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.”