty winter air, just before sundown, she fancied +herself almost in communion with that absent genius. Distance could +not separate two people when both were eminently mediumistic. + +“I believe he is thinking of me at this very moment,” she said to +herself one afternoon at the end of the year, “and I have a kind of +feeling that I shall see him—bodily—very soon.” + +She forgot to reckon with herself that this kind of feeling could count +for very little, since she had experienced it in greater or less degree +ever since she had left Brighton. In almost every excursion she had +beguiled the tedium of the way with some pleasant day-dream. Castellani +would appear in the most unlooked-for manner at the resting-place where +they were to lunch. He would have followed them from England at his +leisure, and would come upon them unannounced, pleased to startle her +by his sudden apparition. In absence she had recalled so many tender +speeches, so many indications of regard; and she had taught herself to +believe that he really cared for her, and had but been withheld from +a declaration by a noble dignity which would not stoop to woo a woman +richer than himself. + +“He is poor and proud,” she thought. + +Poor and proud. How sweet the alliteration sounded! + +She had thought of him so incessantly that it was hardly a coincidence, +and yet it seemed to her a miracle when his voice sounded behind her in +the midst of her reverie. + +“You ought not to be out of doors, Miss Ransome, when the sun is so +nearly down.” + +She turned and faced him, pale first with infinite pleasure, and then +rosy to the roots of her flaxen hair. + +“When did you come?” she asked eagerly. “Have you been long in Italy?” + +“I only came through the St. Gothard last night, breakfasted at +Locarno, and came here by road. I have not seen Mrs. Greswold yet. She +is well, I hope?” + +“She is not over-well. She frets dreadfully, I am afraid. It is so sad +that she and Uncle George should be living apart for some mysterious +reason which nobody knows. They were the most perfect couple.” + +“Mrs. Greswold is a perfect woman.” + +“And Uncle George has the finest character. His first marriage was +unhappy, I believe; nobody ever talked about it. I think it was only +just known in the family that he had married in Italy when he was a +young man, and that his wife had died within a year. It was supposed +that she could not have been nice, since nobody knew anything about +her.” + +“Rather hard upon the dead lady to be condemned by her husband’s +silence. Will you take me to your aunt?” + +“With pleasure. I think she ought to be charmed to see you, for we lead +the most solitary existence here. My aunt has set her face against +knowing anybody, in the hotel or out of it. And there have been some +really charming people staying here; people one would go out of one’s +way to know. Have you come here for your health?” + +“For my pleasure only. I was sick to death of England and of cities. I +longed to steep myself in the infinite and the beautiful. Those indigo +clouds above the mountains yonder—with that bold splash of orange +shining through the gorge—are worth the journey, were there no more +than that; and when the wintry stars glass themselves in the lake by +and by, ah! then one knows what it is to be the living, acting element +in a world of passive beauty. And to think that there are men and women +in London groping about in the fog, and fancying themselves alive!” + +“O, but there are compensations—theatres, concerts, dances.” + +“Miss Ransome, I fear you are a Philistine.” + +“O, no, no! I adore Nature. I should like to be above those common +earthly pleasures—to journey from star to star along the planetary +chain, rising at each transition to a higher level, until I came to the +spirit world where— This is the hotel, and we are on the second floor. +Would you like the lift?” + +“I never walk when I can be carried.” + +“Then we will go up in the lift. I used to think it rather good fun +at first,” said Pamela with a sigh, remembering how soon that trivial +excitement had begun to pall. + +Mildred received the unexpected visitor with marked coldness; but it +was not easy to remain persistently cold while Pamela was so warm. +Castellani was one of those provoking people who refuse to see when +they are unwelcome. He was full of talk, gay, bright, and varied. He +had all the social events of the past three months to talk about. +Society had witnessed the most extraordinary changes—marriages—sudden +deaths—everything unlooked for. There had been scandals, too; but these +he touched upon lightly, and with a deprecating air, professing himself +sorry for everybody. + +Mildred allowed him to talk, and was, perhaps, a little more cordial +when he took his leave than she had been when he came. He had prevented +her from thinking her own thoughts for the space of an hour, and that +was something for which to be grateful. He had come there in pursuit of +Pamela, no doubt. He could have no other reason. He had been playing +his own game, holding back in order to be the more gladly accepted when +he should declare himself. It was thus Mildred reasoned with herself; +and yet there had been looks and tones which it was difficult for her +to forget. + +“He is by profession a lady-killer,” she argued; “no doubt he treats +all women in the same way. He cannot help trying to fascinate them; +and there are women like Cecilia Tomkison who encourage him to make +sentimental speeches.” + +She persuaded herself that the looks and tones which had offended meant +very little. For Pamela’s sake she would like to think well of him. + +“You have told me about a great many people,” she said, as he was +leaving them, “but you have told me nothing about my husband. Did you +hear if he was still at Enderby—and well?” + +“He was still at Enderby up to the end of November, and I believe he +was well. I spent three days at Riverdale, and heard of him from Mrs. +Hillersdon.” + +Mildred asked no further question, nor did she invite Mr. Castellani to +repeat his visit. Happily for his own success in life, he was not the +kind of person to wait for invitations. + +“I am staying in the hotel,” he said. “I hope I may drop in +sometimes—to-morrow even. Miss Ransome is good enough to say she would +like to sing some duets with me.” + +“Miss Ransome knows I have not been receiving any visitors,” Mildred +answered, with a touch of reproachfulness. + +“O, but Mr. Castellani is an old friend! The people you avoided were +strangers,” said Pamela eagerly. + +Mildred made no further protest. Few men would have accepted a +permission so grudgingly given; but Castellani stopped at no obstacle +when he had a serious purpose to serve: and in this case his purpose +was very serious; for life or death, he told himself. + +He came next day, and the day after that, and every day for four or +five weeks, till the first flush of precocious spring lent beauty to +the landscape and softness to the sky. Mildred submitted to his visits +as an inevitable consequence of Pamela’s folly; submitted, and by and +by fell into the habit of being amused by Castellani; interested in his +talk of men and women and of books, of which he seemed to have read +all of any mark that had ever been written. She allowed herself to be +interested; she allowed herself to be soothed by his music; she let +him become an influence in her life, unawares, caught by a subtlety +that had never been surpassed by anybody of lesser gifts than Satan: +but never did this presumptuous wooer beguile her into one single +thought that wronged her absent husband. Her intellect acknowledged the +tempter’s intellectual sway, but her heart knew no wavering. + +César Castellani had seen a good deal of life, but as he had +assiduously cultivated the seamy side, it was hardly strange if he +lacked the power of understanding a pure-minded woman. To his mind +every woman was a citadel, better or worse defended, but always +assailable by treason or strategy, force or art, and never impregnable. +Mrs. Greswold was his Troy, his Thebes, his ideal of majesty and +strength in woman. So far as virtue went upon this earth he believed +Mildred Greswold to be virtuous; proud, too; not a woman to lower her +crest to the illicit conqueror, or stain her name with the disgrace of +a runaway wife. But it had been given to him to disturb a union that +had existed happily for fourteen years. It had been given to him to +awaken the baneful passion of jealousy, to sow the seeds of suspicion, +to part husband and wife. He had gone to work carelessly enough in +the first instance, struck with Mildred’s beauty and sweetness—full +of sentimental recollections of the fair child-face and the bright +streaming hair that had passed him like a vision in the sunlight of +Hyde Park. He had envied the husband so fair a wife, so luxurious +a home, with its air of old-world respectability, that deep-rooted +English aristocracy of landed estate, which to the foreign adventurer +seemed of all conditions in life the most enviable. He had been +impelled by sheer malice when he uttered his careless allusion to +George Greswold’s past life, and with a word blighted two hearts. + +He saw the effect of the speech in the face of the wife, and in the +manner of the husband saw that he had launched a thunderbolt. It was +with deepest interest he followed up his advantage; watched and waited +for further evidence of the evil he had done. He was a close student +of the faces of women; above all, when the face was lovely. He saw all +the marks of secret care in Mrs. Greswold’s countenance during the +weeks that elapsed between his first visit to Enderby and the charity +concert. He saw the deepening shadows, the growing grief, and on the +day of the concert he saw the traces of a still keener pain in those +pale features and haggard eyes; but for an immediate separation between +husband and wife he was not prepared. + +He heard at Riverdale of Mrs. Greswold’s departure from home. The +suddenness and strangeness of her journey had set all the servants +talking. He found out where she had gone, and hastened at once to call +upon his devoted friend Mrs. Tomkison, who told him all she had to tell. + +“There is some domestic misery—an intrigue on his part, I fear,” said +the glib Cecilia. “Men are such traitors. It would hardly surprise me +to-morrow if I was told that Adam was maintaining an expensive _ménage_ +in St. John’s Wood. She would tell me nothing, poor darling; but she +sent for Mr. Cancellor, and was closeted with him for an hour. No doubt +she told _him_ everything. And then she went off to Brighton.” + +Castellani followed to Brighton, and his influence with Miss Fausset +enabled him to learn something, but not all. Not one word said Miss +Fausset about the supposed identity between George Greswold’s first +wife and John Fausset’s _protégée_; but she told Mr. Castellani that +she feared her niece’s separation from her husband would be permanent. + +“Why does she not divorce him,” he asked, “if he has wronged her?” + +“He has not wronged her—in the way you mean. And if he had, she could +not divorce him, unless he had beaten her. You men made the law, and +framed it in your own favour. It is a very sad case, César, and I +am not at liberty to say any more about it. You must ask me no more +questions.” + +Castellani obeyed for the time being; but he did ask further questions +upon other occasions, and he exercised all his subtlety in the +endeavour to extract information from Miss Fausset. That lady, however, +was inflexible; and he had to wait for time to solve the mystery. + +“They have parted on account of that first marriage,” he told himself. +“Perhaps she has found out all about the poor lady’s fate, and takes +the worst view of the catastrophe. That would account for their +separation. She would not stay with a husband she suspected; he would +not live with a wife who could so suspect. A very pretty quarrel.” + +A quarrel—a life-long severance—but not a divorce. There was the +difficulty. César Castellani believed himself invincible with women. +The weakest, and in some cases the worst, of the sex had educated him +into the belief that no woman lived who could resist him. And here was +a woman whom he intensely admired, and whose married