Mildred

Part II

(continued.) VOL. Ill, B

CHAPTER V. TF

Philip Romney were still in London it was most likely that he would, from the papers, learn the fact of Mr. Treherne's death ; but when he had learnt it, Mildred asked herself, would he do anything ? — would he come to her? In looking forward from the distance to this time she had always said to herself that he would. He had trusted her with such entire trust in the old days that she had always clung to the belief that, in spite of all the years they had been parted, he would have faith in her still. But now when the time had arrived at last, she be- B Mildred. 4 gan to say to herself that he would not come. And she was right. Weeks lengthened into months after Mr. Treherne's death, and he did not come. Then she asked herself—" What can I do? What is it possible for a woman to do, placed as I am?"

She had no one to speak to, or to take advice from : she had to take counsel solely from her own heart. She said to herself — "He is poor, and I can make him almost rich ; he is fallen, and even yet, by God's help, I might raise him up ; he is my lover, to whom the last words that I ever spoke were a promise that I would be true to him while I lived. And now, if he is ashamed to come to me, must I sit with my hands folded3 and never give one sign, or utter one word?" She asked herself this question a thousand Mildred. 5 times, and a thousand times she answered it; but sometimes the answer was a passionate " No !" and sometimes it was a sorrowful and bitter " Yes !" How could she answer it once for all, so as to give her soul peace? "Half through the nights I used to lie awake," she said afterwards, speaking of this time, "feeling as if his soul was calling to mine out of the depths."

She had no means of knowing whether the thought had ever entered into either her uncle's or her brother's mind that she might now be contemplating the possibility of becoming Philip Romney's wife; but, in point of fact, they had both thought of it, and spoken of it together. " If she ever comes in the fellow's way, she'll marry him, to a dead certainty !" Mr. Heriott had said. Mildred. ""Well — I doubt if she would marry him," Harry answered. "The man has become quite disreputable, you know, and I don't think — I don't think, upon my word, — that she could be so frantic; — but my fear is that he will find out where she is, and try to get money from her." " Hm — I don't quite know if I should be much afraid of that : — though I suppose when a man has fallen so low as he has," Mr. Heriott replied, "he would do anything."

"I wonder if one of us ought to speak to her," Harry said. " Fve had enough to do with speaking to her," Mr. Heriott answered shortly. "Merely to find out what her own feeling is, I mean," Harry explained. "I believe her own feeling is," Mr. Heriott said bitterly, "that she would marry him to morrow." Mildred. 7 " If she is likely to imagine that it would make her happy to marry him, I think the best thing to cure her of her folly would be to let them meet." "I'm not so sure of that. He may be changed desperately for the worse since she saw him last — and I've no doubt he is," Mr. Heriott said ; " but he's one of those fellows who have got the tongue of a serpent. If she once sees him, take my word for it he'll make her do what he likes." "Well, I'm sure I don't know what it would be best to do," Harry said.

"T've washed my hands of the matter long ago," Mr. Heriott answered. "I'll do nothing. If she resolves to make a fool of herself and marry him she may do it for me." "But i" can't wash my hands of it too," said Harry, and went his way, not much com forted. Mildred. 8 It was, however, on the whole, his fear of what Mr. Romney might do, rather than his anxiety about Mildred's own intentions, that did most to disturb Harry Treherne at this time. He was not much afraid of Mildred, but he felt a dread, that was like the constant fretting of a thorn, that Philip would some day and in some place turn up. Nothing, he thought, — and thought, perhaps, reasonably, — was so likely. His only wonder was that it had not happened already, for Mr. Romney (as he had taken the trouble cautiously to as certain) was still in London, and still struggling in the old way to keep his head above water.

" It's just possible that he may have shame enough left to resolve to keep out of her way," Harry thought sometimes to him self ; but this consolatory reflection he scarcely ventured to indulge in very frequently. Men Mildred. 9 of the sort that he supposed Philip Romney to be were generally, he knew, lost to all shame. And meantime the year went on, and spring changed to summer. That weary passionate question of Mildred's was still unanswered, and the feverish anxiety of the months that had passed since she left Treherne had begun to tell visibly upon her. "I think you want your country air again," her brother would sometimes say to her. She wanted something — but it was not country air. She used to think at times, as she lay resting, worn out after an idle day, that one word from Philip's voice — if he could but come to her, suppose, and call her by her name, and she could look up and find him standing by her side — would be like theelixir of life to her to make her young again.

