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.”