life it had been +his privilege to wreck. She was a rich woman—and it was essential to +his success in life that he should marry wealth. With all his various +gifts he was not a money-earning man, he would never attain even +lasting renown by his talents. For when the good fairies had endowed +him with music and poetry, eloquence and grace, the strong-minded, +hard-featured fairy called Perseverance came to his christening +feast, and seeing no knife and fork laid for her, doomed him to the +curse of idleness. He had all the talents which enable a man to shine +in society but he had also the money-spending talent, the elegant +tastes and inclinations which require some thousands a year for their +sustenance. Hitherto he had lived by his wits—from hand to mouth; but +for some years past he had been on the look-out for a rich wife. + +He knew that Mildred Greswold was three times richer than Pamela +Ramsome. The wealth of the Faussets came within the region of his +knowledge; and he knew how large a fortune John Fausset had left his +daughter, and how entirely that fortune was at her own disposal. He +might have had Pamela for the asking; Pamela, with a paltry fifteen +hundred a year; Pamela, who sang false and bored him beyond measure. +The higher prize seemed impossible; but it was his nature to attempt +the impossible. His belief in his own power was boundless. + +“She cannot divorce her husband,” he told himself; “but he may divorce +her if she should wrong him, or even seem to wrong him: and the most +innocent woman may be compromised if her lover is daring and will risk +much for a great _coup_, as I would.” + +He thought himself very near success in these lengthening afternoons +in the beginning of February, when he was allowed to spend the lovely +hour of sundown in Mrs. Greswold’s _salon_, watching the sunset from +the wide plate-glass window, which commanded a panorama of lake and +mountain, with every exquisite change from concentrated light to +suffused colour, and then to deepening purple that slowly darkened +into night. It was the hour in which it was deemed dangerous to be out +of doors; but it was the loveliest hour of the day or the night, and +Mildred never wearied of that glorious outlook over lake and sky. She +was silent for the most part at such a time, sitting in the shadow of +the window-curtains, her face hidden from the other two, sitting apart +from the world, thinking of the life that had been and could never be +again. + +Sometimes in the midst of her sad thoughts Castellani would strike a +chord on the piano at the other end of the room, and then a tender +strain of melody would steal out of the darkness, and that veiled +tenor voice would sing some of the saddest lines of Heine, the poet +of the broken heart, sadder than Byron, sadder than Musset, sad with +the sadness of one who had never known joy. Those words wedded to +tenderest melody always moved Mildred Greswold to tears. Castellani saw +her tears and thought they were given to him; such tears as yielding +virtue gives to the tempter. He knew the power of his voice, the +fascination of music for those in whom the love of music is a part of +their being. He could not foresee the possibility of failure. He was +already admitted to that kind of intimacy which is the first stage of +success. He was an almost daily visitor; he came upon the two ladies +in their walks and drives, and contrived, unbidden, to make himself +their companion; he chose the books that both were to read, and made +himself useful in getting library parcels sent from Milan or Paris. He +contrived to make himself indispensable, or at least thought himself +so. Pamela’s eagerness filled up all the gaps; she was so full of talk +and vivacity that it was not easy to be sure about the sentiments of +her more silent companion; but César Castellani’s vanity was the key +with which he read Mildred’s character and feelings. + +“She is a sphinx,” he told himself; “but I think I can solve her +mystery. The magnetic power of such a love as mine must draw her to me +sooner or later.” + +Mr. Castellani had a profound belief in his own magnetism. That word +magnetic had a large place in his particular creed. He talked of +certain fascinating women—generally a little _passée_—as “magnetic.” He +prided himself upon being a magnetic man. + +While César Castellani flattered himself that he was on the threshold +of success, Mildred Greswold was deliberating how best to escape from +him and his society for ever. Had she been alone there need have been +no difficulty; but she saw Pamela’s happiness involved in his presence, +she saw the fresh young cheek pale at the thought of separation, +and she was perplexed how to act for the best. Had Pamela been her +daughter she could not have considered her feelings more tenderly. She +told herself that Mr. Castellani would be a very bad match for Miss +Ransome; yet when she saw the girl’s face grow radiant at the sound +of his footsteps, when she watched her dullness in his absence, that +everlasting air of waiting for somebody which marks the girl who is +in love, she found herself hoping that the Italian would make a formal +proposal, and she was inclined to meet him half-way. + +But the new year was six weeks old, and he had not even hinted at +matrimonial intentions, so Mildred felt constrained to speak plainly. + +“My dearest Pamela, we are drifting into a very uncomfortable position +with Mr. Castellani,” she began gently. “He comes here day after day as +if he were your _fiancé_, and yet he has said nothing definite.” + +Pamela grew crimson at this attack, and her hands began to tremble over +her crewel-work, though she tried to go on working. + +“I respect him all the more for being in no haste to declare himself, +Aunt Mildred,” she said, rather angrily. “If he were the kind of +adventurer you once thought him, he would have made me an offer ages +ago. Why should he not come to see us? I’m sure he’s very amusing and +very useful. Even you seem interested in him and cheered by him. Why +should he not come? We have no one’s opinion to study in a foreign +hotel.” + +“I don’t know about that, dear. People always hear about things; and it +might injure you by and by in society to have your name associated with +Mr. Castellani.” + +“I am sure I should be very proud of it,” retorted Pamela; “very proud +to have my name associated with genius.” + +“And you really, honestly believe you could be happy as his wife, +Pamela?” asked Mildred gravely. + +“I know that I can never be happy with any one else. I don’t consider +myself particularly clever, aunt, but I believe I have the artistic +temperament. Life without art would be a howling wilderness for me.” + +“Life means a long time, dear. Think what a difference it must make +whether you lead it with a good or a bad man!” + +“All the goodness in the world would not make me happy with a husband +who was not musical; not John Howard, nor John Wesley, nor John Bunyan, +nor any of your model Johns. John Milton _was_,” added Pamela rather +vaguely, “and handsome into the bargain; but I’m afraid he was a little +_dry_.” + +“Promise me at least this much, Pamela. First, that you will take no +step without your uncle’s knowledge and advice; and next, that if ever +you marry Mr. Castellani, you will have your fortune strictly settled +upon yourself.” + +“O, aunt, how sordid! But perhaps it would be best. If I had the money, +I should give it all to him: but if he had the money, with his artistic +temperament he would be sure to lavish it all upon other people. He +would not be able to pass a picturesque beggar without emptying his +pockets. Do you remember how he was impressed by the four old men on +the church steps the other day?” + +“Yes, but I don’t think he gave them anything.” + +“Not while we were with him; but you may be sure he did afterwards.” + +After this conversation Mrs. Greswold made up her mind on two points. +She would arrange for a prompt departure to Venice or Naples, whichever +might be advised for the spring season; and she would sound Mr. +Castellani as to his intentions. It was not fair to Pamela that she +should be kept in the dark any longer, that the gentleman should be +allowed to sing duets with her, and advise her studies, and join her in +her walks, and yet give no definite expression to his regard. + +Mildred tried to think the best of him as a suitor for her husband’s +niece. She knew that he was clever; she knew that he was fairly well +born. On his mother’s side he sprang from the respectable commercial +classes; on his father’s side he belonged to the art-world. There +was nothing debasing in such a lineage. From neither her friend Mrs. +Tomkison nor from Miss Fausset had she heard anything to his discredit; +and both those ladies had known him long. There could therefore be no +objection on the score of character. Pamela ought to make a much better +marriage in the way of means and position; but those excellent and +well-chosen alliances dictated by the wisdom of friends are sometimes +known to result in evil; and, in a word, why should not Pamela be happy +in her own way? + +Having thus reasoned with herself, Mildred watched for an opportunity +to speak to Castellani. She had not long to wait. He called rather +earlier than usual one afternoon, when Pamela had gone out for +a mountain ramble with her dog and her maid, to search for those +doubly precious flowers which bloom with the first breath of spring. +Castellani had seen the young lady leave the hotel soon after the +midday meal, armed with her alpenstock, and accompanied by her +attendant carrying a basket. She had fondly hoped that he would offer +to join her expedition, to dig out delicate ferns from sheltered +recesses, to hunt for mountain hyacinths and many-hued anemones; but +he observed her departure _perdu_ behind a window-curtain in the +reading-room, and half-an-hour afterwards he was ushered into Mrs. +Greswold’s drawing-room. + +“I feared you were ill,” he said, “as I saw Miss Ransome excursionising +without you.” + +“I have a slight headache, and felt more inclined for a book than for +a long walk. Why did you not go with Pamela? I daresay she would have +been glad of your company. Peterson is not a lively companion for a +mountain ramble.” + +“Poor Miss Ransome! How sad to be a young English Mees, and to have +to be chaperoned by a person like Peterson!” said Castellani, with a +careless shrug. “No, I had no inclination to join in the anemone hunt. +Miss Ransome told me yesterday what she was going to do. I have no +passion for wild flowers or romantic walks.” + +“But you seem to have a great liking for Miss Ransome’s society,” +replied Mildred gravely. “You have cultivated it very assiduously since +you came here, and I think I may be excused for fancying that you came +to Pallanza on her account.” + +“You may be excused for thinking anything wild and improbable, because +you are a woman and wilfully blind,” he answered, drawing his chair +a little nearer to hers, and lowering his voice with a touch of +tenderness. “But surely—surely you cannot think that I came to Pallanza +on Miss Ransome’s account?” + +“I might not have thought so had you been a less frequent visitor in +this room, where you have come—pardon me for saying so—very much of +your own accord. I don’t think it was quite delicate or honourable to +come here so often, to be so continually in the society of a frank, +impressionable girl, unless you had some deeper feeling for her than +casual admiration.” + +“Mrs. Greswold, upon my honour I have never in the whole course of my +acquaintance with Miss Ransome by one word or tone implied any warmer +feeling than that which you call casual admiration.” + +“And you are not attached to her? you do not cherish the hope of +winning her for your wife?” asked Mildred seriously, looking at him +with earnest eyes. + +That calm, grave look chilled him to the core of his heart. His brow +flushed, his eyes grew dark and troubled. He felt as if the crisis of +his life were approaching, and augury was unfavourable. + +“I have never cherished any such hope; I never shall.” + +“Then why have you come here so continually?” + +“For God’s sake, do not ask me that question! The time has not come.” + +“Yes, Mr. Castellani, the time has come. The question