CHAPTER I.

A WIFE AND NO WIFE.

Mr. Castellani’s existence was one of those social problems about which the idle world loves to speculate. There are a good many people in London to whom the idea of a fourth dimension is not half so interesting as the notion of a man who lives by his wits, and yet contrives to get himself dressed by a good tailor, and to obtain a footing in some of the best houses at the smart end of the town. This problem César Castellani had offered to the polite world of London for the last three seasons.

Who is Mr. Castellani? was a question still asked by a good many people who invited the gentleman to their houses, and made much of him. He had not forced his way into society; nobody had the right to describe him as a pushing person. He had slipped so insidiously into his place in the social orbit that people had not yet left off wondering how he came there, or who had been his sponsors. This kind of speculation always stimulates the invention of the clever people; and these affected to know a good deal more about Mr. Castellani than he knew about himself.

“He came with magnificent credentials, and an account was opened for him at Coutts’s before he arrived,” said Magnus Dudley, the society poet, flinging back his long hair with a lazy movement of the large languid head. “Of course, you know that he is a natural son of Cavour’s?”

“Indeed! No, I never heard _that_. He is not like Cavour.”

“Of course not, but he is the image of his mother—one of the handsomest women in Italy—a Duchess, and daughter of a Roman Prince, who could trace his descent in an unbroken line from Germanicus. Castellani has the blood of Caligula in his veins.”

“He looks like it; but I have heard on pretty good authority that he is the son of a Milanese music-master.”

“There are people who will tell you his father wheeled a barrow and sold penny ices in Whitechapel,” retorted Magnus. “People will say anything.”

Thus and in much otherwise did society speculate; and in the meantime Mr. Castellani’s circle was always widening. His book had been just audacious enough and just clever enough to hit the gold in the literary target. _Nepenthe_ had been one of the successes of the season before last: and Mr. Castellani was henceforth to be known as the author of _Nepenthe_. He had touched upon many things below the stars, and some things beyond them. He had written of other worlds with the confidence of a man who had been there. He had written of women with the air of a Café de Paris Solomon; and he had written of men as if he had never met one.

A man who could write a successful book, and could sing and play divinely, was a person to be cultivated in feminine society. Very few men cared to be intimate with Mr. Castellani, but among women his influence was indisputable. He treated them with a courtly deference which charmed them, and he made them his slaves. No Oriental despot ever ruled more completely than César Castellani did in half-a-dozen of those drawing-rooms which give the tone to scores of other drawing rooms between Mayfair and Earl’s Court. He contrived to be in request from the dawn to the close of the London season. He had made a favour of going to Riverdale; and now, although it suited his purpose to be there, he made a favour of staying.

“If it were not for the delight of being here, I should be in one of the remotest valleys in the Tyrol,” he told Mrs. Hillersdon. “I have never stayed in England so long after the end of the season. A wild longing to break loose from the bonds of Philistinism generally seizes me at this time of the year. I want to go away, and away, and ever away from my fellow-men. I should like to go and live in a tomb, like the girl in Ouida’s _In Maremma_. My thirst for solitude is a disease.”

This from a man who spent the greater part of his existence dawdling in drawing-rooms and boudoirs sounded paradoxical; but paradoxes are accepted graciously from a man who has written the book of the season. Louise Hillersdon treated Castellani like a favourite son. At his bidding she brought out the old guitar which had slumbered in its case for nearly a decade, and sang the old Spanish songs, and struck the strings with the old dashing sweep of a delicate hand, and graceful curve of a rounded arm.

“When you sing I could believe you as young as Helen when Paris stole her,” said Castellani, lolling along the sofa beside the low chair in which she was sitting; “I cease to envy the men who knew you when you were a girl.”

“My dear Castellani, I feel old enough to be your grandmother; unless you are really the person I sometimes take you for—”

“Who may that be?”

“The Wandering Jew.”

“No matter what my creed or where I have wandered, since I am so happy as to find a haven here. Granted that I can remember Nero’s beautiful Empress, and Faustina, and all that procession of fair women who illumine the Dark Ages—and Mary of Scotland, and Emma Hamilton, blonde and brunette, pathetic and _espiègle_, every type, and every variety. It is enough for me to find perfection here.”