In all the long past years — Mildred. while there was nothing that was possible for her to do, — when she had but to sit still and bear, knowing that resistance was useless, and that hope — if hope were ever to dawn on her again — lay only in the future, — it seemed to her that she had never so wildly craved for the love that she had lost as she did during these restless days of indecision and feverish uncertainty. " I cannot live like this long," she thought to herself at times. "I must do something to end this suspense, for it is taking all strength of mind and body away." And yet, she could not end it. She let day after day pass, and her courage to do the only thing that was in her power grew fainter and fainter with every fresh hour of delay. They had reached the beginning of June, and were talking of returning in a few more Mildred. 11 weeks to Treherne.

They were to go, they said, some time in July. One morning, a month before they meant to leave London, Mildred and Lucille had gone out to do some shopping. Amongst their other purchases they had been buying gloves at a shop in Re gent Street, and as they were stepping back into their carriage one of Lucille's brothers, happening to pass by, saw them, and coming to the carriage door when they had taken their seats, stood there for five minutes talking to them. He had just heard some amusing piece of public gossip, and they all laughed over it as he told it to them. They looked a merry little group as they talked together, — the young man careless ly and familiarly standing with his foot upon the carriage step and the door held open in his hand, — for the morning had threatened Mildred. 12 rain, and the carriage was a closed one.

"Now, where are you going to next?" he asked Lucille at last; and when she said " Home "—he bade good-bye to them, and closing the door, gave the order to the coach man. The next moment the man drove on. And that same moment, not six paces from her, Mildred saw Philip Romney standing still, and looking in her face. She never afterwards knew what she did, what she said, in what way she tried to make the coachman stop ; but Lucille with a scared face told her husband how she had started up from her seat with a cry such as she had never heard before from any living lips. She caught at the check-string, but it was hang ing loose, and came away in her hand : then, blindly pulling at it, she tried to let the win dow down. Mildred. 13 "Mildred, let me do it! What is it?" frightened Lucille asked.

She was crying out — " Oh, stop him ! — stop him ! — Let me get out ! " — in a voice sharp with wild pain ; and before Lucille had got the coachman stopped she had opened the door, and had sprung out before the horses were standing still. She had only one blind unreasoning feeling in her mind— that she must go back to the place where she had seen him standing ; and she went back : but there was no one stand ing there now. Then she hurried on. She was in no state to stay and think. She could think of nothing but that she had seen him — that he was near her — and that he had passed her like a stranger in the street. During these few minutes — perhaps for longer than these minutes — she was almost be- Mildred. side herself. She felt as though, if she could not find him again, her heart would break.

Lucille said that when, after about five min utes had passed, she came again to the car riage door, she had scarcely the look of a living woman in her face. "I ought not to have tried to follow him on foot," she had begun to think to herself. " He always walked so fast." The carriage had turned round and followed her, and the horses heads were turned now to wards Langham Church. She came to it, and said to the man — " Drive quickly on ! " and took her seat again opposite to Lucille, whence she could look ahead, and strain her eyes, in the forlorn hope of catching sight of Philip Romney's figure amongst the crowd of passers by. But they drove the whole length of Regent Mildred. 15 Street, and looked for him in vain. "Turn and drive back!" she said then. And they drove back. " Oh ! Mildred, it is no use ; let us go home," poor frightened Lucille said at last.