should have been +asked sooner. You have compromised Miss Ransome by your meaningless +assiduities. You have compromised me; for I ought to have taken better +care of her than to allow an acquaintance of so ambiguous a character. +But I am very glad that I have spoken, and that you have replied +plainly. From to-day your visits must cease. We shall go to the south +of Italy in a few days. Let me beg that you will not happen to be +travelling in the same direction.” + +Mildred was deeply indignant. She had cheapened her husband’s +niece—Randolph Ransome’s co-heiress—a girl whom half the young men in +London would have considered a prize in the matrimonial market: and +this man, who had haunted her at home and abroad for the last seven or +eight weeks, dared now to tell her that his attentions were motiveless +so far as her niece was concerned. + +“O, Mildred, do not banish me!” he cried passionately. “You must have +understood. You must know that it is you, and you only, for whom I +care; you whose presence makes life lovely for me, in whose absence +I am lost and wretched. You have wrung my secret from me. I did not +mean to offend. I would have respected your strange widowhood. I would +have waited half a lifetime. Only to see you, to be near you—your +slave, your proud, too happy slave. That was all I would have asked. +Why may that not be? Why may I not come and go, like the summer +wind that breathes round you, like the flowers that look in at your +window—faithful as your dog, patient as old Time? Why may it not be, +Mildred?” + +She stood up suddenly before him, white to the lips, and with cold +contempt in those eyes which he had seen so lovely with the light +of affection when they had looked at her husband. She looked at him +unfalteringly, as she might have looked at a worm. Anger had made her +pale, but that was all. + +“You must have had a strange experience of women before you would dare +to talk to any honest woman in such a strain as this, Mr. Castellani,” +she said. “I will not lower myself so far as to tell you what I think +of your conduct. Miss Ransome shall know the kind of person whose +society she has endured. I must beg that you will consider yourself as +much a stranger to her as to me from to-day.” + +She moved towards the bell, but he intercepted her. + +“You are very cruel,” he said; “but the day will come when you will be +sorry that you rejected the most devoted love that was ever offered to +woman, in order to be true to broken bonds.” + +“They are not broken. They will hold me to my dying hour.” + +“Yes, to a madman and a murderer.” + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +NOT PROVEN. + + +Mildred stood speechless for some moments after those words of +Castellani’s, looking at him with kindling eyes. + +“How dare you?” she cried at last. “How dare you accuse my husband—the +noblest of men?” + +“The noblest of men do strange things sometimes upon an evil impulse, +and when they are not quite right here,” touching his forehead. + +“My husband, George Greswold, is too high a mark for your malignity. +Do you think you can make me believe evil of him after fourteen years +of married life? His intellect is the clearest and the soundest I have +ever found in man or woman. You can no more shake my faith in his power +of brain than in his goodness of heart.” + +“Perhaps not. The George Greswold you know is a gentleman of commanding +intellect and unblemished character. But the George Ransome whom I +knew seventeen years ago was a gentleman who was shrewdly suspected of +having made away with his wife; and who was confined in a public asylum +in the environs of Nice as a dangerous lunatic. If you doubt these +facts, you have only to go to Nice, or to St. Jean, where Mr. Ransome +and his wife lived for some time in a turtle-dove retirement, which +ended tragically. Seventeen years does not obliterate the evidence of +such a tragedy as that in which your husband was chief actor.” + +“I do not believe one word—and I hope I may never hear your voice +again,” said Mildred, with her hand on the electric bell. + +She did not remove her hand till her servant, the courier, opened the +door. A look told him his duty. Castellani took up his hat without +a word; and Albrecht deferentially attended him to the landing, and +politely whistled for the lift to convey him to the vestibule below. + +Castellani made the descent, feeling like Lucifer when he fell from +heaven. + +“Too soon!” he muttered to himself. “She took the cards out of my +hands—she forced my play, and spoiled my game. But I have given her +something to think about. She will not forget to-day’s interview in a +hurry.” + +Albrecht, the handiest of men, was standing beside him, working the +lift. + +“Where is your next move to be, Albrecht?” he asked in German. + +The noble-born lady had not yet decided, Albrecht told him; but he +thought the move would be either to Venice or to Posilippo. + +“If I pretended to be a prophet, Albrecht, I should tell thee that the +honourable lady will go to neither Venice nor Posilippo; but that thy +next move will be to the Riviera, perhaps to Nice.” + +Albrecht shrugged his shoulders in polite indifference. + +“Look here, my friend, come thou to me when madame gives the order for +Nice, and I will give thee a louis for assuring me that I prophesied +right,” said Castellani, as he stepped out of the lift. + + * * * * * + +Mildred walked up and down the room, trying to control the confusion +of her thoughts, trying to reason calmly upon that hideous accusation +which she had affected to despise, but which yet had struck terror to +her soul. Would he dare to bring such a charge—villain and traitor as +he was—if there were not some ground for the accusation, some glimmer +of truth amidst a cloud of falsehood? + +And her husband’s manner: his refusal to tell her the history of his +first marriage; his reticence, his secrecy—reticence so out of harmony +with his boldly truthful nature; the gloom upon his face when she +forced him to speak of that past life: all these things came back +upon her with appalling force, and even trifles assumed a direful +significance. + +“O, my beloved! _what_ was that dark story, and why did you leave me to +hear it from such false lips as those?” + +And then with passionate tears she thought how easy it would have +been to forgive and pity even a tale of guilt—unpremeditated guilt, +doubtless, fatality rather than crime—if her husband had laid his weary +head upon her breast and told her all; holding back nothing; confident +in the strength of a great love to understand and to pardon. How much +easier would it have been to bear the burden of a guilty secret, so +shared, in the supreme trustfulness of her husband’s love! How light +a burden compared with this which was laid upon her! this horror of +groping backward into the black night of the past. + +“I must know the worst,” she said to herself; “I will test that +scoundrel’s accusation. I must know all. I will take no step to injure +my dear love. I will seek no help, trust no friend. I must act alone.” + +Then came a more agonising thought of the hapless wife—the victim. + +“My sister! What was your fate? I _must_ know.” + +Her thoughts came back always to that point—“I must know all.” + +She recalled the image of that unacknowledged sister, the face bending +over her bed when she started up out of a feverish dream, frightened +and in tears, to take instant comfort from that loving presence, to +fling her arms round Fay’s neck, and nestle upon her bosom. Never had +that sisterly love failed her. The quiet watcher was always near. A +sigh, a faint little murmur, and the volunteer nurse was at her side. +Often on waking she had found Fay sitting by her bed, in the dead of +the night, motionless and watchful, sleepless from loving care. + +Her love for Fay had been one of the strongest feelings of her life. +She, who had been ever dutiful to the frivolous, capricious mother, had +yet unconsciously given a stronger affection to the companion who had +loved her with an unselfish love, which the mother had never shown. +Her regard for Fay had been the one romance of her childhood, and had +continued the strongest sentiment of her mind until the hour when, for +the first time, she knew the deeper love of womanhood, and gave her +heart to George Greswold. + +And now these two supreme affections rose up before her in dreadful +conflict; and in the sister so faithfully loved and so fondly regretted +she saw the victim of her still dearer husband. + +Pamela’s footsteps and Pamela’s voice in the corridor startled her in +the midst of those dark thoughts. She hurriedly withdrew to her own +room, where the maid Louisa was sitting, intent upon one of those +infinitesimal repairs which served as an excuse for her existence. + +“Go and tell Miss Ransome that I cannot dine with her. My headache is +worse than it was when she went out. Ask her to excuse me.” + +Louisa obeyed, and Mildred locked the door upon her grief. She sat +all through the long evening brooding over the past and the future, +impatient to know the worst. + +She was on her way to Genoa with Pamela and their attendants before the +following noon. Albrecht, the courier, had scarcely time to claim the +promised coin from Mr. Castellani. + +Miss Ransome repined at this sudden departure. + +“Just as we were going to be engaged,” she sobbed, when she and Mildred +were alone in a railway compartment. “It is really unkind of you to +whisk one off in such a way, aunt.” + +“My dear Pamela, you have had a lucky escape; and I hope you will never +mention Mr. Castellani’s name again. He is an utterly bad man.” + +“How cruel to say such a thing!—behind his back, too! What has he done +that is bad, I should like to know?” + +“I cannot enter into details; but I can tell you one thing, Pamela: he +has never had any idea of asking you to be his wife. He told me that in +the plainest language.” + +“Do you mean to say that you questioned him about his feelings—for me?” + +“I did what I felt was my duty, Pamela—my duty to you and to your +uncle.” + +“Duty!” ejaculated Pamela, with such an air that Box began to growl, +imagining his mistress in want of protection. “Duty! It is the most +hateful word in the whole of the English language. You asked him when +he was going to propose to me—you lowered and humiliated me beyond all +that words can say—you—you spoilt everything.” + +“Pamela, is this reasonable or just?” + +“To be asked when he was going to propose to a girl—with his artistic +temperament—the very thing to disgust him,” said Pamela, in a series +of gasps. “If you had WANTED to part us for ever you could not have +gone to work better.” + +“Whatever I wanted yesterday, I am quite clear about my feelings +to-day, Pamela. It is my earnest hope that you and Mr. Castellani will +never meet again.” + +“You are very cruel, then—heartless—inhuman. Because _you_ have done +with love—because you have left my poor Uncle George—Heaven alone knows +why—is no one else to be happy?” + +“You could not be happy with César Castellani, Pamela. Happiness does +not lie that way. I tell you again, he is a bad man.” + +“And I tell you again I don’t believe you. In what way is he bad? Does +he rob, murder, forge, set fire to people’s houses? What has he done +that is bad?” + +“He has traduced your uncle—to me, his wife.” + +Pamela’s countenance fell. + +“You—you may have misunderstood him,” she faltered. + +“No, there was no possibility of mistake. He slandered my husband. He +let me see in the plainest way that he had no real regard for you, +that he did not care how far his frequent visits compromised either +you or me. He is utterly base, Pamela—a man without rectitude or +conscience. He would have clung to us like some poisonous burr if I had +not shaken him off. My dear, dear child,” said Mildred, putting her arm +round Pamela’s reluctant waist, and drawing the girlish figure nearer +to her side, to the relief of Box, who leaped upon their shoulders and +licked their faces in a rapture of sympathetic feeling; “my dear, you +have been treated very badly, but I am not to blame. You have had a +lucky escape, Pamela. Why be angry about it?” + +“It is all very well to talk like that,” sighed the girl, wrinkling her +white forehead in painful