There was a light in her face no one had ever seen there before.
"And the only outlines that can satisfy us are the outlines of a Personality. As a rule I have always disliked individuals. I know you are surprised. Of course, you are just the other way; you have a touch of genius, a gift for being conscious of personalities, of being attracted to them. Now I have never liked people; in fact, I've hated most of them. But since this religious experience I have known"—her voice dropped; it had been a little loud—"I have known that I want a friend, and can have one."
The priest was astonished by Molly. He had never met any one like her before. Her self-confidence was curious, and her eloquence was so sudden and abounding that his own words seemed to leave him. She was in a moment as silent as she had been talkative, her eyes cast down on the floor. Then she looked at him with an almost imperious questioning in her eyes.
"You have said so much that I expected to say myself," he said, with a faint sense of humour, "and you have not asked me a single question."
Molly laughed "Tell me," she said, "I am right;it is all true? Idounderstand religious experience, the religious sense at last, don't I?"
"Shall I tell you what I miss in it?" he said, suppressing any further comment on her amazing assertion. "I mean in all you have said. And, oddly enough, the Welsh miner would have had it. I mean that, seeing Our Lord as the One Friend of your life, you should also see that you have resisted and betrayed and offended Him during that life which He gave you."
"No: I have not thought much about that side of things" said Molly "I have been too happy."
"You would be far happier if you did."
"But what have I done?" said Molly, almost in a tone of injured respectability.
"Well, you have hated people—or, at least" (in a tone of apology), "you said so just now."
"Oh! yes; it's quite true. I am a great hater and an uncertain one. I never know who it is going to be, or when it will come."
"But you know you have been commanded to love them."
"Yes; but only as much as I love myself, and I quite particularly dislike myself."
"You've no right to—none whatever."
"And why not?"
"Because God made you in His own image and likeness. You can't get out of it. But, you know, I don't believe one word you say. I met you showing love to the poor."
"No, indeed," said Molly indignantly, "I did not love Pat Moloney. I wish you would believe what I say. I hate my mother; I hate the aunt who brought me up; I hate crowds of people. I don't hate oneman because I want him to fall in love with me, but if he doesn't do that soon, I shall hate him too. I feel friendly towards you now, but I don't know how soon I may hate you. At least," she paused, and a gentle look came into her face, "I had all these hatreds up to a few weeks ago; now they are comparatively dormant."
Again the flood of her words seemed to check him, but he tried:
"I believe it then; I will take all you say as true. I think you are fairly convincing. Well, then, how do you suppose you can be united to Infinite Love, Infinite Mercy, Infinite Purity? God is not merely good, He is Goodness. Until you feel that His Presence would burn and destroy and annihilate your unworthiness, you have no sense of the joys of His Friendship. You stand now looking up to Him and choosing Him as your Friend, whereas you must lie prostrate in the dust and wait to be chosen. When you have done that He will raise you, and the Heavens will ring with the joy of the great spirits who never fell, and who are almost envious of the sinner doing Penance."
Molly bent her head low. "I see," she murmured, "mine have been merely the guesses of an amateur; it is useless—I don't understand."
"It isn't, indeed it isn't," he said quietly. "It is the introduction. The King is sending His heralds. Some are drawn to Him by the sense of their own sinfulness, others, as you are, by a glimpse of His beauty."
Molly was not angry, only disappointed. The very habit of a life of reserve must have brought some sense of disappointment in the result. She did not mindbeing told that she must lie in the dust; the abnegation was not abhorrent; she knew that love in itself sometimes demanded humiliation. But she felt sad and discouraged. She had seemed to have conquered a kingdom. Without exactly being proud of them, she had felt her religious experiences to be very remarkable, and now she saw that they only pointed to a very long road, hard to walk on. She got up quickly and was near the door before he was.
"Will you come and see me?" she said, and she gave him her card. "If you can, send me a postcard beforehand that I may not miss you. Good-bye."
He opened the front door for her and her carriage was waiting.
"The third time you have been late for dinner this week," observed the Father Rector. "Have some mutton?"
"Thanks," said the young man; "I wish I could learn the gentle art of sending people away without offending them."
"They didn't include that in the curriculum at Oxford?" The tone was not quite kind; neither was the snort with which the remark was concluded. It was no sauce to the lumpy, greasy mutton that Mark was struggling to eat. Suddenly he caught the eye of the second curate, Father Marny, who had conceived a great affection for him, and he smiled merrily with a school-boy's sense of mischief.
In a small room in a small house in a small street in Chelsea, Father Molyneux was sitting with a friend. There were a few beautiful things in the room, and a few well-bound books; but they had a dusty, uncared for look about them. It teased the young priest to see a medicine bottle and a half-washed medicine glass standing on a bracket with an exquisite statuette of the Madonna. The present occupier of these lodgings had had very true artistic perceptions before he had become blind.
Mark Molyneux had just been reading to him for an hour, and he now put down the book. The old man smacked his lips with enjoyment. The author was new to him, but he had won his admiration at the first reading.
"What people call his paradoxes," he said, "is his almost despairing attempt at making people pay attention; he has to shout to men who are too hurried to stop. The danger is that, as time goes on, he will only be able to think in contrasts and to pursue contradictions."
The speaker paused, and then, his white fingers groped a little as if he were feeling after something. His voice was rich and low. Then he kept still, andwaited with a curious look of acquired patience. At last, the younger man began.
"I want to ask your advice, or rather, I want to tell you something I have decided on."
"And you only want me to agree," laughed Canon Nicholls, and the blind face seemed full of perception.
"Well, I think you will." The boyish voice was bright and keen. "I've come to tell you that I want to be a monk."
"Tut, tut," said Canon Nicholls, and then they both laughed together. "Since when?" he asked a moment later.
"It has been coming by degrees," said Mark, in a low voice. "I want to be altogether for God."
"And why can't you be that now?"
"It's too confusing," he said; "half the day I am amused or worried or tired. I've got next to no spiritual life."
Canon Nicholls did not help him to say more.
"I can't be regular in anything, and now there's the preaching."
"What's the matter with that?"
"Who was it who said that a popular preacher could not save his soul? Father Rector says that it's very bad for me that I crowd up the church. He is evidently anxious about me."
"How kind!"
"Then, since I've been preaching, such odd people come to see me."
"I know," said the Canon, "there's a fringe of the semi-insane round all churches; they used to lie in wait for me once."
"Then I simply love society. I've been to hearsuch interesting people talk at several houses lately. I go a good deal to Miss Dexter."
"Miss Molly Dexter."
"Yes."
"I wouldn't do that; she's a minx. She is the girl who stayed with that kind little woman, Mrs. Delaport Green, who sometimes comes to see me."
"You see," Mark went on eagerly, "I'm doing no good like this. So I have made up my mind to try and be a Carthusian."
