CHAPTER XIII

SIR DAVID'S MEMORY

Lady Rose Bright was faintly disturbed on Tuesday morning, and came into

Lady Groombridge's sitting-room after Mrs. Delaport Green and Molly had

left the castle too preoccupied to notice the tall figure of Grosse in a

far window.

This room had happily escaped all Georgian gorgeousness of decoration,

and the backs of the books, a fine eighteenth-century collection, stood

flush to the walls. The long room was all white except for the books,

the flowered chintz covers, some fine bronze statuettes, and a few bowls

of roses.

Lady Rose moved mechanically towards the empty fire-place.

It was one thing to try not to dislike Miss Dexter, and to see her in a

haze of Christian love; it was another to realise that, while she

herself had slept most comfortably, Molly had not been to bed at all

because the little kitchenmaid was in pain. Humility and appreciation

were rising in Rose's mind, as half absently she gently raised a vase

from the chimney-piece, and, turning to the light to examine its mark,

saw Sir Edmund looking at her from his distant window.

A little, quite a little, flush came into her cheeks; not much deeper

than the soft, healthy colour usual to them. She examined the china with

more attention.

The tall figure moved slowly, lazily, down the room towards her, holding

the _Times_ in one hand.

"It's not Oriental," he said, "it's Lowestoft."

"Ah!" said Rose absently. She felt the eyes whose sadness had been

apparent even to Mrs. Delaport Green looking her over with a quick

scrutiny.

"Why, in your general scheme of benevolence, have you not thought it

fit, during the last few days, to give me the chance of talking to you

alone?" The tone was full of exasperation, but ironical too, as if he

were faintly amused at himself for being exasperated.

"I don't know. Have I avoided being alone with you?" Rose had turned to

the chimney-piece.

Edmund Grosse sank into a low chair, crossed his legs, and looked up at

her defiantly, but with keen observation.

"It has been too absurd," he said, "you have hardly spoken to me, and

you know, of course, that I came here to see you. I meant to go to the

Riviera until I heard that you were coming here."

"But you have been quite happy, quite amused. There seemed no reason why

I should interrupt. And you know, Edmund, they said that you came here

every year."

"Well, I didn't come only to see you," he said, "as you like it better

that way. And now, it is about Miss Molly Dexter I want to speak to

you."

This time Rose gave a little ghost of a sigh, and looked at him with

unutterable kindness. She was feeling that, after all, she had come

second in his consciousness--after Miss Dexter, whom she could not

like, but who had sat up all night with the kitchenmaid.

"Why about Miss Dexter? what can I have to do with her?" The tone was

almost contemptuous--not quite, Rose was too kind.

"Do you remember that I went to Florence?"

"Yes; I did not want you to go." There was at once a distinct note of

distress in her voice. It was horribly painful to her to have to think

of the things she tried so hard to bury away.

"No, but I went," he said very gently; "and it was useless, as I knew it

would be. But I want to tell you one thing which I have learnt, and

which I think you ought to know, as it may be inconvenient if you do

not. It is that Miss Dexter----" Rose interrupted him quickly.

"Is the daughter of the lady in Florence?" She gave a little hysterical

laugh. He looked at her in astonishment.

"And that is why she dislikes me so much. Do you know, Edmund, I had a

feeling from the moment I first saw her that there was something wrong

between us. It gave me a horrible feeling, and then I asked Mary

Groombridge about her, and she told me the poor girl's story; only she

said the mother lived in Paris. Of course Mary does not know, or she

would never have asked us here together. But that is how I knew what you

were going to say; and yet I had no notion of it till a moment ago, when

it came to me in a flash. Only I wish I had known sooner!"

It was not common with Rose to say so much at a time, and there had been

slight breaks and gaps in her voice, pathetic sounds to the listener.

She seemed a little--just a little--out of breath with past sorrow and

present pain. Edmund thought he would never come to know all the

inflections in that voice.

"I wish I had known sooner. I am afraid I have not been kind to her."

"And if you had known you would have cast your pearls at her feet," he

said, in tender anger. "Don't make the mistake of being too kind to her,

Rose. I want you to keep her at a distance. There is something all the

more dangerous about her because she is distinctly attractive. She has

primitive passions, and yet she is not melodramatic; it's a dangerous

species."

It was amazing how easy it was to take a severe view of poor Molly after

she had gone away, and how he believed what he said.

"She has never seen her mother?" asked Rose gently.

"No, but I am sure she knows about her mother," the slowness in his

voice was vindictive; "and that her mother knows what we don't know

about the will."

"Edmund dear," said Rose very earnestly, "do please leave that point

alone; no good can come of it. I do assure you that no good, only harm,

will come of it. It's bad and unwholesome for us all--mother and you and

me--to dwell on it. I do really wish you would leave it alone."

Edmund frowned, though he liked that expression, "mother and you and

me."

"You needn't think about it unless you wish to," he answered.

"But I wish you wouldn't!"

"If I had banished it from my thoughts up till now, I could not leave it

alone now, for I have a clue."

"Oh, don't, Edmund."

"Well, it may come to nothing; only I'm glad that it makes one thing

still more clear to me though it may go no further."

He told her then of what the stud-groom had said, and ended by showing

her the letter. Rose read it in silence, and then, still standing with

her face turned away, she said in a very low voice:

"It is a comfort as far as it goes. But I knew it was so; he never meant

things to be as they are--poor David! Edmund, it is of no use to think

of it. Even if the paper then witnessed were the will, it is lost now

and will never be found. I would rather--I would _really_ rather not

think too much about it."

"No, no," he answered soothingly, "don't dear, don't dwell on it."

"I like," she answered, "to dwell on the thought that David did think of

me lovingly, and did not mean to leave me to any shame. I am sure he

never meant to leave me poor, and to let me suffer all the publicity

about that poor woman. I am sure he always meant to change the will in

time, but, you see, all that mischief is done and can't be undone. I

mean the humiliation and the idea that she was in Florence all the time

during our married life, and all the talk, and my having to meet this

unfortunate girl who has his money. All of them think he was unfaithful

to me, and nothing can put that right. Nothing--I mean nothing of this

world--can put any of that right. And I can't bear the idea of a quarrel

and going to law with these people for money; it may be pride, but I

simply can't bear it."

"But, don't you see," said Edmund, "that if we could prove there was

another will, that would clear David's reputation."

"It won't prevent people knowing that there was the first will and all

about the poor woman in Florence."

"No; but it will make people feel that he behaved properly in the end.

It will alter their bad opinion of him."

"But it will also make them go on thinking and talking of the scandal,

and if it is left alone they will forget. People forget so soon, because

there is always something new to talk about. He will just take his place

among the heroes who died for their country, and the rest will be

forgotten."

Edmund looked at her quickly, as if taking stock of the delicate nature

of the complex womanly materials he had to deal with, but her face was

still averted.