perplexity. “He was my day-dream. One cannot +renounce one’s day-dream at a moment’s warning. If you knew the castles +I have built—a life spent with him—a life devoted to the cultivation +of art! He would have _made_ my voice; and we could have had a flat in +Queen Anne’s Mansions, and a brougham and victoria, and lived within +our income,” concluded Pamela, following her own train of thought. + +“My dearest, there are so many worthier to share your life. You will +have new day-dreams.” + +“Perhaps when I am sixty. It will take me a lifetime to forget him. +Do you think I could marry a country bumpkin, or any one who was not +artistic?” + +“You shall not be asked to marry a rustic. The artistic temperament is +common enough nowadays. Almost every one is artistic.” + +Pamela shrugged her shoulders petulantly, and turned to the window +in token that she had said her say. She grieved like a child who +has been disappointed of some jaunt looked forward to for long days +of expectation. She tried to think herself ill-used by her uncle’s +wife; and yet that common sense of which she possessed a considerable +share told her that she had only herself to blame. She had chosen to +fall in love with a showy, versatile adventurer, without waiting for +evidence that he cared for her. Proud in the strength of her position +as an independent young woman with a handsome fortune and a fairly +attractive person, she had imagined that Mr. Castellani could look no +higher, hope for nothing better than to obtain her hand and heart. She +had ascribed his reticence to delicacy. She had accepted his frequent +visits as an evidence of his attachment and of his ulterior views. + +And now she sat in a sulky attitude, coiled up in a corner of the +carriage, with her face to the window, meditating upon her fool’s +paradise. For seven happy weeks she had seen the man she admired almost +daily; and her own intense sympathy with him had made her imagine an +equal sympathy on his part. When their hands touched the thrilling +vibration seemed mutual; and yet it had been on her side only, poor +fool, she told herself now, abased in her own self-consciousness, +drinking the cup of humiliation to the dregs. + +He had slandered her uncle—yes, that was villany, that was iniquity. +She began to think that he was utterly black. She remembered how +coldly cruel he had been about the anemone hunt yesterday; how deaf to +her girlish hints; never offering his company: colder, crueller than +marble. She felt as if she had squandered her love upon Satan. Yet she +was not the less angry with Mildred. That kind of interference was +unpardonable. + +She arrived at Genoa worn out with a fatiguing journey, and in a +worse temper than she had ever sustained for so long a period, she +whose worst tempers hitherto had been like April showers. Mildred had +reciprocated her silence, and Box had been the only animated passenger. + +The clever courier had made all his arrangements by telegraph: they +spent a night at Genoa; drove round the city next morning; explored +churches, palaces, and picture-galleries; and went on to Nice in the +afternoon. They arrived at the great bustling station late in the +evening, and were driven to one of the hotels on the Promenade des +Anglais, where all preparations had been made for their reception: a +glowing hearth in a spacious drawing-room opening on to a balcony, +lamps and candles lighted, roses on all the tables, maid and man on +the alert to receive travellers of distinction. So far as a place +which is not home can put on an aspect of homeliness the hotel had +succeeded; but Mildred looked round upon the white and gold walls, and +the satin fauteuils, with an aching heart, remembering those old rooms +at Enderby, and the familiar presence that had first made them dear to +her, before the habit of years had made those inanimate things a part +of her life. + + * * * * * + +She was at Nice; she had taken the slanderer’s advice, and had gone to +the city by the sea, to try and trace out for herself the mystery of +the past, to violate her husband’s secret, kept so long and so closely, +only to rise up after years of happiness, like a murdered corpse +exhumed from a forgotten grave. + +She was here, on the scene of her husband’s first marriage, and for +three or four days she walked and drove about the strange busy place +aimlessly, hopelessly, no nearer the knowledge of that dark history +than she had been at Enderby Manor. Not for worlds would she injure +the man she loved. She wanted to know all; but the knowledge must +be obtained in such a way as could not harm him. This necessitated +diplomacy, which was foreign to her nature, and patience, in which +womanly quality she excelled. She had learnt patience in her tender +ministrations to a fretful invalid, during those sad slow years in +which pretty Mrs. Fausset had faded into the grave. Yes, she had learnt +to be patient, and to submit to sorrow. She knew how to wait. + +The place, delightful as it was in the early spring weather, possessed +no charms for her. Its gaiety and movement jarred upon her. The sunsets +were as lovely here as at Pallanza, and her only pleasure was to watch +that ever-varying splendour of declining day behind the long dark +promontory of Antibes; or to see the morning dawn in a flush of colour +above the white lighthouse yonder at the point of the peninsula of St. +Jean. It was in the village of St. Jean that George Greswold had lived +with his first wife—with Fay. The bright face, pale, yet brilliant, +a face in which light took the place of colour; the eager eyes; the +small sharp features and thin sarcastic lips, rose up before her with +the thought of that union. He must have loved her. She was so bright, +so interesting, so full of vivid fancies and changeful emotions. To +this hour Mildred remembered her fascination, her power over a child’s +heart. + +Pamela was dull and out of spirits. Not all the Tauchnitz novels in +Galignani’s shop could interest her. She pronounced Nice distinctly +inferior to Brighton; declined even the distraction of the opera. + +“Music would only make me miserable,” she exclaimed petulantly. “I wish +I might never hear any again. That hateful band in the gardens tortures +me every morning.” + +This was not hopeful. Mildred was sorry for her, but too deeply +absorbed by her own griefs to be altogether sympathetic. + +“She will find some one else to admire before long,” she thought +somewhat bitterly. “Girls who fall in love so easily are easily +consoled.” + +She had been at Nice more than a week, and had made no effort—yearning +to know more—to know all—yet dreading every new revelation. She had +to goad herself to action, to struggle against the weight of a great +fear—the fear that she might find the slanderer’s accusations confirmed +instead of being refuted. + +Her first step was a very simple one, easy enough from a social point +of view. Among old Lady Castle-Connell’s intimate friends had been +a certain Irish chieftain called The O’Labacolly. The O’Labacolly’s +daughter had been one of the reigning beauties of Dublin Castle, had +appeared for three seasons in London with considerable _éclat_, and +in due course had married a Scotch peer, who was lord of an extensive +territory in the Highlands, strictly entailed, and of a more profitable +estate in the neighbourhood of Glasgow at his own disposal. Lord +Lochinvar had been laid at rest in the sepulchre of his forebears, and +Lady Lochinvar was a rich widow, still handsome, and still young enough +to enjoy all the pleasures of society. She had no children of her own, +but she had a favourite nephew, whom she had adopted, and who acted as +her escort in her travels, which were extensive, and as her steward in +the management of the Glasgow property, which had been settled upon her +at her marriage. The Highland territory had gone with the title to a +distant cousin of Lady Lochinvar’s husband. + +Mildred remembered that Castellani had spoken of meeting Mr. Ransome +and his wife at Lady Lochinvar’s palace at Nice. Her first step, +therefore, was to make herself known to Lady Lochinvar, who had +wintered in this fair white city ever since she came there as a young +widow twenty years ago, and had bought for herself a fantastic villa, +built early in the century by an Italian prince, on the crest of a hill +commanding the harbour. + +With this view she wrote to Lady Lochinvar, recalling the old +friendship between The O’Labacolly and Lady Castle-Connell, and +introducing herself on the strength of that friendship. Lady Lochinvar +responded with Hibernian warmth. She called at the Hôtel Westminster +that afternoon, and not finding Mrs. Greswold at home, left a note +inviting her to lunch at the Palais Montano next day. + +Mildred promptly accepted the invitation. She was anxious to be alone +with Lady Lochinvar, and there seemed a better chance of a _tête-à +tête_ at the lady’s house than at the hotel, where it would have +been difficult to exclude Pamela. She drove to that fair hill on the +eastward side of the city, turning her back upon the quaint old Italian +town, with its narrow streets of tall white houses with red roofs, +and its Cathedral dome embedded in the midst, the red and yellow tiles +glistening in the sunlight. The two small horses toiled slowly up the +height with the great lumbering landau, carrying Mildred nearer and +nearer to the bright blue sky and the snow-line glittering on the +edge of the distant hills. They went past villas and flower-gardens, +hedges of yellow roses and hedges of coral-hued geranium, cactus and +agave, palms and orange-trees, shining majolica tubs and white marble +balustrades, statues and fountains, oriel windows and Italian cupolas, +turrets and towers of every order; while the sapphire sea dropped lower +and lower beneath the chalky winding road, as the jutting promontory +that shelters Villefranche from the east came nearer and nearer above +the blue. + +The Italian prince who built the Palais Montano had aspired after +Oriental rather than classic beauty. His house was long and low, with +two ranges of Moorish windows, and a dome at each end. There was an +open loggia on the first floor, with a balustrade of white and coloured +marble; there was a gallery above the spacious tesselated hall, +screened by carved sandal-wood lattices, behind which the beauties of +a harem might be supposed to watch the entrances and exits below. The +house was fantastic, but fascinating. The garden was the growth of more +than half a century, and was supremely beautiful. + +Lady Lochinvar received the stranger with a cordiality which would have +set Mildred thoroughly at her ease under happier circumstances. As it +was, she was too completely engrossed by the object of her visit to +feel any of that shyness which a person of retiring disposition might +experience on such an occasion. She was grave and preoccupied, and it +was with an effort that she responded to Lady Lochinvar’s allusions to +the past. + +“Your mother and I were girls together,” said the Dowager, “at dear old +Castle-Connell. My father’s place was within a drive of the Castle, +but away from the river, and one of my first pleasant memories is of +your grandfather’s gardens and the broad, bright Shannon. What a river! +When I look at our stony torrent-beds here, and remember that glorious +Shannon!” + +“Yet you like Nice better than county Limerick?” + +“Of course I do, my dear Mrs. Greswold. Ireland is a delicious +country—to remember. I saw a good deal of your mother in London before +his lordship’s death, but after I became a widow, I went very little +into English society. I had found English people so narrow-minded. I +only endured them for Lochinvar’s sake; and after his death I became a +rover. I have an apartment in the Champs Elysées and a _pied-à-terre_ +in Rome; and now and then, when I want to drink a draught of +commonplace, when I want to know what the hard-headed, practical +British intellect is making of the world in general, I give myself a +fortnight at Claridge’s. A fortnight is always enough. So, you see, I +have had no opportunity of looking up old friends.” + +“I never remember seeing you in Upper Parchment Street,” said Mildred. + +“My dear, you were a baby at the time I knew your mother. I think you +were just able to toddle across the drawing-room the day I bade her +good-bye, before I went to Scotland with Lochinvar—our last journey, +poor dear man. He died the following winter.” + +The butler announced luncheon, and they went into an ideal dining-room, +purely Oriental, with hangings of a dull pale pink damask interwoven +with lustreless gold, its only ornaments old Rhodes salvers shining +with prismatic hues, its furniture of cedar inlaid with ivory. + +“I am quite alone to-day,” said Lady Lochinvar. “My nephew is driving +to Monte Carlo by the Cornice, and will not be back till dinner-time.” + +“I am very glad to be alone with you, Lady Lochinvar. I feel myself +bound to tell you that I had an _arrière-pensée_ in seeking your +acquaintance, pleasant as it is to me to meet any friend of my mother’s +youth.” + +Lady Lochinvar looked surprised, and even a little suspicious. She +began to fear some uncomfortable story. This sad-looking woman—such +a beautiful face, but with such unmistakable signs of unhappiness. A +runaway wife, perhaps; a poor creature who had fallen into disgrace, +and who wanted Lady Lochinvar’s help to regain her position, or face +her calumniators. Some awkward business, no doubt. Lady Lochinvar was +generous to a fault, but she liked showing kindness to happy people, +she wanted smiling faces and serenity about her. She had never known +any troubles of her own, worse than losing the husband whom she had +married for his wealth and position, and saw no reason why she should +be plagued with the troubles of other people. Her handsome countenance +hardened ever so little as she answered, + +“If there is any small matter in which I can be of service to you—” she +began. + +“It is not a small matter; it is a great matter—to—to a friend of +mine,” interrupted Mildred, faltering a little in her first attempt at +dissimulation. + +Lady Lochinvar breathed more freely. + +“I shall be charmed to help your friend if I can.” + +The butler came in and out, assisted by another servant, as the +conversation went on; but as his mistress spoke to him and to his +subordinate only in Italian, Mildred concluded they understood very +little English, and did not concern herself about their presence. + +“I want you to help me with your recollection of the past, Lady +Lochinvar. You were at Nice seventeen years ago, I believe?” + +“Between November and April, yes. I have spent those months here for +the last twenty years.” + +“You remember a Mr. Ransome and his wife, seventeen years ago?” + +“Yes, I remember them distinctly. I cannot help remembering them.” + +“Have you ever met Mr. Ransome since that time?” + +“Never.” + +“And you have not heard anything about him?” + +“No, I have never heard of him since he left the asylum on the road +to St. André. Good heavens, Mrs. Greswold, how white you have turned! +Pietro, some brandy this moment—” + +“No, no! I am quite well—only a little shocked, that is all. I had +heard that Mr. Ransome was out of his mind at one time, but I did not +believe my informant. It is really true, then? He was once mad?” + +“Yes, he was mad; unless it was all a sham, a clever assumption.” + +“Why should he have assumed madness?” + +Lady Lochinvar shrugged her portly shoulders, and lifted her +finely-arched eyebrows with a little foreign air which had grown upon +her in foreign society. + +“To escape from a very awkward dilemma. He was arrested on suspicion +of having killed his wife. The evidence against him was weak, but the +circumstances of the poor thing’s death were very suspicious.” + +“How did she die?” + +“She threw herself—or she was thrown—from a cliff on the other side of +the promontory which you may see from that window.” + +Mildred was silent for some moments, while her breath came and went in +hurried gasps. + +“Might she not have fallen accidentally?” she faltered. + +“That would have been hardly possible. It was a place where she had +been in the habit of walking for weeks—a path which anybody might walk +upon in the daylight without the slightest danger. And the calamity +happened in broad day. She could not have fallen accidentally. +Either she threw herself over, or he pushed her over in a moment of +ungovernable anger. She was a very provoking woman, and had a tongue +which might goad a man to fury. I saw a good deal of her the winter +before her death. She was remarkably clever, and she amused me. I had a +kind of liking for her, and I used to let her tell me her troubles.” + +“What kind of troubles?” + +“O, they all began and ended in one subject. She was jealous, +intolerably jealous, of her husband; suspected him of inconstancy to +herself if he was commonly civil to a handsome woman. She watched him +like a lynx, and did her utmost to make his life a burden to him, yet +loved him passionately all the time in her vehement, wrong-headed +manner.” + +“Poor girl! poor girl!” murmured Mildred, with a stifled sob, and then +she asked with intense earnestness, “but, Lady Lochinvar, you who knew +George Ransome, surely _you_ never suspected him of murder?” + +“I don’t know, Mrs. Greswold. I believe he was a gentleman, and a man +of an open, generous nature; but, upon my word, I should be sorry to +pledge myself to a positive belief in his innocence as to his wife’s +death. Who can tell what a man might do, harassed and tormented as that +man may have been by that woman’s tongue? I know what pestilential +things she could say—what scorpions and adders dropped out of her +mouth when she was in her jealous fits—and she may have gone just one +step too far—walking by his side upon that narrow path—and he may have +turned upon her, exasperated to madness, and—one push—and the thing +was done. The edge of a cliff must be an awful temptation under such +circumstances,” added Lady Lochinvar solemnly. “I am sure I would not +answer for myself in such a situation.” + +“I will answer for _him_,” said Mildred firmly. + +“You know him, then?” + +“Yes, I know him.” + +“Where is he? What is he doing? Has he prospered in life?” + +“Yes, and no. He was a happy man—or seemed to be happy—for thirteen +years of married life; and then God’s hand was stretched out to afflict +him, and his only child was snatched away.” + +“He married again, then?” + +“Yes, he married a second wife fourteen years ago. Forgive me, Lady +Lochinvar, for having suppressed the truth till now. I wanted you to +answer me more freely than you might have done had you known all. +George Ransome is my husband; he assumed the name of Greswold when he +succeeded to his mother’s property.” + +“Then Mr. Greswold, your husband, is my old acquaintance. Is he with +you here?” + +“No. I have left him—perhaps for ever.” + +“On account of that past story?” + +“No, for another reason, which is my sad secret, and his—a family +secret. It involves no blame to him or me. It is a dismal fatality +which parts us. You cannot suppose, Lady Lochinvar, that _I_ could +think my husband a murderer?” + +“A murderer? No! I do not believe any one ever thought him guilty of +deliberate murder—but that he lost his temper with that unhappy girl, +spurned her from him, flung her over the edge of the cliff—” + +“O, no, no, no! it is not possible! I know him too well. He is not +capable of a brutal act even under the utmost exasperation. No +irritation, no sense of injury, could bring about such a change in his +nature. Think, Lady Lochinvar. I have been his wife for fourteen years. +I must know what his character is like.” + +“You know what he is in happy circumstances, with an attached and +confiding wife. You cannot imagine him goaded to madness by an +unreasonable, hot-headed woman. You remember he was mad for half a year +after his wife’s death. There must have been some sufficient reason for +his madness.” + +“His wife’s wretched death, and the fact that he was accused of having +murdered her, were enough to make him mad.” + +And then Mildred remembered how she had tortured her husband by her +persistent questions about that terrible past; how, in her jealousy of +an unknown rival, she, too, had goaded him almost as that first wife +had goaded him. She recalled the look of pain, the mute protest against +her cruelty, and she hated herself for the selfishness of her love. + +Lady Lochinvar was kind and sympathetic. She was not angry at the trap +that had been set for her. + +“I can understand,” she said. “You wanted to know the worst, and you +felt that I should be reticent if I knew you were Mr. Ransome’s wife. +Well, I have said all the evil I can say about him. Remember I know +nothing except what other people thought and suspected. There was an +inquiry about the poor thing’s death before the Juge d’Instruction at +Villefranche, and Mr. Ransome was kept in prison between the first and +second inquiry, and then it was discovered that the poor fellow had +gone off his head, and he was taken to the asylum. He had no relations +in the neighbourhood, nobody interested in looking after him. His +acquaintances in Nice knew very little about him or his wife, even when +they were living at an hotel on the Promenade des Anglais and going +into society. After they left Nice they lived in seclusion at St. +Jean, and avoided all their acquaintance. Mrs. Ransome’s health was a +reason for retirement; but it may not have been the only reason. There +was no one, therefore, to look after the poor man in his misfortunes. +He was just hustled away to the madhouse—the inquiry fell through for +want of evidence—and for six months George Ransome was buried alive. +I was in Paris at the time, and only heard the story when I came back +to Nice in the following November. Nobody could tell me what had +become of Mr. Ransome, and it was only by accident that I heard of his +confinement in the asylum some time after he had been released as a +sane man.” + +“Did his wife ever talk to you of her own history?” + +“Never. She was very fond of talking to me about her husband’s supposed +inconstancy and the mistake she had made in marrying a man who had +never cared for her; but about her own people and her own antecedents +she was silent as the grave. In a place like Nice, where everybody is +idle, there is sure to be a good deal of gossip, and we all had our +own ideas about Mrs. Ransome. We put her down as the natural daughter +of some person of importance, or, at any rate, of good means. She had +her own fortune, and was entirely independent of her husband, who was +not a rich man at that time.” + +“No, it was his mother’s death that made him rich. But you did not +think he had married for money?” + +“No; our theory was that he had been worried into marrying her. We +thought the lady had thrown herself at his head, and that all her +unhappiness sprang from her knowledge that she had in a measure forced +him to marry her.” + +“Do you remember the name of the house at St. Jean where they lived +when they left Nice?” + +“Yes, I called there once, but as Mrs. Ransome never returned my call, +I concluded that they wished to drop their Nice acquaintance, and I +heard afterwards that they were living like hermits in a cave. The +house is a low white villa, spread out along the edge of a grassy +ridge, with a broad stone terrace on one side and a garden and orchard +on the other. It is called Le Bout du Monde.” + +“I am very grateful to you, Lady Lochinvar, for having been frank with +me. I will go and look at the house where they lived. I may find some +one, perhaps, who knew them.” + +“You want to make further inquiries?” + +“I want to find some one who is as convinced of my husband’s +guiltlessness as I am.” + +“That will be difficult. There was very little evidence for or +against him. The husband and wife went out to walk together one April +afternoon. They left the house in peace and amity, as it seemed to +their servants; but some ladies who met and talked to them an hour +afterwards thought by Mrs. Ransome’s manner that she was on bad terms +with her husband. When she was next seen she was lying at the foot of +a cliff, dead. That is all that is known of the tragedy. You could +hardly hang a man or acquit him upon such evidence. It is a case of not +proven.” + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +LOOKING BACK. + + +Lady Lochinvar offered to drive Mrs. Greswold to St. Jean that +afternoon. Her villa