Yes, one of those mahogany panelled cupboards would serve Mildred’s purpose admirably. She selected a key from one of the bunches in her key-box, and opened the cupboard nearest the door.
It was packed tight with Army Lists, New Monthly Magazines, and Edinburgh Reviews—packed so well that there was scarcely an interstice that would hold a pin. She opened the next cupboard. Sporting Magazine, Blackwood, Ainsworth, and a pile of pamphlets. No room there.
She opened the third, and found it much more loosely packed, with odd newspapers, and old Prayer Books and Bibles: shabby, old-fashioned books, which had served for the religious exercises of several generations of Faussets, and had been piously preserved by the owner of The Hook. There was room here perhaps for the things in the writing-table, if all these books and papers were rearranged and closely packed.
Mildred began her work patiently. She was in no hurry to have done with her task; it brought her nearer to her beloved dead. She worked slowly, dreamily almost, her thoughts dwelling on the days that were gone.
She took out the Prayer Books and Bibles one by one, looking at a fly-leaf now and then. John Fausset, from his loving mother, on the day of his confirmation, June 17, 1835; Lucy Jane Fausset, with her sister Maria’s love, April 3, 1804; Mark Fausset, in memory of little Charlie, December 1, 1807. Such inscriptions as these touched her, with their reminiscences of vanished affection, of hearts long mingled with the dust.
She put the books on one side in a little pile on the carpet, as she knelt before the open cupboard, and then she began to move the loose litter of newspapers. The Morning Herald, the Morning Chronicle, the Sun. Even these were of the dead.
The cupboard held much more than she had expected. Behind the newspapers there were two rows of pigeons-holes, twenty-six in all, filled—choke-full, some of them—with letters, folded longwise, in a thoroughly business-like manner.
Old letters, old histories of the family heart and mind, how much they hold to stir the chords of love and pain! Mildred’s hand trembled as she stretched it out to take one of those letters, idly, full of morbid curiosity about those relics of a past life.
She never knew whether it had been deliberation or hazard which guided her hand to the sixth pigeon-hole, but she thought afterwards that her eye must have been caught by a bit of red ribbon—a spot of bright colour—and that her hand followed her eye mechanically. However this may have been, the first thing that she took from the mass of divers correspondence in the twenty-six pigeon-holes was a packet of about twenty letters tied with a red ribbon.
Each letter was carefully indorsed “M. F.” and a date. Some were on foreign paper, others on thick gilt-edged note. A glance at the uppermost letter showed her a familiar handwriting—her aunt’s, but very different from Miss Fausset’s present precise penmanship. The writing here was more hurried and irregular, bolder, larger, and more indicative of impulse and emotion.