Mildred had only spoken once to her. "I have seen some one that I know," she said ; and Lucille, who had heard about her sister-in-law's sad love story, guessed the rest. "Yes — we may go home," she said now in a strange voice ; and then the desolate woman gave up her search, letting her clasped hands fall down upon her knees as she resigned it, with a broken-hearted moan. They drove home in silence. For a few min utes she felt crushed, — utterly subdued, broken down, hopeless. She seemed to pass through something that was like a trance of black blank pain before life came back. But when that life Mildred. 16 returned, it brought with it the strength of a fixed purpose. She felt at last as if all was made clear to her that she had to do ; or, rather, it seemed to her that one thing only was possible for her to do ; for she had but seen him for one moment, yet the look that had been on his face had burnt itself already into her memory, — its haggard look of poverty, its half reproach, its half scorn, — and she felt as if to live with that face haunting her would drive her mad.

As she sat still by Lucille's side she conquered the doubts at last that had beset and tortured her for months : they all fell back, — driven from her, and shrivelled up by the fire of the burning heart. She went quickly into the house when the carriage stopped, and asked the servant who opened the door to them, if her brother was at home. He answered — " Yes ; he is in his Mildred. 17 study;" and she passed straight on, and entered the room. "Harry," she said, as she closed the door be hind her, "I want to speak to you." And then she walked up to him, and elec trified him with her next words. "Harry, I have seen Philip Romney," she said. He broke into an exclamation that almost sounded like an oath : then there was a sudden silence, — and then — " I am most bitterly sorry to hear it," he an swered in a harsh voice.

"I saw him," she went on, taking no notice of his answer, " in Regent Street, as Lucy and I were driving. Before I could get Law son to stop, I had lost sight of him, and I could not find him again, though I tried. But I saw him, — and he saw me," she said. VOL. III. C Mildred. 18 Before the last words there came a sudden halt in her voice, and then they were spoken with a kind of gasp or sob, — as if her strength to be calm were giving way. He looked at her, and for two or three moments kept silent. He waited till he thought she might have re covered herself, and then he said, "It was extremely unfortunate. There is nothing I have been so anxious about as that you shouldn't come across him. It can't be helped now, — and of course, too, as long as you live in London, the same thing may hap pen again, but — " He had begun his speech, hardly knowing at all what to say, and he was going on with it now in utter ignorance how to end it, when she interrupted him.

She had sat down where the light fell full upon her, and as she began to speak again he saw her face well, worn Mildred. 19 and white, but yet with a firmness of fixed determination in it that gave it a strange kind of power. " If I had not been a coward," she began to say abruptly, "I would have done long ago what I mean to do now. I have been hesitating and doubting all these months. But I am clear at last what I ought to do. I ought to see him — I know that — and I have resolved to do it." " You shall never see him with my will," her brother said quickly. "I will see him whether it is with your will or against it," she answered ; " but I want it to be with your will, Harry, — and I want it to be with more than that — I want it to be with your help." "It shall never be with my help as long as I live !" he said.

C2 Mildred. "Then you will drive me to seek him for myself," she replied at once. "And, Harry, if you force me to do that I will do it," she said, with the light flashing suddenly into her eyes. " Understand what I say. Whether you give me help or not I will find out where he is ! " "Then you will do what no woman would," Harry answered impetuously, "who was not lost to every feeling of self-respect ! " The blood rose to her face and crimsoned it all over; but when after several moments she went on speaking, her tone was neither in dignant nor even angry. "I suppose I must bear to have that said of me," she only answered. " All these months I have known that it would be said, and it has been that that has held me back. And yet, what can I do?" she cried with sudden Mildred. 21 vehemence. "Harry, you think that you know what my life has been.

You do not know it! Through all these bitter years you have never known the thought that has been haunting me day and night. They drove him to his ruin when they parted us ! Think of all the tidings that have ever reached me of him — think of what he is now ! Oh, my love ! — my love !" the passionate woman cried, and dropped her face down on her hands with a wild wail of pain that struck very like a blow on Harry Treherne's heart. What could he say to her? He sat un easily, and did not speak. He was very sorry for her, — he was more sorry for her, perhaps, than he had ever been in his life before; but yet his whole feeling was simply, sorrow for her — not pity in any degree whatever for Philip Romney. Him he hated as thoroughly Mildred. as he had ever done, — despised him as much, — condemned him as much.