His face lit up now with the same intense delight. "It's such a splendid life! Fancy! No more humbug, and flattery, and insincerity. 'Vous ne jouerez plus la comédie,' an old monk said to me. Wouldn't it be splendid? Think of the stillness, and then the singing of the Office while the world is asleep, like the little birds at dawn. It would be simply and entirely to live for God!"
"I do believe in a personal devil," muttered Canon Nicholls to himself, and Mark stared at him. "Now listen," he said. "There is a young man who has a vocation to the priesthood, and he comes under obedience to work in London. That is, to live in the thick of sin, of suffering, of folly and madness. If it were acknowledged that the place was full of cholera or smallpox it would be simple enough. But the place is thick with disguises. The worst cases don't seem in the least ill; the stench of the plague is a sweet smell, and the confusion is thicker because there are angels and demons in the same clothes, living in the same houses, doing the same actions, saying almost the same things. In every Babylon there have been these things, but this is about the biggest. And the most harmless of the sounds, the hum of daily work,is loud and continuous enough to dull and wear the senses. So confused and perplexed is the young man that he doesn't know when he has done good or done harm; being young, compliments appeal to him very seriously; being young, he takes too many people's opinions; and, being young, he generalises and if, for instance, I tell him not to go often to the house of a capricious woman of uncertain temper, he probably resolves at once never to lunch in an agreeable house again. Meanwhile, above this muddle, this tragicomedy, he sees the distant hills glowing with light; so, without waiting for orders, he leaves the people crying to him for help and turns tail and runs away! And what only the skill of a personal devil could achieve, he thinks in his heart that he is choosing a harder fight, a more self-denying life."
"But I could help those people more by my prayers."
"Granted, if it were God's will that you should lead the life of contemplation, but I don't believe it is. I don't see what right you've got to believe it is. As to not living altogether for God here, that's His affair. Mind you, I don't undervalue the difficulties, and it's uncommon hard to human nature. Don't think too much of other people's opinions; I know you feel a bit out of it with the priests about you. They are rough to young men like you—it's jealousy, if they only knew it. Jealousy is the fault of the best men, because they never suspect themselves of it. If they saw it, they would fight it. Face facts. You have some gifts; you will be much humbler if you thank God for them instead of trying to think you haven't got them. And be quite particularly nice to the growler sort of priest; he's had a hard time and,lived a hard life; much harder than the life of a monk. Mind you respect his scars."
He talked on, partly to give Mark time; he saw he had given him a shock.
"Mind," he said, "there is sometimes an acute personal temptation, but you've not got that now. You've got a sort of perception of what it might be. It won't be unbearable." He crossed his legs and put the long, white fingers into each other. "But I'm old now, and it's my experience that the mischief for all priests is to let society be their fun. It ought to be a duty, and a very tiresome duty too. Take your amusements in any other way, and go out to lunch in the same state of mind as you visit a hospital. Do you think the best women, whether Protestant or Catholic, think society their fun? They may like it or not, but it is a serious duty to them."
Mark sprang up suddenly. "I can't stand this!" he said. "You go on talking, and I want to be a Carthusian, and I will be one." He laughed; his voice was troubled and the clear joy of his face was clouded.
Canon Nicholls felt in his pocket for a snuff-box, and brought it out. "Go along, if you can't stand it. And don't come back till you've seen through the devil's trick. I don't mind what I bet that you won't run away."
Left alone, Canon Nicholls covered his blind eyes with his hands and heaved a deep sigh.
The man who had just left him was the object of his keenest affection, the apple of those blind eyes that craved to look upon his face. But his love was not blind, and he felt the danger there lay in the seeming perfectness of the young man. Mark's nature was gloriously sweet and abounding in the higher gifts; hislove of God had the awe of a little child, and his love of men had the tenderness of a shepherd towards his lost sheep. Mark had loved life and learning, had revelled in Oxford, and would, in one sense, be an undergraduate all his days. He had known dreams of ambition, and visions of success in working for his country. Then gently—not with any shock—had come the vocation to the priesthood, and so tenderly had the tendrils that attached him to a man's life in the world been loosened, that the process hardly seemed to have hurt any of the sensitive sympathies and interests he had always enjoyed. Even in the matter of giving up great possessions, all had come so gradually as to seem most natural and least strained.
Long before the Groombridges could be brought to believe that the brilliant and favourite young cousin had rejected all that they could leave him, it had become a matter of course to the rest of the family and their friends that Mark Molyneux would be a priest, and give up the property to the younger brother.
When the outer world took up the matter, Father Molyneux always made people feel as if allusions to his renunciation of Groombridge were simply quite out of taste, and nothing out of taste seemed in keeping with anything connected with him. It was all so simple to Mark, and so perfect to Canon Nicholls, that the latter almost dreaded this very perfection as unlikely, and unbefitting the "second-rate" planet in which it was his lot to live. And to confirm this almost superstitious feeling of a man who had lived to know where the jolts and jars of life cause the acutest suffering to the idealist, had come this fresh aspiration of Mark's after a life more completely perfect in itself. Stronginstincts were entirely in accord with the older man's sober judgment of the situation. And yet he wished it could be otherwise. He had no opinion of the world that Mark wanted to give up. He would most willingly have shut any cloister door between that world and his cherished son in the spirit. It was with no light heart that he wanted him to face all the roughness of human goodness, all the blinding confusion of its infirmities, all the cruelty of its vices. The old man's own service in his last years was but to stand and wait, but, even so, he was too often oppressed by the small things that fill up empty hours, small uncharitablenesses, small vanities, small irritations. Was it not a comfort at such moments to believe that in another world we should know human nature in others and in ourselves without any cause for repugnance and without any ground for fear?
At last there came a letter to Molly from her mother.
"Carissima,—"I thank you for your most kind intentions. I too have at times thought of seeing you. But I am now far too ill, and I have no attention to spare from my unceasing efforts to keep well. I can assure you that two doctors and two nurses spend their time and skill on the struggle. I may, they tell me, live many years yet if I am not troubled and disturbed. I had, by nature, strong maternal instincts; it was your father's knowledge of that side of my character which made his conduct in taking you from me almost criminal in its cruelty. You must have had a most tiresome childhood with his sister, and probably you gave her a great deal of trouble. Your letter affected me with several moments of suffocation, and the doctors and nurses are of opinion that I must not risk any more maternal emotions. My poor wants are now very expensive. I am obliged to have everything that is out of season, and onecheffor my vegetables alone. Have you ever turned your attention to vegetable diet? Doctor Larrone, whom I thoroughly confide in, sees no reasonwhy life should not be indefinitely prolonged if the right—absolutely the right—food is always given. I am sending you a little brochure he has written on the subject."I hope that your allowance is sufficient for your comfort. I should like you to have asparagus at every meal, and I trust, my dear child, that you will never become adévote. It is an extraordinary waste of the tissues."As we are not likely to correspond again, I should like you to know that I have made a will bequeathing to you the fortune which was left me, as an act of reparation, by Sir David Bright."I wonder why an Englishman, Sir Edmund Grosse, has made so many attempts at seeing me? Do you know anything of him? I risk much in the effort to write this letter to assure you of my love."Your Devoted Mother."P.S.—There is no need to answer the question as to Sir Edmund Grosse."
