CHAPTER VII.DRIFTING APART.
George Greswoldand his wife spent the rest of that fatal year in a villa on the Lake of Thun, an Italian villa, with a campanello tower, and a long white colonnade, and stone balconies overhanging lawn and gardens, where the flowers grew in a riotous profusion. The villa was midway between two of the boat-stations, and there was no other house near, and this loneliness was its chief charm for those two heart-broken mourners. They yearned for no sympathy, they cared for no companionship—hardly even for that of each other, close as the bond of love had been till now. Each seemed to desire above all things to be alone with that great grief—to hug that dear, sad memory in silence and solitude. Only to see them from a distance, from the boat yonder, as it glided swiftly past that flowery lawn, an observer would have guessed at sorrowand bereavement from the mere attitude of either mourner—the man sitting with his head bent forward, brooding on the ground, the unread newspaper lying across his knee; the woman on the other side of the lawn, beyond speaking distance, half reclining in a low basket-chair, with her hands clasped above her head, gazing at the distant line of snow mountains in listless vacancy. The huge tan-coloured St. Bernard, snapping with his great cavern-like jaws at infinitesimal flies, was the only object that gave life to the picture.
The boats went by in sunshine and cloud, the boats went by under torrential rain, which seemed to fuse lake and mountains, villas and gardens, into one watery chaos; the boats went by, and the days passed like the boats, and made no difference in the lives of those two mourners. Nothing could ever make any difference to either of them for evermore, it seemed to Mildred. It was as if some spring had broken in the machinery of life. Even love seemed dead.
“And yet he was once so fond of me, and I of him,” thought the wife, watching her husband’sface, with its curious look of absence—the look of a window with the blind down.
There were times when that look of utter abstraction almost frightened Mildred Greswold. It was an expression she had seen occasionally during her daughter’s lifetime, and which had always made her anxious. It was the look about which Lola used to say when they all met at the breakfast-table,
“Papa has had his bad dream again.”
That bad dream was no invention of Lola’s, but a stern reality in George Greswold’s life. He would start up from his pillow in an agony, muttering broken sentences in that voice of the sleeper which seems always different from his natural voice—as if he belonged to another world. Cold beads of sweat would start out upon his forehead, and the wife would put her arms round him and soothe him as a mother soothes her frightened child, until the muttering ceased and he sank upon his pillow exhausted, to lapse into quiet sleep, or else awoke and recovered calmness in awakening.
The dream—whatever it was—always left itsmark upon him next day. It was a kind of nightmare, he told his wife, when she gently questioned him, not urging her questions lest there should be pain in the mere recollection of that horrid vision. He could give no graphic description of that dream. It was all confusion—a blurred and troubled picture; but that confusion was in itself agony.
Rarely were his mutterings intelligible; rarely did his wife catch half-a-dozen consecutive words from those broken sentences; but once she heard him say,
“The cage—the cage again—iron bars—like a wild beast!”
And now that absent and cloudy look which she had seen in her husband’s face after the bad dream was there often. She spoke to him sometimes, and he did not hear. She repeated the same question twice or thrice, in her soft low voice, standing close beside him, and he did not answer. There were times when it was difficult to arouse him from that deep abstraction; and at such times the utter blankness and solitude of her own life weighed upon her like a dead weight, an almost unbearable burden.
“What is to become of us both in all the long years before us?” she thought despairingly. “Are we to be always far apart—living in the same house, spending all our days together, and yet divided?”
She had married before she was eighteen, and at one-and-thirty was still in the bloom of womanhood, younger than most women of that age; for her life had been subject to none of those vicissitudes and fevers which age women of the world. She had never kept a secret from her husband, never trembled at opening a milliner’s account, or blushed at the delivery of a surreptitious letter. The struggles for preëminence, the social race in which some women waste their energies and strain their nerves, were unknown to her. She had lived at Enderby Manor as the flowers lived, rejoicing in the air and the sunshine, drinking out of a cup of life in which there mingled no drop of poison. Thus it was that not one line upon the transparent skin marked the passage of a decade. The violet eyes had the limpid purity, and the emotional lips had the tender carnation, of girlhood. Mildred Greswold was as beautifulat thirty-one as Mildred Fausset had been at seventeen. And yet it seemed to her that life was over, and that her husband had ceased to care for her.
Many and many an hour in that lovely solitude beside the lake she sat with hands loosely clasped in her lap or above her head, with her books lying forgotten at her feet—all the newest books that librarians could send to tempt the jaded appetite of the reader—and her eyes gazing vacantly over the blue of the lake or towards the snow-peaks on the horizon. Often in these silent musings she recalled the past, and looked at the days that were gone as at a picture.