was half-way between Nice and Villefranche, and +half-an-hour’s drive would have taken them to the Bout du Monde; +but Mildred preferred to make her explorations alone. There was too +much heart-ache in such an investigation to admit of sympathy or +companionship. + +“You are all goodness to me, dear Lady Lochinvar,” she said, “and I may +come to you again for help before I have done; but I would rather visit +the scene of my husband’s tragedy alone—quite alone. You cannot tell +how sad the story is to me, even apart from my love for him. I may be +able to confide in you more fully some day, perhaps.” + +Lady Lochinvar kissed her at parting. She did not care for commonplace +troubles; she could not sympathise with stupid family quarrels or +shortness of money, or any of the vulgar trivialities about which +people worry their friends; but a romantic sorrow, a tragedy with a +touch of mystery in it, was full of interest for her. And then, Mildred +was a graceful sufferer, not hysterical or tiresome in any way. + +“I will do anything in the world that I can for you,” she said. + +“Will you let me bring my husband’s niece to see you?” asked Mildred. +“She has a dull time with me, poor girl, and I think you would like +her.” + +“She shall come to me this evening, if she has nothing better to do,” +said Lady Lochinvar. “I am fond of young people, and will do my best to +amuse her. I will send my carriage for her at half-past seven.” + +“That is more than kind. I shall be glad for the poor girl to get a +glimpse of something brighter than our perpetual _tête-à-tête_. But +there is one thing I ought to speak about before you see her. I think +you know something of an Italian called Castellani, a man who is both +musical and literary.” + +“Yes, I have heard of Mr. Castellani’s growing fame. He is the author +of that delightful story _Nepenthe_, is he not? I knew him years ago—it +was in the same winter we have been talking about. He used to come to +my parties. Do you know him?” + +“He has been a visitor at Enderby—my husband’s house—and I have seen +something of him in Italy of late. I am sorry to say he has made a very +strong impression upon my niece’s heart—or upon her imagination—but +as I know him to be a worthless person, I am deeply anxious that her +liking for him should—” + +“Die a natural death. I understand,” interrupted Lady Lochinvar. “You +may be sure I will not encourage the young lady to talk about Mr. +Castellani.” + +Mildred explained her responsibility with regard to Pamela and the +young lady’s position, with its substantial attraction for the +adventurer in search of a wife. She had deemed it her duty to confide +thus much in Lady Lochinvar, lest Castellani should change his tactics, +and pursue Pamela with addresses which might be only too readily +accepted. + +She left the Palais Montano at two o’clock, and drove round the bay to +St. Jean, where the rose-hedges were in flower, and where the gardens +were bright with bloom under a sky which suggested an English June. + +She left the fly at the little inn where the holiday people go to +eat bouillabaisse on Sundays and fête-days, but which was silent and +solitary to-day, and then walked slowly along the winding road, looking +for the Bout du Monde. The place was prettier and more rustic, after +an almost English fashion, than any spot she had seen since she left +Enderby. Villas and cottages were scattered in a desultory way upon +different levels, under the shelter of precipitous cliffs, and on every +bit of rising ground and in every hollow there were orange and lemon +groves, with here and there a peach or a cherry in full bloom, and here +and there a vivid patch of flowers, and here and there a wall covered +with the glowing purple of the Bougainvilliers. Great carouba-trees +rose tall and dark amidst all this brightness, and through every +opening in the foliage the changeful colour of the Mediterranean shone +in the distance, like the jasper sea of the Apocalypse. + +Mildred went slowly along the dusty road, looking at all the +villas, lingering here and there at a garden gate, and asking any +intelligent-looking person who passed to direct her to the Bout du +Monde. It was not till she had made the inquiry half-a-dozen times that +she obtained any information; but at last she met with a bright-faced +market-woman, tramping home with empty baskets after a long morning at +Nice, and white with the dust of the hillside. + +“Le Bout du Monde? But that was the villa where the poor young English +lady lived whose husband threw her over the cliff,” said the woman +cheerily. “The proprietor changed the name of the house next season, +for fear people should fancy it was haunted if the story got about. It +is called Montfleuri now.” + +“Is there any one living there?” Mildred asked. + +No, it was let last year to an English family. O, but an amiable +family, rich, ah, but _richissime_, who had bought flowers in heaps of +the speaker. But they had left, _malheureusement_. They had returned +to their property near London, a great and stupendous property in a +district which the flower-woman described as le Crommu-elle Rodd. There +had never been such a family in St. Jean—five English servants, three +English mees who mounted on horseback daily: a benefaction for the +whole village. Now, alas! there was no one living at Montfleuri but an +old woman in charge. + +“Could you take me to the house?” asked Mildred, opening her purse. + +The woman would have been all politeness and good-nature without +the stimulant offered by that open purse. She had all the southern +kindliness and alacrity to oblige, but when the lady dropped +half-a-dozen francs into her broad brown hand she almost sank to the +earth in a rapture of gratitude. + +“Madame shall see the house from garret to cellar if she wishes,” she +exclaimed. “I know the old woman in charge. She is as deaf as one of +those stones yonder,” pointing to a block of blue-gray stone lying +amidst the long rank grass upon the shelving ground between the road +and the sea; “but if madame will permit _I_ will show her the house. +Madame is perhaps interested in the story of that poor lady who was +murdered.” + +“Why do you say that she was murdered?” asked Mildred indignantly. “You +cannot know.” + +The woman shrugged her shoulders with a dubious air. + +“_Mais_, madame. Nobody but the good God can know: but most of us +thought that the Englishman pushed his wife over the cliff. They did +not live happily together. Their cook was a cousin of mine, a young +woman who went regularly to confession, and would not have spoken +falsely for all the world, and she told me there was great unhappiness +between them. The wife was often in tears; the husband was often angry.” + +“But he was never unkind. Your cousin must know that he was never +unkind.” + +“Alas! my cousin lies in the same burial-ground yonder with the poor +lady,” answered the woman, pointing to the white crest of the hill +above Villefranche, where the soldiers were being drilled in the dusty +barrack-yard under the cloudless blue. “She is no more here to tell +the story. But no, she did not say the husband was unkind; he was grave +and sad; he was not happy. Tears, tears and reproaches, sad words +from her, day after day; and from him silence and gloom. Poor people +like us, who work for our bread, have no leisure for that kind of +unhappiness. ‘I would rather stand over my _casseroles_ than sit in a +_salon_ and cry,’ said my cousin.” + +“It is cruel to say he caused her death, when you know he was never +unkind to her,” said Mildred, as they walked side by side; “a patient, +forbearing husband does not become a murderer all at once.” + +“Ah, but continual dropping will wear a stone, madame. She may have +tried him too much with her tears. He went out of his mind after her +death. Would he have gone mad, do you think, if he had not been guilty?” + +“He was all the more likely to go mad, knowing himself innocent, and +finding himself accused of a dreadful crime.” + +“Well, I cannot tell; I know most of us thought he had pushed her over +the cliff. I know the young man who was their gardener said if he had +had a wife with that kind of temper he would have thrown her down the +well in his garden.” + +They were at the Villa Montfleuri by this time, a long, low white +house, with a stone terrace overlooking the harbour of Villefranche. +The woman opened the gate, and Mildred followed her into the garden +and to the terrace upon which the principal rooms opened. There was +a latticed verandah in front of the _salon_ and dining-room, over +which roses and geraniums were trained, and above which the purple +Bougainvilliers spread its vivid bloom. The orange-trees grew thick in +the orchard, and in their midst stood the stone well down which the +gardener said he would have thrown a discontented wife. + +The caretaker was not in the house, but all the doors were open. +Mildred went from room to room. The furniture was the same as it had +been seventeen years ago, the woman told Mildred—furniture of the +period of the First Empire, shabby, and with the air of a house that +is let to strangers year after year, and in which nobody takes any +interest. The clocks on the mantelpieces were all silent, the vases +were all empty: everything had a dead look. Only the view from the +windows was beautiful with an inexhaustible beauty. + +Mildred lingered in the faded _salon_, looking at everything with a +melancholy interest. Those two familiar figures were with her in the +room. She pictured them sitting there together, yet so far apart in the +bitter lack of sympathy—a wife, tormented by jealous suspicions, no +less agonising because they were groundless; a husband, long-suffering, +weary, with his little stock of marital love worn out under slow +torture. She could see them as they might have been in those bygone +years. George Greswold’s dark, strong face, younger than she had ever +known it; for when he first came to her father’s house there had been +threads of gray in his dark hair and premature lines upon the brow +which told of corroding care. She could understand now how those +touches of gray had come in the thick wavy hair that clustered close on +the broad, strongly-marked brow. + +Poor Fay! poor, loving, impulsive Fay! + +Child as she had been in those old days in Parchment Street, Mildred +had a vivid conception of her young companion’s character. She +remembered the quick temper, the sensitive self-esteem, which had taken +offence at the mere suggestion of slight; she remembered dark hours of +brooding melancholy when the girl had felt the sting of her isolated +position, had fancied herself a creature apart, neglected and scorned +by Mrs. Fausset and her butterfly visitors. For Mildred she had been +always overflowing with love, and she had never doubted the sincerity +of Mildred’s affection; but with all the rest of the household, with +every visitor who noticed her coldly, or frankly ignored her, she was +on the alert for insult and offence. Remembering all this, Mildred +could fully realise Lady Lochinvar’s account of that unhappy union. +A woman so constituted would be satisfied with nothing less than a +passionate, all-absorbing love from the man she loved. + +The rooms and the garden were haunted by those mournful shades—two +faces pale with pain. She, too, had suffered those sharp stings of +jealousy; jealousy of a past love, jealousy of the dead; and she knew +how keener than all common anguish is that agony of a woman’s heart +which yearns for sovereign possession over past, present, and future +in the life of the man she loves. + +The market-woman sat out in the sunshine on the terrace, and waited +while Mildred roamed about the garden, picturing that vanished life +at every step. There was the _berceau_, the delight of a southern +garden, a long, green alley, arched with osiers, over which the brown +vine-branches made a network, open to the sunlight and the blue sky +now, while the vine was still leafless, but in summer-time a place of +coolness and whispering leaves. There was the fountain—or the place +where a fountain had once been, and a stone bench beside it. They had +sat there perhaps on sunny mornings, sat there and talked of their +future, full of hope. They could not have been always