"Carissima,—
"I thank you for your most kind intentions. I too have at times thought of seeing you. But I am now far too ill, and I have no attention to spare from my unceasing efforts to keep well. I can assure you that two doctors and two nurses spend their time and skill on the struggle. I may, they tell me, live many years yet if I am not troubled and disturbed. I had, by nature, strong maternal instincts; it was your father's knowledge of that side of my character which made his conduct in taking you from me almost criminal in its cruelty. You must have had a most tiresome childhood with his sister, and probably you gave her a great deal of trouble. Your letter affected me with several moments of suffocation, and the doctors and nurses are of opinion that I must not risk any more maternal emotions. My poor wants are now very expensive. I am obliged to have everything that is out of season, and onecheffor my vegetables alone. Have you ever turned your attention to vegetable diet? Doctor Larrone, whom I thoroughly confide in, sees no reasonwhy life should not be indefinitely prolonged if the right—absolutely the right—food is always given. I am sending you a little brochure he has written on the subject.
"I hope that your allowance is sufficient for your comfort. I should like you to have asparagus at every meal, and I trust, my dear child, that you will never become adévote. It is an extraordinary waste of the tissues.
"As we are not likely to correspond again, I should like you to know that I have made a will bequeathing to you the fortune which was left me, as an act of reparation, by Sir David Bright.
"I wonder why an Englishman, Sir Edmund Grosse, has made so many attempts at seeing me? Do you know anything of him? I risk much in the effort to write this letter to assure you of my love.
"Your Devoted Mother.
"P.S.—There is no need to answer the question as to Sir Edmund Grosse."
Molly was so intensely disgusted with the miserable old woman's letter that her first inclination was to burn it at once. She was kneeling before the fire with that intention when Sir Edmund Grosse was announced. She thrust the paper into her pocket, and realised in a flash how astonishing it was that Sir Edmund should have tried to see Madame Danterre. The only explanation that occurred to her at the moment was that he had tried to see her mother because of his interest in herself. She did not know that he had not been in Florence since he had known her. But what could have started him in the notion that Miss Dexter was Madame Danterre's child? Anddid he know it for certain now? That was what she would like to find out.
Molly had on a pale green tea-gown, which fell into a succession of almost classic folds with each rapid characteristic movement. The charm of her face was enormously increased by its greater softness of expression. Although she could not help wishing to please him, even in a moment full of other emotion, she did not know how much there was to make her successful to-day. She did not realise her own physical and moral development during the past months.
Edmund's manner was unconsciously caressing. He had come, he told himself—and it was the third time he had called at the flat,—simply because he wanted to keep in touch, to get any information he could. And he had heard rumours from Florence that Madame Danterre was becoming steadily weaker and more unable to make any effort.
"A man told me the other day that this was the best-furnished flat in London, and, by Jove! I rather think he was right."
"I never believe in the man who told you things, he is far too apposite; I think his name is Harris."
Edmund smiled at the fire.
"Who was the attractive little priest I met here the other day?" he asked.
"Little! He is as tall as you are."
"Still, one thinks of him asun bon petit prêtre, doesn't one? But who is he?"
"Father Molyneux."
"Not Groombridge's cousin?"
"Yes, the same."
"I wonder if he repents of his folly now? I didn't think he looked particularly cheerful!"
"Didn't you?" said Molly. "Well, I think he is the happiest person I know! But we never do agree about people, do we?"
"About a few we do, but it's much more amusing to talk about ourselves, isn't it?"
"Much more. What do you want me to tell you about myself this time?"
Edmund looked at her with sleepy eyes and perceived that something had changed. "I should like to know what you think about me?" he said gently.
"No, you wouldn't," said Molly, and she gave a tiny sigh. "No, for some reason or other you want to know something which I have settled to tell you."
Her manner alarmed and excited him. As a matter of honourable dealing he felt that he ought to give her pause. "Are you sure you are wise?" he said.
"I'm not sure, but that's my own affair, and it will be a relief. I would rather you knew what you want to know, though why you want to know"—her eyes were searching him—"I can't tell."
Sir Edmund Grosse almost told her that he did not want to know.
"You want to know for certain that my mother is living in Florence under the name of Madame Danterre—the Madame Danterre you have tried to see there. And further, you want to know how much I have ever seen of her."
"Oh, please!" cried Edmund, "I don't indeed wish you to tell me all this."
"You do, and so I shall answer the questions. I have never seen her in my life. But these lastfew weeks I have thought I ought to try, so I wrote and offered to go to her, and I have this evening had the first letter she has ever written to me. In this letter"—she drew it half out of her pocket—"she declines to see me, and she exhorts me to a vegetable diet."
There was a moment in which her face looked the embodiment of sarcasm, then something gentler came athwart it. He had never come so near to liking her before. He could no longer think of her as all the more dangerous on account of her attractions; she was a suffering, cruelly-treated woman. It is dangerous to see too much of one's enemies: Edmund was growing much softer.
"But why," she went on with quiet dignity, "did you try so hard to break through her seclusion?"
It was a dreadful question—a question impossible to answer. He was silent; then he said—
"Dear lady, I told you I did not want you to satisfy what you supposed to be my wish for knowledge, and I am very sorry that now, at least, I cannot tell you why I wished to see Madame Danterre."
Naturally, it never struck him for a moment that Molly might think it was for her sake that he had tried to see her mother, as he had not known of her existence when he was in Florence. But his reticence made her incline much more to that idea. She almost blushed in the firelight. Edmund was feeling baffled and sorry. If there were another will—and he still maintained that there was another—certainly Miss Dexter knew nothing about it. He had wronged her; and after all what reasonable grounds had there been for his suspicions as to her guilt?
"I suppose," he thought, "Rose is right, and will-hunting is demoralising, or 'not healthy,' as she calls it."
But he had been too long silent.
"It is very hard on you to get such a letter," he said, with a ring of true sympathy in his voice and more expression than usual in his face. "I wish I had not come in and disturbed you; I wish you had a woman friend here instead."
"I don't," said Molly quickly. "Don't go yet. I can say as little as I like with you, and then I'm going to church to hear thebon petit prêtrepreach."
"He will lure you to Rome."
"Perhaps."
"Well, I think there's a good deal to be said for Rome."
"Don't you mind people joining it?" she asked, a little eagerly.
"No, I like it better than Ritualism."
"But Lady Rose is a Ritualist."
"I believe you will find angels few and far between in any religion."
"It must be nice to be an angel," mused Molly.
