For that deferred wedding was to have been a gorgeous and impressive function at St. George's, Hanover Square, with a Bishop in lawn sleeves to pronounce the nuptial benediction, palms, Japanese lilies, smilax, and white Rambler roses everywhere, while the celebrated "Non Angli sed Angeli" choir of boy-choristers had been specially engaged to render the anthem with proper fervour and give due effect to "The Voice that Breathed."
Owen promised and went back to London. There were cards and envelopes upon the salver in the hall, but not one from Mildred. That stabbed him to the heart.... Not a line, O God!—not a written line, in answer to that letter in which he told her of the acquittal, and of his father's death, and of his own anguish at having to answer the stern call of filial duty, and leave dear Love uncomforted by even one kiss after all these weeks of famine, and hurry away to lay that grand grey head in the vault that covered so many Saxhams. Not a line. But here was the letter, which his idiot of a servant, demoralised by the recent catastrophe, had forgotten to send on lying waiting upon the writing-table in his study. He snatched at it in desperate haste, and tore the envelope open.
Her letter bore the date of that day. She said she had written before and torn the confession up ... it was so difficult to be just to him and true to herself.... It was a roundabout, involved, youthfully grandiloquent epistle in which Mildred announced that her love for Owen was dead, that nothing could ever resuscitate it; that she could not, would not, ever marry him, and that she had returned in an accompanying packet his ring, and presents, and letters, and would ever remain his friend (underlined) Mildred. In a rather wobbly postscript, she begged him not to write or to attempt to see her, because her decision was irrevocable. She spelt the word with only one r.
Saxham read the letter three times deliberately. The walls of the castle he had built, and fondly believed to be a work of Cyclopean masonry, had come tumbling about his ears, and lo! the huge blocks were only bits of painted card, and the Lady of the Castle, his true love, was the false Queen, after all. He folded up the letter and put it away in his pocket-book, and went over to the mantel-glass and looked steadily at the reflection of his own square face, haggard and drawn and ghastly, with eyes of startling blue flaring out from under a scowling smudge of meeting black eyebrows. He laughed harshly, and a mocking devil looked out of those desperate eyes, and laughed back. He unlocked an oak-carved, silver-mounted cellaret, and got out a decanter of brandy, and filled a tumbler, and drank the liquor off. It numbed the unbearable mental agony, though it had apparently no other effect. But probably he was drunk when he rang the bell and said quietly to his man:
"Tait, do you believe there is a God?"
Tait's smooth, waxy countenance did not easily express surprise. He answered, as though the question had been the most commonplace and ordinary of queries:
"Can't say I do, sir. I reckon the parsons are responsible for floating 'Im, and that they made a precious good thing out of bearin' stock in Heaven until the purchasers began to ask for delivery, and after that...." He chuckled dryly. "I've lived with one or two of 'em, and, if I may say so, sir—I know the breed!"
"He knows ... the breed ..." repeated Saxham heavily.