"I think it's hard on David." He spoke as if yielding to her wish. "I do

think it is hard. If he did make this will, and it is lost through

chance or fraud, I think it is very hard that his last wishes should be

disregarded, and his memory should suffer in all right-minded people's

opinions. Of course, it is for you to decide, but I own I should

otherwise feel it wrong to leave a stone unturned if anything could be

done to restore his good name."

He felt that Rose was terribly troubled, but he could not quite realise

what it was to her to disturb her hardly-won peace of mind and calm of

conscience.

"If it were not for the money!" she faltered. "I shall get to long for

that money; so many people become horrid when they have a lawsuit about

a fortune. It has always seemed to me that if the money is only for

one's self one might leave it alone, and then, after all, if we went to

law and failed, things would be much worse than they were before."

"Well," said Edmund, slightly exasperated but controlling himself. "I

don't mean to do anything definite yet, but we ought to find out if we

can make a case of it. We can always stop in time if we can't get what

we want, but it's worth while to try. It is not merely the money--the

less you dwell on that the better. Seriously, I think it would be very

wrong that, through any fastidiousness of yours, David's memory should

not be cleared if it is possible to clear it."

The last shot had this time reached the mark. After a few minutes'

silence Rose said in a very low voice:

"But then, what can I do about it?" He felt that she was hurt, but he

knew he had gained his point.

"I don't think you can do anything at this moment but allow me a free

hand; I could not do what is necessary without your permission and your

trust--and, presently, let me compare notes with you freely. I know what

your judgment is worth when you can get rid of those scruples."

"Very well."

But still she did not turn round. Indeed, the wounds in her mind were

too deep and too fresh to make the subject give her anything but

quivering pain. It was impossible that Edmund should suspect half of

what she felt. He naturally concluded that much of her present suffering

showed how unconquerably Rose's love for Sir David had outlived the

strain put on it. To Rose it would have been much simpler if it had been

so. But in fact part of the trial to Rose was the doubt of her own past

love, and of her own present loyalty. Had she ever truly loved David

while he was still her hero "_sans peur et sans reproche_," could that

love have been killed at all? So much anxiety to be sure of having

forgiven, so much self-reproach for the failure of her marriage, such an

acute, overwhelming sense of shame, and such shrinking from all that was

ugly and low, were intermixed and confused in poor Rose's mind that it

was no wonder even Edmund, with all his tact and his tenderness,

blundered at times.

They were quite silent for some moments. Edmund wanted to see her face

but he could not. Presently she looked into the glass over the

chimney-piece, and in the glass he saw with remorse a little tear about

to fall.

"I think I've caught cold," she murmured to herself. Producing a tiny

handkerchief she seemed to apply it to her nose, and so caught that one

little tear. Her movements were wonderfully graceful, but the man

looking at her did not think of that. What he thought was:--How exactly

she was herself and no one else. How could she have that child's

simplicity of hers, and her amazing power of seeing through a stone

wall? How could she be a saint and have all a woman's faults? How could

she live half in another world and yet with all her absurd unworldliness

be so eminently a woman of this one? She was twenty-six, but she knew

what many women of fifty never learn; she was twenty-six, yet she was

more innocent than many a child of thirteen. What a contrast to Molly's

crude ignorance and hankering after success!

All the time he looked at her in silence and she did not seem to realise

it. She put her handkerchief into her belt and took it out again; she

touched her hair, seeing in the glass that it was untidy. Then she sat

down on a low stool, and her soft, fluffy black draperies fell round

her. She pressed her elbows on her knees, and sank her face in her

hands. She might have been alone; he was not quite sure she was not

praying. There were some moments of silence. At last she moved, raised

her head, and looked him gently full in the face.

"And you--you never talk about yourself," she said, with a thrill in her

voice that he had known so long. "I always talk so much of myself when I

am alone with you."

"No," he said, with a touch of lazy anger, "I'm not worth talking about,

not worth thinking of, and you know it!"

For a moment she flushed.

"You always have abused yourself."

"Because I know what's in your thoughts, and when I am with you I can't

help expressing them--there!" he concluded defiantly, and crossed and

uncrossed his legs again.

"Edmund, that isn't one bit, one little bit true. But I do wish you were

happier."

"Yes, of course," he went on sardonically, "you know that too. You know

that I loathe and detest life--that I hate the morning because it begins

a new day. Oh, I am bored to extinction, you know all that, you most

exasperating woman. I hate"--he suddenly seemed to see that he was

giving her pain, and the next words were muttered to himself--"no, I

love the pity in your eyes."

The graceful figure sitting there trembled a little, and the white hands

covered the eyes again.

"But," he went on quickly in a louder voice, "the pity's no good. You

might as well expect me to command an army to-morrow, or become an

efficient Prime Minister, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Roman

Catholic Cardinal, or anything else that is impossible, as become the

sort of man you would like me to be. You know so perfectly well," he

laughed, "how rotten I am; you are astonished if you find me do any sort

of good--you can't help it, how can you, when it's just and true? Do you

know I sometimes have had absurd dreams of what I might have been if you

had not been so terribly clear-sighted. You stood in your white frock

under the old mulberry tree--your first long skirt--and you saw that I

was no good, and you were perfectly right, but, after all, what is your

life to be now?"

Rose got up from the stool and rested one hand on the marble

mantelpiece. She needed some help, some physical support.

"Edmund," she said, "I don't think I dwell much on the future; I leave

all in God's hands. I have been through a good deal now, you must not

expect too much of me." She paused. "But what you have said to me about

yourself is nonsense; I wish you would not talk like that. You are only

forty. You are very clever, very rich, you have the right sort of

ambition although you won't say so, and you are, oh! so kind. Couldn't

you do something, have some real interest?" He growled inarticulately.

"Is it of no use to ask you just to think it over?"

"None whatever," he said firmly and cheerfully.

The gong sounded in the hall for luncheon.

BOOK II

CHAPTER XIV

MOLLY IN THE SEASON

"Still together?"

"Yes; and it has not turned out so badly as might be expected."

"I thought you were to have had a flat with a dear old governess?"

"I could not get Miss Carew, the governess in question, and Adela

Delaport Green pressed me to stay with her for the season."

"It does credit to the amiability of both," said Edmund.

"I don't know about that," answered Molly, "we both knew what we wanted,

and that we could not easily get it unless we combined, and so we

combined."

"But was it quite easy to get over the slight friction at Groombridge?"

"Oh, yes; directly we got away Adela was all right. She felt stifled by

the atmosphere, and she recovered as soon as she got home."

Edmund would have been less surprised at the tone of this last remark if

he had seen Lady Groombridge's exceedingly offhand way of greeting Molly

this same evening. That great lady, having expected to find that Molly

had, acting on her advice, abandoned Mrs. Delaport Green, was quite

disappointed in the girl when she met them still together in London, and

so she extended her frigidity to both of them.

"And you are enjoying yourself?" Edmund went on. "Come, let us sit

behind those palms. You look as if things were going smoothly."

"It is delightful."

Molly cast her grey eyes over the moving groups that were strolling

about the ballroom, and over the lights and flowers and the band

preparing to begin again, and then looked up into Edmund's face. It was

a slow, luxurious movement, fitted to the rather unusually developed

face and expression. Most debutantes are crude in their enjoyment, but

Molly was beginning London at twenty-one, not at eighteen, and

circumstances made her more mature than her actual experience of society

warranted. Yet it seemed to Edmund that the untamed element in her was

the more striking from the contrast. Molly accepted social delights and

social conventions as a young and gentle tigress might enjoy the soft

turf of an English lawn.

The defiance in her tone when she alluded to Groombridge faded now.

"I have six balls in the next four nights, and one opera, and we are

going to Ascot, then back to London, then to Cowes, and, after that, I

am going to the Italian Lakes and to Switzerland, and wherever I like."

"Is Mrs. Delaport Green so very unselfish?"

"Oh, no; I am only going to stay with Adela till the end of the season,

and then I am going abroad with two girls who are quite delightful, and

in October the flat and the governess are to come into existence."

"Yes; everything--everything perfect," murmured Grosse, looking at her

with an expression that included her own appearance in the "everything

perfect." Then, dropping his restless eyeglass, he went on.

"And you are never bored?"

"Never for one single moment."

"Amazing! and what is more amazing is that possibly you never will be

bored."

"Am I to die young then?" asked Molly.

"Not necessarily, but I believe you will enjoy too keenly, and probably

suffer too keenly to be bored."

"Did you ever enjoy very keenly?" asked Molly, with timid interest.

"Didn't I!" cried Grosse, with unusual animation; "until the last seven

or eight years I enjoyed myself hugely, but----"

"Why did it stop?" asked Molly, her large eyes straining with eagerness.

"You look like a child who must know the end of the story at once. Do

you always get so eager when you are told a story? Mine is dreadfully

dull. While I had plenty of work to do, and something to look forward

to, I was amused, but then----"

"Then what?"

"Well, then I became rich, and I've been dawdling about ever since. At

first I enjoyed it, but now I'm bored to extinction."

"I can understand," said Molly, "when anything becomes quite easy it

doesn't seem worth while to do it. But isn't there anything difficult

you want to do?"

"Yes," said Edmund, "there are two things; one is plainly impossible,

and the other is not hopeful, and neither of them prevents my feeling

bored, for unfortunately neither of them gives me enough to do."

"Couldn't you work more at them?" asked Molly, with much sympathy.

"No," he said, as if talking to himself, "no one has the power to make a

woman change her nature, and the other matter needs an expert. Good

Heavens!" he stopped short, in astonishment at himself.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Molly, while a deep flush of colour rose

in her dark cheeks.

"You must be a witch," he said lightly; "you make me say things I don't

in the least mean to say, and that I have never said to anyone else. And

here is a distracted partner, Edgar Tonmore, coming to reproach you."

"Our dance is nearly over, Miss Dexter," said a young, fresh voice, and

a most pleasing specimen of well-built and well-trained manhood stood

before them. "I have been looking for you everywhere."

Molly and Edmund rose.

He stood where they left him watching her whirl

past. It was as he had suspected; she had the gift of perfect movement.

And Molly, as she danced past, glanced towards the tall, loose figure,

dignified with all its carelessness and with some curious trick of

distinction and indifference in its bearing, and twice she caught tired

eyes looking very earnestly at her.

"Good Heavens! I was talking of Rose to that girl, and of my efforts to

get at her mother's money, and I never speak of either to mortal man.

What made me do it?"

Slowly he turned away and left the ballroom and the house, declining

with a wave of the hand various appeals to stay, and found himself in

the street.

"Sympathies and affinities be hanged!" He said it aloud. "She isn't even

really beautiful, and I'll be hanged, too, if I'll talk to her any

more."

But, alack for Molly, he did talk to her on almost every occasion on

which they met. It was from no conscious lack of royalty to Rose; it was

largely because he was so full of her and her affairs that he would in

an assembly of indifferent people drift towards one who was in any way

connected with those affairs. Then one word or two, the merest "how d'ye

do?" seemed to develop instantly into talk, and shortly the talk turned

to intimate things. And for him Molly was always at her best. Many

people did not like her, yet admired her, and admitted her into their

houses half unwillingly. Her speech was not often kindly, and there was

an element of defiance even in her quietness, for her unmistakable

social ease was distinctly negative. Molly was rich and dressed well,

and Mrs. Delaport Green was a very clever woman, whose blunders were

rare and whose pet vice was not unfashionable. There was nothing in this

life to soften and ripen the best side of Molly. But Edmund drew out

whatever she had in her that was gentle and kindly.

It does not need the experience of many London seasons in order to

realise that it is a condition of things in which many of the faculties

of our nature are suspended. It is not as a Puritan moralist might put

it, that the atmosphere of a whirlpool of carnal vice chokes higher

things, for the amusements may be perfectly innocent. Only for a time

the people who are engaged in them don't happen to think, or to pity, or

to pray, or to condemn, or often, I believe, to love, though it may

seem absurd to say so. It may, therefore, be called a rest cure for

aspirations and higher ambitions and anxieties and all the nobler

discontents. To Molly it was youth and fun and brightness and

forgetfulness. There was no leisure to be morbid, no occasion to be

bitter or combative. The game of life was too bright and smooth, above

all too incessant not to suffice.

Mrs. Delaport Green might be outside the circle in which Lady

Groombridge disported herself with more dignity than gaiety, but she had

the _entrée_ to some houses almost as good, if not as exclusive, and she

had also a large number of acquaintances who entertained systematically

and extravagantly. That the Delaport Greens were very rich, or lived as

if they were very rich, had from the first surprised the "paying guest."

Lately it had become evident to her that if Adela had not been addicted

to cards, Molly would never have been established in her house. She had

found out by now that Mr. Delaport Green was a man of very good repute

in the financial world as being distinctly successful on the Stock

Exchange. He struck Molly as a sturdy type of Englishman, rather

determined on complete independence, and liking to pay his way in a

large free fashion. She rather wondered at his having consented to the

plan of the "paying guest," but he seemed quite genial when he came

across her and inquired with sympathy after her amusements, and

evidently wished that she should enjoy herself.

Many girls whose position was undoubtedly secure, whom no one disliked

and everybody was willing to amuse, had a much less amusing summer than

Molly. And Edmund Grosse, most unconsciously to himself, was a leading

figure in the warm dream of delight in which Molly lived from the

middle of May till the end of June. They did not meet often at dances,

but at stiffer functions, at the Opera, and also twice in the

country--once on the river on a Sunday afternoon, and once for a whole

week-end party, which last days deserve to be treated in more detail.

The group who met under the deep shade of some historic cedars, on a hot

Saturday afternoon, to spend together a Saturday to Monday with a

notably pleasant host and hostess, had carried with them the electric

atmosphere of the season that so fascinated Molly's inexperience, to

perfume it further with the June roses and light it with the romance of

summer moonlight. Of the party were Molly and her chaperone and Sir

Edmund Grosse.

By this time Mrs. Delaport Green had made up her mind that Molly had

decidedly better become Lady Grosse, and she felt that it would be a

pleasing and honourable conclusion to the season if the engagement were

announced before she and Molly parted. She had fleeced Molly very

considerably, but she wanted her to have her money's worth, and go away

content.

It would take long to carry conviction as to the actual good and the

possibility of further good there was in Mrs. Delaport Green. Out of

reach of certain temptations she might have been quoted as a positive

model of goodness and unselfish brightness. If her imitative gift had

found only the highest models, she might have been a happy nun, or a

quiet, stay-at-home wife and mother. But she was tossed into a social

whirlpool where her instincts and her ambitions and her perceptions were

all confused, and out of the depths of her little spoiled soul, had

crawled a vice--probably hereditary--which might otherwise have slept.

It was fast becoming known that Molly's chaperone was a thorough

gambler.

Sir Edmund Grosse was not unwilling to dawdle under the shade of an old

wall with Mrs. Delaport Green that Saturday evening in the country.

"I feel terribly responsible," she said, in her thin eager little voice;

"I am sure that boy is going to propose to my protégé!"

"What boy?" asked Edmund, in a tone of indifference.

"Edgar Tonmore."

"Is Edgar here, then?"

"Oh, no; it won't be at once. He has gone to Scotland, but he will be

back before we leave London."

"Really he is an excellent fellow. I don't see why you should be

anxious."

"But Molly is an orphan," she said plaintively, eyeing him quickly as

she spoke.

"Even so, orphans marry and live happily ever after."

"But I'm not sure she will live happily."

"Why not?"

"I don't think she cares for him."

"Then I suppose she will refuse."

"But people so often make mistakes. I don't think dear Molly knows her

own mind, and it is so natural that she should not confide in me as I am

in her mother's place."

"Leave things alone. Edgar will find out if she likes him or not."

"Will he? oh well, it's a comfort that you take that view." And she

then changed the topic, being of opinion that nothing more could be done

with it. But no doubt the effect produced in Edmund was an increase of

interest in Molly's affairs. It would be exceedingly tiresome if she

should marry this attractive but penniless boy, as he knew him to be,

under the impression that she possessed enough money for them both.

Edmund had only that morning received certain intelligence of the

whereabouts of young Akers, the son of the old stud-groom.

From Florence had come the information that Madame Danterre was supposed

to be in failing health, and that she had been seldom seen to drive out

of her secluded grounds this summer, whereas last year she used to go

long distances in her old-fashioned English carriage in the evenings.

Thus it became a matter of thrilling interest whether the great fortune

would pass to Molly before any evidence could be produced of the

existence of the last will in which he so firmly believed.

"I believe the old sinner knows all about it, even if she hasn't got

it," Grosse murmured to himself.

Finally he concluded that it would be better if Molly married money and

not poverty, and did not smile on the penniless Edgar Tonmore.

Therefore, finding himself alone with her during church time next

morning, he thought no harm of trying to put a little spoke in the wheel

to prevent that affair going too easily. But first he asked her why she

did not go to church.

"I might say, why don't you go yourself?" said Molly, "but I don't mind

telling you that I hardly ever do go."

"Why not?"

"Why not?" Molly was leaning back in a low chair under the shadow of the

cedars, as still as if she would never move again, as still as the

greyhound that was lying by her. "I hate going to church. None of it

seems beautiful to me as it does to Adela. My aunt used to say that we

were not fortunate in our clergyman, but personally I don't like any

clergymen. I am anti-clerical like a Frenchwoman."

"Have you any French blood?"

"Yes; my mother was French."

"But you do good works; I remember how you nursed the kitchenmaid at

Groombridge."

"I like to stop pain, but not because it is a good work. I can't stand

all the fuss about good works and committees, and nonsense about loving

the poor. It's a way rich people have to make themselves feel

comfortable. Don't you think so?"

"No, I don't. I know people who make themselves exceedingly

uncomfortable because they give away half what they possess."

"Really," said Molly, a little contemptuously. She knew that he was

thinking of Rose Bright. "My opinion is that doing good works means to

bustle about trying to get as much of other people's money to give away

as you can, without giving any yourself."

Edmund did not like to suggest that this opinion might be the result of

special experiences gained while living in the house of Mrs. Delaport

Green.

"If," Molly went on, evidently glad to relieve her mind on the subject,

"you got the money to pay your unfortunate dressmaker, there would be

some justice in that. But," she suddenly sat up and her eyes shot fire

at Edmund, "to fuss at a bazaar to show your kindness of heart while you

know you are not going to pay the woman who made the very gown you have

on, is perfectly sickening."

"It is atrocious," said Grosse, who wanted to change the subject. But

this was effected by the most unexpected apparition of Mr. Delaport

Green, whom they had both supposed to be refreshing himself by the sea

at Brighton.

Mr. Delaport Green was dressed in very light grey, with a white

waistcoat. His figure was curious, as it extended in parts so far in

front of the rest that it gave the impression that you must pass your

eyes over a great deal of substance in the foreground before you could

see the face. Then again, the nose was so predominant that it checked

any attempt to realise the eyes and forehead, while the cheeks were

baggy and the skin unwholesome.

Edmund Grosse had only seen him on two occasions when he dined at his

house, and he had liked him at once. There was something markedly

masculine about him; he knew life, and had made up his mind as to his

own part in it without delusions and without whining. He would have

preferred to have been slim and handsome, and to have known the ways of

the social world from his youth, but there were plenty of other things

to be interested in, and he was not averse to the power which follows on

wealth. He was a self-made Englishman, with nothing of the Jew about

him, either for good or evil. But no apparition could have been more

surprising to the two as he came slowly over the grass to meet them.

Molly saw at once that Adela's husband was exceedingly annoyed, probably

exceedingly angry, and although she had always felt his capacity for

being very angry, she had never seen him in that condition before.

"I came down in the motor to get a short talk on business with Miss

Dexter," he explained, "but I am sorry to disturb a more amusing

conversation."

Edmund, of course, after that left them alone, and walked off by

himself.

Molly looked all her astonishment at Adela's "Tim."

"Miss Dexter," he said very slowly, "I was given to understand when you

came to us in the winter that you were a young lady wanting a home and

some amusement in London. I thought it kindly in my wife to wish to have

you with her, and, as she is young and a good deal alone" (Molly looked

the other way at this assertion), "I thought it would be for the

advantage of both. But I had no notion that there was any question of

payment in the case, and I must now ask you to tell me exactly what you

have paid to Mrs. Delaport Green since first you made her acquaintance."

Molly was not entirely astonished at discovering that Adela's husband

had known nothing whatever of Adela's financial arrangements with

herself. But she was so angry at this proof of what she had up to now

only faintly suspected, that it was not very difficult to make her tell

all that she knew of her share in Adela's expenses, only that knowledge

proved to be of a very vague kind. Molly had kept no accounts, and had

the vaguest notion of what her bills included. One thing she intended to

conceal (but Mr. Delaport Green managed to make her confide even that)

was the fact that she had given £100 to his wife's dressmaker. He made

no comment of any sort, only firmly and quietly insisted on Molly

giving him all the items she could. Then he got up and said--

"Good-bye for the present; I want to get back in time for lunch."

And he walked away, making one or two notes in a little book he held in

his hand as to the cheque that Molly should find waiting for her next

day.

Molly, left alone on the bench, did not at the first moment dwell on the

thought of how far this talk with her host would affect her own plans.

She could only think of the man himself. She had been for many weeks in

his house, and had never done more than "exchange the weather" with him,

or occasionally suffer gladly the little jokes and puns to which he was

addicted. She had written to Miss Carew that his attitude towards Adela

and herself was that of a busy man towards his nursery. Since that how

little she had thought about him! And now she felt the strength in him,

not weakened, but lit up with a kind of pathos. He might have been a

true friend to any man or woman. He was really fond of Adela Delaport

Green, and that position in itself was tragic enough. It was plain to

Molly, although nothing had been breathed on the subject that morning,

that Tim would not find it hard to forgive his Adela. Adela would pass

almost scot-free from well-merited punishment; and yet her husband was

strong enough to have punished effectively where he deemed it necessary.

Molly was puzzled because she was without a clue to the mystery. The

fact was that Tim had no wish to punish effectively. As long as Adela

passed untouched by one sin, as long as he felt sure of one great virtue

in her life, all such details as much gambling, much selfishness, absurd

extravagance, could be easily forgiven. Molly herself would be fairly

dealt with and set aside; the "paying guest" was an indignity that he

would soon forget. He would have been entirely indifferent to the

impression of regretful interest that he had made upon her.

That night Edmund Grosse was Molly's confidant as to the second, and

evidently final, rupture between herself and Mrs. Delaport Green that

had taken place in the afternoon. He could not but be kind and

sympathetic as to her difficulties. It was, no doubt, very blind of him

not to see that she was too quickly convinced of the wisdom of his

advice, far too anxious to act as seemed well in his opinion. It never

dawned on his imagination for a moment that the most serious part of the

loss of the end of the season to Molly was the loss of his society

during that time.

They strolled in the moonlight between the cedars and under the great

wall with its alternate "ebon and ivory" of darkest evergreen growths

and masses of white climbing roses, Molly's white gown rustling a little

in the stillness. And Molly discovered with joy that he was trying to

set her mind against marriage with Edgar Tonmore. If he only knew how

little danger there was of that! And under Edmund's influence she

decided to offer herself for a visit of two or three weeks to Mrs.

Carteret, in the old and much disliked home of her childhood. It would

look right; it would give a certain dignity to her position after the

breakdown of the Delaport Green alliance, and it was always a great

mistake to break with natural connections. So far Edmund Grosse; and in

Molly's mind it ran something like this: "He wants me to stand well with

the world, and I will do this, intolerable as it is, to please him. He

likes to think that I have some nice relations, and so I must try to be

friendly with Aunt Anne Carteret, though that is the hardest part. And

he wants me to get away from Edgar Tonmore, and I would go away from so

many more people if he wished it."

The evening passed into night, and Edmund was walking alone under the

wall, dreaming of Rose.

All this foolish gambling, quarrelsome, small world of men and women

made such a foil to her image. Molly and her mother, the Delaport

Greens, and many others were grouped in his mind as he purled the smoke

disdainfully from his cigar. Something in Molly's walk by his side just

now had made him see again the old woman with her quick, alert movements

in the garden at Florence; after all they were cut from the same piece,

the old wicked woman and the slight, dark girl with the curious eyes.

Molly must not be trusted; she must be suspected all the more because of

her attractions in the moments of dangerous gentleness. And with a

certain simplicity Edmund looked again at the moon above him, all the

more glorious because secret and dark things were moving stealthily

under the trees in the lower world.

And Molly was kneeling on her low window-seat, looking out at the same

moon in a mood of joy that was transmuted half consciously into prayer

by the alchemy of pure love.

CHAPTER XV

A POOR MAN'S DEATH

Early in October, Molly and Miss Carew took up their abode in a flat

with quite large rooms and a pleasing view of Hyde Park.

August and September had been two of the healthiest and most normal

months that Molly had ever spent or was likely ever to spend again. The

weeks between the rupture with the Delaport Greens and the journey to

Switzerland had been trying, although it was undoubtedly much pleasanter

to be Mrs. Carteret's guest than it had ever been to be a permanent

inmate of her house.

Molly--thought Mrs. Carteret--was restless, not inclined to morbid

thoughts, and more gentle than of yore, but more nervous and fanciful.

It was not until after a fortnight abroad, after the revelation of

mountains realised for the first time, that Molly had the courage to say

to herself that she had been a fool during the visit to Aunt Anne. Was

it in the least likely that a man of Edmund Grosse's kind would act

romantically or hastily? Of course not. She had been as foolish as Mrs.

Browning's little Effie in dreaming that a lover might come riding over

the Malcot hills on a July evening.

The girls with whom Molly had travelled were of a healthy, intellectual

type, and Molly, under their influence, had grown to feel the worth of

the higher side of Nature's gifts. And so, vigorous in mind and body,

she had come to London in October, so she said, to study music.

Miss Carew was a little disappointed when Molly expressed lofty

indifference as to who had yet come to London. But that indifference did

not last long when her friends of the season began to find her out. Then

Miss Carew surprised Molly by her excessive nervousness and shyness of

new acquaintances. "Carey" had always professed to love society, and had

always been very carefully dressed in the fashion of the moment. But, as

a civilian may idealise warfare and be well read in tactics, and yet be

unequal to the emergency when war actually raises its grisly head, so it

was with poor Miss Carew. She simply collapsed when Molly's worldly

friends, as she called them with envious admiration, swept into the

room, garnished with wonderful hats and fashionable furs. She had none

of a Frenchwoman's gift for ignoring social differences, and she had the

uneasy pride that is rare in a Celt, although she had all a Celt's taste

for refinement and show and glitter. Miss Carew sat more and more

stiffly at the tea-table, until she confided frankly to Molly--

"My dear, I am too old, and I am simply in the way. It is just too late

in my life, you see, after all the years of governess work. Of course,

if my beloved father had lived, I should never have been a governess.

But as it is, I think I need not appear when you have visitors, except

now and then."

Molly acquiesced after enough protest, chiefly because she had begun to

wonder if it would be quite easy to have an occasional _tête-à-tête_

with men friends without having to suggest to Miss Carew to retire

gracefully. She had that morning heard that Sir Edmund Grosse was in

London, but she had no reason, she told herself, to suppose that he knew

where she was.

Meanwhile, she was exceedingly angry at finding that Adela Delaport

Green was giving her version of her relations with Molly in the season

to all her particular friends. Molly could not find out details, but she

more than suspected that the fact of her being Madame Danterre's

daughter made up part of Adela's story, although she could not imagine

how she came to know who her mother was.

Molly would probably have brooded to a morbid degree over these angry

suspicions, but that another side of life was soon pressed upon her, a

new source of human interest, in the dying husband of a charwoman.

This woman, Mrs. Moloney, had cleaned out the flat before Molly and Miss

Carew took possession.

High up in a small room in a block of workmen's buildings in West

Kensington, Pat Moloney lay dying. He and his wife had been thriftless

and uncertain, they drifted into marriage, drifted in and out of work,

and, having watched their children grow up with some affection and a

good deal of neglect, had now seen them drift away, some back to the old

country, and some to the Colonies.

Mrs. Moloney counted on her fingers to remember their number and their

ages, and spoke with almost more realisation of the personalities of

three little beings that had died in infancy than of the living men and

women and their children.

Moloney was far too ill by the time Molly Dexter came to see him to

speak of anything distinctly. Three years ago he had fallen from a

ladder and had refused to go into the hospital, in which decision he had

been supported by his wife, who "didn't hold" with those institutions. A

kindly, rough, clever young doctor had since treated him for growing

pain and discomfort, and had prophesied evil from the first. Pat kept

about and, when genuinely too ill for regular work, took odd jobs and

drifted more and more into public houses. He had never been a thorough

drunkard, and had been free from other vices, though lazy and

self-indulgent. But pain and leisure led more and more to the stimulants

that were poison in his condition. At last a chill mercifully hastened

matters, and Pat, suffering less than he had for some months past, was

nearing his end in semi-consciousness. Molly Dexter then descended on

the Moloneys in one of her almost irresistible cravings to relieve

suffering.

Ordinary human nature when not in pain was often too repugnant to Molly

for her to be able to do good works in company with other people. She

was, as she had told Edmund Grosse, a born anti-clerical, and she

scorned philanthropists; so her best moods had to work themselves out

alone and without direction. Nor was she likely to spoil the recipients

of her attentions, partly from the strength of her character, partly

because the poor know instinctively whether they are merely the objects

on which to vent a restless longing to relieve pain, or whether they are

loved for themselves.

Molly, in the village at home, had always made the expression of

gratitude impossible, but she constantly added ingratitude as a large

item in the account she kept running, in her darker hours, against the

human race.

Late on a wet and windy October evening she went to undertake the

nursing of Pat Moloney for the first part of the night. She had been

visiting him constantly for several weeks, and actually nursing him for

three days.

"Has the doctor been?"

"Yes, miss" (in a very loud whisper); "he says Pat is awful bad; he left

a paper for you."

Molly Dexter walked across the small, bare room and took a paper of

directions from the chimney-piece, and then stood looking at the old

man's heavy figure on the bed. He was lying on his side, his face turned

to the wall.

"You had better rest in the back room while I am here," she said.

"I couldn't, indeed I couldn't, miss, him being like that; you mustn't

ask me to. Besides, I've been round and asked the priest to come, and so

I couldn't take my things off. I'll just have some tea and a drop of

whisky in it, and I can keep going all the night, it's more than likely

he'll die at the dawn."

Molly eyed the woman with supreme contempt.

"It isn't at all certain that he's going to die, he'll make a good fight

yet if you will give him a chance."

Mrs. Moloney looked deeply offended. It had been all very well to be

guided by a lady at the beginning of the illness, but now it was very

different. She felt half consciously that science had done its worst,

and bigger questions than temperatures and drugs were at issue.

"A priest now," said Molly, in a whisper of intense scorn, "would kill

him at once."

Mrs. Moloney did not condescend to reply. She had propped a poor little

crucifix, a black cross, with a chipped white figure on it, against a

jam pot on a shelf under the window, and she had borrowed two

candlesticks with coloured candles from a labourer's wife on the floor

beneath. The window had been shut, so that the wind should not blow down

these objects.

Molly looked at the man on the bed and sniffed.

"He must have air--" the whisper was a snort.

At that moment there was a knock on the outer door. On the iron outer

stairs was standing the priest.

"It's just the curate," said Mrs. Moloney, looking out of the window;

and then she disappeared into the tiny passage.

Molly stood defiantly, her figure drawn to its full height. She felt

that she knew exactly the kind of Irish curate who was coming in to

disturb, and probably kill, the unhappy man on the bed. Well, she should

make a fight for this poor, crushed life; she would stand between the

horrible tyranny and superstition that lit those pink candles, and that

would rouse a man to make his poor wretched conscience unhappy and

frighten him to death. "If there is a hell," she muttered, "it must be

ready to punish such brutality as that."

Mrs. Moloney opened the door as wide as possible, and the priest came

in. Miss Dexter looked at him in amazement; how, and where had she seen

him before?

He went straight to the bed and looked at the man in silence, while

Molly looked at him. He was about middle height, with very dark hair and

eyes, a small, well-formed head, and a very good forehead. It was not

until he turned to Mrs. Moloney that Molly understood why she had

fancied that she had seen him before. She was sure now that she had

seen his photograph, but, although she was certain of having seen it,

she could not remember when or where she had done so.

"Can't you open the window, Mrs. Moloney?"

"It's the only place to make into an altar, father?"

"Oh, never mind that yet; I will manage."

Molly stepped forward; whatever he was going to do, it should not be

done without a protest.

"The doctor's orders are that he is not to be disturbed."

The priest did not seem aware of the exceedingly unpleasant expression

on Molly's countenance.

"It would be a great mistake to wake him, of course," he said; and then,

"Do you suppose he will sleep for long?"

"I haven't the faintest notion"; the uttermost degree of scorn was

conveyed in those few words.

Mrs. Moloney suppressed a sob.

"He's not been to the Sacraments for three years," she murmured.

The priest leant over the bed and looked intently at the dying man.

Mrs. Moloney opened the window and put the crucifix and candlesticks in

a corner on the dirty floor.

"It might kill him to wake him now," murmured Molly.

"Yes, that is just the difficulty." The young man was speaking more to

himself than to her.

"Difficulty!" thought Molly with scorn. "Fiddlesticks!"

The silence was unbroken for some moments. The fresh autumn air blew

into the room. A sandy coloured cat came from under the bed, looked at

them, and then rubbed her arched back against the unsteady leg of the

only table, which was laden with bottles and basins, finally retired

into a further corner, and upset and broke one of the pink candles that

belonged to the neighbour.

But Mrs. Moloney never took her eyes off the priest's pale face.

"I'll wait until he wakes," he said to her, "but is there anywhere else

I could go? It's not good to crowd up this room."

"That's intended to remove me," thought Molly, "but it won't succeed."

Mrs. Moloney moved into the little back room, and pulled forward a

chair. When the priest was seated she shut the door behind her and

whispered to him--

"Father, you'll not let his soul slip through your fingers, will you,

father dear? Just because of the poor lady who knows no better!"

"Who is she? She is not like the district visitors I've seen about in

the parish."

"No, indeed; she is a lady, and I've done some work for her, and she

would not be satisfied when she heard Moloney was ill but she must come

herself, and yesterday, not to grudge her her due, father, the doctor

said if he pulled through that I owed her his life. Well, that's proved

a mistake, anyhow, but she's after spoiling his last chance, and he's

not been the good man he was once, father."

"Yes, Mrs. Moloney, you must watch him carefully, and here I am if there

is any change. I'm sure that lady is an excellent nurse, and we mustn't

let any chance slip of keeping him alive, must we?"

She shook her head; this was only an English curate, still he must be

obeyed.

Molly was profoundly irritated by Mrs. Moloney's proceeding to make a

cup of tea for the priest, but he was grateful for it, as he had been

out at tea-time, and had come to the Moloneys' instead of eating his

dinner. He opened the window of the tiny room as far as it would go, and

read his Office by the light of the tallow candle. That finished, he sat

still and began to wonder about the lady with the olive complexion and

the strange, grey eyes.

"I felt as if I should frizzle up in the fire of her wrath," he thought

with a smile.

He took his rosary and was half through it when the door opened and

Molly came in. She shut it noiselessly, and then spoke in her usual

unmoved, impersonal voice.

"The new medicine is not having any effect; the temperature has gone up;

the doctor said if it did so now it was a hopeless case. I must rouse

him in an hour to give him another dose and take the temperature again.

After that, if it is as high as I expect it to be, you can do anything

you like to him."

As she said the last words, she went back into the other room.

The hour passed slowly, and she came again and let the priest know in

almost the same words that he was free to act as he pleased. Then she

added abruptly--

"Do you mind telling me your name?"

"My name? Molyneux."

"Then are you any relation of Lord Groombridge?"

"I am his cousin."

"I have been at Groombridge." But the priest felt that the tone was not

in the least more friendly.

"Moloney won't suffer now," she went on, turning towards the door, "and

I think he will be conscious for a time."

Molly was giving up her self-imposed charge; she wanted to be off. With

the need for help no longer an attraction, Moloney had almost ceased to

interest her; he would remain only as part of the darker background of

her mind, as a dim figure among many in the dim coloured atmosphere of

revolt and bitterness in which her thoughts on human life would move

when she had no labour for her hands. He was another of those who

suffered so uselessly, a mere half animal who had to do the rough work

of the world, and then was dropped into the great charnel house of

unmeaning death. As soon as the man began to show signs, faint signs of

perception, she left the priest by his bedside and went back into the

inner room to put on the cloak she had left there. And then she

hesitated.

What would go on in the next room? She was anxious now to know more

about it, because she had caught so strange a look on Father Molyneux's

face. If he had only known this man before she could have understood it.

But how could there be this passion of affection, this intensity of

feeling, for a total stranger, a rough brutal-looking fellow who was no

longer in pain, who would probably die easily enough, and probably be no

great loss to those he left? She had seen a strange intensity of

reverence in the way the young man had touched the wreck upon the bed.

She had known thrills of curious joy herself when relieving physical

agony; was it something like that which filled the whole personality and

bearing of the priest?

She began to feel that she could not go away; she wanted to see this

thing out. It was something entirely new to her.

Low voices murmured in the next room; she hesitated now to pass through,

she might be intruding at too sacred a moment. She believed that the

priest was hearing the dying man's confession. She had a half

contemptuous dislike of this feeling of mystery and privacy. She felt

she had been foolish not to go away at once. But she did not move for

nearly half an hour, and then the door opened, and the man's wife came

in and started back.

"I'm sure I thought you had gone, miss." Her manner was much more

cordial than it had been before. She was tearful and excited. "I want to

raise him a bit higher, and there's a cloak here. He is going off fast

now, but he was quite himself when I left him with the father to make

his confession; he looked his old self and the good man he was for many

a year--and God Almighty knows he has suffered enough these last years

to change him, poor soul."

Molly went back with her to the sick bed and helped her to raise the

dying man. The dawn came in feebly now, and made the guttering candle

dimmer. Death was all that was written on the grey face, and the body

laboured for breath. The flicker of light in the mind, that had been

roused, perhaps, by those rites which had passed in her absence, had

faded; there was not the faintest sign of intelligence in the eyes now;

the hands were cold and would never be warm again. The sandy cat had

crept away into the other room; and outside the great town was alive

again, the vast crowds were astir, each of whom was just one day nearer

to death. There was nothing but horror, stale, common horror, in it all

for Molly. But, kneeling as upright as a marble figure, and his whole

face full of a joy that seemed quite human, quite natural, Father

Molyneux was reading prayers, and there was a curious note of triumph in

the clear tones. At first she did not heed the words; then they thrust

themselves upon her, and her eyes fastened on the dying, meaningless

face, the very prey of death, in a kind of stupefaction at the words

spoken to him.

"I commend thee to Almighty God, dearest brother, and commend thee to

Him whose creature thou art; that, when thou shalt have paid the debt of

humanity by death, thou mayest return to the Maker, Who formed thee of

the dust of the earth. As thy soul goeth forth from the body, may the

bright company of angels meet thee; may the judicial senate of Apostles

greet thee; may the triumphant army of white-robed Martyrs come out to

welcome thee; may the band of glowing Confessors, crowned with lilies,

encircle thee; may the choir of Virgins, singing jubilees, receive thee;

and the embrace of a blessed repose fold thee in the bosom of the

Patriarchs; mild and festive may the aspect of Jesus Christ appear to

thee, and may He award thee a place among them that stand before Him for

ever."

And so it went on; some of it appealing to her more, some less; some

passages almost repulsive. But her imagination had caught on to the vast

outlines of the prayer--the enormous nature of the claims made on behalf

of the dying labourer.

Was it Pat Moloney who was to pass out of this darkness to "gaze with

blessed eyes on the vision of Truth"? What a tremendous assertion made

with such intensity of confidence! What a curious pageantry, too, so

magnificent in its simplicity, was ordered, almost in tones of command,

by the Church Militant for the reception of the charge she was giving

up. The triumphant army of Martyrs was to come out to meet him; the

Confessors were to "encircle him"; Michael was "to receive him as Prince

of the armies of Heaven." Peter, Paul, John were to be in attendance.

Nor in the rich strain was there any false ring of praise, or any

attempt to veil the weakness of humanity. "Rejoice his soul, O Lord,

with Thy Presence, and remember not the iniquities and excesses which,

through the violence of anger or the heat of evil passion, he hath at

any time committed. For, although he hath sinned, he hath not denied the

Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, but hath believed and hath had a

zeal for God, and hath faithfully adored the Creator of all things."

Was it an immense, an appalling impertinence--this great drama? Was it a

mere mockery of the impotence and darkness of man's life? Would the

priest say all this at the death-bed of the drunken beggar, of the

voluptuous tyrant, of the woman who had been too hard or too weak in the

bonds of the flesh? Was it a last great delusion, a last panacea given

by the Church to those who had consented to bandage their eyes and crook

their knees in childish obedience? Vaguely in her mind there flitted

half phrases of the humanitarian, the materialist, the agnostic. It

seemed as if their views of the wreck on the bed pressed upon all her

consciousness. But, just as they had never succeeded in silencing the

voice of that great drama of faith and prayer through the ages, so she

could not dull to her own consciousness the strange, spiritual vitality

that poured out in this triumphant call to the powers on high to come

forth in all their glory to receive the inestimable treasure of the

redeemed soul of Pat Moloney.

CHAPTER XVI

MOLLY'S LETTER TO HER MOTHER

There followed after that night a quite new experience for Molly. It was

the upheaval of an utterly uncultivated side of her nature. She was

astonished to find that she had religious instincts, and that, instead

of feeling that these instincts were foolish and irrational--a lower

part of her nature,--they now seemed quite curiously rational and

established in possession of her faculties. Her mind seemed more

satisfied than it had ever been before. She did not know in what she

believed, but she felt a different view of life in which men seemed less

utterly mean, and women less of hypocrites. Externally it worked

something in this way.

The day on which Pat Moloney died at dawn she could not rest so much as

she intended, to make up for the short night. She wrote one or two brief

notes begging to be let off engagements, and told the servants to say

she was not at home. She could not keep quite still, and she did not

want to go out. Gradually, as the day wore on, she worked herself into

more and more excitement. Her imagination pictured what might be the

outcome of such a view of life and death as seemed to have taken hold of

her. In her usual moods she would have thought with sarcasm that such

were the symptoms of "conversion" in a revivalist. But now there was no

critical faculty awake for cynicism; the critical faculty was full of a

solemn kind of joy. Next there came, after some hours of a sort of

surprise at this sudden and vehement sense of uplifting, the wish for

action and for sacrifice. Her mind returned to the concrete, and the

circumstances of her life. And then there came a most unwelcome thought.

If Molly wanted to sacrifice herself indeed, and wished to do some real

good about which there could be no self-delusion, was there not one duty

quite obviously in her path, her duty as a child? Had she ever made any

attempt to help the forlorn woman in Florence? Perhaps Madame Danterre's

assertion, when Molly came of age, that she did not want to see Molly,

was only an attempt to find out whether Molly really wished to come to

her mother. From the day on which her ideal of her mother had been

completely shattered Molly had shrunk from even thinking of her. She now

shivered with repugnance, but she was almost glad to feel how repugnant

this duty might be, much as a medieval penitent might have rejoiced in

his own repugnance to the leprous wounds he was resolved to dress as an

expiation for sin. It did not strike her, as it never struck the noble

penitents in the Middle Ages, that it might be very trying to the object

of these expiatory actions. She felt at the moment that it must be a

comfort to her mother to receive all the love and devotion that she

would offer her. And there was real heroism in the letter that Molly

proceeded to write to Madame Danterre. For she knew that if her offer

were accepted she risked the loss of all that at present made life very

dear, both in what she already enjoyed, and in the hope that was hidden

in her heart.

Molly had pride enough to shrink utterly from the connection with her

mother, and her girl's innocence shrank, too, with quick sensitiveness

from what might be before her. How strange now appeared the dreams of

her childhood, the idealisation of the young and beautiful mother!

The letter was short, but very earnest, and had all the ring of truth in

it. She could not but think that any mother would respond to it, and,

for herself, after sending it there could be no looking back. Once the

letter was posted to the lawyer to be forwarded to Madame Danterre, a

huge weight seemed to be lifted from Molly's mind. That night she met

Edmund Grosse at dinner. He had never seen her so bright and

good-looking, and he found he had many questions to ask as to the summer

abroad.

For several weeks Molly received no answer from Florence, but during

that time she did not repent her hasty action. And during those weeks

her interest in religion grew stronger. Just as she had been unable to

work with philanthropists, she was ready now to take her religion alone.

She felt kinder to the world at large, but she did not at first feel any

need of human help or human company. She went sometimes to a service at

Westminster Abbey, sometimes to St. Paul's, sometimes to the Oratory,

and two or three times to the church in West Kensington in which Father

Molyneux was assistant parish priest. On the whole she liked this last

much the best. Indeed, she was so much attracted by his sermons that she

went to call upon him late one afternoon.

The visitor was shown into a rather bare parlour, and Father Molyneux

soon came in. He was a good deal interested in seeing her there. He had

never been more snubbed in his life than by this lady on their first

meeting, and he had been much surprised at seeing her in the church soon

afterwards. She was plainly dressed, though at an expense he would never

have imagined to be possible, and she appeared a little softer than when

he had seen her last. She looked at him rather hard, not with the look

that puzzled Rose Bright; it was a look of sympathy and of inquiry.

"I have had curious experiences since we met," she said, "and I want to

understand them better. Have you--has anybody been praying for me?"

"I have said Mass for you twice since poor Moloney died," he said.

"I thought there was some sort of influence," she murmured. "That night

I was tired and excited and worried, and foolishly prejudiced. Somehow

the prayers you read for Pat Moloney, the whole attitude of your Church

in those prayers, caught my breath. I imagine it was something like the

effect of a revivalist preacher on a Welsh miner." She paused. Father

Molyneux was full of interest, and did not conceal it.

"I can't tell," he said. "Of course, it may have been----"

"Nerves," interrupted Molly so decidedly that he laughed; it was not in

the least what he had meant to say.

"But," she went on, with an air of impartial diagnosis, "it has lasted.

I have been very happy. I understand now what is meant by religion. I

understand what you felt about that man's soul. I understand, when you

are preaching, that intense sense of worth-whileness. I understand the

religious sense, the religious attitude. It makes everything worth

while because of love. It does not explain all the puzzles. It does not

answer questions, it swallows them up alive. It makes everything so big,

and at the same time so small, because there are infinite things too.

Then it insists on reality; I see now it must insist on dogma for fear

of unreality. Renan was quite wrong in that great sentence of his: 'Il

ne faut rien dire de limitée en face de l'infini.' The infinite is a fog

to us if there are no outlines in our conception of it. Don't you think

so?"

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? I _do_

understand 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 one man 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 mind being 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.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BLIND CANON

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, and waited 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 hear such 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; his love 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.

Strong instincts 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?

CHAPTER XVIII

MADAME DANTERRE'S ANSWER

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 one _chef_ for my vegetables alone. Have you ever turned your

attention to vegetable diet? Doctor Larrone, whom I thoroughly

confide in, sees no reason why 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 a _dévote_. 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? And did 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 as _un 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 last few 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 the _bon petit

prêtre_ preach."

"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. There was 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.

CHAPTER XIX