“If you only knew how sick I am of that kind of nonsense!” said Mrs. Hillersdon, smiling at him, half in amusement, half in scorn.

“O, I know that you have drunk the wine of men’s worship to satiety! Yet if you and I had lived upon the same plane, I would have taught you that among a hundred adorers one could love you better than all the rest. But it is too late. Our souls may meet and touch perhaps thousands of years hence in a new incarnation.”

“Do you talk this kind of nonsense to Mrs. Greswold or her niece?”

“No; with them I am all dulness and propriety. Neither lady is _simpatica_. Miss Ransome is a frank, good-natured girl—much too frank—with all the faults of her species. I find the genus girl universally detestable.”

“Miss Ransome has about fifteen hundred a year. I suppose you know that?”

“Has she really? If ever I marry I hope to do better than that,” answered César with easy insolence. “She would be a very nice match for a country parson; that Mr. Rollinson, for instance, who is getting up the concert.”

“Then Miss Ransome is not your attraction at Enderby? It is Mrs. Greswold who draws you.”

“Why should I be drawn?” he asked, with his languid air. “I go there in sheer idleness. They like me to make music for them; they fool me and praise me; and it is pleasant to be fooled by two pretty women.”

“Does Mrs. Greswold take any part in the fooling? She looks like marble.”

“There is fire under that marble. Mrs. Greswold is romantically in love with her husband: but that is a complaint which is not incurable.”

“He is not an agreeable man,” said Louise, remembering how long George Greswold and his wife had kept aloof from her. “And he does not look a happy man.”

“He is not happy.”

“You know something about him—more than we all know?” asked Louise, with keen curiosity.

“Not much. I met him at Nice before he came into his property. He was not a very fortunate person at that time, and he doesn’t care to be reminded of it now.”

“Was he out-at-elbows, or in debt?”

“Neither. His troubles did not take that form. But I am not a gossip. Let the past be past, as Gœthe says. We can’t change it, and it is charity to forget it. If we are not sure about what we touch and hear and see—or fancy we hear and touch and see—in the present, how much less can we be sure of any reality or external existence in the past! It is all done away with—vanished. How can we know that it ever was? A grave here and there is the only witness; and even the grave and the name on the headstone may be only a projection of our own consciousness. We are such stuff as dreams are made of.”

“That is a politely circuitous manner of refusing to tell me anything about Mr. Greswold when his name was Ransome. No matter. I shall find other people who know the scandal, I have no doubt. Your prevarication assures me that there was a scandal.”

This was on the eve of the concert at Enderby, at about the same hour when George Greswold showed Mildred his first wife’s portrait. Castellani and his hostess were alone together in the lady’s morning-room, while Hillersdon and his other guests were in the billiard-room on the opposite side of a broad corridor. Mrs. Hillersdon had a way of turning over her visitors to her husband when they bored her. Gusts of loud talk and louder laughter came across the corridor now and again as they played pool. There were times when Louise was too tired of life to endure the burden of commonplace society. She liked to dream over a novel. She liked to talk with a clever young man like Castellani. His flatteries amused her, and brought back a faint flavour of youth and a dim remembrance of the day when all men praised her, when she had known herself without a rival. Now other women were beautiful, and she was only a tradition. She had toiled hard to live down her past, to make the world forget that she had ever been Louise Lorraine: yet there were moments in which she felt angry to find that old personality of hers so utterly forgotten, when she was tempted to cry out, “What rubbish you talk about your Mrs. Egremont, your Mrs. Linley Varden, your professional beauties and fine lady actresses. Have you never heard of ME—Louise Lorraine?”

* * * * *

The drawing-rooms at Enderby Manor had been so transformed under Mr. Castellani’s superintendence, and with the help of his own dexterous hands, that there was a unanimous expression of surprise from the county families as they entered that region of subdued light and æsthetic draperies between three and half-past three o’clock on the afternoon of the concert.

The Broadwood grand stood on a platform in front of a large bay-window, draped as no other hand could drape a piano, with embroidered Persian curtains and many-hued Algerian stuffs, striped with gold; and against the sweeping folds of drapery rose a group of tall golden lilies out of a shallow yellow vase. A cluster of gloxinias were massed near the end of the piano, and a few of the most artistic chairs in the house were placed about for the performers. The platform, instead of being as other platforms, in a straight line across one side of the room, was placed diagonally, so as to present the picturesque effect of an angle in the background, an angle lighted with clusters of wax-candles, against a forest of palms.

