Mrs. Wilfrid Ward - Great Possessions

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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 _entree_ 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 protege!"

"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 L100 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."

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