"I can"t say there is anything approaching to proof. But supposing, just for the sake of supposing, that you were right in your wild guess as to the will, then we should next go on to suppose that the real will was in the box conveyed by Dr. Larrone to Miss Dexter."
Edmund"s face was very dark, but he did not speak for some moments.
"No," he said, "she is incapable of such a crime. She would have given it up at once."
"At once?" Murray said. "Miss Dexter was too ill to do anything at once.
She was down with influenza, of which she very nearly died, but she pulled through, and then went away for a month. She only got back to London two weeks ago. Her affairs are in the hands of a very respectable firm. We know them, and they began this business with her a very short time before she came up. Now Sir Edmund, think it well over. You may be right in your opinion of this young lady, but just fancy the position.
There is a fortune of at least 20,000 a year on the one hand, and on the other, absolute poverty. For do you suppose that, if it were in the last will which Akers and Stock witnessed on board ship, and there were any provision in it for Madame Danterre, Sir David Bright would have left capital absolutely in her possession? No: the probability is--I am, of course, always supposing your original notion to be true--that the girl has this choice of immense wealth practically unquestioned by the world which has settled down to the fact that Sir David left his money to Madame Danterre; or, on the other hand, extreme poverty (she inherited some 2,000 from her father) and public disgrace. Mind you, she would have to announce that her mother was a criminal, and she would, in this just and high-minded world of ours, pa.s.s under a cloud herself. A few, only a very few, would in the least appreciate her conduct."
Sir Edmund was miserably uncomfortable, intensely averse to the results of what he had done. In drawing his mesh of righteous intrigue round the mother he had never realised this situation. For the moment he wished himself well out of it all.
"There is one other point," he said. "Are we quite sure that Dr. Larrone did not know what was in the box? Is it not just possible that something was taken out of it before it was given to Miss Dexter? He must have known there was a large legacy to himself; it was against his interests that Madame Danterre"s will should be set aside. Also, it would not be a very comfortable situation for him if it turned out that he had been the intimate friend and highly-paid physician of a criminal."
"That last motive fits the character of the man, according to Pietrino, better than the first," said Mr. Murray. "Well, we must see; we must wait and see whether he accepts his legacy. But before that must come the publication of Madame Danterre"s will."
Edmund drove back from the city absorbed in the thought of Molly, in comparing his different impressions of her at different stages of their acquaintance. He had spoken so firmly and undoubtingly to Murray. His first thought had been one of simple indignation, and yet--But no! he remembered her simplicity in speaking of her mother"s letter; he could see her now with the gentle, pathetic look on her face as she told him of her offering to go out to the wicked old woman, and how her poor little advance had been rejected.
Edmund had thought it one of the advantages of the expedition on the yacht that it would make it impossible for many weeks to call again at Molly"s flat. He had often before felt uncomfortable and annoyed with himself when he had been too friendly with Molly. Not that he felt her attraction to be a temptation to disloyalty to Rose. He knew he was incurable in his devotion to his love. But he did feel it mean to enjoy this pleasant, philosopher-and-guide att.i.tude, towards the daughter of Madame Danterre. That Molly could hold any delusion about his feelings had never dawned on his imagination as a possibility until the night when she confided in him her forlorn attempt at doing a daughter"s duty.
He had never liked her so well; never so entirely dissociated her from her mother, and from all possibilities of evil.
And now the situation was changed; now there was this hazy ma.s.s of suspicion revealed in Florence, and this most detestable story of Larrone and the box.
How differently things looked when it was a question of suspecting of a crime the woman he had seen in the Florentine garden, and of that same suspicion regarding poor little graceful, original, Molly Dexter!
Within two or three days Edmund became still more immersed in business.
He began to realise his own ignorance as to his own affairs, and he went through the slow torture of understanding how blindly he had left everything in his solicitor"s hands. He was beginning to face actual poverty as inevitable, when he heard from Mr. Murray that Madame Danterre"s will was proved in London, and that her daughter was her sole heir.
"The income cannot be less than 20,000 a year, and the whole fortune is entirely at Miss Dexter"s disposal," wrote Mr. Murray without any comment whatever.
Edmund was not sorry that Rose and her mother were staying on in Paris.