All the windows had been darkened save those in the further drawing-room, which opened into the garden, and even these were shaded by Spanish hoods, letting in coolness and the scent of flowers, with but little daylight. Thus the only bright light was on the platform.

The auditorium was arranged with a certain artistic carelessness: the chairs in curved lines to accommodate the diagonal line of the platform; and this fact, in conjunction with the prettiness of the stage, put every one in good temper before the concert began.

The concert was as other concerts: clever amateur singing, excellent amateur playing, fine voices cultivated to a certain point, and stopping just short of perfect training.

César Castellani’s three little songs—words by Heine—music, Schubert and Jensen—were the hit of the afternoon. There were few eyes that were unclouded by tears, even among those listeners to whom the words were in an unknown language. The pathos was in the voice of the singer.

The duet was performed with _aplomb_, and elicited an encore, on which Pamela and Castellani sang the old-fashioned “Flow on, thou shining river,” which pleased elderly people, moving them like a reminiscence of long-vanished youth.

Pamela’s heart beat furiously as she heard the applause, and she curtsied herself off the platform in a whirl of delight. She felt that it was in her to be a great public singer—a second Patti—if—if she could be taught and trained by Castellani. Her head was full of vague ideas—a life devoted to music—three years’ hard study in Italy—a _début_ at La Scala—a world-wide renown achieved in a single night. She even wondered how to Italianise her name. Ransomini? No, that would hardly do. Pamelani—Pameletta? What awkward names they were—christian and surname both!

And then, crimsoning at the mere thought, she saw in large letters, “MADAME CASTELLANI.”

How much easier to make a great name in the operatic world with a husband to fight one’s battles and get the better of managers!

“With an income of one’s own it ought to be easy to make one’s way,” thought Pamela, as she stood behind the long table in the dining-room, dispensing tea and coffee, with the assistance of maids and footmen.

Her head was so full of these bewildering visions that she was a little less on the alert than she ought to have been for shillings and half-crowns, whereby a few elderly ladies got their tea and coffee for nothing, not being asked for payment, and preferring to consider the entertainment gratis.

Mildred’s part of the concert was performed to perfection—not a false note in an accompaniment, or a fault in the _tempo_. Lady Millborough, a very exacting personage, declared she had never been so well supported in her _cheval de bataille_, the finale to _La Cenerentola_. But many among the audience remarked that they had never seen Mrs. Greswold look so ill; and both Rollinson and Castellani were seriously concerned about her.

“You are as white as marble,” said the Italian. “I know you are suffering.”

“I assure you it is nothing. I have not been feeling very well lately, and I had a sleepless night. There is nothing that need give any one the slightest concern. You may be sure I shall not break down. I am very much interested in the painted window,” she added, with a faint smile.

“It is not that I fear,” said Castellani, in a lower voice. “It is of you and your suffering I am thinking.”

George Greswold did not appear at the concert: he was engaged elsewhere.

“I cannot think how Uncle George allowed himself to have an appointment at Salisbury this afternoon,” said Pamela. “I know he doats on music.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t doat upon it quite so well as to like to see his house turned topsy-turvy,” said Lady Millborough, who would have allowed every philanthropic scheme in the country to collapse for want of cash rather than suffer her drawing-room to be pulled about by amateur scene-shifters.

Mrs. Hillersdon and her party occupied a prominent position near the platform; but that lady was too clever to make herself conspicuous. She talked to the people who were disposed to friendliness—their numbers had increased with the advancing years—and she placidly ignored those who still held themselves aloof from “that horrid woman.” Nor did she in any way appropriate Castellani as her special _protégé_ when the people round her were praising him. She took everything that happened with the repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere, and may often be found among women whom the Vere de Veres despise.

* * * * *

All was over: the last of the carriages had rolled away. Castellani had been carried off in Mrs. Hillersdon’s barouche, no one inviting him to stay at the Manor House. Rollinson lingered to repeat his effusive thanks for Mrs. Greswold’s help.

“It has been a glorious success,” he exclaimed; “glorious! Who would have thought there was so much amateur talent available within thirty miles? And Castellani was a grand acquisition. We shall clear at least seventy pounds for the window. I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough for giving us the use of your lovely rooms, Mrs. Greswold, and for letting us pull them about as we liked.”