He had risen to go; he thought he might still find Rose at home and he wanted to speak to her, yet he was in no hurry to be gone.
"Don't give me an excuse for compliments; I warn you, you will repent it if you do," he said warmly; and then, after a little hesitation which might well have been mistaken for an effort at self-command in a moment of emotion, he added in a low voice—
"May I come and see you again very soon?"
As Molly gave him her hand he looked at her with wistful apology for having wronged her in his thoughts, for having intruded into her secrets. Therewas more pity in his eyes than he knew at the moment. He bent his head after that, and with the foreign fashion he sometimes fell into, and which Molly had known before, gently kissed her hand. The quick kindly action was the expression of his wish to make amends.
Molly stood quite still after he had gone away, as motionless as a living figure could stand, her grey eyes dilated and full of light. Would he could have seen her! But if he had, would he have understood what love meant in a heart that had never before been opened by any great human affection? No love of father, mother, sister, or brother had ever laid a claim on Molly. The whole kingdom of her affections had been standing empty and ready, and now the hour of fulfilment was near.
"He will come again very soon," she whispered to herself. And then she put her hand to her lips and kissed it where it had been kissed a moment before, but with a devotion and reverence and gentleness that made the last kiss a tragic contrast.
Presently, happier than she had ever been in her life before, Molly went out to hear Mark Molyneux preach on sanctifying our common actions.
"No position is so hard" he said in his peroration, "no circumstances are so difficult, no duties so conflicting, no temptations so mighty, as not to be the means to lead us to God if we seek to do His will."
But the words seemed in no way appropriate to Molly's mind, which was wholly occupied in a wordless song of thanksgiving.
As Edmund Grosse was shown up-stairs to Lady Rose Bright, he passed a young clergyman coming down. He found Rose standing with a worried look in the middle of the room.
"Edmund! how nice," she said gently.
"What has that fellow been worrying you about?"
"It isn't his fault, poor man," said Rose, "only it's so sad. He has had at last to close his little orphanage. You see, we used to give him £100 a year, and after David died I had to write and tell him that I couldn't go on, and it has been a hard struggle for him since that. I don't think he meant it, but when he came and saw this house"—she waved her hands round the very striking furniture of the room—"I think he wondered, or perhaps it was my fancy. You see, Edmund, I don't know how it is, but I've overdrawn again. What do you think it can be? The housekeeping comes to so little; I have only four servants, and——"
She paused, and there were tears in her eyes. She was wondering where the orphans would go to. It was not like Rose to give way like this and to have out her troubles at once. The fact was that she was finding how much harder it is to help in good workswithout money than with. If she had started without money it would have been different, but to try to work with people who used to find her large subscriptions a very great help and now had to do without them, was depressing. She had to make constant efforts to believe that they were all just the same to her as they had been in the past.
"How much did you give that youth instead of the £100?"
"Only ten, Edmund." There was a note of pleading in her voice.
"And you will have dinner up here on a tray as there is no fire in the dining-room?"
"Well, what does it matter?"
"And how much will there be to eat on the tray?"
"Oh! much more than I can possibly eat."
"Because it will be some nasty warmed-up stuff washed down by tea. It's of no use trying to deceive me: I've heard that the cook is seventeen, and an orphan herself."
"But what will those other orphans have for dinner?"
"Now, Rose, will you listen to common sense. How many orphans has that sandy-faced cleric on his hands?"
"There were only four left."
"Then I'll get those four disposed of somehow, if you will do something I want you to do."
"What is it? But, Edmund, you know you have done too much for my poor works already; I can't let you."
"Never mind, if you will do what I want."
"What is it?"
"Come right away in the yacht, you and your mother, and we'll go wherever you like."
Joy sprang into her face, but then he saw doubt, and he knew with a deep pang what the doubt meant. He wished to move, oh! so carefully now, or he would lose all the ground he had lately gained.
"What scruples have you now?" he asked laughing. "What a genius you have for them! Look here, Rose, it's common sense; you want a change, you can let the house up to Easter. Besides, you know what it would do for your mother; see what she thinks."
"It's all so quick," gasped Rose, laughing.
"Well, then, don't settle at once if you like; but not one penny for those poor dear little orphans if you don't come. And now, I want to say something else quick, because the tray with the chops and the cheese and the tea will all be getting greasy if I don't get out of the way. Do you know I think I was very hard on that Miss Dexter. I remember I solemnly warned you not to have to do with her. You were quite right: it is not healthy to think so much of that will; it poisons the mind. I am quite sure that poor thing is not to blame."
His tone was curiously eager, it seemed to Rose; and then he began discussing Miss Dexter, and said he thought that at moments she was beautiful. Presently he remembered the tray that was coming, and saw that the hour was half-past seven, and hurried away. She fancied that she missed in his "Good-night" the sort of gentle affectionateness he had shown her so freely of late.
She went up to her room to prepare for the meal he had disparaged so much, looking tired. She smiled rather sadly when she had to own to herself that thetray of supper was almost exactly what Edmund had foretold. She dismissed it as soon as she could, and then drew a chair up to the fire and took up a book. But it soon dropped on to her knee. She had been trying not to give way to depression all that day. But it was very difficult. There seemed to be so little object in life. She felt as if everything had got into a fog; there was no one at home to whom her going and coming mattered any more than the meals mattered. And, meanwhile, she was being sucked into a world of committees and sub-committees. She had thought that, as she could no longer give money, she would give her time and her work; so, when asked, she had joined many things just because she was asked, and she was a little hazy as to the objects of some of them. Having been afraid that she would not have enough to do, she found now that she had already more than she could manage. And everything seemed so difficult. During the past week she had twice taken the wrong bus, and come home very wet and tired. Another day she had taken the wrong train when coming back from South London, and had found herself at Baker Street instead of Sloane Square. These things tried her beyond reason with the sense of loneliness, of incapacity, of uncertainty. Then she had thought that, with very quiet black clothes, she could go anywhere, but her mother had discovered that she sometimes came back from the Girls' Club in Bermondsey as late as ten o'clock at night, and there had been a fuss. Rose had forgotten the fact that she was very fair and very good to look at; she found, half-consciously, that her beauty had its drawbacks. There did not seem to be any reason why she should spare her strength in any way. So, a littlewan and tremulous, she appeared at the early morning service, and then, after walking back in any weather, there was a dull little breakfast, and soon after that she got to work. Every post brought begging letters in crowds, and these hurt her dreadfully. It was her wish to live for God and the poor, and every day she had to write: "Lady Rose Bright much regrets that she is quite unable," etc., etc. Then, after those, she would begin another trial—begging letters to her rich friends to help her poor ones, or letters trying to get interest and influence. The difficulties and the confusion of life in the modern Babylon weighed on Rose in something of the same way that they tried Mark Molyneux. It seemed to her that it must be safe and right to be doing so many disagreeable things and to be very tired, too tired to enjoy pleasures when they came her way. Constantly, one person was trying to throw pleasures in her way; one person reminded old friends that Rose was in town; one person suggested that Rose Bright, although she did not go to parties, might come in to hear some great musician at a friend's house; one person wanted to know her opinion on the last book; one person tried to find out when he could take her anywhere in his motor. And this very morning Rose had asked herself if this one friend ought to be allowed to do all these things? Was she sure that she was quite fair to Edmund Grosse?
