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 churchbells, 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 fortunefrom 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; andweare 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 committeemeeting, 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 everybodylikes 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 wornà laMarie 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 likea 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 whoshewas before Mr. Hillersdon married her,” said Louisa; “and don’t tell me that a woman who has behaved liked that while shewas 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, andhad 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 heras 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 thatyear. 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 answeredcoldly. “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 tome. 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 wouldallow, 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, aftera 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 myknowledge, 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, andgo 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. “Canyoube so false to the conduct and principles of your whole life—canyouput 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 meto 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, andthen 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 ifIhad 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 sheleft 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 dinedtête-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 slowmovement. “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 morningservice 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 thebusy 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 thealabaster 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 amvolageby 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 Castellanithoughtfully; “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 cameto 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 inMildred’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 wroteNepentheand 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 calledLa 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’sMelusine.”
“Mr. Castellani’s operas were popular in Italy, were they not?”
“For a time, yes; but the Italians are as capriciousas 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.