unhappy. Fay +must have had her bright hours; and then, no doubt, she was dear to +him, full of a strange fascination, a creature of quick wit and vivid +imagination, light and fire embodied in a fragile earthly tenement. + +The sun was nearing the dark edge of the promontory when Mildred left +the garden, the woman accompanying her, waiting upon her footsteps, +sympathising with her pensive mood, with that instinctive politeness of +the southern, which is almost as great a delight to the stranger from +the hard, cold, practical north, as the colour of the southern sea, or +the ever-varying beauty of the hills. + +“Will you show me the place where the English lady fell over the +cliff?” Mildred asked; and the woman went with her along the winding +road, and then upward to a path along the crest of a cliff, a cliff +that seemed low on account of those bolder heights which rose above it, +and which screened this eastward-fronting shore of the little peninsula +from all the world of the west. The carriage-road wound southward up to +the higher ground, but Mildred and her guide followed a footpath which +had been trodden on the long rank grass beside the cliff. The rosemary +bushes were full of flower: pale, cold gray blossoms, as befitted the +herb of death, and a great yellow weed made patches of vivid colour +among the blue-gray stones scattered in the long grass on the slope of +the hill. + +“It was somewhere along this pathway, madame,” said the woman. “I +cannot tell you the exact spot. Some fishermen from Beaulieu picked +her up,” pointing across the blue water of the bay to a semicircle of +yellow sand, with a few white houses scattered along the curving road, +and some boats lying keel upward on the beach. “She never spoke again. +She was dead when they found her there.” + +“Did they see her fall?” + +“No, madame.” + +“And yet people have dared to call her husband a murderer.” + +“Ah, but, madame, it was the general opinion. Was it not his guilty +conscience that drove him mad? He came here once only after he left the +madhouse, wandered about the village for an hour or two, went up to the +cemetery and looked once—but once only—at the poor lady’s grave, and +then drove away as if devils were hunting him. Who can doubt that it +was his hand that sent her to her death?” + +“No one would believe it who knew him.” + +“Everybody at St. Jean believed it, even the people who liked him best.” + +Mildred turned from her sick at heart. She gave the woman some more +money, and then with briefest adieu walked back to the inn where she +had left the carriage, and where the horse was dozing with his nose in +a bag of dried locust fruit, while his driver sprawled half asleep upon +the rough stone parapet between the inn and the bay. + + * * * * * + +Pamela received her aunt graciously on her return to the hotel, and +seemed in better spirits than she had been since she left Pallanza. + +“Your Lady Lochinvar has written me the sweetest little note, asking +me to dine with her and go to the opera afterwards,” she said. “I feel +sure this must be your doing, aunt.” + +“No, dear. I only told her that I had a very nice niece moping at the +hotel, and very tired of my dismal company.” + +“Tired of you? No, no, aunt. You know better than that. I should no +more grow tired of you than I should of Box,” intending to make the +most flattering comparison; “only he had made himself a part of our +lives at Pallanza, don’t you know, and one could not help missing him.” +(The pronoun meant Castellani, and not the dog.) “I am glad I am going +to the opera after all, even if it does remind me of him; and it’s +awfully kind of Lady Lochinvar to send her carriage for me. I only +waited to see you before I began to dress.” + +“Go, dearest; and take care to look your prettiest.” + +“And you won’t mind dining alone?” + +“I shall be delighted to know you are enjoying yourself.” + +The prospect of an evening’s solitude was an infinite relief to +Mildred. She breathed more freely when Pamela had gone dancing off to +the lift, a fluffy, feathery mass of whiteness, with hooded head and +rosy face peeping from a border of white fox. The tall door of the +_salon_ closed upon her with a solemn reverberation, and Mildred was +alone with her own thoughts, alone with the history of her husband’s +past life, now that she had unravelled the tangled skein and knew all. + +She was face to face with the past, and how did it seem in her eyes? +Was there no doubt, no agonising fear that the man she had loved as a +husband might have slain the girl she had loved as a sister? All those +people, those simple and disinterested villagers, who had liked George +Ransome well enough for his own sake, had yet believed him guilty: +they who had been on the spot, and had had the best opportunities for +judging the case rightly. + +Could she doubt him, she who had seen honour and fine feeling in every +act of his life? She remembered the dream—that terrible dream which had +occurred at intervals; sometimes once in a year; sometimes oftener; +that awe-inspiring dream which had shaken the dreamer’s nerves as +nothing but a vision of horror could have shaken them, from which he +had awakened more dead than alive, completely unnerved, cold drops upon +his pallid brow, his hands convulsed and icy, his eyes glassy as death +itself. The horror of that dream even to her, who beheld its effect on +the dreamer, was a horror not to be forgotten. + +Was it the dream of a murderer, acting his crime over again in that dim +world of sleep, living over again the moment of his temptation and his +fall? No, no! Another might so interpret the vision, but not his wife. + +“I know him,” she repeated to herself passionately; “I know him. I know +his noble heart. He is incapable of one cruel impulse. He could not +have done such a deed. There is no possible state of feeling, no moment +of frenzy, in which he would have been false to his character and his +manhood.” + +And then she asked herself if Fay had not been her sister, if there had +not been that insurmountable bar to her union with George Greswold, +would her knowledge of his first wife’s fate, and the suspicion that +had darkened his name, have sufficed to part them? Could she, knowing +what she now knew, knowing that he had been so suspected, knowing +that it was beyond his power ever to _prove_ his guiltlessness—could +she have gone though the rest of her life with him, honouring him and +trusting him as she had done in the years that were gone? + +She told herself that she could have so trusted him; that she could +have honoured and loved him to the end, pitying him for those dark +experiences, but with faith unshaken. + +“A murderer and a madman,” she said to herself, repeating Castellani’s +calumny. “Murderer I would never believe him; and shall I honour him +less because that sensitive mind was plunged in darkness by the horror +of his wife’s fate?” + + * * * * * + +Pamela came home before midnight. Lady Lochinvar had driven her to +the door. She was in high spirits, and charmed with her ladyship, and +thought her ladyship’s nephew, Mr. Stuart, late of a famous Highland +regiment, a rather agreeable person. + +“He is decidedly plain,” said Pamela, “and looks about as intellectual +as Sir Henry Mountford, and he evidently doesn’t care a jot for music; +but he has very pleasant manners, and he told me a lot about Monte +Carlo. A brother officer of his, bronchial, with a very nice wife, came +to Lady Lochinvar’s box in the evening, and she is going to call for me +to-morrow afternoon, to take me to the tennis-ground at the Cercle de +la Méditerranée, if you don’t mind.” + +“My dearest, you know I wish only to see you happy and with nice +people. I suppose this lady, whose name you have not told me—” + +“Mrs. Murray. She is very Scotch, but quite charming—nothing fast or +rowdy about her—and devoted to her invalid husband. He does not play +tennis, poor fellow, but he sits in the sun and looks on, which is very +nice for him.” + +Mrs. Murray made her appearance at two o’clock next day, and Mildred +was pleased to find that Pamela had not exaggerated her merits. She +was very Scotch, and talked of Lady Lochinvar as “a purpose woman,” +with a Caledonian roll of the _r_ in purpose which emphasised the word +in its adjectival sense. She had very pretty simple manners, and was +altogether the kind of young matron with whom a feather-headed girl +might be trusted. + +Directly Pamela and her new friend had departed Mildred put on her +bonnet, and went out on foot. She had made certain inquiries through +Albrecht, and she knew the way she had to go upon the pilgrimage on +which she was bent, a pilgrimage of sorrowful memory. There was a +relief in being quite alone upon the long parade between the palm-trees +and the sea, and to know that she was free from notice and sympathy for +the rest of the afternoon. + +She walked to the Place Massena, and there accepted the beseeching +offers of one of the numerous flymen, and took her seat in a light +victoria behind a horse which looked a little better fed than his +neighbours. She told the man to drive along the west bank of the +Paillon, on the road to St. André. + +Would not Madame go to St. André, and see the wonderful grotto, and the +petrifactions? + +No, Madame did not wish to go so far as St. André. She would tell the +driver where to stop. + +The horse rattled off at a brisk pace. They are no crawlers, those flys +of the South. They drove past the smart shops and hotels on the quay; +past the shabby old inn where the diligences put up, a hostelry with +suggestions of the past, when the old Italian town was not a winter +rendezvous for all the nations, the beaten track of Yankee and Cockney, +_calicot_ and counter-jumper, Russian prince and Hebrew capitalist, +millionaire and adventurer. They drove past the shabby purlieus of +the town, workmen’s lodging-houses, sordid-looking shops, then an +orange-garden here and there within crumbling plaster walls, and here +and there a tavern in a shabby garden. To the left of the river, on +a sharp pinnacle of hill, stood the Monastery of Cimies, with dome +and tower dominating the landscape. Further away, on the other side +of the stony torrent-bed, rose the rugged chain of hills stretching +away to Mentone and the Italian frontier, and high up against the +blue sky glimmered the white domes of the Observatory. They came by +and by to a spot where, by the side of the broad high-road, there +was a wall enclosing a white dusty yard, and behind it a long white +house with many windows, bare and barren, staring blankly at the dry +bed of the torrent and the rugged brown hills beyond. At each end of +the long white building there was a colonnade with iron bars, open +to the sun and the air, and as Mrs. Greswold’s carriage drew near a +man’s voice rolled out the opening bars of “Ah, che la morte!” in a +tremendous baritone. A cluster of idlers had congregated about the open +gate, to stare and listen; for the great white house was a madhouse, +and the grated colonnades right and left of the long façade were the +recreation-grounds of the insane—of those worst patients who could not +be trusted to wander at their ease in the garden, or to dig and delve +upon the breezy hills towards St. André. + +The singer was a fine-looking man, dressed in loose garments of some +white material, and with long white gloves. He flung himself on to an +upper bar of the grating with the air of an athlete, and hung upon the +bars with his gloved hands, facing that cluster of loafers as if they +had been an audience in a theatre, and singing with all the power of a +herculean physique. Mildred told her driver to stop at the gate, and +she sat listening while the madman sang, in fitful snatches of a few +bars at a time, but with never a false note. + +That cage, and the patients pacing up and down, or hanging on to the +bars, or standing staring at the little crowd round the gate, moved her +to deepest pity, touched her with keenest pain. He had been here, her +beloved, in that brief interval of darkest night. She recalled how in +one of his awakenings from that torturing dream he had spoken words of +strange meaning—or of no meaning, as they had seemed to her then. + +“The cage—the cage again!” he had cried in an agonised