They would escape the first outburst of gossip as to the further history of Sir David Bright"s fortune. Nor was he sorry that they should also miss the growing rumours as to the disappearance of the fortune of Sir Edmund Grosse. Of Rose herself he dared not let himself think; but every evil conclusion which he had to face as to his own future, every undoubted loss that was discovered in the inquiry which was being carried on, seemed as a heavy door shut between him and the hopes of those last days on the yacht.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE USES OF DELIRIUM
"Don"t you think I might get up and sit by the window and look at the sea, Carey?"
Miss Carew hesitated, and then summoned the nurse.
"Miss Dexter was to have one whole day in bed after the journey."
The nurse, looking into Molly"s eager eyes, compromised for one half hour, in which Miss Dexter might lie on the sofa in a fur cloak.
It was a big sofa befitting the largest bedroom in the hotel, and Molly lay back on its cushions with the peculiar physical satisfaction of weakness, resting after very slight efforts. Yesterday she had been too exhausted for enjoyment, but this afternoon her sensations were delightful.
The short afternoon light was ruddy on the glorious brown sails of the fishing-boats, and drew out all their magnificent contrast to the blue water. But the sun still sparkled garishly on the crest of the waves, and the milder glow of the sunset had not begun.
Weakness was sheltered and at rest within, while without was the immense movement of wind and water, and the pa.s.sing smile of the sun on the great, unshackled forces of winter. Molly"s rest was like a child"s security in the arms of a kindly giant. Her mind had been absorbed by illness--an illness that had had her completely in grip, the first serious illness she had ever known. There had been a struggle in the depths of her life"s forces such as she had never imagined; but now life had conquered, and she was at rest. In that time there had been awful delirium: horrible things, guilty and hideous, had clung about her, all round her. One wicked presence especially had taken a strange form, a face without a body, and yet it had hands--it must have had hands because the horror of it was that it constantly opened the doors of the different cupboards, but most often the door of the big wardrobe, and looked out, and that although Molly had had the wardrobe locked and the key put under her pillow. And this face was very like Molly"s, and the question she had to settle was whether this face was her mother"s or her own. At times she reasoned--and the logical process was so deadly tiring--that it must be her mother, for she could not be Molly herself being so unkind to herself; whereas, if the face had had any pity for her it might have been herself looking at herself. But was that not nonsense? There was surely a touch of hysteria in that. Did the face really come out of her own brain? And if so, from what part of her brain? She felt sure there was a sort of empty attic, a large one, in the top part of her right brain, it felt hollow, quite terribly hollow.
Probably the face came out of that. But then, how did it get inside the wardrobe? and once inside the wardrobe, how did it get out again when Molly really had the key?
She longed to speak to Miss Carew about this, but Miss Carew never could follow a chain of reasoning. The nurse was more sensible, but she thought that reasoning was too tiring for Molly--so silly! If only she could be allowed to explain it all quietly and reasonably! And oh! why did they leave her alone? She hated to be left alone, and she was sure she told them so; and yet they went away. And then she began to work her brain again as soon as the was alone, and she would be happy for a few minutes with a new plan for shutting the face into the large empty attic in her right brain and locking the door, when quite suddenly the face opened the door of the wardrobe with its loose hands and looked out again and jeered at her.
Even now, lying resting, and looking at the sun, Molly was glad that there was no hanging wardrobe in the room; only one full of shelves. She would certainly not use the same room when she went back to London. She would only be in that flat for a short time, as she must now take a big house.
As her eyes rested on the sails and the water, and were filled with the joy of colour, she had a sort of delicious idea of her new house. It should be very beautiful, most exquisite, quite unlike anybody else"s house; it should be Molly"s own special triumph. It must have the glamour of an old London house, its dignity, its sense of a past. It should have for decoration gloriously subdued gilding and colour, and old pictures, which Molly could afford to buy.
"And"--she smiled to herself--"as long as it is a house in the air it shall have a great outlook on the sea and the sunset." The fancy that had been so cruel in her sickness was a sycophant now that life was victorious; it flattered and caressed and soothed her now.
Within a few days two theories were growing in the background of her consciousness, not acknowledged or questioned while they took possession. They took turns to make themselves gradually, very gradually, and imperceptibly familiar to her. The first was founded on the idea that she had been very ill a little sooner than was supposed, and that she had imagined a great deal that was torturing and absurd as to her mother"s papers. She had been delirious that evening, and, what was still more important, she was actually very hazy now as to what she had seen and read of the contents of that box.
"I can"t remember if that"s true," she could honestly say to herself when some fact of the horrible story came forward and claimed attention.
