Mrs. Wilfrid Ward - Great Possessions

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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 in it 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
there was 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 the bravest
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 L800 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, young and 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 L20,000 a year
if that paper did not exist, and would be under L80 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 these were 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 this _trop de zele_ on 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 L100 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 that Miss 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."

BOOK III

CHAPTER XXI

AN INTERLUDE OF HAPPINESS

An interlude of happiness, six weeks of almost uninterrupted enjoyment,
followed for Rose after she went on board Sir Edmund's yacht.

Edmund Grosse had most distinctly made up his mind that during those
weeks he would not betray any ulterior motive whatever. They were all to
be amused and to be happy. There is no knowing when an interlude of
happiness will come in life; it is not enough to make out perfect plans,
the best fail us. But sometimes, quite unforeseen, when all the weather
signs are contrary, there come intervals of sunshine in our hearts, in
spite of any circumstances and the most uninteresting surroundings.
Harmony is proclaimed for a little while, and we wonder why things were
black before, and have to remember that they will be black again. But
when such a truce to pain falls in the happiest setting, and the most
glorious scenery, then rejoice and be glad, it is a real truce of God.
So did Rose night by night rejoice without trembling. It wanted much
skill on Edmund's part to ward off any scruples, any moments of
consciousness. He showed great self-command, surprising self-discipline
in carrying out his tactics. There were moments when their talk had
slid into great intimacy, when they were close together in heart and in
mind, and he slipped back into the commonplace only just in time. There
were moments, especially on the return journey, when he could hardly
hide his sense of how gracious and delicious was her presence, how acute
her instincts, how quaintly and attractively simple her mind, how big
her spiritual outlook. But before she could have more than a suspicion
of his thoughts Edmund would make any consciousness seem absurd by a
comment on the doings of the very young people on board.

"The child does look happy," he said in his laziest voice one evening
when he knew his look had been bent for a rashly long moment on Rose.
"Happy and pretty," he murmured to himself, and he watched his youngest
guest with earnestness. Then he sat down near Rose on a low deck-chair,
and put away the glasses he held in his pocket. "I'm not sure I don't
get as much pleasure out of the hazy world I see about me as you
long-sighted people do; the colours are marvellous." Rose looked at him
in surprise.

"But Edmund, don't you see more than haze?"

"Oh, yes, I can see a foreground, and then the rest melts away. I don't
know what is meant by a middle distance--that's why I can't shoot."

Rose sat up with an eager look on her face. "I never knew that; I only
thought you did not care for shooting."

There was a silence of several minutes, and neither looked at the other.
At last Edmund rose and went to the side of the boat and looked over at
the water, and then, turning half-way towards her, said: "Why does it
startle you so much?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"But you do know perfectly well."

"Indeed, Edmund." Her face was flushed and her voice a little tremulous.

"You shall tell me." He spoke more imperiously than he knew.

"I can't, indeed I can't."

"No," he said; "it would be a difficult thing to say, I admit."

"Couldn't we read something?" said Rose.

"No, no use at all. I am going to tell you why you are so glad I am
short-sighted."

"But I am not glad."

"I repeat that you are, and this is the reason why."

"You shall not say it," said Rose, now more and more distressed and
embarrassed.

"It's because you never knew before why I did not volunteer for the war,
that is why you are so glad." "Yes," he thought in anger, "she has had
this thing against me all the time; it is one of the defences she has
set up." But he was hurt all the same--hurt and angry; he wanted to
punish her. "So all the time you have thought this of me?"

"No, indeed, indeed, Edmund, it wasn't that. I never meant that; I knew
you were never that, do believe me."

"Well, if I do believe you so far, what did you think?"

Rose let her book lie on her knee and leant over it with her hands
clasped. "I thought that perhaps," she faltered, "you had been too long
in the habit of doing nothing much, and that you had grown a little
lazy--at least, I didn't really think so, but that idea has struck me."

She came and stood by him. "Oh, Edmund, why do you make me say things
when I don't want to, when I hate saying them, when they are not really
true at all." She was deeply moved, and he felt that in one sense she
was in his power. He gave a bitter sigh.

"Can I make you say whatever I like?" Her face flushed and a different
look, one of fear he thought, came into her troubled eyes. "Then say
after me, 'I am very sorry I did not understand by intuition that you
were too blind to shoot the Boers, and that I was so silly as to think
for a moment that you had ever wasted your time or been the least little
bit lazy.'"

"No, I won't say anything at all"--she held out both hands to
him--"except what the children say, 'let us just go on with the game and
pretend that that part never happened.'"

And though Rose was still embarrassed, still inclined to fear she had
hurt him, what might have been a little cloud was pierced by sunshine.
"How ridiculously glad she is that I'm not a coward!" He, too, in spite
of annoyance, felt more hopeful than he had been for a long time.

At Genoa they got long delayed letters and papers. In one of these a
short paragraph announced the death of Madame Danterre. "It is
believed," were the concluding words, "that she has left her large
fortune to her daughter, Miss Mary Dexter." That was the first reminder
to Rose that the interlude of mere enjoyment was almost over. She was
not going to repine; it had been very good. Coming on board after
reading this with a quiet patient look, a look habitual to her during
the last two years, but which had faded under the sunshine of happy
days, Rose saw Edmund Grosse standing alone in the stern of the boat
with a number of letters in his left hand pressed against his leg,
looking fixedly at the water. The yacht was already standing out to sea,
but Edmund had not glanced a farewell at beautiful and yet prosperous
Genoa, a city that no modern materialism can degrade. Like a young bride
of the sea, she is decked by things old and things new, and her marble
palaces do not appear to be insulted by the jostling of modern commerce.
All things are kept fresh and pure on that wonderful coast. Something
had happened, of that Rose was sure; but what?

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