“That did not matter—much,” Mildred said faintly, as she stood by the drawing-room door in the evening light, the curate lingering to reiterate the assurance of his gratitude. “Everything can be arranged again—easily.”

She was thinking, with a dull aching at her heart, that to her the pulling about and disarrangement of those familiar rooms hardly mattered at all. They were her rooms no longer. Enderby was never more to be her home. It had been her happy home for thirteen gracious years—years clouded with but one natural sorrow, in the loss of her beloved father. And now that father’s ghost rose up before her, and said, “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, and because of my sin you must go forth from your happy home and forsake the husband of your heart.”

She gave the curate an icy hand, and turned from him without another word.

“Poor soul, she is dead-beat!” thought Rollinson, as he trudged home to his lodgings over a joiner and builder’s shop: airy and comfortable rooms enough, but odorous of sawdust, and a little too near the noises of the workshop.

He could but think it odd that he had not been asked to dine at the Manor, as he would have been in the ordinary course of events. He had told the builder’s wife that he should most likely dine out, whereupon that friendly soul had answered, “Why, of course they’ll ask you, Mr. Rollinson. You know they’re always glad to see you.”

And now he had to return to solitude and a fresh-killed chop.

* * * * *

It was seven o’clock, and George Greswold had not yet come home from Salisbury. Very few words had passed between him and his wife since she fell fainting at his feet last night. He had summoned her maid, and between them they had brought her back to consciousness, and half carried her to her room. She would give no explanation of her fainting-fit when the maid had left the room, and she was lying on her bed, white and calm, with her husband sitting by her side. She told him that she was tired, and that a sudden giddiness had come upon her. That was all he could get from her.

“If you will ask me no questions, and leave me quite alone, I will try to sleep, so that I may be fit for my work in the concert to-morrow,” she pleaded. “I would not disappoint them for worlds.”

“I don’t think you need be over-anxious about them,” said her husband bitterly. “There is more at stake than a painted window: there is your peace and mine. Answer me only one question,” he said, with intensity of purpose: “had your fainting-fit anything to do with the portrait of my first wife?”

“I will tell you everything—after the concert to-morrow,” she answered; “for God’s sake leave me to myself till then.”

“Let it be as you will,” he answered, rising suddenly, wounded by her reticence.

He left the room without another word. She sprang up from her bed directly he was gone, ran to the door and locked it, and then flung herself on her knees upon the prie-dieu chair at the foot of a large ivory crucifix which hung in a deep recess beside the old-fashioned fireplace.

Here she knelt, in tears and prayer, deep into the night. Then for an hour or more she walked up and down the room, absorbed in thought, by the dim light of the night-lamp.

When the morning light came she went to a bookcase in a little closet of a room opening out of the spacious old bedroom—a case containing only devotional books, and of these she took out volume after volume—Taylor’s _Rule of Conscience_, Hooker’s _Religious Polity_, Butler, Paley—one after another, turning over the leaves, looking through the indexes—searching for something which she seemed unable to find anywhere.

“What need have I to see what others have thought?” she said to herself at last, after repeated failure; “Clement Cancellor knows the right. I could have no better guide than his opinion, and he has spoken. What other law do I need? His law is the law of God.”

Not once did her eyes close in sleep all through that night, or in the morning hours before breakfast. She made an excuse for breakfasting in her dressing-room, a large, airy apartment, half boudoir. She was told that Mr. Greswold had gone out early to see some horses at Salisbury, and would not be back till dinner-time. He was to be met at the station at half-past seven.

She had her morning to herself. Pamela was rehearsing her part in the duet, and in “Flow on, thou shining river,” which was to be sung in the event of an encore. That occupation, and the arrangement of her toilet, occupied the young lady till luncheon—allowing for half-hourly rushes about the lawn and shrubberies with Box, whose health required activity, and whose social instincts yearned for companionship.

“He can’t get on with only Kassandra; she hasn’t intellect enough for him,” said Pamela.

It was only ten minutes before the arrival of the performers that Mrs. Greswold went down-stairs, pale as ashes, but ready for the ordeal. She had put on a white gown with a little scarlet ribbon about it, lest black should make her pallor too conspicuous.

