“I am very glad you have written to me, dear Mrs. Greswold. Had I known your address, I think I should have taken the initiative, and written to you. Believe me, I respect your motive for the act which has, I fear, cast a blight upon a good man’s life; and I will venture to say no more than that the motive should be a very strong one which forces you to persevere in a course that has wrecked your husband’s happiness, and desolated one of the most delightful and most thoroughly Christian homes I had ever the privilege of entering. I look back and recall what Enderby Manor was, and I think what it is now, and I can hardly compare those two pictures without tears.
“You ask me to tell you frankly all I can tell about your husband’s mode of life, his health and spirits. All I can tell is summed up in four words: his heart is broken. In my deep concern about his desolate position, in my heartfelt regard for him, I have ventured to force my society upon him sometimes when I could not doubt it was unwelcome. He received me with all his old kindness of manner; but I am sympathetic enough to know when a man only endures my company, and I know that his feeling was at best endurance. But I believe that he trusts me, and that he was less upon his guard with me than he is with other acquaintances. I have seen him put on an appearance of cheerfulness with other people. I have heard him talk to other people as if life had in nowise lost its interest for him. With me he dropped the mask. I saw him brooding by his hearth, as he broods when he is alone. I heard his involuntary sighs. I saw the image of a shipwrecked existence. Indeed, Mrs. Greswold, there is nothing else that I can tell you if you would have me truthful. You have broken his heart. You have sacrificed your love to a principle, you say. You should be very sure of your principle. You ask me as to his habits and occupations. I believe they are about as monotonous as those of a galley-slave. He walks a great deal—in all weathers and at all hours—but rarely beyond his own land. I don’t think he often rides; and he has not hunted once during the season. He did a little shooting in October and November, quite alone. He has had no staying visitor within his doors since you left him.
“I have reason to know that he goes to the churchyard every evening at dusk, and spends some time beside your daughter’s grave. I have seen him there several times when it was nearly dark, and he had no apprehension of being observed. You know how rarely any one enters our quiet little burial-ground, and how complete a solitude it is at that twilight hour. I am about the only passer-by, and even I do not pass within sight of the old yew-tree above your darling’s resting-place, unless I go a little out of my way between the vestry-door and the lych-gate. I have often gone out of my way to note that lonely figure by the grave. Be assured, dear Mrs. Greswold, that in sending you this gloomy picture of a widowed life I have had no wish to distress you. I have exaggerated nothing. I wish you to know the truth; and if it lies within your power—without going against your conscience—to undo that which you have done, I entreat you to do so without delay. There may not be much time to be lost.—Believe me, devotedly and gratefully your friend,
Frederick Rollinson.”
Mildred shed bitter tears over the curate’s letter. How different the picture it offered from that afforded by George Greswold’s own letters, in which he had written cheerily of the shooting, the dogs and horses, the changes in the seasons, and the events of the outer world! That frank easy tone had been part of his armour of pride. He would not abase himself by the admission of his misery. He had guessed, no doubt, that his wife would read those letters, and he would not have her know the extent of the ruin she had wrought.
She thought of him in his solitude, pictured him beside their child’s grave, and the longing to look upon him once more—unseen by him, if it could be so—became irresistible. She determined to see with her own eyes if he were as unhappy as Mr. Rollinson supposed. She, who knew him so well, would be better able to judge by his manner and bearing—better able to divine the inner workings of his heart and mind. It had been a habit of her life to read his face, to guess his thoughts before they found expression in words. He had never been able to keep a secret from her, except that one long-hidden story of the past; and even there she had known that there was something. She had seen the shadow of that abiding remorse.
“I am going to leave you for two days, aunt,” she said rather abruptly, on the morning after she received Rollinson’s letter. “I want to look at Lola’s grave. I shall go from here to Enderby as fast as the train will take me; spend an hour in the churchyard; go on to Salisbury for the night; and come back to you to-morrow afternoon.”
“You mean that you are going back to your husband?”
“No, no. I may see him, perhaps, by accident. I shall not enter the Manor House. I am going to the churchyard—nowhere else.”
“You would be wiser if you went straight home. Remember, years hence, when I am dead and gone, that I told you as much. You must do as you like—stay at an inn at Salisbury, while your own beautiful home is empty, or anything else that is foolish and wrong-headed. You had better let Franz go with you.”