" Year after year," she said (when a minute or two had passed she lifted up her head and went on speaking) — "year after year I have lived with only one hope in the world. They took all my happiness away from me, — they took my youth away, — but they could not take away this. I have lived for the hope of going back to him. And now I must see him, — let you, or everyone else, be against me ; and, Harry," she said, " though he should be everything that you believe he is, — though he should be sunk so low that I shall find nothing left in him of all I ever loved, yet, even then, if he asks me to go to him, I will go! I will go to him, what ever he is : I will share his life, whatever it may be; I will take the burden upon me Mildred. 23 that I have yearned and prayed for all these lonely years, and save him still if a woman's love has power to do it."

"You cannot save him," he said then. He did not speak till there had been a few moments of silence. "You don't know what you are proposing to yourself. You can no more raise him from the slough into which he has sunk — you or any woman — than — than I can break this iron ruler that I am hold ing with my naked hands." " Why can I not ?" she answered quickly. "Has no man ever yet been raised by a woman? Harry," she said, "you think you know the world better than I do — and so you may, for I have lived far away from it ; but we learn some things not from the world, not from precedent, not from what any hearts or lives except our own can tell us. I may Mildred. 24 fail to save him : oh, I know that ! — I may fail : but while there seems to me — to my own self — one shadow of a hope that I may raise him, to that hope I will cling, — for that hope I will live through whatever more of life may be given me, as I have lived for it through every day through these long years that are gone.

And, Harry, though you may say bitter words to me," she said, and her voice gave way a little, " though you and every friend I have may say bitter words, I will do more than this, for I will hold out my hand to him first. I must do it," she cried almost wildly, " for I have seen him in his poverty, and passed him by as I might have passed an utter stranger in the street ; and now I must see him, and set myself right with him, or my heart will break ! I may not marry him, for the love he had once Mildred. 25 for me may be worn out, and he may not want me now ; but we must meet, if it is only once, — we must speak together face to face — if I am ever to get peace or rest again in this world ! Harry, this is the whole that I have to say. I have waited for him to come to me, and he has not come : he will not come now; and so I must take the first step, and write to him.

If I had had courage I would have written to him months ago. I want to say nothing to him but — 'I saw you in the street to-day. Why did you not come and speak to me? Will you come and speak to me now?' Only that. You shall read my letter if you like, if only when you have read it you will take it to him. Harry, will you do that ? " she said. She rose up, fixing her passionate, pleading eyes upon his face. Mildred. "Will you do this one thing for me," she repeated, "almost the only thing I have ever asked from you? Oh! Harry," she cried, "do it for the love you used to have for me — for the pity I think you have now ! I could find out where he is without your help, but do not cast me away, and throw me on my self! Harry, you are so happy, and / have suffered so ! Think of this before you refuse me your help to gather back something — all that is possible — the last poor grain that is possible now of the happiness that was mine once !"

"Mildred, what can I do?" the young man said, in a troubled voice. She stood beside him for a moment or two in silence, and then all at once she burst into tears. " I have been in prison all these years," Mildred. 27 she said. " If you had borne what I have borne, would you not struggle for liberty at last?" "My poor sister!" he exclaimed, sadly. And then he rose, and the next moment he took her in his arms. "Mildred, I wish you had asked me to do anything else for you in the wide world but this," he said. "But yet you will do it?" she cried, She held her head back from him, and gazed into his face with a look in her eyes so beseeching that he could not meet it. "You will do it?" she reiterated. "Oh! Harry, say yes to me, and give me the first comfort — the first gladness — I have had for years !"

And then, at last, slowly and hesitatingly, he said "Yes." He said it sorely against his Mildred. will, but what else could he do? — what would have been the use of refusing her, resolved as she was, with his help or without it, to have her own way ? "You have done right. I am sure you have done right!" Lucille said to him, half an hour afterwards. And with his wife's sympathy, and Mildred's gratitude, he had, as he best could, to com fort himself. It was a bitter, bad business, he thought : but yet, in the circumstances, how could he have acted differently ? — how could he have said "No"? Mildred. 29

CHAPTER VI. QO

Mildred, trembling with a hope that only felt half like gladness, and half made her sick at heart like sudden fear, went up to her room and wrote her letter. She had said to Harry that it should only be a short letter, and it was short. "How could you pass me in the street to day," she wrote, " without speaking to me ? You cut me to the heart. Can you think that we have ceased to be friends, because it is so long since we have met ? "My brother has promised me to send this note to you, and I write it to say — will you Mildred. 30 come to see me? I ask you to come, Philip. Come as you would to an old friend whom you trusted once, and who, whatever changes the years may have brought about, will thank God that she has lived to touch your hand and hear your voice again." This was the whole. Her brother did not read the letter when it was written.