She remembered just such an autumn as this, a peerless autumn spent with her father at The Hook—spent for the most part on the river and in the garden, the sunny days and moonlit nights being far too lovely for any one to waste indoors. Her seventeenth birthday was not long past. It was just ten years since she had come home to that house to find Fay had vanished from it, and to shed bitter tears for the loss of her companion. Neversince that time had she seen Fay’s face. Her questions had been met coldly or angrily by her mother; and even her father had answered her with unsatisfactory brevity.
All she could learn was that Fay had been sent to complete her education at a finishing-school at Brussels.
“At school! O, poor Fay! I hope she is happy.”
“She ought to be,” Mrs. Fausset answered peevishly. “The school is horridly expensive. I saw one of the bills the other day. Simplyenormous. The girls are taken to the opera, and have all sorts of absurd indulgences.”
“Still, it is only school, mother, not home,” said Mildred compassionately.
This was two years after Fay had vanished. No letter had ever come from her to Mildred, though Mildred was able to write now, in her own sprawling childish fashion, and would have been delighted to answer any such letter. She had herself indited various epistles to her friend, but had not succeeded in getting them posted. They had drifted to thewaste-paper basket, mute evidences of wasted affection.
As each holiday time came round the child asked if Fay were coming home, always to receive the same saddening negative.
One day, when she had been more urgent than usual, Mrs. Fausset lost temper and answered sharply,
“No, she is not coming. She is never coming. I don’t like her, and I don’t intend ever to have her in any house of mine, so you may as well leave off plaguing me about her.”
“But, mother, why don’t you like her?”
“Never mind why. I don’t like her. That is enough for you to know.”
“But, mother, if she is father’s daughter and my sister, you ought to like her,” pleaded Mildred, very much in earnest.
“How dare you say that! You must never say it again—you are a naughty, cruel child to say such things!” exclaimed Mrs. Fausset, beginning to cry,
“Why naughty? why cruel? O, mother!” and Mildred cried too.
She clasped her arms round her mother’s neck and sobbed aloud.
“Dear mother, indeed I’m not naughty,” she protested, “but Bell said Fay was papa’s daughter. ‘Of course she’s his daughter,’ Bell said; and if she’s father’s daughter, she’s my sister, and it’s wicked not to love one’s sister. The psalm I was learning yesterday says so, mother. ‘Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!’ And it means sisters just the same, Miss Colville said, when I asked her; and I do love Fay. I can’t help loving her.”
“You must never speak her name again to me,” said Mrs. Fausset resolutely. “I shall leave off loving you if you pester me about that odious girl!”
“Then wasn’t it true what Bell said?”
“Of course not.”
“Mother, would it be wrong for papa to have a daughter?” asked Mildred, perplexed by this mysterious resentment for which she could understand no cause,
“Wrong! It would beinfamous.”
“Would God be angry?” asked the child, with an awe-stricken look. “Would it be wicked?”
“It would be the worst possible insult tome,” said Lord Castle-Connell’s daughter, ignoring the minor question.
After this Mildred refrained from all further speech about the absent girl to her mother; but as the years went by she questioned her father from time to time as to Fay’s whereabouts.
“She is very well off, my dear. You need not make yourself unhappy about her. She is with a very nice family, and has pleasant surroundings.”
“Shall I never see her again, father?”
“Never’s a long day, Mildred. I’ll take you to see her by and by when there is an opportunity. You see, it happens unfortunately that your mother does not like her, so it is better she should not come here. It would not be pleasant for her—or for me.”
He said this gravely, with a somewhat dejected look, and Mildred felt somehow that even to him it would be better to talk no more of her lost companion.
As the years went by Mrs. Fausset changed from a woman of fashion to a nervous valetudinarian. It was not that she loved pleasure less, but her beauty and her health had both begun to dwindle and fade at an age when other women are in their prime. She fretted at the loss of her beauty—watched every wrinkle, counted every gray hair, lamented over every change in the delicate colouring which had been her chief charm.
“How pretty you are growing, Mildred!” she exclaimed once, with a discontented air, when Mildred was a tall slip of fourteen. “You are just what I was at your age. And you will grow prettier every day until you are thirty, and then I daresay you will begin to fade as I have done, and feel an old woman as I do.”
It seemed to her that her own charms dwindled as her daughter grew. As the bud unfolded, the flower faded. She felt almost as if Mildred had robbed her of her beauty. She would not give up the pleasures and excitement of society. She consulted half-a-dozen fashionable physicians, and would not obey one of them. They all prescribed the samerepulsive treatment—rest, early hours, country air, with gentle exercise; no parties, no excitement, no strong tea.
Mrs. Fausset disobeyed them all, and from only fancying herself ill grew to be really ill; and from chronic lassitude developed organic disease of the heart.
She lingered nearly two years, a confirmed invalid, suffering a good deal, and giving other people a great deal of trouble. She died soon after Mildred’s sixteenth birthday, and on her death-bed she confided freely in her daughter, who had attended upon her devotedly all through her illness, neglecting everything else in the world for her mother’s sake.