It had been a day of fears and scruples. She had been unnerved when the clergyman had called just to let her realise that the withdrawal of her subscription had, in the end, meant the collapse of his little orphanage; and when she was breaking down under this, Edmund had come in, and how soothed andcomforted she had felt by his presence! And then the joy of his proposal as to the yacht! Her pulses beat with delight; she felt a positive hunger for blue skies, blue water, blue shores; a longing to get away from cares and muddles and badly-done jobs and being misunderstood. Was it not horribly selfish, horribly cowardly? Was it not the longing to stifle the sounds of pain, to shut her eyes to the gloom of the misery about her, to shut her mind to the effort to understand what was of practical good, and what was merely quack in the remedies offered? Still, she realised to-night that she must get some sort of rest; that part of all this gloom was physical. She would understand and feel things more rightly if she went away for a bit.
But could she, ought she, to go away on Edmund's yacht?
Could Rose honestly feel quite sure that all his kindness meant nothing more? She had never since she was eighteen, and wearing her first long skirt, heard from him any word that need mean more than cousinly affection. He had contrived after that Easter visit to Groombridge to make her feel that she had been foolish and self-conscious in trying not to be alone with him. For many months now she had felt absolutely at her ease in his company. It seemed to be only to-day that this thought had come back to trouble her. She did not want to be disturbed with such notions; they would spoil their friendship. And he could not be feeling like that; he was always so cool, so untroubled. Why to-night, just as he was waiting to know if she would come on the yacht or not, he had talked much more warmly of Miss Dexter than seemed quite natural! Faintly she felt that itmight be good for him if they went on the yacht, she and her mother. They would be better for Edmund than some of the people he might otherwise ask; he was not always wise as to his lady friends. And it would be so good for Lady Charlton, and so good, too, for those four orphans. And where should they go? It did not matter much where they went if they only gained light and colour and rest. The artist was strong in Rose at that moment. She looked at one or two old guide-books till it was bed-time. Then, the last thing at night, a strange gust of thought came upon her just after her prayers.
Could she, would she, ever marry again? She knelt on at thepriedieuwith her fair head bowed, and then there came over her a strong sense of the impossibility of it. The shock she had had was too great, too lasting in its effects. She did not know it was that, she did not tell herself that once humiliated, once misled, she could not trust again. She did not say that the past married life which she had made so full of duty, so full of reverence as almost to deceive herself while she lived it, had been desecrated, polluted and had made her shrink unutterably from another married life.
A young widow, sometimes, when drawing near to a second marriage, suddenly realises it to be impossible because the past asserts its tyrannous claim upon her heart. What had appeared to be a dead past is found to be both alive and powerful. But with Rose it was not simply her heart; it was her nature as a woman that refused. That nature had been hurt to the very quick, humbled and brought low once. Surely it was enough!
For about a week after the evening on which she had received her mother's letter and Edmund Grosse had been to see her, Molly Dexter stayed at home from four o'clock till seven o'clock and wore beautiful tea-gowns. She had a very small list of people to whom she was always at home written on a slate, but one by one they had been reduced in number. Now there were five—Father Molyneux, who never came except by appointment; Sir Edmund Grosse; and three ladies who happened to be abroad for the winter.
The week was from a Friday to a Thursday, and on the Thursday several things happened to Molly. It was a brilliant day, and although those evenings from four till seven when nobody came were sorely trying, she was in very good spirits. A friend coming out of church the day before had told her that she had met Sir Edmund Grosse at a country house.
"He said such pretty things about you," purred the speaker, a nice newly "come out" girl who admired Molly very much.
But the main point to Molly had been the fact that Edmund had been away from London. Surely he would come directly now! She seemed to hear,constantly ringing in her ears, the voice in which he had asked if he might "come again very soon."
Thursday had been a good day altogether, for Molly had skated at Prince's and come home with a beautiful complexion to be "At Home" to the privileged from four till seven. She got out of her motor, and was walking to the lift when it came whizzing down from above, and the little friend who had said the nice things yesterday stepped out of it, looking very bright.
"Oh, Miss Dexter," she said, "may I come up again and tell you my good news?" Molly took her kindly by the arm and drew her into the lift again, and they went up. But she hoped the girl would not stay. She wanted to be quite alone, so that if anybody came who mattered very much they would not be disturbed.
"Well, what's the good news?"
Molly looked brilliant as she stood smiling in the middle of the room.
"Well, it isn't a bit settled yet, but I met Sir Edmund Grosse at luncheon, and he asked me if mother would let me go on his yacht to Cairo. Lady Rose Bright is going and Lady Charlton, and he said they all wanted something very young indeed to go with them, so they thought I'd better come, and his nephew Jimmy, too. Wasn't itawfullykind of him?"
Molly turned and poked the fire.
"When do they go?" she asked.
"Sir Edmund starts to-morrow, but Lady Rose and Lady Charlton will follow in about ten days. They will join the yacht at Marseilles, and I should go with them. Do you think mother will let me go, Miss Dexter?"
Miss Dexter looked down.
"Why should your mother object?" she said.
"But it's so sudden."
"Yes, it's very sudden," said Molly, in a low voice.
"I can hardly keep quiet; I don't know how to get through the time till six o'clock, and mother can't be at home till then."
Molly turned back into the room; her face was very white. There were white dents in her nostrils, and there was a bitter smile on her lips. Whatever she might have said was stopped in the utterance. The parlourmaid had come into the room, and now, coming up to Molly, said in a low voice:
"There is a gentleman asking if Miss Dexter will see him on important business; he says he is a doctor, and that he has come from Italy."
Molly frowned.
"What is his name?"
"It sounded like Laccaroni, ma'am."
"Show him up."
"Well, I'm off," said the young visitor, and, still entirely absorbed in her own affairs, she took Molly's limp hand and left the room.
A spare man with a pale face and rather good eyes was announced as "Dr. Laccaroni." "Larrone," he corrected gently. He carried a small old tin despatch box, and looked extremely dusty.
"I am the bearer of sad tidings," he said in English, with a fair accent, in a dry staccato voice. "It was better not to telegraph, as I was to come at once."
"You attended my mother?"
"Yes, until two nights ago. That was the end."
"Did she suffer?"
"For a few hours, yes; and there was also somebrain excitement—delirium. In an interval that appeared to be lucid (but I was not quite sure) she told me to come to you, mademoiselle, quite as soon as she was dead, and she gave me money and this little box to bring to you. She said more than once, 'It shall be her own affair.' The key is in this sealed envelope. Afterwards twice she spoke to me: 'Don't forget,' and then the rest was raving. But the last two hours were peace."
"And where is my mother to be buried?"
"Madame will be cremated, and her ashes placed in an urn in the garden, mademoiselle, in a fine mausoleum, with just her name, 'Justine,' and the dates—no more. Madame told me that these were her wishes."
"Do you know what is in this box?"
"Not at all, and I incline to think there may be nothing: the mind was quite confused. And yet I could only calm her by promising to come at once, and so I came, and if mademoiselle will permit I should like to retire to my hotel."
"Can I be of any use to you?"
"Not at all: the money for the journey was more than enough."
Molly was left alone, and she gave orders that no one, without exception, was to be admitted. Then she walked up and down the room in a condition of semi-conscious pain.
At first it seemed as if Dr. Larrone's intelligence had not reached her brain at all. The only clear thing in her mind at that moment was the thought that Edmund was going away at once with Lady Rose Bright. The disappointment was in proportion to the wild hopes of the last week, only Molly had not quiteowned to herself how intensely she had looked forward to his next coming. It was true he might still come and see her before he started, but if he came it could not be what she had meant it to be. If he had meant what Molly dreamed of, could he have gone off suddenly on this yachting expedition? She knew the yachting was not thought of when she had seen him, for he told her then that he meant to stay in London for some weeks. But as her thoughts grew clearer, what was most horrible to Molly was a gradual dawning of common daylight into the romance she had been living in for months. For, looking back now, she could not feel sure that any of her views of Edmund's feelings towards herself had been true. It was a tearing at her heart's most precious feelings to be forced to common sense, to see the past in the matter-of-fact way in which it might appear to other people. And yet, Adela Delaport Green had expected him to propose even in the season, but then, what might not the Adela Delaport Greens of life suspect and expect without the slightest foundation? Could Molly herself say firmly and without delusion that Edmund had treated her badly? How she wished she could! She would rather think that he had been charmed away by hostile influence, or even that he had deliberately played with her than feel it all to have been her own vain fancy! It was agony to her to feel that she had without any excuse, set up an idol in her sacred places, and woven about him all the dreams and loves of her youth. It must be remembered not only that it was the first time that Molly had loved in the ordinary sense of the word, but it was absolutely the first time that she had ever felt any deep affection for any human being whatever. And now a great sense ofabandonment was on her; the old feeling of isolation, of being cast out, that she had had all her life, was frightfully strong. Edmund had left her; he had deceived her, played with her, she told herself, deluded her; and now her mother's death brought home all the horror, the disgrace, which that mother's life had been for Molly. An outcast whom no one cared for, no one loved, no one wanted. The new gentleness of the past weeks, the new softness, all the high and sacred thoughts that had seemed to have taken possession of her inner life, were gone at this moment. Her feeling now was that, if she were made to suffer, she could at least make others suffer too.
She had thrown off her furs in walking up and down, and they had fallen on to the box which Dr. Larrone had brought. Presently they slipped to the floor, and showed the small, black tin despatch box.
Molly broke the seal of the envelope, took out the key, and opened the box, half mechanically and half as seeking a distraction.
Inside she found two or three packets of old yellow letters, a few faded photographs, and a tiny gold watch and chain; and underneath these things a large registered envelope addressed to Madame Danterre.
Molly was not acutely excited about this box. She knew that her mother's will would be at the lawyer's. She had no anxiety on this point, but there is always a strange thrill in touching such things as the dead have kept secret. Even if they have bid us do it, it seems too bold.
Molly shrank from what that box might contain, what history of the past it might have to tell, but she did not think it would touch her own life. Therefore, thinking more of her own sorrow than anything else,Molly drew two papers out of the registered envelope, and then shrank back helplessly in her chair. She had just seen that the larger of the two enclosures was a long letter beginning: "Dearest Rose." She hesitated, but only for a moment, and then went on reading.
"I trust and hope that if I die in to-morrow's battle this will reach you safely. I have really no fear whatever of the battle, and after it is over I shall have a good opportunity of putting this paper into a lawyer's hands at Capetown."
Then she hastily dropped the letter and took up a small paper that had been in the same envelope. A glance at this showed that it was the "last will and testament of Sir David Bright."
It was evidently not drawn up by a lawyer, but it seemed complete and had the two signatures of witnesses; Lord Groombridge and Sir Edmund Grosse were named as executors. It was dated on board ship only a few weeks before Sir David Bright died.
At first Molly was simply bewildered. She read, as if stupefied, the perfectly simple language in which Sir David had bequeathed all and everything he possessed to his wife, Lady Rose Bright, subject to an annual allowance of £1000 to Madame Danterre during her life-time. It was so brief and simple that, if Molly had not known how simple a will could be, she might have half doubted its legality. As it was she was not aware of the special facilities in the matter of will-making that are allowed to soldiers and sailors when on active service. The absolutely amazing thing was that the paper should have been in Madame Danterre's possession.
Molly turned to the letter, and read it with absorbed attention.
The General wrote on the eve of the battle, without the least anxiety as to the next day. But he already surmised the vast proportions that the war might assume, and he intended to send the enclosed will with this letter to the care of a lawyer in Capetown for fear of eventualities. Then, next day, as Molly knew, he had been killed.
But Molly did not know that to the brother officer who had been with him in his last moments Sir David had confided two plain envelopes, and had told him to send the first—a blue one—to his wife, and the second—a white one—to Madame Danterre, faintly murmuring the names and addresses in his dying voice. The same officer was himself killed a week later. If he had lived and had learned the disposal of Sir David's fortune, it might possibly have occurred to him that he had put the addresses on the wrong letters. But he was sure at the time that Sir David's last words had been: "Remember, the white one for my wife." And perhaps he was right, for it is not uncommon for a man even in the full possession of all his faculties (which Sir David was not) to make a mistake just because of his intense anxiety to avoid making it. As it was, knowing nothing whatever of the circumstances, the will and the letter seemed to Molly to come out of a mysterious void.
To any one with an unbiassed mind who was able to study it as a human document, the letter would have been pathetic enough. It was the revelation, the outpouring of what a man had suffered in silence for many long years. It seemed at moments hardly rational. The sort of unreasonable nervous terror init was extraordinary. Molly read most of the real story in the letter, but not quite all. There had been a terrible sense of a spoilt life and of a horrible weakness always coming between him and happiness. The shadow of Madame Danterre had darkened his youth; a time of folly—and so little pleasure in that folly, he moaned—had been succeeded by an actual tyranny. The claim that she was his wife had begun early after her divorce from Mr. Dexter, and it seemed extraordinary that he had not denied it at once. David Bright had been taken ill with acute fever in Mrs. Dexter's house almost immediately after that event. Mrs. Dexter declared that he had gone through the form of marriage with her before witnesses, and she declared also that she had in her possession the certificate of marriage. The date she gave for the marriage was during the days when he had been down with the fever, and he never could remember what had happened.
"God knows," he wrote, "how I searched my memory hour by hour, day by day, but the blank was absolute. I don't to this hour know what passed during those days."
While still feeble from illness he had given her all the money he could spare, and for years the blackmail had continued. Then, at last, after he had been a year in England, the worm had turned.
"I dared her to do her worst. I declared, what I am absolutely convinced to have been the case, that the marriage certificate she had shown me was a forgery, and I concluded that if she proved the marriage by forgery and perjury, I should institute proceedings for divorce on the grounds of her subsequent life. I got no answer, and for three years therewas total silence. Then came a letter from a friend saying that Madame Danterre, who had taken her maiden name, was dying and wished me to know that she forgave me." With this note had been sent to him a diamond ring he had given her in the first days of her influence over him. He sent it back, but months later he got it again, returned by the Post Office authorities, as no one of the name he had written to could be found.
Then came a solemn declaration that he had never doubted of Madame Danterre's death.
"I thought that to have spoilt my youth was enough; but she was yet to destroy my best years. Ah! Rose," he wrote, "if I had loved you less it would have been more bearable. I met you; I worshipped you; won you. Then, after a brief dream of joy, the cloud came down, and my evil genius was upon me. I don't think you were in love with me, my beloved, but it would have come even after you had found out what a commonplace fellow it was whom you thought a hero; it would have come. You must have loved me out of the full flow of your own nature if I had not been driven to cowardice and deception."
Evidently Madame Danterre had had a kind of almost uncanny power of terrifying the soldier. He had been a good man when she first met him, and he had been a good man after that short time of mad infatuation. He was by nature and training almost passionately respectable; he was at length happily married; but this horror of an evil incident in the past had got such a hold on his nerves that when he met Madame Danterre (whom he had believed to be dead) coming out of a theatre in London, the hero of the Victoria Cross, of three other campaigns, perhaps thebravest man in England, fainted when he saw her. Without doubt it was the publication of Mr. John Steele's will leaving his enormous fortune to Sir David Bright that had resuscitated Madame Danterre.
From the moment of that shock David Bright had probably never been entirely sane on the subject. The resurrection of Madame Danterre had seemed to him preternatural and fateful. The woman had become to him something more or something less than human, something impervious to attack that could not be dealt with in any ordinary way.
From that time there had grown up an invisible barrier between him and his wife. He found himself making silly excuses for being out at quite natural times. He found himself getting afraid of her, and building up defences, growing reserved and absurdly dignified, trying to cling to the pedestal of the elderly soldier as he could not be a companion.
Madame Danterre had gone back to Florence, fat with blackmail, and then had begun a steady course of persecution.
Step by step he had sunk lower down, knowing that he was weakening his own case most miserably if it should ever become public. Nothing satisfied her, although she received two thousand a year regularly, until the will was drawn up, which left everything to her except an allowance of £800 a year to Rose.
Once a year for three years Madame Danterre had visited London, and had generally contrived that Sir David should be conscious of the look in her astonishing eyes, which Sir Edmund had likened to extinct volcanoes, at some theatre, or in the park, once at least every season. Evidently that look had never failed. It touched the exposed nerve in his mind—exposed ever since the time of illness and strain when he was young and helpless in India. It was evident that he had felt that any agony was bearable to shield Rose from the suffering of a public scandal. If he could only have brought himself to consult one of the Murrays something might have been done. As it was, he had recourse to subterfuge. He assured Madame Danterre annually, in answer to her insisting on the point, that no other will had ever been signed by him, but he always carried a will with him ready to be signed. There was much of self-pity perhaps in the letter, there was the plaint of a wrecked life, but there was still more of real delicate feeling for Rose, of intense anxiety to shield her, of poignant regret for "what might have been" in their home life. The man had been of a wholesome nature; his great physical courage was part of a good fellow's construction. But he had been taught to worship a good name, an unsullied reputation, and to love things of good repute too much, perhaps, for the sake of their repute, as he could not venture to risk the shadow for the reality. The effect of reading Sir David's last letter to Rose on an unbiassed reader of a humane turn of mind would have been an intensity of pity, and a sigh at the sadness of life on this planet.
Molly was passionately biassed, and as much of Sir David's story as reached her through the letter was to her simply a sickening revelation from a cowardly traitor of his own treason through life, and even up to the hour of death. Her mother had been basely deceived; for his sake she had been divorced, and he had denied the marriage that followed. Of course, it was a marriage, or he would never have been so frightened. Then her mother, thus deserted, youngand weak, had gone astray, and he had defended himself by threatening divorce if she proclaimed herself his wife. Every word of the history was interpreted on the same lines. And then, last of all, this will was sent to her mother. Was it a tardy repentance? Had he, perhaps when too weak for more, asked some one to send it to Madame Danterre that she might destroy it? If so, why had she not destroyed it? Why, if it might honourably have been destroyed, send to Molly now a will that, if proved, would make her an absolute pauper? In plain figures Molly's fortune could not be less than £20,000 a year if that paper did not exist, and would be under £80 a year if it were valid.
Molly next seized on one of the old packets of letters in trembling hope of some further light being thrown on the situation, but in them was evidence impossible to deny that her mother had invented the whole story of the marriage. Why Madame Danterre had not destroyed these letters was a further mystery, except that, time after time, it has been proved that people have carefully preserved evidence of their own crimes. Fighting against it, almost crying out in agonised protest, Molly was forced to realise the slow persevering cunning and unflinching cruelty with which her mother had pursued her victim. It was an ugly story for any girl to read if the woman had had no connection with her. It seemed to cut away from Molly all shreds of self-respect as she read it. She felt that the daughter of such a woman must have a heritage of evil in her nature.
The packet of old letters finished, there was yet something more to find. Next came a packet of prescriptions and some receipts from shops. Under thesewere the faded photographs of several men and women of whom she knew nothing. Lastly, there was half a letter written to Molly dated in August and left unfinished and without a signature:
"Carissima:"I am far from well, but I believe Dr. Larrone has found out the cause and will soon put things right again. If you ever hear anything about me from Dr. Larrone you can put entire confidence in him. I have found out now why Sir Edmund Grosse has tried to see me. He is possessed with the absurd idea that I have no right to Sir David Bright's fortune, although he does not venture to call in question the validity of the will which left that fortune to me. Dr. Larrone has certain proof that Grosse employs a detective here to watch this house. I have also heard that he is in love with poor David's widow, and hence I suppose thistrop de zèleon her behalf. As he cannot get at me he is likely to try to become intimate with you, so I warn you to avoid him now and in future."
"Carissima:
"I am far from well, but I believe Dr. Larrone has found out the cause and will soon put things right again. If you ever hear anything about me from Dr. Larrone you can put entire confidence in him. I have found out now why Sir Edmund Grosse has tried to see me. He is possessed with the absurd idea that I have no right to Sir David Bright's fortune, although he does not venture to call in question the validity of the will which left that fortune to me. Dr. Larrone has certain proof that Grosse employs a detective here to watch this house. I have also heard that he is in love with poor David's widow, and hence I suppose thistrop de zèleon her behalf. As he cannot get at me he is likely to try to become intimate with you, so I warn you to avoid him now and in future."
That was all.
Molly sat staring vacantly in front of her, almost unconscious of her surroundings from the intensity of pain. Each item in the horror of the situation told on her separately, but in no sequence—with no coherence. Shame, "hopes early blighted, love scorned," kindness proved treason, the prospect of complete and dishonourable poverty, a poverty which would enrich her foes. And all this was mixed in her mind with the dreadful words from the old letters that seemed to be shouted at her.
Miss Carew, coming in at dinner-time, was horror-struck by what she saw. Molly was sitting on the floor surrounded by letters and papers, moaning and biting her hand. The gong sounded, the parlourmaid announced dinner, and Molly gathered up her papers, locked them in the box, fastened the key on to her chain—all in complete silence—and got up from the floor. She then walked straight into the dining-room in her large hat and outdoor clothes without speaking.
And without a word the terrified Miss Carew went with her, and tried to eat her dinner.
Molly ate a very little of each thing that was offered to her, taking a few mouthfuls voraciously, and then quite suddenly, as she was offered a dish of forced asparagus, she went into peal after peal of ringing, resounding laughter. "I should like you to have asparagus at every meal," she said, and then again came peal after peal—each a quite distinct sound. It was dreadful to hear, and Miss Carew and the servant were terrified. It was the laughter, not of a maniac, not of pure unreasoning hysteria, not quite of a lost soul. It suggested these elements, perhaps, but it was chiefly a nervous convulsion at an overpowering perception of the irony in the heart of things.
The hysterical fit lasted long enough for Miss Carew to insist on a doctor, and Molly did not resist. When he came she implored him to give her a strong sleeping-draught. She kept Miss Carew and the maid fussing about her, in a terror of being alone, until the draught was at last sent in by a dilatory chemist. She then hurried them away, drank the medicine, and set herself to go to sleep. The draught acted soon, as Miss Carew learnt by listening at the door and hearing the deep, regular breathing. But the effects passed off,and Molly sat up absolutely awake at one o'clock in the morning. She lay down again and tried to force herself to sleep by sheer will power, but she soon realised the awful impotence of desire in forcing sleep.
At last, horror of her own intensely alert faculties, blinded by darkness, made her turn up the light. Instantly the sight of the familiar room seemed unbearable, and she turned it down again. But again the darkness was quite intolerable, and seemed to have a hideous life of its own which held in it presences of evil. At one moment she breathed in the air of the winter's night, shivering with cold; at the next she was stifled for want of breath. So the light by the bed was turned on again, and to get a little further from it Molly got up and slowly and carefully put on her stockings and fur slippers, then opened a cupboard and took out a magnificent fur cloak and wrapped herself in it. Then suddenly one aspect of the position became concrete to her imagination. She knew that the cloak was bought with ill-gotten money. Her enormous allowance after she came of age, even the expenses of her education—Miss Carew's salary among other things—had been won by fraud. And now, oh! why, why had not her miserable mother spoken the truth when she got the will, or why had she not destroyed it? Why had she left it to Molly to put right all this long, long imposture, and to reveal to the world the story of her mother's crime? It seemed to Molly as if she were looking on at some other girl's life, and as if she were considering it from an external point of view. The sleeping-draught had, no doubt, excited still further the terrible agitation of her nerves, and ideas came to her as if they had no connection with her own personality.
Wicked old woman, dying in Florence! How cruel those words were: "Let it be her own affair"! Her last act to send those papers to the poor girl she had deserted as a baby, and refused even to see as a woman. "Let it be her own affair." Her own affair to choose actual poverty and a terrible publicity as to the past instead of a great fortune and silence as to her mother's guilt. "Let it be her own affair" to enrich her enemies, to give a fortune to the woman who would scorn her! Would the man who had pretended to be her friend, and who had been pursuing her mother with detectives all the time, would he some day talk pityingly of her with his wife, and say she "had really behaved very well, poor thing"?
Suddenly Molly stopped, full of horror at a new thought. Oh! she must make things safe and sure, or—good God!—what might not her mother's daughter be tempted to do? A deep blush spread over her face and neck. She moved hastily to the door, and in a moment she was in Miss Carew's room.
"I want to speak to you; I want to tell you something," said Molly, turning up the electric light as she spoke.
Miss Carew was startled out of a sweet sleep, and her first thought was the one which haunted her whenever she was awakened at an untimely hour. Her carefully-curled fringe was lying in the dressing-table drawer, and Molly had never seen her without it!
"Yes, yes; in one moment," she answered fussily. "I will come to your room in one minute."
Molly felt checked, and there had been something strange and unfamiliar in Miss Carew's face. Suddenly she felt what it would be to tell Miss Carew the truth—Miss Carew, who was now her dependent, receiving from her £100 a year, would be shocked and startled out of her senses, and might not take these horrible revelations at all kindly. It would, anyhow, be such a reversal of their mutual positions as Molly could not face. And by the time the chestnut hair tinged with grey had been pinned a little crooked on Miss Carew's head, and she had knocked timidly at Molly's door, she was startled and offended by the impatient, overbearing tone of the voice that asked her to "go back to bed and not to bother; it was nothing that mattered."
The night had got on further than Molly knew by that time, and she was relieved to hear it strike four o'clock. She was astonished at noticing that, while she had been walking up and down, up and down her room, she had never heard the clock strike two or three. The fact of having spoken to Miss Carew had brought her for the moment out of the inferno of the last few hours, and the time from four o'clock to six was less utterly miserable because worse had gone before it.
At six she called the housemaid, and kept her fussing about the room, lighting the fire, and getting tea, so as not to be alone again. At eight o'clock she sent for coffee and eggs, and the coffee had to be made twice before she was satisfied with it. Then she suddenly said she felt much better, and, having dressed much more quickly than usual, she went out.
Molly had determined to confide the position to Father Molyneux. When she got to the church in Kensington it was only to find that Father Molyneux had gone away for some days.
That evening the doctor was again summoned, and told Miss Carew that he had now no doubt thatMiss Dexter was suffering from influenza, with acute cerebral excitement, and the case was decidedly anxious.
"He might have found out that it was influenza last night," said Miss Carew indignantly, "and I even told him the housemaid had just had influenza! Molly simply caught it from her, as I always thought she would."