Once she caught herself thinking how very common it was for people to forget entirely what had happened just before or during an illness. For instance, Sir David Bright had never been able to remember what happened on the day on which Madame Danterre declared he had married her. But how did Molly know that? And suddenly she said to herself that she could not remember; perhaps she had fancied that, too.
At another time she began almost to think that she had imagined the black box altogether. Was it square or oblong? and how shallow was it?
Sometimes while she was ill she had seen a black box as big as a house; sometimes it was a little tiny cash box.
Meanwhile, under cover of so many uncertainties, the other theory was getting a firm footing. It was simply that the fact of the will being sent to her mother was undoubted proof of Sir David"s having repented of having made it. If Sir David had not sent her this will, who had? It was absurd and romantic to suppose that her mother had carried on an intrigue in South Africa in order to get possession of this will. That might have done in a chapter of Dumas, or have been imagined in delirium, but it was not possible in real life. The only puzzle was--and the theory must be able to meet all the facts of the case--why had he not destroyed the will himself? The probability was that he had not been able to do so at the last moment. When dying he must have repented of the last will just too late to destroy it. She could quite imagine his asking a friend, almost with his last words, to send Madame Danterre the papers. It would look more natural than his asking the friend to destroy them. And then the officer would have addressed the papers, of course not reading them. And thus the theory comfortably wrapped up another fact, namely, that the registered envelope had not been addressed by the hand that had written its contents. Finally, all that the theory did for the will, it did also for the letter to Rose, for the two things evidently stood or fell together. So the theories grew and prospered without interfering with each other as Molly"s health and strength returned, except that the delirium theory insisted at times on the other theory being purely hypothetical; as, for instance, it had to be "Even supposing I was not delirious, and the will had been there, it is still evident that----"
Molly"s recovery did not get on without a drawback, and the day on which the lawyer came down to see her she was genuinely very unwell. She seemed hardly able to understand business. She was ready to leave all responsibility to him in a way that certainly saved much trouble, but he hardly liked to see her quite so pa.s.sive.
After he left, Miss Carew found her looking faint and ill.
"He must think me a fool," she said, in a weak voice. "I have left everything on his shoulders, poor man. I"m afraid if he is asked about me, as he"s a Scotchman he will say I am "just an innocent"! I really ought not to have seen him to-day."
But in a few days she was better, and the house agent found her quite business-like. The said house agent had come down with one secret object in his heart. It was now nine months since the bankruptcy of a too well-known n.o.bleman had thrown a splendid old house on the market. It had been in the hands of all the chief agents in London, and they had hardly had a bite for it. Even millionaires were shy of it so far, the fact being that the house was more beautiful than comfortable, the bedrooms having been thought of less importance than the effectiveness of the first floor. Then, perhaps, it was a little gloomy, though artists maintained that its share of gloom only enhanced its charm.
After mentioning several uninteresting mansions, the agent observed that, of course, there was Westmoreland House still going, and Molly"s eyes flashed. She had been at the great sale at Westmoreland House; she had been absolutely fascinated by the great well staircase and by the music-room, by the square reception-rooms, and above all by the gallery with its perfection of light moulding, a room of gla.s.s and gold, but so spiritualised, so subdued and reticent and dignified, that ghosts might live there undisturbed.
Molly trembled with eagerness as she asked the vital questions of cost, of repairs, of rates and taxes. Yes, it was possible--undoubtedly possible. There was a very large sum of money in a bank in Florence which possibly Madame Danterre had acc.u.mulated there with a view to a sudden emergency. Molly"s lawyer had not been certain of the amount, but he had mentioned a sum larger than the price of Westmoreland House.
By the time Molly was fit to go back to London, and while the theories just described were still in possession of her mind, Westmoreland House was bought. Molly said it was a great relief to get it settled.
"One feels more settled altogether," she said to Miss Carew, "when a big question like that is done with."
She strolled with Miss Carew on the smooth sand by the water"s edge on the last evening before leaving, and looked up at the white cliffs growing bright in the light of the sunset.
"It has been very restful," she said. "I am almost sorry to go."
"Then why not stay a little longer, my dear?"
"Oh, no, Carey! it would soon become quite intolerable; it isn"t real life, only a pause; and now, Carey, I am going to live!"
The sun presently set lower and more grey than they had expected; the wind felt sharper, and Molly shivered. Nature was unbearable without its gilding.