She brought it to him unsealed, but he fastened it at once in her presence. " Remember, I only send it for you to save you from doing anything worse," he said to her gravely as she gave it to him. "I do not take it of my own will, Mildred. You know that." "Yes — I know that," she answered quietly. He had merely meant to write the address upon it and put it in the post-office. This was all that it was necessary for him to do, Mildred. 31 and all, naturally, that he at first thought of doing. But when he he went out to post it suddenly occurred was in the street (for it with his own hand) to him— "What if I should go and find the man myself?" He had never seen Philip Romney : he felt an angry kind of curiosity about him. Would it be worth his while to bring himself face to face with the fellow ? he said to him self.

He paused as he was about to post the letter, and put it back into his pocket, and walked up and down the street, trying to make up his mind. If by seeing Philip Rom ney with his own eyes he could bring back such an account of him as should startle Mildred and make her pause in her frantic determination, it would be well for him to go, he thought. But yet he shrank from Mildred. 32 going, he shrank from the thought of facing the man in his degradation whom he had hated for so many years. He felt an unutterable horror of him, — a loathing of the life he led so intense that he shuddered at the thought of bringing himself into the midst of it even for a few minutes. It was a clear, beautiful June evening. He had been walking up and down for ten minutes, and was still undecided what to do, when a Hansom cab came towards him, the driver looking out for a fare.

" I may just as well be driving towards Westminster as loitering about here," Harry thought suddenly, and hailed the man, and told him to take him to the Abbey. When he arrived there he got down. "How beautiful the old place looks in the sunset!" he said to himself, as he glanced up at it for a moment before passing on. He Mildred. 33 thought of it again presently, and of the con trast that it made — standing in its solemn great repose — with the scene that met his eyes only a few moments later. He had made up his mind in the course of his drive that he would deliver Mildred's letter himself. As he plunged into the squalid region south of the Abbey he left the sun light behind him. There was none in the narrow, dark, ill-favoured streets, where pale faced children were swarming in the gutters, and coarse-voiced men and women, hanging about the doors of their dwellings, were talk ing or fighting or swearing in the fair summer evening, with the flare of the gas from the small shops lighting up the faces of them all.

Harry knew little of the place, and soon lost his way in it, and was glad to avail VOL. III. D Mildred. 34 himself of the offered guidance of a young man, a few degrees more respectable-looking than most of those around him, whom he asked to direct him to the street in which Philip Romney lived. Following this lad, he soon left the worst streets behind him, and came into a quieter and more decent-looking neighbourhood. "It's the first turning now on your left," the young man said presently to him, and, parting from his guide then, in two or three minutes more he had reached the place. It was a small and dingy, but respectable enough looking house. Harry paused before the door for a few moments : he was even yet half undecided whether merely to leave the letter, or to ask if Mr. Romney were at home ; he had hardly made up his mind even when his hand was on the knocker.

Mildred. 35 He knocked, however, and the door was presently opened to him by a worn -looking woman, who cautiously held it half ajar, and glanced at him suspiciously as he began to speak. " Mr. Romney lives here, does he not ?" Harry asked. "He lives here — when he's at home," she answered after a moment's silence. " Is he at home now ?" " No !" she said bluntly, " I wanted to see him," Harry said. " What do you want him for ?" the woman sharply asked. "My good woman," Harry said — he was taken aback for a moment — " I think that is hardly any concern of yours. I have business with him. If you know where he is to be found, be good enough to tell me at once." D Mildred. As he spoke he put a piece of money into her hand. She looked at the coin quickly. It was a half-crown, and her eyes brightened at the sight of it.