How easy it was to reach him! how natural it would seem to hasten to him after half a year of exile! and yet she must not. She had pledged herself to honour the law; to obey the letter and the spirit of that harsh law which decreed that her sister’s husband could not be hers.
She knew that he was at Enderby, and she had some ground for supposing that he was well, and even contented. She had seen the letters which he had written to his niece. He had written about the shooting, his horses, his dogs; and there had been no word to indicate that he was out of health, or in low spirits. Mildred had pored over those brief letters, forgetting to return them to their rightful owner, cherishing them as if they made a kind of link between her and the love she had resigned.
How firm the hand was!—that fine and individual penmanship which she had so admired in the past—the hand in which her first love-letter had been written. It was but little altered in fifteen years. She recalled the happy hour when she received that first letter from her affianced husband. He had gone to London a day or two after their betrothal, eager to make all arrangements for their marriage, impatient for settlements and legal machinery which should make their union irrevocable, full of plans for immediate improvements at Enderby.
She remembered how she ran out into the garden to read that first letter—a long letter, though they had been parted less than a day when it was written. She had gone to the remotest nook in that picturesque riverside garden, a rustic bower by the water’s edge, an osier arbour over which her own hands had trained the Céline Forestieri roses. They were in flower on that happy day—clusters of pale yellow bloom, breathing perfume round her as she sat beneath the blossoming arch and devoured her lover’s fond words. O, how bright life had been then for both of them!—for her without a cloud.
He was well—that was something to know; but it was not enough. Her heart yearned for fuller knowledge of his life than those letters gave. Wounded pride might have prompted that cheerful tone. He might wish her to think him happy and at ease without her. He thought that she had used him ill. It was natural, perhaps, that he should think so, since he could not see things as she saw them. He had not her deep-rooted convictions. She thought of him and wondered about him till the desire for further knowledge grew into an aching pain. She must write to some one; she must do something to quiet this gnawing anxiety. In her trouble she thought of all her friends in the neighbourhood of Enderby; but there was none in whom she could bring herself to confide except Rollinson, the curate. She had thought first of writing to the doctor, but he was something of a gossip, and would be likely to prattle to his patients about her letter, and her folly in forsaking so good a husband. Rollinson she felt she might trust. He was a thoughtful young man, despite his cheery manners and some inclination to facetiousness of a strictly clerical order. He was one of a large family, and had known trouble, and Mildred had been especially kind to him and to the sisters who from time to time had shared his apartments at the carpenter’s, and had revelled in the gaieties of Enderby parish, the penny-reading at the schoolhouse, the sale of work for the benefit of the choir, and an occasional afternoon for tea and tennis at the Manor. Those maiden sisters of the curate’s had known and admired Lola, and Mr. Rollinson had been devoted to her from his first coming to the parish, when she was a lovely child of seven.
Mildred wrote fully and frankly to the curate.
“I cannot enter upon the motive of our separation,” she wrote, “except so far as to tell you that it is a question of principle which has parted us. My husband has been blameless in all his domestic relations, the best of husbands, the noblest of men. Loving him with all my heart, trusting and honouring him as much as on my wedding-day, I yet felt it my duty to leave him. I should not make this explanation to any one else at Enderby, but I wish you to know the truth. If people ever question you about my reasons you can tell them that it is my intention ultimately to enter an Anglican Sisterhood, or it may be to found a Sisterhood, and to devote my declining years to my sorrowing fellow-creatures. This is my fixed intention, but my vocation is yet weak. My heart cleaves to the old home and all that I lost in leaving it.
“And now, my kind friend, I want you to tell me how my husband fares in his solitude. If he were ill and unhappy he would be too generous to complain to me. Tell me how he is in health and spirits. Tell me of his daily life, his amusements, occupations. There is not the smallest detail which will not interest me. You see him, I hope, often; certainly you are likely to see him oftener than any one else in the parish. Tell me all you can, and be assured of my undying gratitude.—Ever sincerely yours,
Mildred Greswold.”
Mr. Rollinson’s reply came by return of post: