“He ought not to have sent her away,” she thought; “he saw us happy together, his two daughters, and he ought not to have divided us, and sent her away to a loveless life among strangers. If he had only been frank and straightforward with my mother she might have forgiven all.”
Might, perhaps. Mildred was not sure upon that point; but she felt very sure that it was her father’s duty to have braved all consequences rather than to have sent his unacknowledged child into exile. That fact of not acknowledging her seemed in itself such a tremendous cruelty that it intensified every lesser wrong.
Mrs. Dawson understood her mistress’s fancy for her father’s room, and Mildred’s meals were served here, at a Sutherland-table in the bay-window, from which she could see the boats go by, Mrs. Dawson having a profound belief in the efficacy of the boats as a cure for low spirits.
“People sometimes tell me it must be dull at The Hook,” she said; “but, lor! they don’t know how many boats go by in summer-time. It’s almost as gay as Bond Street.”
Mildred lived alone with old memories in the flower-scented room, where the Spanish blinds made a cool and shadowy atmosphere, while the roses outside were steeped in sunshine. Those few days were just the most perfect summer days of the year. She felt sorry that they had not been reserved for Pamela’s honeymoon. Such sunshine was almost wasted on her, whose heart was so full of sadness.
It was her last afternoon at The Hook, or the afternoon which she meant to be her last, having made up her mind to go back to Brighton and duty on the following day, and she had a task before her, a task which she had delayed from day to day, just as she had delayed her return to her aunt.
She had to put away those special and particular objects which had belonged to her father and mother, and had been a part of their lives. These were too sacred to be left about now that strangers were to occupy the rooms of the dead. Hitherto no stranger had entered those rooms since John Fausset’s death, nothing had been removed or altered. No documents relating to property or business of any kind had been kept at The Hook. Mr. Fausset’s affairs had all been put in perfect order after his wife’s death, and there had been no ransacking for missing title-deeds or papers of any kind. It had been understood that all papers and letters of importance were either with Mr. Fausset’s solicitors or at the house in Parchment Street, and thus the household gods had been undisturbed in the summer retreat by the river.
Mildred had spent the morning in her mother’s rooms, putting away all those dainty trifles and prettinesses which had gathered round the frivolous, luxurious life, as shells and bright-coloured weeds gather among the low rocks on the edge of the sea. She had placed everything carefully in a large closet in her mother’s dressing-room, covered with much tissue-paper, secure from dust and moth; and now she began the same kind of work in her father’s room, the work of removing all those objects which had been especially his: the old-fashioned silver inkstand, the well-worn scarlet morocco blotting-book, with his crest on the cover, and many inkspots on the leather lining inside, his penholders and penknives, and a little velvet pen-wiper which she had made for him when she was ten years old, and which he had kept on his table ever afterwards.
She looked round the room thoughtfully for a place of security for these treasures. She had spent a good deal of time in rearranging her father’s books, which careful and conscientious dusting had reduced to a chaotic condition. Now every volume was in its place, just as he had kept them in the old days when it had been her delight to examine the shelves and to carry away a book of her father’s choosing.
The bookcases were by Chippendale, with fretwork cornices and mahogany panelling. The lower part was devoted to cupboards, which her father had always kept under lock and key, but which she supposed to contain only old magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers, part of that vast mass of literature which is kept with a view to being looked at some day, and which finally drifts unread to the bourne of all waste paper, and is ground into pulp again, and rolls over the endless web again, and comes back upon the world printed with more intellectual food for the million of skippers and skimmers.