“I don’t know. Human love might be too strong for conscience. God knows I would not have sacrificed you to a scruple—to a law made by man. God’s laws are different. There is no doubt about them.”
The evening was darkening. The nightingale burst out suddenly into loud melody, more joyous than her reputation. Mildred could see the lights in the house that had been her home. The lamp-light in the drawing-room shone across the intervening space of lawn and shrubberies; the broad window shone vividly at the end of a vista, like a star. O lovely room, O happy life; so far off, so impossible for evermore!
“Good-night and good-bye,” Mildred sighed, holding out her hand.
“Good-bye,” he answered, taking the small cold hand, only to let it drop again.
He made no inquiry as to how she had come there, or whither she was going. She had appeared to him suddenly as a spirit in the soft eventide, and he let her go from him unquestioned, as if she had been a spirit. She felt the coldness of her dismissal, and yet felt that it could be no otherwise. She must be all to him or nothing. After love so perfect as theirs had been there could be no middle course.
She went across the meadow by the way she had come, and through the village street, where all the doors were closed at this hour, and paraffin-lamps glowed brightly in parlour-windows. Dear little humble street, how her heart yearned over it as she went silently by like a ghost, closely veiled, a slender figure dressed in black! She had been very fond of her villagers, had entered into their lives and been a brightening influence for most of them, she and her child. Lola had been familiar with every creature in the place, from the humpbacked cobbler at the corner to the gray-haired postmaster in the white half-timbered cottage yonder, where the letter-boxes were approached by a narrow path across a neat little garden. Lola had entered into all their lives, and had been glad and sorry with them with a power of sympathy which was the only precocious element in her nature. She had been a child in all things except charity; there she had been a woman.
There was a train for Salisbury in half-an-hour, and there was a later train at ten o’clock. Mildred had intended to travel at the earlier hour, but she felt an irresistible inclination to linger in the beloved place where her happiness was buried. She wanted to see some one who would talk to her of her husband, and she knew that the curate could be trusted; so she determined upon waiting for the later train, in the event of her finding Mr. Rollinson at home.
The paraffin-lamp in the parlour over the carpenter’s shop was brighter than any other in the village, and Mr. Rollinson’s shadow was reflected on the blind, with the usual tendency towards caricature. The carpenter’s wife, who opened the door, was an old friend of Mrs. Greswold’s, and was not importunate in her expressions of surprise and pleasure.
“Please do not mention to any one that I have been at Enderby, Mrs. Mason,” Mildred said quietly. “I am only here for an hour or two on my way to Salisbury. I should like to see Mr. Rollinson, if he is disengaged.”
“Of course he is, ma’am, for you. He’ll be overjoyed to see you, I’m sure.”