On one side of the grave there was a large mountain-ash, whose white blossoms and delicate leaves made a kind of temple above the marble slab; on the other, an ancient yew cast its denser shade. Mildred knelt down in the shadow, and let her head droop over the cold stone. There was a skylark singing in the blue vault high above the old Norman tower—a carol of joy and glad young life, as it seemed to Mildred, sitting in the dust. What a mockery that joyousness of spring-time and Nature seemed!
She knew not how long she had knelt there in silent grief when the branches rustled suddenly, as if a strong arm had parted them, and a man flung himself down heavily upon a turf-covered mound—a neglected, nameless grave—beside Lola’s monument. She did not stir from her kneeling attitude, or lift her head to look at the new-comer, knowing that the mourner was her husband. She had heard his footsteps approaching, heavy and slow in the stillness of the place.
The trunk of the tree hid her from that other mourner as she knelt there. He thought himself alone; and, in the abandonment of that fancied solitude, he groaned aloud, as Job may have groaned, sitting among ashes.
“Judgment!” he cried, “judgment!” and then, after an interval of silence, he cried again, “judgment!”
That one word, so repeated, seemed to freeze all the blood in her veins. What did it mean, that exceeding bitter cry,
“Judgment!”
CHAPTER IX.
THE FACE IN THE CHURCH.
Two months had gone since that first visit to Lola’s grave, when the husband and wife had knelt so near each other, and yet so far apart in the infinite mystery of human consciousness; he with his secret thoughts and secret woes, which she had never fathomed. He, unaware of her neighbourhood; she, chilled by a vague suspicion and sense of estrangement which had been growing upon her ever since her daughter’s death.
It was summer again, the ripe full-blown summer of mid-July. The awful anniversary of their bereavement had passed in silence and prayer. All things at Enderby looked as they had looked in the years that were gone, except the faces of the servants, which were for the most part strange. That change of the household made a great change in life to people so conservative as George Greswold and his wife; and the old home seemed so much the less like home because of that change. The Squire of Enderby felt that his popularity was lessened in the village for which he had done so much. His severe dealing with the offenders had pleased nobody, not even the sufferers from the epidemic, whose losses he had avenged. He had shown himself implacable; and there were many who said he had been unjust.
“It was hard upon Wadman and his wife to be turned off after twenty years’ faithful service,” said one of the villagers. “The Squire may go a long way before he’ll get as good a bailiff as Thomas,” said another.