“You are old enough to understand things that must once have seemed very mysterious to you, Mildred,” said Mrs. Fausset, lying half-hidden in the shadow of guipure bed-curtains, with her daughter’s hand clasped in hers, perhaps forgetting how young that daughter was in her own yearning for sympathy. “You couldn’t make out why I disliked that horrid girl so much, could you?”
“No, indeed, mother.”
“I hated her because she was your father’s daughter, Mildred—his natural daughter; the child of some woman who was not his wife. You are old enough now to know what that means. You were readingThe Heart of Midlothianto me last week. You know, Mildred?”
Yes, Mildred knew. She hung her head at the memory of that sad story, and at the thought that her father might have sinned like George Staunton.
“Yes, Mildred, she was the child of some woman he loved before he married me. He must have been desperately in love with the woman, or he would never have brought her daughter into my house. It was the greatest insult he could offer to me.”
“Was it, mother?”
“Was it? Why, of course it was. How stupid you are, child!” exclaimed the invalid peevishly, and the feverish hand grew hotter as she talked.
Mildred blushed crimson at the thought of this story of shame. Poor Fay! poor, unhappy Fay! And yet her strong common sense told her that there were two sides to the question.
“It was not Fay’s fault, mother,” she said gently. “No one could blame Fay, or be angry withher. And if the—wicked woman was dead, and father had repented, and was sorry, was it very wrong for him to bring my sister home to us?”
“Don’t call her your sister!” exclaimed Mrs. Fausset, with a feeble scream of angry alarm; “she is not your sister—she is no relation—she is nothing to you. It was an insult to bring her across my threshold. You must be very stupid, or you must care very little forme, if you can’t understand that. His conduct proved that he had cared for that low, common woman—Fay’s mother—more than ever he cared for me; perhaps he thought her prettier than me,” said the invalid in hysterical parenthesis, “and I have never known a happy hour since.”
“O, mamma dear, not in all the years when you used to wear such lovely gowns, and go to so many parties?” protested the voice of common sense.
“I only craved for excitement because I was miserable at heart. I don’t think you can half understand a wife’s feelings, Mildred, or you wouldn’t say such foolish things. I wanted you to know thisbefore my death. I want you to remember it always, and if you meet that odious girl avoid her as you would a pestilence. If your father should attempt to bring her here, or to Parchment Street, after I am gone——”
“He will not, mother. He will respect your wishes too much—he will be too sorry,” exclaimed Mildred, bending down to kiss the hot, dry hand, and moistening it with her tears.
The year of mourning that began soon after this conversation was a very quiet interval for father and daughter. They travelled a little, spent six months in Leipsic, where Mildred studied the piano under the most approved masters, a couple of months in Paris, where her father showed her all the lions in a tranquil, leisurely way that was very pleasant; and then they went down to The Hook, and lived there in happy idleness on the river and in the gardens all through a long and lovely summer.
Both were saddened at the sight of an empty chair—one sacred corner in all the prettiest rooms—where Maud Fausset had been wont to sit, agraceful languid figure, robed in white, or some pale delicate hue even more beautiful than white in contrast with the background of palms and flowers, Japanese screen or Indian curtain. How pretty she had looked sitting there, with books and scent-bottles, and dainty satin-lined basket full of some light frivolous work, which progressed by stages of half-a-dozen stitches a day! Her fans, her Tennyson, her palms, and perfumes—all had savoured of her own fragile bright-coloured loveliness. She was gone; and father and daughter were alone together—deeply attached to each other, yet with a secret between them, a secret which made a darkening shadow across the lives of both.
Whenever John Fausset wore a look of troubled thought Mildred fancied he was brooding upon the past, thinking of that erring woman who had borne him a child, the child he had tried to fuse into his own family, and to whom her own childish heart had yearned as to a sister.
“It must have been instinct that made me love her,” she said to herself; and then she would wonder idly what the fair sinner who had been Fay’s motherwas like, and whether her father had really cared more for that frail woman than for his lawful wife.
“Poor pretty mamma! he seemed to doat upon her,” thought Mildred. “I cannot imagine his ever having loved any one so well. I cannot imagine his ever having cared for any other woman in this world.”
The formless image of that unknown woman haunted the girl’s imagination. She appeared sometimes with one aspect, sometimes another—darkly beautiful, of Oriental type, like Scott’s Rebecca, or fair and lowly-born like Effie Deans—poor fragile Effie, fated to fall at the first temptation. Poetry and fiction were full of suggestions about that unknown influence in her father’s life; but every thought of the past ended in a sigh of pity for that fair wife whose domestic happiness had been clouded over by that half-discovered mystery.
Never a word did she breathe to her father upon this forbidden subject; never a word to Bell, who was still at the head of affairs in both Mr. Fausset’s houses, and who looked like a grim and stony repository of family secrets.