voice; “iron +bars—like a wild beast!” + +These words had been an enigma to her then. She saw the answer to the +riddle _here_. + +She sat for some time watching that sad spectacle, hearing those broken +snatches of song, with intervals of silence, or sometimes a wild peal +of laughter. + +The loiterers were full of speculations and assertions. The porter at +the gate answered some questions, turned a deaf ear to others. + +The singer was a Spanish nobleman who had lost a fortune at Monte +Carlo the night before, and had been brought here bound hand and foot +at early morning. He had tried to kill himself, and now he imagined +himself a famous singer, and that the barred colonnade was the stage of +the Grand Opéra at Paris. + +“He’ll soon be all right again,” said the porter with a careless shrug; +“those violent cases mend quickly.” + +“But he won’t get his money back again, poor devil,” said one of the +loiterers, a flyman whose vehicle was standing by the wall, waiting +for a customer. “Hard to recover his senses and find himself without a +soul.” + +“O, he has rich friends, no doubt. Look at his white kid gloves. He +is young and handsome, and he has a splendid voice. Somebody will +take care of him. Do you see that old woman sitting over there in the +garden? You would not think there was anything amiss with her, would +you? No more there is, only she thinks she is the Blessed Virgin. +She has been here five-and-thirty years. Nobody pities _her_—nobody +inquires about _her_. My father remembers her when she was a handsome +young woman at a flower-shop on the Quai Massena, one of the merriest +girls in Nice. Somebody told her she was neglecting her soul and +going to hell. This set her thinking too much. She used to be at the +Cathedral all day, and at confession as often as the priest would +hear her. She neglected her shop, and quarrelled with her mother and +sisters. She said she had a vocation; and then one fine day she walked +to the Cathedral in a white veil, with a bunch of lilies in her hand, +and she told all the people she met that they ought to kneel before her +and make the sign of the cross, for she was the Mother of God. Three +days afterwards her people brought her here. She would neither eat nor +drink, and she never closed her eyes, or left off talking about her +glorious mission, which was to work the redemption of all the women +upon earth.” + +“Drive on to the doctor’s house,” Mildred said presently; and the fly +went on a few hundred yards, and then drew up at the door of a private +house, which marked the boundary of the asylum garden. + +Mrs. Greswold had inquired the name of the doctor of longest experience +in the asylum, and she had been referred to Monsieur Leroy, the +inhabitant of this house, where the flyman informed her some of +the more wealthy patients were lodged. She had come prepared with +a little note requesting the favour of an interview, and enclosing +her card, with the address of Enderby Manor as well as her hotel in +Nice. The English manor and the Hôtel Westminster indicated at least +respectability in the applicant; and Monsieur Leroy’s reception was +both prompt and courteous. + +He was a clever-looking man, about sixty years of age, with a fine +benevolent head, and an attentive eye, as of one always on the alert. +He had spent five-and-thirty of his sixty years in the society of the +deranged, and had devoted all his intellectual power to the study of +mental disease. + +After briefest preliminary courtesies, Mildred explained the purpose of +her visit. + +“I am anxious to learn anything you can tell me about a patient who was +under your care—or, at least, in this establishment—seventeen years +ago, and in whom I am deeply interested,” she said. + +“Seventeen years is a long time, madame, but I have a good memory, and +I keep notes of all my cases. I may be able to satisfy your curiosity +in some measure. What was the name of this patient?” + +“He was an Englishman called Ransome—George Ransome. He was placed here +under peculiar circumstances.” + +“_Corpo di Bacco!_ I should say they were peculiar, very peculiar +circumstances!” exclaimed the doctor. “Do you know, madame, that Mr. +Ransome came here as a suspected murderer? He came straight from the +gaol at Villefranche, where he had been detained on the suspicion of +having killed his wife.” + +“There was not one jot of evidence to support such a charge. I know all +the circumstances. Surely, sir, you, who must have a wide knowledge of +human nature, did not think him guilty?” + +“I hardly made up my mind upon that point, even after I had seen him +almost every day for six months; but there is one thing I do know about +this unhappy gentleman: his lunacy was no assumption, put on to save +him from the consequences of a crime. He was a man of noble intellect, +large brain-power, and for the time being his reason was totally +obscured.” + +“To what cause did you attribute the attack?” + +“A long period of worry, nerves completely shattered, and finally the +shock of that catastrophe on the cliff. Whether his hand pushed her to +her death, or the woman flung her life away, the shock was too much +for Mr. Ransome’s weakened and worried brain. All the indications of +his malady, from the most violent stages to the gradual progress of +recovery, pointed to the same conclusion. The history of the case +revealed its cause and its earlier phases: an unhappy marriage, a +jealous wife, patience and forbearance on his part, until patience +degenerated into despair, the dull apathy of a wearied intellect. All +that is easy to understand.” + +“You pitied him, then, monsieur?” + +“Madame, I pity all my patients; but I found in Mr. Ransome a man of +exceptional characteristics, and his case interested me deeply.” + +“You would not have been interested had you believed him guilty?” + +“Pardon me, madame, crime is full of interest for the pathologist. +The idea that this gentleman might have spurned his wife from him in +a moment of aberration would not have lessened my interest in his +mental condition. But although I have never made up my mind upon the +question of his guilt or innocence, I am bound to tell you, since +you seem even painfully interested in his history, that his conduct +after his recovery indicated an open and generous nature, a mind of +peculiar refinement, and a great deal of chivalrous feeling. I had many +conversations with him during the period of returning reason, and I +formed a high opinion of his moral character.” + +“Did other people think him guilty—the people he had known in Nice, for +instance?” + +“I fancy there were very few who thought much about him,” answered the +doctor. “Luckily for him and his belongings—whoever they might be—he +had dropped out of society for some time before the catastrophe, and +he had never been a person of importance in Nice. He had not occupied +a villa, or given parties. He lived with his wife at an hotel, and +the man who lives at an hotel counts for very little on the Riviera. +He is only a casual visitor, who may come and go as he pleases. +His movements—unless he has rank or fashion or inordinate wealth +to recommend him—excite no interest. He is not a personage. Hence +there was very little talk about the lamentable end of Mr. Ransome’s +married life. There were hardly half-a-dozen paragraphs in our local +papers, all told; and I doubt if those were quoted in the _Figaro_ or +_Galignani_. My patient might congratulate himself upon his obscurity.” + +“Did no one from England visit him during his confinement here?” + +“No one. The local authorities looked after his interests so far as +to take care of the ready money which was found in his house, and +which sufficed to pay for the poor lady’s funeral and for my patient’s +expenses, leaving a balance to be handed over to him on his recovery. +From the hour he left these gates I never heard from him or of him +again; but every new year has brought me an anonymous gift from London, +such a gift as only a person of refined taste would choose, and I have +attributed those annual greetings to Mr. George Ransome.” + +“It would be only like him to remember past kindness.” + +“You know him well, madame?” + +“Very well; so well as to be able to answer with my life for his being +incapable of the crime of which even you, who saw so much of him, +hesitate to acquit him.” + +“It is my misfortune, madame, to have seen the darker sides of the +human mind, and to know that in the whitest life there may be one black +spot—one moment of sin which stultifies a lifetime of virtue. However, +it is possible that your judgment is right in this particular case. +Be assured I should be glad to think so, and glad to know that Mr. +Ransome’s after days have been all sunshine.” + +A sigh was Mildred’s only answer. Monsieur Leroy saw tears in her eyes, +and asked no more. He was shrewd enough to guess her connection with +his former patient—a second wife, no doubt. No one but a wife would be +so intensely interested. + +“If there is anything I can do for you, or for my old patient—” he +began, seeing that his visitor lingered. + +“O, no, there is nothing—except if you would let me see the rooms in +which he lived.” + +“Assuredly. It is a melancholy pleasure, at best, to recall the sorrows +we have outlived, but the association will be less painful in your case +since the—friend in whom you are interested was so speedily and so +thoroughly restored to mental health. I take it that he has never had a +relapse?” + +“Never, thank God!” + +“It was not likely, from the history of the case.” + +He led the way across a vestibule and up-stairs to the second floor, +where he showed Mrs. Greswold two airy rooms, sitting-room and bedroom +communicating, overlooking the valley towards Cimies, with the +white-walled convent on the crest of the hill, and the white temples of +the dead clustering near it; cross and column, Athenian pediment and +Italian cupola, dazzling white against the cloudless blue. The rooms +were neatly furnished, and there was every appearance of comfort; no +suggestion of Bedlam, padded walls, or strait-waistcoats. + +“Had he these rooms all the time?” asked Mildred. + +“Not all the time. He was somewhat difficult to deal with during the +first few weeks, and he was in the main building, under the care of one +of my subordinates, till improvement began. By that time I had grown +interested in his case, and took him into my own house.” + +“Pray let me see the rooms he occupied at first, monsieur; I want to +know all. I want to be able to understand what his life was like in +that dark dream.” + +She knew now what his own dream meant. + +Monsieur Leroy indulged her whim. He took her across the dusty garden +to the great white house—a house of many windows and long corridors, +airy, bare, hopeless-looking, as it seemed to that sad visitor. She +saw the two iron-barred enclosures, and the restless creatures roaming +about them, clinging to the bars, climbing like monkeys from perch to +perch, hanging from the trapeze. The Spaniard had left off singing. + +She was shown George Ransome’s room, which was empty. The bare +whitewashed walls chilled her as if she had gone into an ice-vault. +Here on everything there was the stamp of a State prison—iron bars, +white walls, a deadly monotony. She was glad to escape into the open +air again, but not until she had knelt for some minutes beside the +narrow bed upon which George Ransome had lain seventeen years ago, +and thanked God for his restoration of reason, and prayed that his +declining days might be blessed. She prayed for him, to whom she might +nevermore be the source of happiness, she who until so lately had been +his nearest and dearest upon earth. + +A law which she recognised as duty had risen up between them, and both +must go down to the grave in sadness rather than that law should be +broken. + + +END OF VOL. II. + + + LONDON: + ROBSON AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + pg 58 Changed: She must have have known. + to: She must have known. + + pg 121 Changed: The law does not recogise such affinities + to: The law does not recognise such affinities + + pg 236 Changed: goaded to madness by an unreasonble + to: goaded to madness by an unreasonable + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75411 *** |