And now it was seven o’clock, and she was alone. The curate had been right in pronouncing her dead-beat; but she had some work before her yet. She had been writing letters in the morning. Two of these she now placed on the mantelpiece in her bedroom: one addressed to her husband, the other to Pamela.

She had a bag packed—not one of those formidable dressing-bags which weigh fifteen to twenty pounds—but a light Russia-leather bag, just large enough to contain the essentials of the toilet. She put on a neat little black bonnet and a travelling-cloak, and took her bag and umbrella, and went down to the hall. She had given orders that the carriage should call for her before going to the station, and she was at the door ready to step into it when it came round.

She told the groom that she was to be put down at Ivy Cottage, and was driven off unseen by the household, who were all indulging in a prolonged tea-drinking after the excitement of the concert.

Ivy Cottage was within five minutes’ walk of Romsey Station: a little red cottage, newly built, with three or four ivy plants languishing upon a slack-baked brick wall, and just enough garden for the proverbial cat to disport himself in at his ease—the swinging of cats being no longer a popular English sport. There was nothing strange in Mrs. Greswold alighting at Ivy Cottage—unless it were the hour of her visit—for the small brick box was occupied by two maiden ladies of small means: one a confirmed invalid; the other her patient nurse; whom the lady of Enderby Manor often visited, and in whom she was known to be warmly interested.

The coachman concluded that his mistress was going to spend a quarter of an hour with the two old ladies, while he went on and waited for his master at the station, and that he was to call for her on his return. He did not even ask for her orders upon this point, taking them for granted.

He was ten minutes too soon at the station, as every well-conducted coachman ought to be.

“I’m to call for my mistress, sir,” he said, as Mr. Greswold stepped into the brougham.

“Where?”

“At Ivy Cottage, sir: Miss Fisher’s.”

“Very good.”

The brougham pulled up at Ivy Cottage; and the groom got down and knocked a resounding peal upon the Queen Anne knocker, it being hardly possible nowadays to find a knocker that is not after the style of Queen Anne, or a newly-built twenty-five pound a year cottage in any part of rural England that does not offer a faint reminiscence of Bedford Park.

The groom made his inquiry of the startled little maid-of-all-work, fourteen years old last birthday, and already aspiring to better herself as a vegetable-maid in a nobleman’s family.

Mrs. Greswold had not been at Ivy Cottage that evening.

George Greswold was out of the brougham by this time, hearing the girl’s answer.

“Stop where you are,” he said to the coachman, and ran back to the station, an evil augury in his mind.

He went to the up-platform, the platform at which he had alighted ten minutes before.

“Did you see Mrs. Greswold here just now?” he asked the station-master, with as natural an air as he could command.

“Yes, sir. She got into the up-train, sir; the train by which you came. She came out of the waiting-room, sir, the minute after you left the platform. You must just have missed her.”

“Yes, I have just missed her.”

He walked up and down the length of the platform two or three times in the thickening dusk. Yes, he had missed her. She had left him. Such a departure could mean only severance—some deep wound—which it might take long to heal. It would all come right by and by. There could be no such thing as parting between man and wife who loved each other as they loved—who were incapable of falsehood or wrong.

What was this jealous fancy that had taken possession of her? This unappeasable jealousy of the dead past—a passion so strong that it had prompted her to rush away from him in this clandestine fashion, to torture him by all the evidences of an inconsolable grief. His heart was sick to death as he went back to the carriage, helpless to do anything except go to his deserted home, and see what explanation awaited him there.

It was half-past eight when the carriage drove up to the Manor House. Pamela ran out into the hall to receive him.

“How late you are, uncle!” she cried, “and I can’t find aunt. Everything is at sixes and sevens. The concert was a stupendous success—and—only think!—_I_ was encored.”

“Indeed, dear!”

“Yes, my duet with him: and then we sang the other. They would have liked a third, only we pretended not to understand. It would have made all the others so fearfully savage if we had taken it.”

This speech was not a model of lucidity, but it might have been much clearer and yet unintelligible to George Greswold.

“Do you mind dining alone to-night, my dear Pamela?” he said, trying to speak cheerily. “Your aunt is out—and I—I have some letters to write—and I lunched heavily at Salisbury.”

His heavy luncheon had consisted of a biscuit and a glass of beer at the station. His important business had been a long ramble on Salisbury Plain, alone with his troubled thoughts.

“Did your mistress leave any message for me?” he asked the butler.

“No, sir. Nobody saw my mistress go out. When Louisa went up to dress her for dinner she was gone, sir—but Louisa said there was a letter for you on the bedroom mantelpiece. Shall I send for it, sir?”

“No, no—I will go myself. Serve dinner at once. Miss Ransome will dine alone.”

George Greswold went to the bedroom—that fine old room, the real Queen Anne room, with thick walls and deep-set windows, and old window-seats, and capacious recesses on each side of the high oak chimneypiece, and richly-moulded wainscot, and massive panelled doors, a sober eighteenth-century atmosphere in which it is a privilege to exist—a spacious old room, with old Dutch furniture, of the pre-Chippendale era, and early English china, Worcester simulating Oriental, Chelsea striving after Dresden: a glorious old room, solemn and mysterious as a church in the dim light of a pair of wax-candles which Louisa the maid had lighted on the mantelpiece.

There, between the candles, appeared two letters: “George Greswold, Esq.,” “Miss Ransome.”

The husband’s letter was a thick one, and the style of the penmanship showed how the pen had hurried along, driven by the electric forces of excitement and despair:

“MY BELOVED,—You asked me last night if the photograph which you showed me had anything to do with my fainting-fit. It had everything to do with it. That photograph is a portrait of my unhappy sister, my cruelly-used, unacknowledged sister; and I, who have been your wife fourteen years, know now that our marriage was against the law of God and man—that I have never been legally your wife—that our union from the first has been an unholy union, and for that unlawful marriage the hand of God has been laid upon us—heavily—heavily—in chastisement, and the darling of our hearts has been taken from us.

“‘Whom He loveth He chasteneth.’ He has chastened us, George—perhaps to draw us nearer to Him. We were too happy, it may be, in this temporal life—too much absorbed by our own happiness, living in a charmed circle of love and gladness, till that awful chastisement came.

“There is but one course possible to me, my dear and honoured husband, and that course lies in life-long separation. I am running away from my dear home like a criminal, because I am not strong enough to stand face to face with you and tell you what must be. We must do our best to live out our lives asunder, George; we must never meet again as wedded lovers, such as we have been for fourteen years. God knows, my affection for you has grown and strengthened with every year of union, and yet it seems to me on looking back that my heart went out to you in all the fulness of an infinite love when first we stood, hand clasped in hand, beside the river. If you are angry with me, George—if you harden your heart against me because I do that which I know to be my duty, at least believe that I never loved you better than in this bitter hour of parting. I spent last night in prayer and thought. If there were any way of escape—any possibility of living my own old happy life with a clear conscience—I think God would have shown it to me in answer to my prayers; but there was no ray of light, no gleam of hope. Conscience answers sternly and plainly. By the law of God I have never been your wife, and His law commands me to break an unhallowed tie, although my heart may break with it.

“Do you remember your argument with Mr. Cancellor? I never saw you so vehement in any such dispute, and you took the side which I can but think the side of the Evil One. That conversation now seems to me like a strange foreshadowing of sorrow—a lesson meant for my guidance. Little did I then think that this question could ever have any bearing on my own life; but I recall every word now, and I remember how earnestly my old master spoke—how ruthlessly he maintained the right. Can I doubt his wisdom, from whose lips I first learnt the Christian law, and in whom I first saw the true Christian life?

“I have written to Pamela, begging her to stay with you, to take my place in the household, and to be to you as an adopted daughter. May God be merciful to us both in this heavy trial, George! Be sure He will deal with us mercifully if we do our duty according to the light that is given to us.

“I shall stay to-night in Queen Anne’s Gate with Mrs. Tomkison. Please send Louisa to me to-morrow with luggage for a considerable absence from home. She will know what to bring. You can tell her that I am going abroad for my health. My intention is to go to some small watering-place in Germany, where I can vegetate, away from all beaten tracks, and from the people who know us. You may rely upon me to bear my own burden, and to seek sympathy and consolation from no earthly comforter.

“Do not follow me, George—should your heart urge you to do so. Respect my solemn resolution, the result of many prayers.—Your ever loving

“MILDRED.”